Beijing - Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev met with China's top legislator Wu Banguo Thursday, pledging to step up bilateral cooperation, state media reported.

Wu, chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress, said relations between the two countries were at an all-time high and that China would work with Kazakhstan to enhance cooperation in fields such as energy, transportation, mineral resources development and infrastructure construction, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Beijing  - China's Three Gorges Dam, due to be completed in November, is getting bigger every day on all fronts.

While officially the government said it has spent 180 billion yuan (26.35 billion dollars) on building the 185-metre dam and a reservoir stretching more than 600 kilometres, local critics and foreign observers said the real figure could be more than twice that amount, and that's just in the construction phase.

Hong Kong - The new leader of the Catholic Church in Hong Kong said Thursday that he believed China should reverse its verdict on the students killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Bishop John Tong, who took up his duties in the former British colony Thursday, said China was wrong to brand the 1989 Beijing student movement a counterrevolutionary rebellion.

New Delhi, Apr 16 : The Chinese Navy plans to develop a new generation of warships and aircraft as part of the country''s effort to upgrade the maritime security defence system.

Admiral Wu Shengli outlined key missions, present and future, in an interview with Xinhua News Agency on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Chinese Navy next Thursday.

Shanghai - Jenson Button will be out for his third straight season win at the Chinese Formula One Grand Prix on Sunday now that his fast Brawn GP car has been declared legal.

The governing body FIA said on Wednesday that diffusers used by Brawn, Toyota and Williams meet F1 rules, forcing other teams to play catch-up which could take several weeks.

The diffuser is an aerodynamic feature which channels air out of the back of the chassis. It affects the car's downforce which in turn enhances speed and performance, allegedly making the car half a second faster than others over one lap than one without the diffuser.

Beijing, Apr. 16 : Though China''s economy has expanded by 6.1 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2009, the quarterly growth is the slowest in the past 10 years as the global financial crisis continues to affect the world''s fastest-growing economy.

It was 4.5 percentage points lower than the first quarter of 2008 and down 0.7 percentage points from the previous quarter, reports Xinhua.