Hambantota (Sri Lanka), Sep. 1: India and China are reportedly competing to gain a commercial and strategic edge in the busy sea lanes of the Indian Ocen, even as China has secured the Sri Lankan Government’s approval to build a new port in southern Hambantota.

Foreign news agency reports claim that once the port is completed, it could serve as an ideal point for international competition over energy supply routes that fuel much of the global economy.

Beijing - The casualty toll has risen to at least 33 dead and 506 injured after an earthquake on the borders of China's south-western provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan, the government said Monday.

Most of the casualties were in Sichuan's worst-hit county of Huili, where 22 people were reported dead after Saturday's 6.1-magnitude quake, the State Seismological Bureau said on its website.

Beijing - The death toll rose to at least 25 and more than 400 injured after an earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale in south-western China, state media said on Sunday.

At least 17 people died, three were missing and 253 injured in the worst-hit county of Huili in Sichuan province, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Three others were reported dead in Sichuan's Panzhihua city and at least five died in the neighbouring province of Yunnan, the agency said.

Hangzhou (China), Aug. 30: A British architect has completed the Liangzhu Culture Museum in east China's Zhejiang Province and it will open to the public from October 1.

The museum will contain relics of ancient villages, nobles' tombs with exquisite jade burial artifacts, imperial graveyards, sacrificial altars and large-scale mountain structures in Liangzhu Town marks essential evidence of China's 5,000 years of history," China News quoted Zhang Zhongpei, the ex-curator of the Forbidden City Museum in Beijing, as saying.

New Delhi, August 30 : Liangzhu Culture Museum in east China’s Zhejiang Province, which will showcase early Chinese civilization, will open to the public on October 
1, 2008, after four years of construction at the helm of a British architect.

The museum, in Liangzhu Cultural Village in a suburb of the provincial capital Hangzhou, abuts a park characterized by water and marsh.

“The discovery of relics of ancient villages, nobles’ tombs with exquisite jade burial artifacts, imperial graveyards, sacrificial altars and large-scale mountain structures in Liangzhu Town marks essential evidence of China’s 5,000 years of history,” said Zhang Zhongpei, ex-curator of the Forbidden City Museum in Beijing.