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[Metro & Sports]

• China's rural population will shrink by about half a billion people over the next 30 years, a Chinese official in charge of rural economic research said yesterday.
• The Chinese Lunar New Year was not only a gala for domestic retail sales, but a bonanza for overseas retailers, too.
• Business owners in Hongqiao, better known as the Pearl Market, in Chongwen district, say their sales have decreased by at least 20 percent as they mainly depend on European and American customers who are still suffering from the global financial crisis.
• Over 50 high school students in Beijing have been blocked from entering school on the first day of the new semester for having long or colored hair.
• Sachin Tendulkar confirmed his status as one of cricket's all-time great batsmen yesterday, adding the highest individual one-day international score to his list of world records.
• American golden girl Lindsey Vonn sustained a broken finger after crashing out in the first leg of the women's giant slalom at Whistler yesterday.

[China's Champion] Li Ling, the Most Beautiful Countryside Schoolmaster

She is only 27 years old, but she has set up a free school especially for children in remote villages. Despite extreme poverty, she has been endeavoring at all costs to run the school. And in order to build a reading room for her students, she even went to the streets to collect second-hand books. She is Li Ling (.i), an ordinary young woman who inspired the whole country with her extraordinary deeds and is regarded as the most beautiful countryside schoolmaster.

[Cultural Voyage] Taiwan, among earliest global warming victims

Taiwan releases", a documentary that depicts global warming effects on the island. According to the documentary, the island of Taiwan is facing a potential disastrous future with rising sea levels and more typhoons.

• Actress Tang Wei is likely to return to the Chinese mainland to promote her new film "Crossing Hennessy," co-starring Hong Kong singer-actor Jacky Cheung.
• Which were the most popular shows at the 2010 CCTV Spring Festival Gala? A survey among TV viewers and netizens will soon give us the answer. And the winners will be announced at an evening gala on the fifteen day of the Chinese Lunar New Year.
• The 'Poker Face' singer - who cleaned up at the BRIT Awards last week taking home three prizes, including International Female Solo Artist - says she can't wait to be a wife and mother.
• A painting of a windmill newly attributed to the Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh went on display on Wednesday after spending decades in the depot of a Dutch provincial museum.

[Strange News]

• A sleepy businessman surnamed Wang in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province has posted an online ad for a customized wakeup call. He's said he will pay 300 yuan or 44 US dollars per month for a "sweet, clear-voiced woman under 30, with a bachelor's degree who speaks Putonghua" to call him at 7 am daily to get him out of bed.
• Women flying Japan's All Nippon Airways will have a toilet all to themselves from next month, with the airline designating one restroom on most international routes as female-only.
• University of Montreal School of Social Work professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse, intending to research the effects of pornography on men's relationships with women and needing a control group for comparison, advertised in the local community for up to 20 nonusers of pornography, but he was forced to radically alter his research model when no one signed up.
  Concluded Lajeunesse, "Guys who do not watch pornography do not exist."
• Two men identified as only as bus owner Li and driver Chen sat in raincoats and crash helmets to ward off the cold and rain and drove their exposed, badly damaged 69-seat vehicle for about 270 kilometers from Tongzi, Gui-zhou Province to Jiangjin, Chongqing Municipality for repairs.

[Real China] Second-Generation Only Children

There have always been many disagreements over those who were born after the introduction of the country's one-child policy in 1979. Now that first generation of only children has entered their late 20s and early 30s, and many are parents themselves. How they are bringing up their children is attracting attention from all sides.

[Flexible] Afro Shop

African art has long been appreciated around the world and now Chinese people are embracing it too. Here in Beijing, the Afro Shop offers different kinds of Art works in the form of clothes shoes, paintings and much, much more. Nillah Nyakoa went along to find out more.