EVERYONE knows that the CCTV Spring Festival Gala has long dominated Chinese New Year's Eve. Even now, as some people go looking around for alternatives for that night, the folks at CCTV are working hard to make this annual celebration more attractive.

The old-fashioned holiday reunions are characterized by karaoke, a group dinner and some shopping. Feel the need for some fresh ideas? Well, there’s “Sanguosha”, a role-playing card game which has made its way from school dorms to parties all over the country.

One of the great remaining mysteries of ancient Egypt, the lineage of the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun, may soon be solved, the country's antiquities supremo hinted on Sunday.

Now, listen up, you foreigner boys and girls, Chinese New Year is around the corner and I want to talk to you seriously about fireworks.

Temperatures have plummeted across the northern hemisphere in recent weeks, and icy conditions, everywhere have forced people to take extra care. But they've also provided some chances for cold-weather fun.

Legend has it that Cao Cao, King Wu of Wei kingdom in the Three Kingdoms period (AD 208 to 280), had built 72 tombs to thwart tomb raiders.

MANY say the Europeans lead the world by far in human development, and that even the Americans can't keep up with them sometimes. French President Sarkozy has provided the latest example of this by trying to pass a law forcing gender equality in one of the most masculine areas still around in today's world: the corporate boardroom.

When discussing cultural differences in love, a friend (who has ample experience) once summed it up nicely: "The French are romantic while the Chinese are sentimental."

The longest entry in the new Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, a work that has been 44 years in the making, is for the word "immediately".

Over the weekend, 30 Japanese universities took part in the International Education Expo in Beijing. ROK, meanwhile, expects an influx of Chinese students, thanks to new exchanges between the two countries.

COFCO, a large State Chinese enterprise opens its door to five interns from America’s Harvard University.

Romanian-born German writer Herta Mueller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday, honored for work that "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed," the Swedish Academy said.

New waves of authors continue making a splash in China’s literary scene. The innovative work represents the ideals and styles of younger generations, offering insight into a world often unseen by those of different times.

Shanghai does not want to lose face over the mistranslations and mistakes when thousands of visitors arrive for the World Expo next year.

GUATEMALA offers an astonishing diversity of spectacular landscapes. In two weeks, we'd visited high mountains and colonial cities, a lush cloud forest and active volcanoes, deep lakes and limestone valleys.