Check out this big bird in China. No, not Big Bird in China (amusing and educational though that video may be).

It's a really BIG bird in China!

Yes, scientists have discovered the remains of a deadly prehistoric Chinese ostrich in Inner Mongolia. They're calling it Gigantoraptor erlianensis. Its drumstick was a little larger than a fully grown human being. It weighed 3,000 pounds. It was, more than anything else, like a Tyrannosaurus rex with feathers and a beak. (My favorite part, actually, is that it was discovered on camera, while paleontologists were demonstrating how they'd found another batch of fossilized remains.)

And look, look! China also has little big cats! Lots of 'em! (Caution: link contains dangerously cute baby tiger photos.)

The Hengdaohezi Feline Breeding Center in the northern city of Harbin has played midwife to a whopping 84 Siberian tiger cubs since March. They're one of the world's rarest animals - only 400 left in the wild. And now, nearly 100 more very large kittens are being brought up to eventually be released into the wild. Hopefully, it'll go better than the recent giant panda release. (Caution: link contains Call of the Wild-style story that may depress empathetic readers.)

(Who should probably also avoid the following developing story.)

Officials in Shanxi and Henan are doing their best to stamp out a slave scandal involving people being forced to work in mines, kilns and foundries over the past 10 years (making, one would assume, the bricks and iron necessary for China's explosive growth over the last decade). They've arrested 130 suspected human traffickers and are still looking for 20 more. Key words include "emaciated bodies" and "festering sores," so, you know, advance with caution.

Despite all that (and decades of other not terribly pleasant dealings), the Dalai Lama still says, "Go ahead. Trade with China. They need to know how the rest of the world does things." More or less. I'm paraphrasing.

China, by way of response, has announced plans to build a highway on Mount Everest. Now there's a symbolic gesture - possibly the most remote, forbidding, unspoiled wilderness in the world (once you get past the piles of used oxygen tanks and dead climbers), and we'll build a road up it.

Well, to the first base camp, at least. They're also planning on having the Olympic torch reach the summit in 2008. Which should be interesting, given the wind and lack of oxygen.

Big challenge.