What better weekend news to read than iPhone app news? Honestly, is there anything that phone can't do? Just minutes ago I've finished writing about Steve D.'s Trism game for the Apple device and now
I've stumbled upon news on this app called iChinese. As its name implies, its helps you learn your characters.

They say you can take a Chinese course and still forget the ideograms. Huh...! Well, if that's the case, iChinese is just what you need. It is designed as a native iPhone application, according to Matthias Huber. He told tuaw.com that iChinese helps train iPhone users writing and reading of Chinese characters. The app actually features lessons that are based on well-known training courses, such as "Practical Chinese Reader."

If you need something to compare the app's system to, check out Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! released for Nintendo's DS. It pretty much uses the same concept, only without the stylus.

A jailbroken iPhone is required for the installation procedure (no need to remind anyone that Softpedia doesn't condone hacking/jailbreaking your Apple devices) in order to be able to run 3rd party apps on it. However, those who've downloaded Nullriver's Installer and installed it on their iPhone simply need to add a new source repository and install iChinese from the "Learning" category.

Using iChinese is as simple as saying "ni hao"! You go to "Library" and download (at least) one training lesson in order to be able to start doing writing exercises.

If you're dying to get this thing up and running on your phone you have two options, one of which Softpedia reckons is safer than the other, and that is waiting for the iPhone SDK to arrive. Apple's upcoming software development kit will aid developers in creating nifty apps such as iChinese, iAno, iHalo Stats or casual games like Trism, which ultimately will have you installing them on your Apple phone without having to jailbreak it prior to installation.

Beijing, January 24: Communist Party officials in central China have urged mobile phone-wielding citizens to send rousing "red" text messages instead of blue jokes, but the response has been more derision than revolution.

Nanyang city, in rural Henan province, recently told residents to "mobilise to compose and send healthy, positive, uplifting red text messages," the China Youth Daily reported on Thursday.

"Red sentences occupy the text message culture front!," Party officials urged in a local newspaper, the Youth Daily said.

China's 500 million mobile phone users rank as the world's most avid text message senders and passing ribald jokes and satirical jibes about leaders is a national pastime frowned on by unamused Party officials.

"The broad masses of residents should mobilise ... and fight the vulgar with the healthy," said the announcement.

But many citizens have responded to the campaign with only more catcalls, the China Youth Daily reported.

"Too funny, this itself is a joke," said one message pasted on an Internet site. "You go your noble way and let us go our tasteless way," said another.

Other residents wondered whether officials should be doing more useful things.

"All of you wallow in wine and women and want us to be pure-minded and puritanical," one Nanyang resident told the paper. "It's going a bit far."

A Chinese hospital has successfully removed the world's biggest tumour of its kind from a woman's buttocks.

The eight stone (45kg) tumour weighed more than patient Ahui, 36, of Guangzhou city, reports Guangzhou Daily.

Two teams of surgeons at Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital worked for more than eight hours to remove the 4ft 5ins tumour.

"We had to divide the surgeons into two teams, one cutting from the waist, the other from the lower right leg, then meeting in the middle," said chief surgeon Huang Guangxiang.

"This is the largest tumour we've ever seen, and medical reports show it was the biggest neurofibromatosis tumour in the world."

Ahui says the tumour started growing on her right buttock when she was 12.

"At that time, it was only the size of an egg, and my family had it cut off at the hospital," she said. "But after 10 years, a new tumour started growing like crazy where the old one had been."

"Because of this, I haven't had a bath in the past two years, and had to stay in bed all the time. My sister quit her job to take care of me."

Ahui inherited the disease, multiple neurofibromatosis, from her mother, who died of it in 1990.