Apple apologised to Chinese consumers after government media attacked its repair policies in a two-week campaign.

Investigators have traced a co-ordinated cyber attack that paralysed tens of thousands of computers at six South Korean banks and media companies to a Chinese internet protocol address, but it is still unclear who orchestrated the attack, authorities in Seoul said.

The online version of China’s Communist Party newspaper has hailed a report by The Onion naming North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as the “sexiest man alive” — not realising it is satire.

Iran is playing a growing role supporting the Syrian regime and is helping to build and train a militia to fight opposition forces, US defence chiefs say.

CHINESE authorities came under fire yesterday after the worst subway accident in 42 years raised fresh fears that the world’s second biggest economy was sacrificing safety in the rush to develop.

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama warned yesterday that polarised lawmakers were “almost out of time” to forge a deal averting a disastrous debt default that could send shockwaves though the world economy.

Chinese authorities have rescued 89 trafficked children and arrested 369 suspects after uncovering two trafficking gangs.

Demonstrations against Japan broke out in at least six Chinese cities over the weekend despite efforts by authorities to rein in the growing protest movement, reports said.

China today denied organising internet attacks against search engine giant Google in a dispute over censorship and access rights.

CHINA is struggling to contain the fallout from the tainted milk scandal, announcing a survey of melamine-free dairy products and promising to subsidise farmers hit by the scare.

Three shoppers died and at least 31 others were injured in a stampede when the doors opened at the start of a sale at a Carrefour supermarket in south-western China today, state media reported.

ABOUT 400 Chinese men whose children were sold to work as slaves at brickworks were seeking help online after risking their lives and spending all their savings in a mostly futile search, media reported yesterday.

ABOUT 100 Beijing News reporters walked out in protest at this week’s dismissal of the top editor, the latest victim of China’s strict press controls, industry sources said yesterday.

China’s beer production rose 15.2% in 2004 over the previous year to 29.1 million tonnes in 2004, maintaining the country’s ranking as the world’s biggest beer producer, state media has reported.

Nearly 500 people were in quarantine in China’s capital Beijing and a southern province today as authorities raced to contain a small eruption of SARS before a national holiday puts millions of travellers on the road.

With its astronaut back home and healthy, the orbital capsule that made China’s first manned space mission a success began its own physical examination today – an exhaustive, part-by-part check-up to determine if everything worked according to plan.

China launched its first manned space mission today, sending an astronaut hurtling into orbit and becoming the third country in Earth’s history to do so - four decades after the Soviet Union and the US.

Six people in northern China have been jailed for inciting riots and using violence to stop anti-SARS work, state newspapers reported today, part of a government campaign to force compliance with disease-control restrictions.

China opposes war on Iraq and believes weapons inspectors should be given more time to enforce UN resolutions on disarmament, the Communist Party’s top newspaper said in a commentary today.

A giant panda at a Chinese research centre has given birth to twin male cubs, the second set of twins born this year in the country’s panda breeding programme.

More than 70 miners have been killed in a south China tin mine that flooded, the Communist Party’s leading newspaper confirmed today, after days of official denials.

An official Chinese Web site today said a flood in a mine killed about 400 people, even as local officials continued to deny any deaths.