Fireworks for Chinese New Year celebrations have exploded on a lorry in central China, destroying part of an elevated motorway and sending vehicles plummeting 100ft to the ground.

A scandal involving Chinese city officials having sex with women hired by developers who secretly videotaped the trysts to extort construction deals broadened today with state media announcing 10 more officials fired.

Beijing will introduce tough laws to punish firms that flout food safety laws, the official Xinhua news agency reported, a significant move in China’s struggle to get its abysmal food safety record under control.

The wife of a senior Communist Party official in China is being held over the murder of a British businessman, state media has reported.

The Chinese government has banned the country’s airlines from paying controversial charges on carbon emissions imposed by the European Union.

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.

HEAVY rain drenched a drought-ravaged swathe of southern and eastern China, killing 52 people and forcing more than 100,000 to evacuate.

RESCUERS said yesterday there is little hope of finding alive 11 miners trapped underground after a gas explosion in a central Chinese coal mine that killed 26 of their comrades.

A typhoon that left dozens dead in the Philippines and two more dead in China weakened to a tropical storm today as it churned towards northern Vietnam, smashing boats in its path and lashing the region with rain and wind.

The news agency run by China's ruling Communist Party launched a global English-language television channel today as part of efforts to expand its influence abroad.

TIGERS mauled a man to death after he entered their enclosure with his son at a northern Chinese wildlife park.

Tigers mauled a man to death after he entered their enclosure with his son at a northern Chinese wildlife park, police and a park spokesman said today.

Three judges in a Chinese court were shot dead by a gunman who then killed himself today.

A CHINESE man who hacked to death seven young children and two adults in the latest in a series of deadly assaults on schools lashed out after an argument over a nursery school lease, neighbours and state media said.

China’s biggest national news agency today announced plans to launch its global, English-language television news network as part of efforts to expand the communist government’s media influence abroad.

China today executed a man who stabbed eight schoolchildren to death in attacks that shocked the country, state media reported.

US arms sales to Taiwan hurt China’s national security, its foreign minister said, escalating the rhetoric in a dispute threatening to deepen rifts between the world’s biggest and third-biggest economies.

Grieving miners’ families demanded answers today from mining officials about the underground gas explosion that left at least 104 men dead in northeastern China.

Four tourists died when their hot-air balloon caught fire and crashed during a sightseeing trip in China.

Police have rescued 33 children and 25 women who were kidnapped in southern China by a trafficking ring.

Astronauts aboard China’s Shenzhou 7 spacecraft are readying spacesuits for Saturday’s spacewalk – the country’s first ever.

Fifteen people have died after a bus plunged into a ravine in central China, it was reported today.

Thousands of troops are tonight fighting to plug dangerous cracks in a dam above an earthquake-hit Chinese town.

The official death toll in the Chinese earthquake rose to 12,000 today with thousands more still missing amid reports of strong aftershocks in the region.

TENS of thousands of people were feared dead last night in a huge earthquake that shattered central China.

A powerful earthquake toppled buildings, schools and a chemical plant in China today, killing more than 8,700 people and trapping untold numbers in mounds of concrete, steel and earth.

China urged its citizens to be “calm” and “rational” as nationalistic protests against French supermarket Carrefour spread today to more cities across the country.

MORE than 100 people have died in floods and landslides in China, and tens of thousands have fled their homes in the east where dykes are in danger of being breached by a swollen river.

THE only giant pandareleased into the wild after being bred in captivity has died, setting back China’s efforts to save the critically endangered species, state press reported yesterday.

CHINA sentenced the former head of its food and drug watchdog to death yesterday on corruption charges, for accepting bribes in return for granting approvals for hundreds of medicines.

A LOVELORN Chinese herdsman who is the world’s tallest man has finally found his other half in a sales clerk who comes up to his elbow.

At least 35 miners were trapped underground after a coal mine gas explosion in western China, state media reported today.

THE Communist party boss of Shanghai has been sacked for corruption, state media said yesterday, toppling the highest leader so far in national party chief Hu Jintao’s drive to root out abuse and enforce loyalty.

BIRD flu has killed at least one person in China, officials said yesterday, confirming the spread of the deadly virus to people in another large Asian country where it might prove hard to contain.

CHINA told Japan bluntly yesterday that it had nothing to apologise for after weeks of anti-Japanese protests, some violent, in cities across the country.

CHINA has ordered severe punishments for phone sex operators as part of a sweeping crackdown on electronic pornography. Local governments have been ordered to take action by October 1, China’s national day, the Xinhua news agency reports.

Two trains that collided triggering a massive blast in North Korea were carrying explosives and not fuel, while casualty figures appeared to be lower than originally feared, an international Red Cross official said today.

The fighter pilot who made China’s first trip into space last week has been promoted, amid efforts by the communist government to build Lt Col Yang Liwei into a national hero.

AT least 32 people were killed, five missing and 116 injured as Typhoon Dujuan slammed into southern China, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

THE World Health Organisation took its SARS probe into rural China, where the health system is a shambles, as reports emerged yesterday of more attacks on quarantine sites in the country by people scared of the disease.

CHINA ordered schools in Beijing to stay closed for another two weeks and put aside politics to allow a WHO team to visit rival Taiwan as the communist giant took tough measures to contain the spread of the lethal SARS virus.

CHINA closed theatres, internet cafes and other entertainment venues in an attempt to stop the spread of SARS as the Health Ministry yesterday reported nine new deaths from the flu-like illness nationwide.

At least 21 students were killed and 47 more injured after a staircase collapsed in a middle school in China.

A suicide bomber has killed himself and a police officer in a department store in north-west China.