Chinese toy inspectors set fire to Elmo’s buggy white eyes, tugged on Dora the Explorer’s arms and scraped off paint from plastic pieces of a “Barbie hot tub party bus” kit in front of foreign journalists, in a bid to repair the damage caused by the worldwide toy recalls.

China urged other governments today to share more information about bird flu cases in people to prevent a human pandemic.

A man in China’s southern Guangdong province died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, an expert confirmed today.

A man in south China broke both his legs and an arm when he fell to the ground after a fast-rising kite pulled him 16ft into the air, the official Xinhua News Agency said today.

Paul Gascoigne has signed for struggling Chinese second division side Gansu Tianma, according to reports.