A collaboration between the Port of Cork and a major port in southern China aims to see both gain from developing increased trade.

Authorities in Hong Kong have confiscated nearly four tons of ivory worth $3.4m in their biggest ever seizure of endangered species products.

Protesters have burned police and fire department vehicles in a violent outburst of anger against the treatment of migrant workers in southern China’s manufacturing hub, eyewitnesses said.

TWIN girls with a single body and two heads have been born at a hospital in China.

MORE than 1,000 people have died or disappeared in severe flooding in China so far this year, and the heaviest rains are still to come, a senior official warned yesterday.

Seven children and a teacher were hacked to death and at least 20 others injured today at a kindergarten in China’s north-west Shaanxi province.

A FARMER attacked children with a hammer, injuring five, before burning himself to death yesterday in China’s third such assault in as many days and prompting the government to demand stricter school security nationwide.

A knife-wielding man attacked 28 children at a preschool in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, the second such attack in two days.

Ten people were killed when a bus plunged off a steep slope into a valley in China’s southern Guangdong province.

China’s top judge urged courts to focus on maintaining social stability to deal with the fallout from the global economic slowdown, state media said today amid growing fears of impending social tumult.

More than 40 animal-loving Beijing residents unfurled banners in a protest urging a southern Chinese province to stop the “cruel slaughter” of cats for food.

A FIRE and subsequent stampede at a club in southern China killed 43 people and left 88 injured in the latest incident highlighting China’s abysmal fire safety record.

More than 540,000 people evacuated low-lying areas along China’s southeast coast as Typhoon Sepat roared toward the mainland today after battering Taiwan.

LIVE rats are being trucked from central China, which is suffering a plague of a reported two billion rodents displaced by a flooded lake, to the south to end up in restaurant dishes.

China National Petroleum Corporation the country’s biggest onshore oil and gas producer, will begin building a second west-to-east natural gas pipeline in 2008, a state media report said today.

The death toll from Tropical Storm Prapiroon jumped to 57, with 16 more people missing, after the storm knocked down houses and set off landslides and flash floods in China, news reports said today.

China’s death toll from Tropical Storm Prapiroon has jumped to 48, with 15 more people missing, after the storm knocked down houses and set off landslides and flash floods, news reports said.

Tropical Storm Prapiroon left five people dead in south China, official media reported today, as high winds and heavy rain lashed an area where 400,000 people had earlier been evacuated.

China’s death toll from tropical storm Bilis more than doubled to 482 today after a hard-hit province reported a sharp rise in fatalities, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Beijing police are telling the city’s residents to turn in illegal guns or face prison amid a national crackdown on unlicensed firearms, a news report said today.

Typhoon Chanchu roared towards Hong Kong and China’s southern coast today, just days after killing nearly 40 people and leaving thousands homeless in the Philippines.

A killer typhoon picked up speed today as it spun closer to Hong Kong, forcing the city to urge small ships and fishing boats on the open seas to seek shelter from the storm – the strongest on record to enter the South China Sea in May.

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

A teenage girl was beaten to death in weekend clashes between protesting Chinese villagers and police wielding electric batons, media reported today.

A TOXIC spill flowing toward China’s southern business capital of Guangzhou has been stopped by a dam as the government rushed to protect water supplies to the city of seven million.

Hundreds of riot police armed with guns and shields surrounded and sealed off a southern Chinese village where authorities shot dead as many as 20 demonstrators this week, villagers said.

Southern China’s Guangdong province will cease all coal mining, state media reported today, following a disaster that killed 123 people in August.

An overloaded minibus plunged off a mountain road in southern China, killing 11 people, including the driver, the official Xinhua News Agency reported today.

SARS-wary southern China today threatened fines of up to €9,350 for merchants who try to hide civet cats, a day ahead of the deadline to slaughter thousands of the animals because of fears they carry the disease.

Health authorities in Taiwan are urgently trying to track down five foreign passengers on a flight taken by a man later diagnosed with SARS.

TAIWAN health authorities said a military medical researcher had contracted SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), sparking alerts across Asia of a possible resurgence of the killer virus.

A couple have been arrested and accused of robbing and killing 12 women in southern China over a five-month period, preying on job seekers in the boomtown of Shenzhen, state media and local officials said today.

China will host its first ever round of the motorcycle endurance world championships next year.

The World Health Organisation today put Toronto back on its list of places affected by SARS

Canada's participation in the Special Olympics has been thrown into question again today as the country faces another SARS outbreak.

THE Chinese immigrant suspected of having SARS is expected to be discharged from hospital early this week.

IF the public needed any proof of the lack of preparedness in this country in the event of an incidence of SARS, it was graphically illustrated in the case of the Chinese woman, who was considered a possible case of the virus.

Twelve more people have died of the SARS virus and more than 300 new cases have been diagnosed, China announced today.

Malaysia stopped issuing entry visas to most Chinese travellers to curb severe acute respiratory syndrome while Hong Kong today cautiously prepared to let more than 200 people go home from quarantine camps after they showed no signs of the deadly infection.

Malaysia today became the latest country to announce a death from a mystery disease that has killed at least 86 people worldwide, while neighbouring Singapore tried to convince a wary public that its own outbreak was under control.

Seventy nursery school children and two teachers have been taken to hospital in south-eastern China after falling ill from a school lunch of corn porridge laced with rat poison, police said today.

The death toll in China from Typhoon Utor has risen to 23 as hundreds of thousands of people battle against floods.

A typhoon that ripped through southern China damaging thousands of homes and demolished sugarcane and banana plantations has caused more than $446m of damage.

A man killed 10 people by driving a digger into a crowd at a Chinese market after he'd had a loan application refused.