THIRTEEN vocational students were hurt in China yesterday – including one who had a hand chopped off – when they were attacked by youths with cleavers, after a string of violent school assaults.

At least five men armed with knives burst into the dormitory of a vocational college in China today and slashed nine students, one of them seriously, sparking new fears in a country on edge over a series of shocking rampages, many of them at schools.

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

As US technicians prepared to inspect a grounded Navy spy plane, an American military spokesman said today that Washington still hopes to fly home the aircraft damaged in a collision with a Chinese fighter jet.

The plane carrying the 24 crew members of the US EP-3 spy plane has left the island of Guam for Hawaii.

The crew of the US spy plane, held in China for 12 days, is back on American territory.

US diplomats planned meeting with the captured spy plane’s crew on a Chinese island was delayed without explanation today.

US diplomats are to meet again with the crew of a spy plane marooned on a Chinese island.