A typhoon has blasted through the northern Philippines, leaving at least 38 people dead and forcing more than half a million to flee its wind and rain.

Eight young children and three adults died in central China after the minivan they were in crashed into a pond.

A 91-year-old woman has set time and age records at the Rock ‘n’ Roll San Diego marathon.

China’s new home prices in December jumped by the most last year even as the country’s biggest cities tightened property controls to moderate price gains.

Doctors in China kept a man’s severed hand alive for a month by attaching it to his leg, before restoring it to its usual position.

A wingsuit diver who disappeared during a trial flight in China on Tuesday has been found dead.

It’s been so hot in China that people are grilling bacon and eggs in frying pans on manhole covers, or even directly on pavements sometimes heated up to 60C.

Lavish weddings, fancy holidays and lunchtime wine on the public purse were among corrupt perks that have led China’s ruling Communist Party to discipline 2,290 officials so far in a crackdown aimed at addressing public anger.

The IDA regard it as a coup and every tourism organisation in the country is delighted.

A blast in a tunnel has killed 20 workers at a road construction site in central China.

A woman in China has been living with a thermometer inside her lung for 44 years.

A GAS explosion at a coal mine operating without a proper licence has killed 29 miners in central China, state media said yesterday, in the latest in a series of deadly accidents to hit the industry.

A gas explosion at a coal mine in central China killed 29 workers.

At least 21 people, including 14 schoolchildren, have died in a pair of traffic accidents in China, one a pile-up of more than 100 cars in foggy weather.

Seventeen miners were killed by a dynamite explosion at a coal mine in central China, authorities said today.

At least 16 people were killed and more than 320,000 evacuated from their homes in southern and central China after heavy rains toppled houses, flooded roads and damaged a dam.

Two passenger trains collided today in an accident that killed three people and injured 60 as train cars were derailed and nearby houses knocked over, Chinese state media and an official said.

The last-known prisoner jailed for hooliganism in resisting the Chinese government’s crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement has been released ahead of the 20th anniversary of the suppression, a human rights group claimed.

Snowstorms that have battered many parts of China over the last three weeks have killed at least 60 people and caused 53.3bn Yuan (€5bn) in damage.

China put nearly half a million soldiers to work clearing roads today as the country struggled to cope with winter storms that have brought it to a virtual standstill.

Snow and ice has caused chaos in China, disrupting the nation's busiest holiday travel season.

BLIZZARDS stranded more than half a million train passengers in a Chinese town yesterday.

Blizzards stranded more than half a million train passengers in a Chinese town today.

An explosion in a fireworks factory in central China killed 11 people and injured eight, state media and local police said today.

The collapse of a bridge under construction that left at least 29 people dead in a Chinese tourist town rekindled concerns today about rushed, shoddy building amid China’s torrid economic expansion.

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.

Rescuers were today struggling to reach 45 miners trapped in two mines in the latest accidents to hit the industry in China, state media said

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.

The death toll from Tropical Storm Prapiroon rose to six in south China today as the storm weakened further into a tropical depression but continued to drench an area where 400,000 people had been evacuated.

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.

Tropical storm Bilis killed at least 115 people and injured hundreds more as it churned across China’s south-east, toppling houses and forcing authorities to evacuate a prison and thousands of villagers, reports in Beijing said today.

Explosions tore through two Chinese coal mines hundred of miles apart, killing 23 workers, the government said today.

A coal mine explosion and resulting fire in central China today left three miners confirmed dead and six others missing, the government said.

A Chinese orphanage director and nine other people have been sentenced to prison for buying and selling scores of infants who were adopted by foreign parents, the government announced today.

A MAN who was jailed for throwing paint on Mao Zedong’s portrait in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square during pro-democracy protests in 1989 has been released after nearly 17 years in prison, his family said.

HEALTH authorities in China and Indonesia each reported a woman killed by a deadly strain of bird flu, and the virus has spread to another new country, Azerbaijan.

A 20-year-old woman in southern China has died of bird flu.

A 35-year-old Chinese woman who handled sick and dying chickens has died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, becoming the mainland’s sixth human fatality, the government and the World Health Organisation said today.

The deaths of two more people in China and two in Turkey have brought the global toll from bird flu to 78, the World Health Organisation said today as it urged stepped-up preparation in case the illness turns into a pandemic strain.

A six-year-old Chinese boy who contracted bird flu late last month is in a critical condition, state media reported today.

SCIENTISTS yesterday reported on the first confirmed case of a human death caused by H5N1 bird flu in mainland China.

China reported its second confirmed human death from bird flu as it prepared to test a vaccine on people amid increasingly drastic measures to contain outbreaks of the disease in poultry, state media said today.

China today reported its second confirmed human fatality from bird flu.