Floodwaters surging through Himalayan foothills in western China have swept bridges, houses and hillsides into surging brown rivers, leaving at least 19 people dead and dozens missing as heavy rains buffet many parts of the country.

Bruno Paumard, the cellar master at a vineyard in China, can’t stop laughing while describing a bottle of supposedly French wine he received two years ago.

Thirty six people died when a double-decker bus rammed into a tanker loaded with highly-flammable methanol in northern China early today, causing both vehicles to burst into flames.

Miss China, a 23-year-old music lover who wants to work with the poor, was crowned Miss World 2012 at a ceremony in Inner Mongolia over the weekend.

TV star Myleene Klass is to host the Miss World contest on Saturday.

A Chinese space capsule with three astronauts aboard has returned from a mission to an orbiting module.

Samco Agricultural Manufacturing in Limerick has signed a deal to bring its cutting-edge corn silage system to China.

Chinese police rescued more than 24,000 abducted children and women last year, some of whom had been sold for adoption or forced into prostitution as far away as Angola.

China has just been declared the world’s second biggest economy, and now it has a traffic jam to match.

China’s capital woke up to orange-tinted skies today as the strongest sandstorm so far this year hit the country’s north, delaying some flights at Beijing’s airport and prompting a dust warning for Seoul.

THE world’s official shortest man, He Pingping, has died at the age of 21, a Guinness World Records spokesman said yesterday.

Three Chinese astronauts emerged from their capsule today upon a jubilant return to Earth after successfully completing the country’s first-ever spacewalk mission.

A Chinese milk company knew their product was contaminated with a dangerous chemical six weeks ago, but did nothing to remove it from shop shelves according to a major shareholder.

An explosion at a fireworks plant in northern China has killed 15 people and injured six others, according to state-run media.

Stung by criticism of their pollution-ridden atmosphere, Beijing’s Olympic officials today promised the air would be clean in time for this summer’s games.

TWO Chinese brothers clawed their way out of a collapsed coal mine after surviving underground for nearly six days, shocking grieving relatives, state media said yesterday.

THE world’s tallest man married a woman two-thirds his size and almost half his age yesterday in a traditional Mongolian ceremony sponsored by at least 15 companies hoping to cash in on his fame.

WEIGHING more than a ton with a parrot’s beak and dagger-like claws, Gigantoraptor was far from a pretty Polly.

The remains of a giant, bird-like dinosaur as tall as the formidable tyrannosaur have been found in China, scientists said today.

At least 16 people were killed and 29 injured when the roof of a new house in a northern Chinese village collapsed during a celebration for its completion, the official Xinhua News Agency said today.

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.

A sandstorm with hurricane-strength wind gusts derailed a train in China’s far west today, killing at least four people and injuring another 30.

Rescue workers today freed six miners trapped in a flooded shaft in northern China and were in contact with five others, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

THE long arms of the world’s tallest man saved two dolphins in north-east China by reaching inside of them to remove plastic they had swallowed, state media reported yesterday.

The long arms of the world’s tallest man saved two dolphins in north-east China when he reached inside them to remove plastic they had swallowed, state media reported today.

China’s death toll from Typhoon Saomai rose to 114 today as authorities said some victims were evacuees who died when buildings used as shelters collapsed in the strongest storm to hit China in more than five decades.

More than 14,000 police and firefighters were struggling today to douse a blaze raging through China's largest remaining virgin forest, the government said.

An underground flood trapped 44 miners in a coal mine in northern China, and nine mine managers were detained after apparently trying to conceal the scale of the disaster, the government said today.

The death toll from an explosion at a coal mine in northern China rose to 20 today as rescuers found one more body in the rubble of the collapsed shafts, the government has said.

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

ROMANIA confirmed yesterday that dead hens discovered in a remote village had bird flu as Chinese officials warned that the threat to humans was growing as the winter flu months approached and ordered officials to stockpile emergency supplies.

China reported its 16th and 17th bird flu outbreaks in poultry in the north and a central province today, despite massive efforts to vaccinate billions of farm birds.

China said today that it is taking effective measures to prevent the spread of bird flu and keep it from infecting people as the world’s most populous nation reported three outbreaks of the disease in a week.

A bird-flu outbreak has killed 545 chickens and ducks in a village in central China in the country’s third case of the disease in two weeks, the government announced today.

An Indonesian man has died of bird flu, raising the country’s human toll to four, officials said today, as international health experts prepared to go house-to-house to search for infected poultry.

A 48-YEAR-OLD man has died of bird flu in Thailand after eating his neighbour’s sick chickens, and Taiwan yesterday confirmed the island nation’s first case of the disease in birds smuggled in from China.

Taiwanese authorities today confirmed the island’s first case of bird flu.

China has destroyed 91,100 birds around a farm in Inner Mongolia to stop a bird flu outbreak, the World Health Organisation said today.

China today prepared for the return of the Shenzhou 6 mission, saying that the capsule was operating smoothly and its two astronauts were doing well after five days in space.

A MONGOLIAN has broken the record for the world’s tallest living man, lurching in at a towering 7ft 8.95ins, or 2m 36.1cm.

A PASSENGER plane crashed into a lake in northern China immediately after take-off yesterday, killing all 53 people aboard and two others on the ground.

A passenger plane crashed into a lake today in northern China immediately after take-off, killing all 53 people aboard and two others on the ground, the government said.

With its astronaut back home and healthy, the orbital capsule that made China’s first manned space mission a success began its own physical examination today – an exhaustive, part-by-part check-up to determine if everything worked according to plan.

China’s first astronaut in space returned safely to Earth today when his craft touched down as planned after 21 hours in orbit. Beijing’s mission control declared the country’s landmark debut flight “a success”.