Easter Saturday is not necessarily the time you would expect me to be writing about spicy foods but my favourite Easter dinner is a rich yoghurt and spice marinated slow-cooked lamb dish called lamb raan, and it was thinking about this that led me to tackle once again the issue of wine and spice.

Two senior Chinese officials – one who led the country’s biggest oil company and the other a deputy party chief in populous Sichuan province – have been convicted of corruption and sentenced to 16 and 13 years in prison respectively.

From glamorous and grown-up to feisty and fun, there’s an autumn fragrance for everyone, says Katie Wright.

A woman who was sentenced to death in China after being convicted of murdering her abusive husband received a two-year reprieve, which could become a life sentence with a possibility of parole.

Wild giant pandas in China are doing well. The latest census by China’s State Forestry Administration shows the panda population has grown by 268 to a total of 1,864 since the last survey ending in 2003.

A former mining tycoon who led a mafia-style crime gang that ran casinos and killed rivals has been executed along with four of the gang’s members, a court in central China said.

Authorities in a Chinese village have launched a “thought education” campaign after more than 200 villagers signed a petition to banish an eight-year-old boy infected with the HIV virus, state media said.

Say hello to the newest star of your nightmares.

China has sealed off parts of its north-western city of Yumen after a resident died of bubonic plague last week, state media said.

NO LAUGHING MATTER

Chinese police rescued 92 abducted children and detained 301 suspects in the latest operation to crack down on the country’s chronic problem of child trafficking, the Ministry of Public Security said.

China may boast the world’s largest potential reserves of shale gas but is likely to lose to Australia in the race to be second behind the US in bringing significant production on line.

An earthquake has hit a mountainous area in south-western China, killing at least three people and injuring several more.

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.

Flooding in western China has triggered a landslide that buried up to 40 people and destroyed a high-profile memorial to a devastating 2008 earthquake.

A Chinese grandmother died while shielding her 15-month-old granddaughter from being crushed by a landslide that toppled their house around them, reports say.

A wildlife centre in south west China said that a giant panda has given birth to twins.

A powerful earthquake struck the steep hills of China’s south-western Sichuan province today, leaving at least 113 people dead and more than 2,600 injured, nearly five years after a devastating quake wreaked widespread damage across the region.

A national operation in China has busted nine child abduction gangs, arresting 355 suspects and rescuing 89 children.

China’s President Hu Jintao called today for sterner measures against official corruption while urging the Communist Party to maintain firm political control as he prepares to hand over power after a decade in office.

Marion Hughes kept the Irish flag flying in China on Saturday when second in the World Cup in Chengdu.

A coal mine explosion in eastern China has killed at least 14 people just days after a blast in the country’s south-west left 44 dead.

The death toll in China’s worst mine accident in nearly three years rose to 41 today, with five others still trapped underground.

Rescuers are searching for 28 miners trapped for more than a day in a coal mine after an explosion killed at least 19 people in China’s deadliest mining accident in nearly a year.

The Chinese appetite for Irish meat continues to grow, with imports of fresh and frozen pork up 116% for the first half of this year versus 2011, according to the latest Bord Bia analysis.

Styled To Rock

A moderate earthquake has toppled houses in a mountainous part of south-western China, killing four people and injuring at least 100, state media said.

Two men engulfed themselves in towering flames outside a temple that is a popular tourist site in Lhasa, marking the first time a recent wave of self-immolations to protest Chinese rule has reached the tightly guarded Tibetan capital.

Chinese workers who often spend more than 60 hours per week assembling iPhones and iPads for Apple will have their overtime curbed and their pay increased following an audit.

Tibetans are setting themselves on fire to demonstrate against Chinese rule, write Tim Sullivan and Gillian Wong

WHEN Professor Fan Hong returned to China after studying abroad, she stopped in the neighbourhood where she thought she had lived and wondered where her home had gone.

Two former Tibetan monks set themselves on fire in far western China, in what an activist group said was the latest in a series of self-immolation protests against Chinese rule.

Chinese police have arrested 608 suspects and rescued 178 children in a raid of two separate child trafficking networks, authorities said today.

CHINA SICHUAN’S reputation certainly precedes it.

Doctors have successfully separated conjoined twin girls after a six-hour surgery in a Chinese hospital.

A COURT in south-west China has charged three Tibetan monks with “intentional homicide” for hiding a fellow monk and prevented him from getting treatment after he set himself on fire, state news agency Xinhua reported yesterday.

A TIBETAN Buddhist monk burned himself to death in south-west China calling for the return of the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader condemned by Beijing as a separatist, a group campaigning for Tibetan self-rule said.

The elected prime minister of Tibet’s government-in-exile, Lobsang Sangay, said a grand religious gathering starting in Washington today would allow expatriates a right denied their brethren inside China – to meet their spiritual leader.

China's state-controlled Catholic Church says it will move swiftly to appoint new bishops in dioceses where there are none, in a step certain to worsen tensions with the Vatican.

A flooded river in eastern China is at its highest level in more than 50 years, and thousands of train passengers were stranded after landslides buried parts of a railway line in the south west, officials said.

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.

A Chinese man dressed as a cartoon tiger was used to stage a mock escape from a zoo.

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