Divers have pulled three people alive from inside a capsized cruise ship in China and are searching for other survivors, state media said.

TOMORROW is the tender date for the sale of Cork City’s Victoria Hotel on St Patrick’s Street and Cook Street, with well over a half dozen parties expected to make offers on the historic 33-bed city hotel.

THE fact that our lakes and rivers still contain many biological surprises was emphasised recently when it was announced that freshwater jellyfish had been discovered in Lough Derg and Lough Erne.

The treacherous Yangtze, a lost raft and a health scare didn’t stop two Irishmen on an incredible journey across Asia, writes Richard Fitzpatrick

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

More than 8,000km by bike, 25 marathons in 27 days, and now 6,500km down one of the world’s fastest flowing rivers in a raft.

A section of a high-speed railway line that had already undergone test runs has collapsed in central China following heavy rains, the latest accident since a crash last summer that killed 40 people.

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.

China has launched its biggest relocation programme since the Three Gorges Dam, with 330,000 residents set to be moved to new homes to make way for a water project that will serve thirsty Beijing.

Rescuers in three countries across Asia struggled to reach survivors from massive flooding that afflicted millions of people, as the death toll climbed in a remote Chinese town where hundreds died and more than 1,100 were missing from landslides.

Heavy rain hindered efforts by workers to repair reservoirs and place sandbags along breached riverbanks today as the death toll from China’s worst flooding in a decade climbed above 1,000.

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 today.

Landslides slammed into three mountain hamlets in western China early today, killing 17 people and leaving 44 missing, while crews drained an engorged reservoir in another part of the country following heavy rains.

Unusually heavy seasonal flooding in China has killed at least 155 people and forced more than 1 million to flee as water levels in some areas reached their highest for more than a decade, the government said today.

Plans to raise the water level behind China’s massive Three Gorges dam to full capacity this month, which would mark the symbolic culmination of the decades-old project, have stalled amid a worsening drought and reports of increased landslide risks.

China is planning to build its own version of Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch on an island near Shanghai, it emerged today.

China’s environment ministry has suspended construction of two ambitious hydropower dams in the upper Yangtze River region, saying the projects were illegal because they were started without necessary environmental assessments.

China plans to build more than 20 dams along the country’s longest river by 2020, it announced today.

Edmund Hillary, the man who conquered Mount Everest, will be given a state funeral, the New Zealand government said today.

Edmund Hillary, the unassuming beekeeper who conquered Mount Everest has died, New Zealand’s prime minister Helen Clark said tonight.

THE Little Emperors, they call them, and they can be counted in tens of millions. They are the young generation of China, and the main reason why that country will surely become the next and perhaps the greatest superpower in the world.

The Redheaded Vulture, a bird that thrived in South Asia feeding on the dead, is itself dying out.

DOES Fungi, the famous Dingle dolphin, speak with a Kerry accent?

ON Wednesday, August 8, there was a sad story on RTÉ Radio’s News at One. It was the announcement that the Yangtze River dolphin was extinct.

A Chinese freshwater dolphin has been declared extinct after desperate efforts to rescue it came too late.

Lightning strikes and mud flows sparked by record-breaking torrential rains killed at least 15 people in western China, state media reported today.

SCIENTISTS launched a bid yesterday to save some of the world’s rarest and most neglected creatures from extinction.

AN EXPEDITION searching for a rare Yangtze River dolphin ended yesterday without a single sighting and with the team’s leader saying one of the world’s oldest species was effectively extinct.

A LEADING institute of technology is forging further links with key educational hubs across the globe.

China has stationed anti-terror troops equipped with helicopters, tanks and bomb disposal robots to defend the massive Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River against terror attacks.

Rain-soaked residents of south-western China began digging out today after floods and landslides that killed at least 161 people, while authorities warned of further rains over parts of the disaster area.

RESCUERS battled to reach thousands of people trapped by floods and mudslides in southwest China as the death toll from some of the worst storms in years rose to 107 with another 88 missing.

AUTHORITIES in Shanghai have suspended work on a Universal Studios theme park as China slows down major building projects in an effort to cool off surging economic growth.

China’s largest city is bracing for more power shortages during the sultry summer months, amid official forecasts of price rises for electricity, coal and oil.

A Chinese shipbuilding company has broken ground on what it says will be the world’s biggest shipyard, a high-tech facility capable of producing cruise ships and natural gas tankers.

FIVE people have died and more than 370,000 have been evacuated as huge holes were blown in dykes in east China to tackle flood waters that are at record highs, officials said yesterday.

Dozens of people are missing after the sinking of a Chinese ferry and rescuers are losing hope of finding more survivors, officials said today.

ON October 27, I wonder how many anniversary supplements and television documentaries will remind us “lest we forget”? We have already forgotten.

Authorities downstream on the Yangtze River braced themselves for high water racing towards them today as the city of Wuhan escaped flooding.

A thunderstorm packing high winds and torrential rains hit the area around central China’s Dongting Lake today, raising the threat to already strained dikes protecting several cities and dozens of villages.

FLOODWATERS threatening several cities and dozens of villages along central China’s vast Dongting Lake held at dangerously high levels yesterday, but could rise as heavy rain was forecast.

Flood waters in central China’s vast Dongting Lake which threaten several cities and dozens of villages remained at dangerously high levels today - and could rise in the coming days as heavy rain was forecast.

CHINESE authorities have evacuated 600,000 people from around the dangerously swollen Dongting Lake as it threatens to engulf millions more, state media said yesterday.