The mayor of Clare, Cllr John Crowe (FG), won’t go lonely on his 16,000km round trip to China as five councillors and two officials are to accompany him on the €12,000 trek.

Clare County Council was told last night that it must deliver on its planned twinning arrangement with the 46m-strong Yunnan province in China.

Clare County Council is to take a major step today in an unlikely twinning arrangement with the far flung land of the Yunnan province in China by agreeing to send a delegation there this spring.

A strong, shallow earthquake has shaken Yunnan province in south-west China, killing at least one person.

The death toll from a powerful earthquake that hit southern China four days ago has risen to 615, with 114 other people missing.

A strong earthquake in southern China’s Yunnan province toppled thousands of homes yesterday, killing at least 367 people and injuring more than 1,800.

At least 357 people have been killed following a strong earthquake in south west China.

A strong earthquake in south western China has killed at least 26 people and injured 79.

Attackers crashed a pair of vehicles and hurled explosives in a suicide attack on a busy street market in the capital of China's volatile north-western region of Xinjiang, leaving dozens dead and injured.

The death toll from a horrific rampage by a knife-wielding mob at a railway station has risen to 33 as China blamed ethnic separatists for the “terrorist attack”.

Four second-level students will be walking the Great Wall and speaking the native tongue in China over the next fortnight.

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.

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

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

A landslide in south western China has toppled an elementary school building and buried 18 students and another person.

At least seven people have died and more than 20 were injured in an earthquake in south-west China today.

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.

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.

An earthquake struck China’s far south west today, killing at least 13 people and injuring more than 125, an official said.

China’s Red Cross made an urgent nationwide appeal for blood donors today after a sudden shortage halted some surgical operations.

RESCUE crews yesterday continued to search for scores of people left missing and feared dead in south-western China after torrential rains triggered massive mudslides.

Rescue crews today continued to search for scores of people left missing and feared dead in south-western China after torrential rains triggered massive mudslides.

Widespread flooding in southern China has caused 175 deaths, with 107 people missing and more storms expected, the government said today.

Massive flooding in southern China has killed 132 people and forced 860,000 to flee their homes, and more storms are on the way, the government said today.

An earthquake rocked south-west China, killing one person, injuring at least 324 others and collapsing 18,000 homes.

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.

Chinese rescue teams carrying tents, quilts and sacks of rice rushed today to reach survivors of an earthquake that killed at least 27 people, turned tens of thousands of homes into rubble and cracked reservoirs.

TWO people were killed yesterday in explosions aboard two public buses in a major Chinese city, police said, heightening security concerns only weeks before the Olympics.

At least 55 people have died and seven are missing in flooding across a broad stretch of southern China, state media reported today.

Thousands of troops were called in to central China after a massive earthquake rocked the region today bringing fears of a huge death toll.

Police in eastern China have broken up a baby trafficking ring, arresting 47 people and rescuing 40 infants, state media said today.

MORE than 100 people have died in floods and landslides in China, and tens of thousands have fled their homes in the east where dykes are in danger of being breached by a swollen river.

Record rainfall this week has triggered floods, landslides and mud flows that have killed 152 people in China and forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands, state media said today.

TENS of thousands of earthquake victims in southwest China were living in tents or in the open yesterday, fearful of returning to their damaged homes a day after a magnitude 6.4 quake killed three and injured at least 300.

AN ENGLISH language (EFL) teacher I know emailed me from China last week. He lives and works in one of the many hundreds of Chinese cities with a population of more than one million . His dim glimpses of China on the ground — or rather, on a bicycle — may interest readers.

A Chinese farmer who received a partial face transplant after he was badly disfigured in a bear attack has been discharged from hospital.

A Chinese man who received the world’s second-ever partial face transplant is healing well.

A Chinese man whose face was badly disfigured after an attack by a black bear received a partial face transplant today, in a cutting-edge medical procedure that a hospital statement described as a first for China.

A Chinese woman has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for selling eight babies after telling their parents she would find adoptive homes for them.

Blood tests on a schoolteacher who fell ill in an area of China that suffered a bird flu outbreak show he doesn’t have the virulent H5N1 strain of the virus, a World Health Organisation official said today.

China has called bird flu a “serious epidemic” and reported three new outbreaks of the deadly virus in different parts of the country, while Canada announced multiple new cases but stressed they are not the virulent strain that has swept across Asia.

China’s Ministry of Agriculture today announced three new outbreaks of bird flu, two in the west and one in the south, resulting in the killing of nearly 175,000 birds, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Nineteen miners have died after a flood and two gas explosions hit separate coal mines in China, the official Xinhua News Agency reported today.

A strong earthquake shook south-western China today, injuring five people and damaging about 20,000 homes.