A kindergarten owner who sickened 70 children by mixing rat poison into salt at a rival school’s kitchen was executed in southern China today.

The owner of a nursery school has been detained on suspicion that he added rat poison to lunches at a rival pre-school in south-eastern China, which put 70 young children and two teachers in hospital, police said today.

A fire that gutted a fifth-floor beauty salon in southern China has killed nine people and left eight others injured.

A typhoon that ripped through southern China damaging thousands of homes and demolished sugarcane and banana plantations has caused more than $446m of damage.