Beijing

At least 24 miners have died in an explosion at a coal mine in north-western China, the government said on Sunday. Thirty-nine miners were working underground when the gas blast occurred at the Wayaobao Coal Mine in Shaanxi province, China’s State Administration of Coal-Mine Safety said on its website.

China’s first face transplant recipient, a hunter who was badly mauled by a bear, is recovering faster than expected and has even managed to smile, state media said on Wednesday. The Xijing Hospital in the northwestern city of Xi’an said the physical and mental state of Li Guoxing (30) was "pretty good".

India’s Jeev Mikkha Singh claimed his maiden European Tour victory in Beijing on Sunday, winning the ,8-million China Open by one shot over Spain’s Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano. The 34-year-old Indian carded a two-under par 70 around the Nick Faldo-designed course at Beijing’s Honghua International Golf Club, to finish at 10 under par for the tournament.

Chinese police have concluded 121 skulls found in a ravine with their tops missing were byproducts of a local handicraft industry using human bone as a vital ingredient, state media reported on Thursday. A farmer surnamed Qiao, a resident of the northwestern province of Qinghai, had hacked the skulls from the bodies of unmarked graves and sold them to two artists in neighbouring Gansu province.

The subversion trial of Chinese dissident Li Jianping opened on Wednesday in eastern China’s Shandong province, with the writer accused of posting pro-democracy articles on the internet. Li (40) a businessman and writer, was arrested in May last year after posting essays advocating greater democracy on the internet.

Chinese writer Li Jianping will go on trial for subversion on Wednesday for posting political essays on the internet, a rights group said. An intermediate court in Shandong province will hear Li’s case after charges against him were upgraded from "suspicion of defamation" to "inciting subversion of the state," the China Rights Defenders said in a statement.

A powerful explosion at a hospital complex in northern China’s Shanxi province early on Monday killed at least 17 people with up to a dozen more missing, state media and local police reported. The explosion occurred in a garage at the hospital and damaged buildings within one square kilometre "to various degrees", Xinhua news agency and police said, without giving a reason for the blast.

Beijing plans to make full use of its authoritarian powers during the Olympics in 2008 by banning more than two million cars to ensure that one of the world’s most polluted cities will have clear skies for at least the two weeks of the games. Billions of dollars are being spent on Olympic venues, new roads and the world’s biggest airport terminal.

Police have confirmed that 121 skulls with mysterious saw marks that were found in a ravine in north-west China belonged to humans, state press reported on Wednesday. The skulls were found in plastic bags, along with fur and other bones, in a forested riverbank on Monday last week in Gansu province’s Tianzhu Tibetan autonomous county.

The United Nations’ top official on bird flu urged China on Tuesday to share its experience with other countries on how to tackle the disease. Speaking at the end of his third visit to China as UN coordinator for avian influenza, David Nabarro said he had tried to persuade Chinese officials that the knowledge and experience they gained fighting bird flu could help the rest of the world.

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama may be allowed to visit China if he ”completely abandons” independence ambitions, the nation’s religious affairs chief said in comments published on Monday. ”As long as the Dalai Lama makes clear that he has completely abandoned Tibetan ‘independence’, it is not impossible for us to consider his visit.”

China, officially celebrating the ‘Year of Italy’, has reacted angrily to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s comments that Chinese people used to ”boil babies”. ”We are not satisfied with such remarks, which are groundless and lack any facts,” the foreign ministry said in a brief statement faxed to Agence France-Presse on Wednesday.

Thousands of people in south-west China, who were evacuated after a weekend gas explosion, remained unable to return home on Tuesday with dangerous gas still leaking, officials said. The explosion on Saturday in Chongqing municipality led to the evacuation of 11 500 people from villages near the site of the leak.

Nearly 60% of "foreign-brand" liquor found in four major Chinese cities is fake, according to a random check carried out by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. The administration inspected 40 bottles, mostly cognac and whisky, in 19 retail outlets and found 23 with Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and certain Scotch whisky labels were fake.

The British Museum’s first exhibition in China has left many Chinese wondering where their own country’s priceless artefacts in the collection from the world’s oldest museum have gone. ”Why are there no Chinese artefacts and [who] do the objects really belong to?” asked the official Xinhua news agency on Monday.

A Chinese dissident was jailed on Friday for 10 years over an essay he posted on the internet, a United States-based rights body said, as China continued its crackdown on people who express anti-government views. Ren Zhiyuan was sentenced by the Jining City Intermediate Court for ”subverting state sovereignty”, New York-based Human Rights in China said.

Jaywalkers in China beware. Crossing the street against the lights could lead to punishments at work, including being overlooked for a promotion and a loss of salary bonuses. China’s law on road safety states that every work unit or company has the responsibility to educate their staff on traffic regulations.

Forget the Mao suits of a generation ago. Actually, forget about any clothes at all. Naked wedding photos are the hot new trend among young couples in once deeply conservative China. Even in Anhui, a largely rural province in the east, many newly-weds are having their pictures taken in the nude, to the fury of their parents’ generation.

China expressed shock on Thursday after Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso called Taiwan a ”country”, and accused him of intervening in its internal affairs. Aso told a parliamentary committee that Taiwan is a ”law-governed country”, the latest in a series of remarks that have angered Beijing.

China’s agriculture minister has warned of a possible ”massive bird-flu outbreak” as the country announced two new human cases of the H5N1 flu strain, raising to 14 the number of reports of human infections since October. The latest human cases are a nine-year-old girl and a 26-year-old woman.

China warned outspoken Hong Kong Bishop Joseph Zen on Thursday not to mix politics and religion, after Pope Benedict XVI named him a cardinal. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao also said Beijing’s position on refraining from establishing diplomatic ties with Rome had not changed because of the appointment.

China has defended its internet censorship policies, saying its rules follow international norms and claims no one has been detained for writing online content. China is no different from Western nations, whose criticisms smack of ”double standards”, said Liu Zhengrong, deputy chief of the Internet Affairs Bureau.

The number of twin births is rising rapidly across China as more women take fertility drugs, often in order to circumvent the nation’s stern population policies, state media said on Monday. At the Maternal and Child Hygiene Hospital in east China’s Nanjing city, 90 sets of twins and triplets were born last year, compared with usually just 20 sets annually.

The Shanghai zoo, located in China’s economic capital, is storing the bones of dead tigers in distilled spirits and selling the resulting tonic as a health supplement, state press said on Friday. The zoo, which keeps up to a dozen tigers, has linked up with an alcohol producer to make the tiger-bone elixir.