Beijing

Next year, residents of Beijing will be able to again enjoy their centuries-old custom of setting off fireworks during the Chinese Lunar New Year, a news report said. Beijing’s municipal legislature on Friday lifted a 12-year ban on fireworks during the Chinese Lunar New Year, also called the Spring Festival, in the Chinese capital.

A restaurant in north-east China has been raided and closed for listing stir-fried tiger meat on its menu, a dish that turned out to be donkey dressed with tiger urine. The Hufulou restaurant in Hailin city in Heilongjiang province is located barely 1km from the Hengdaohezi Siberian Tiger Park.

Internet giant Yahoo! supplied information to the Chinese government that led to the jailing of journalist Shi Tao for 10 years, international watchdog Reporters sans Frontières said on Wednesday. The California-based company’s Hong Kong subsidiary gave details to China’s state security, which helped to identify and convict Shi (37) the group said.

Seventeen miners died, mostly from burns or suffocation, in a gas explosion at an illegal coal mine in northern China’s Shanxi province, state media said on Wednesday. The miners were killed when the blast happened on Tuesday in the Zhike Town Coal Mine in Zhongyang county, Luliang city, the Xinhua news agency said.

China on Saturday raised the death toll from Typhoon Talim to at least 54, while 23 more people were listed as missing, state media reported. The death toll shot up after authorities in the eastern province of Anhui said 39 people, perhaps more, had lost their lives in the powerful typhoon and that nine were missing.

The number of dead left in the wake of Typhoon Talim rose on Saturday to 18 on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported from the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang. Meanwhile, powerful Typhoon Nabi was churning on Saturday toward the southern Japanese island of Okinawa.

A rare Chinese tiger born in a zoo in China and sent to South Africa to be trained for a life in the wild has died, threatening a wildlife protection programme, an animal rights group said on Tuesday. Hope, a four-year-old male, died of pneumonia and heart failure on Saturday at the Laohu Valley Reserve in South Africa.

A crocodile that fled an abandoned wildlife park for a day at the seaside caused beachgoers to panic at a popular south China resort on Sunday, state media said. The croc surfaced at Beihai city’s Silver beach in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, scaring off many swimmers, Xinhua news agency reported.

Rising steel prices in China have added new impetus to the regional phenomenon of drain-top theft and manhole mishaps, forcing municipal authorities to get tough on this type of highway robbery. Missing manholes have long been a hazard throughout Asia, but escalating steel prices have exacerbated the menace.

An earthquake measuring 5,3 on the Richter scale shook south-west China’s Yunnan province on Saturday, toppling houses and causing several injuries, state media reported. ”Injuries have been reported in seven townships of Wenshan county,” the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Floods and related disasters have killed 910 people in China so far this year with another 218 missing, the International Red Cross said on Friday as it launched an emergency appeal for ,4-million in aid. Most of the deaths occurred since May, when the flood season kicked in.

At least 22 people have been killed and about a quarter-million evacuated in rain-induced floods hitting large parts of western China, state media said on Thursday. The toll could rise further with two people reported missing after a massive landslide in rural Sichuan, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Rescuers on Wednesday recovered the body of one miner from a flooded southern China coal shaft as hopes of finding 122 still trapped underground faded, state media reported. Authorities also suspended two mayors who had jurisdiction over
mines in the area, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Rescuers were on Monday scrambling to save more than 100 workers trapped deep underground in a flooded coal mine in southern China as their chances of survival faded and water levels continued to rise. The accident happened on Sunday afternoon at the Daxing coal mine about 265km northeast of the provincial capital Guangzhou in Guangdong province.

North Korean, Russian, United States and South Korean delegates discussing ways to scrap North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programme returned to the main talks venue late on Wednesday, fuelling speculation they would meet overnight to try to agree on basic principles for ending the three-year stand-off.

North Korea said no progress was made in talks on Tuesday over the dismantlement of its nuclear-weapons programmes but insisted it is still working to find a solution. Deputy chief United States envoy Joseph DeTrani said the talks will continue into a ninth day on Wednesday.

Officials from six nations held a seventh day of talks on Monday, after China presented a second draft joint statement of principles on ending North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programme. United States negotiators held more bilateral talks with North Korea and plan to continue talks on Tuesday, a US official said.

The United States said on Wednesday that fundamental differences remain with North Korea over its nuclear-weapons drive but it does not believe the issue of uranium enrichment will prove a stumbling block to progress. Highly enriched uranium can be used to produce nuclear explosive devices.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Wednesday said he was overjoyed at his red carpet welcome by China, as other countries pressed for a United Nations Security Council meeting on his slum demolition drive. Mugabe is on a six-day visit to China and has been warmly greeted as ”an old friend” by President Hu Jintao.

Six-nation talks aimed at resolving the nuclear standoff between North Korea and the United States will resume on Tuesday amid the highest hopes for a breakthrough since the process began two years ago. But the delegates gathered in Beijing know this fourth round of talks may represent the last as well as the best chance.

Joy at the birth on Tuesday of another pair of panda twins in China quickly turned to sorrow following the announcement that the world’s oldest giant panda had died after suffering from eating difficulties. Thirty-six-year old Mei Mei, equivalent in age to a 108-year-old human, died at a zoo in southern China’s Guilin city.

Forty-one miners died and 57 others are missing after two separate disasters in China’s beleagured coal-mine industry, a government agency and state media said on Monday. The bulk of the casualties came when a gas explosion ripped through a mine in China’s north-west Xinjiang region, killing at least 40 miners.

A Chinese herbalist will go without food for 50 days in full public view to prove he didn’t pull a fast one when he performed a similar feat last year, state media said on Wednesday. Chen Jianmin plans to live in a glass box placed on a stone platform in central Wuhan city from September 8, consuming only water.

At least 40 children were killed on Friday when a flash flood struck a primary school in north-eastern China, hospital sources said. "There are at least 40 children who were sent to hospital to be saved and who did not survive," said a doctor at the hospital in Heilongjiang. A local bank worker said there were "at least 50 or 60 dead".