A flock of hungry sheep gobbled up banknotes totalling 100 000 yuan ($12 500) that were the public funds of a northern Chinese village, state media reported on Tuesday. A farmer who was also the treasurer of Linjiawan village in Shaanxi province was devastated when he found out the cash he had hidden underneath his sheep pasture was mostly chewed up by the beasts.
John Oosterhuizen carried on South Africa’s javelin tradition at the IAAF World Junior Championships, becoming the third man from his country to get a gold medal in the event in Beijing on Saturday. Oosterhuizen sent the javelin out to a championship record 83,07m in the second round to kill the competition as a contest.
The death toll in China from Typhoon Saomai rose by 106 to 436 on Friday with the confirmation of dozens more deaths in the eastern province of Zhejiang, state media said. All 106 new fatalities were in the coastal province of Zhejiang, which had previously reported 87 dead and 52 missing, Xinhua news agency said.
The death toll from the strongest typhoon to hit China in half a century has reached 319 and could rise further, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday. Much of southern China has been battered by a series of typhoons and tropical storms this year that have now killed about 1 300 people.
The death toll from China’s strongest typhoon in five decades jumped to 295 on Tuesday and was expected to climb higher as scores of bodies of fishermen and sailors were found at sea, a state news agency reported. At least 59 bodies were found on Monday in waters off Fuding, a port on the south-eastern coast.
China has called on its 31 provinces to rein in their economies, state media said on Sunday, in a sign the central government has yet to persuade local bureaucrats that red-hot growth is bad. Vice-Premier Zeng Peiyan emphasised that investment in factories, residential buildings and other fixed assets must be cooled down, according to the Xinhua news agency.
Workers in southern China shovelled large piles of mud and debris off the streets as officials assessed the losses on Saturday after the strongest typhoon in 50 years killed 104 people and left 190 missing. Typhoon Saomai bore down on Zhejiang and Fujian provinces on Thursday, forcing the evacuation of 1,7-million people.
The Beijing city government has turned down an undertaker’s application to send human ashes into space, state media said Friday. A funeral home’s proposal to charge 100Â 000 yuan ($12Â 500) each for sending two clients’ ashes into space was turned down on the grounds that there was no law regulating space burials, Xinhua news agency reported.
A super typhoon, the strongest to threaten China in half a century, slammed into the south-east coast on Thursday killing at least two people, injuring more than 80 and forcing hundreds of thousands from their homes. Typhoon Saomai made landfall in Zhejiang province, hitting Cangnan county just after officials there declared a state of emergency, Xinhua news agency said.
Nearly 500 000 people were evacuated from their homes in south-east China as the region, already suffering from two months of devastating weather, prepared for Typhoon Saomai to make landfall on Thursday. Saomai, with winds of more than 200kph, pounded Taiwan earlier in the day.
The Chinese — who lay claim to inventing paper — were using it 100 years earlier than previously thought, state press said on Wednesday following a new discovery of an ancient scrap of the material. The 10-square-centimetre piece of paper was found in north-west China’s Gansu province and is believed to have been made in eight BC.
Stressed-out Chinese can now unleash pent-up anger at a bar that lets customers attack staff, smash glasses and generally make a ruckus, a Chinese newspaper reported on Monday. The Rising Sun Anger Release Bar in Nanjing, capital of the eastern province of Jiangsu, employs 20 muscled young men as ”models” for customers to punch and scream at.
Tropical Storm Prapiroon swept across south China, leaving a trail of destruction with more than 70 people reported dead or missing by Sunday. ”It’s still raining heavily, and the situation is pretty serious,” an official said from the flood-control headquarters in Guangxi region, where the eye of the storm was located early on Sunday.
At this time of the year, holidaymakers in Europe rush to the beaches to top up their tans, but in Chinese cities women avoid the sun like the plague. Umbrellas deployed, arms fully covered, hats jammed on their heads, women on Shanghai’s occasionally sunny streets are now employing every trick in the book to cut out the UV rays.
Tropical Storm Prapiroon killed 18 people as it lashed south China with heavy rain and winds on Friday after forcing the evacuation of more than half a million and snarling transport links across the region. State television showed pictures of huge trees uprooted by the roadside in the Guangdong city of Shenzhen.
The dog days of summer are murder on China’s canines. For the second time in days, a Chinese region has ordered a mass slaughter of dogs to curb a rabies outbreak, drawing criticism from animal lovers but also support from many who say such culls are the only sure way to contain the disease.
Tropical Storm Prapiroon strengthened into a full-blown typhoon on Wednesday, with forecasters warning of possible severe destruction to parts of southern China. The storm had been steadily gathering strength while churning across the South China Sea from the Philippines, where six deaths were blamed on the severe weather.
A pair of Chinese blogs maintained by a banned Tibetan writer have been shut down in an apparent attempt to block her distributing her work online, French monitoring group Reporters sans Frontières said on Tuesday. Attempts to connect to the blogs on Tuesday were returned with a message saying they did not exist.
The death toll from an explosion at a chemical plant in eastern China has risen to 22 but more than 7 000 people evacuated after the blast have now gone home, Xinhua news agency said on Saturday. The blast, which occurred on Friday morning when a chemical reactor exploded during a test run, injured 28 others.
An explosion at a chemical plant in eastern China killed at least 12 people on Friday and prompted the evacuation of 7 000 others, state media and officials said. Also on Friday, two unrelated explosions at another chemical plant and aboard an oil tanker injured at least five people, with two others missing and feared dead.
Torrential rains from Typhoon Kaemi left more than 80 people dead or missing in China on Thursday, with a military barracks swept away, thousands of homes destroyed and rivers bursting their banks. Six people were confirmed killed and another 38 soldiers and their relatives were missing after floods destroyed the military barracks in the eastern province of Jiangxi.
Four people were killed when torrential rains from Typhoon Kaemi caused widespread flooding in south-eastern China on Wednesday, as more than 700 000 evacuees remained in shelters. The typhoon, which hit south-east China’s Fujian province on Tuesday, packing winds of 120kph, was downgraded to a tropical storm on Wednesday morning.
Typhoon Kaemi struck the south-east coast of China on Tuesday, sparking the evacuation of more than 500 000 people in an area still reeling from a tropical storm that claimed more than 600 lives. The typhoon first passed over Taiwan, causing widespread disruption to daily life but not enormous damage.
A typhoon triggered floods and knocked out power in some areas of Taiwan on Tuesday, forcing schools and offices to close, and then swept towards China, where hundreds of thousands were evacuated. As of 7am GMT, the centre of typhoon Kaemi was just off China’s eastern coast moving north-west at 17kph toward the city of Xiamen.
The death toll in China from Tropical Storm Bilis has risen to 612, with another 208 people missing, state media said on Monday in another major reassessment of the impact of the devastating floods. Xinhua news agency, citing the nation’s disaster-relief commission, gave no reason for the sudden jump in the casualty numbers from the storm.
Chinese authorities were warned against cover-ups on Saturday after the death toll from Tropical Storm Bilis more than doubled overnight. A week after Bilis made landfall, the official number of people killed in gales and floods was given at 518, nearly 300 more than the 228 previously reported, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
At least 160 hidden deaths in a central Chinese province pushed the death toll to 482 from floods and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Bilis over the past week, state media said on Friday. Floods and landslides caused by Bilis destroyed tens of thousands of homes and left damage estimated at 20-billion yuan (,5-billion).
The death toll in China from Tropical Storm Bilis has risen to 198, official media said on Tuesday, as 140 people remained missing and heavy rain continued to pound the south of the country. Forecasters had expected the storm to weaken as it hit mainland China but instead it brought more death and destruction, as well as paralysing transport and communications infrastructure.
Torrential rains have killed at least 170 people across south China since the weekend, flooding cities, sweeping away houses and cutting off utilities as well as rail and road links, state media reported on Monday. The rains were triggered by tropical storm Bilis, which killed dozens in the Philippines and Taiwan before hitting China on Friday.
Forty years ago during the Cultural Revolution, it took an edict from China’s then premier Zhou Enlai to protect the Potala Palace from the destruction of the infamous Red Guards. Now a new menace — tourism — threatens the jewel of Tibetan Buddhism, which has come to be the symbol of Tibet.
The death toll from severe rainstorms and flooding across China in the aftermath of severe Tropical Storm Bilis has risen to 154, state media said on Monday. Torrential rain hit several provinces including Fujian, Hunan, Guangdong, Jiangxi and Zhejiang in the aftermath of the storm, forcing millions of residents to be evacuated and wreaking havoc on transport and communications.
Chinese officials have expressed concern that the media furore surrounding world record hurdler Liu Xiang could harm his career, state media reported on Thursday. They quoted athletics official Yu Weili as calling for more privacy for Liu, who set a new world record in the 110m hurdles with a time of 12,88 seconds in Lausanne on Tuesday.