China

Authorities in south-west China on Wednesday appealed for medicine, food and water as they struggled to cope with the aftermath of ferocious storms that left 169 people dead, 67 missing and thousands sick or injured. Meanwhile, an earthquake measuring five on the Richter scale struck north-western China’s Gansu province.

At least 90 people were killed and 77 were missing in torrential storms lashing south-west China, disaster relief officials said on Monday. At least 66 were killed and 50 were missing in Sichuan province while 24 people died and 27 were missing in Chongqing municipality.

Three people were killed and 34 others, many of them children attending the first day of school, injured when a man set fire to explosive materials inside a minibus in central China on Wednesday, state media said. The man committed suicide after carrying out the attack, the Xinhua news agency said.

The death toll in an earthquake in southwest China rose to four, officials said on Wednesday as hospitals struggled to cope with the nearly 600 injured and rescuers continued searching for survivors. The quake, which measured 5,6 on the Richter scale, ripped through Ludian county in Yunnan province late on Tuesday.

An earthquake measuring 5,6 on the Richter scale rocked south-west China on Tuesday, leaving three people dead and more than 250 injured, officials said. Two earthquakes measuring 5,1 and 5 on the Richter scale hit the same area on November 15 and 26 2003, killing four and injuring 120.

An internet engineering firm sent 10 new sales staff to beg on a main shopping street as part of their training in Changchun city, in northeastern China’s Jilin province, state media said on Tuesday. Company owner Li Jinghua said the exercise was designed to teach the new staff to be thick-skinned.

A court on Friday convicted 52 members of a baby-trafficking gang that smuggled 118 infants for sale in southern China, sentencing the ringleaders to death or life in prison. The case included a highly publicised incident in March in which 28 baby girls were found hidden in nylon tote bags aboard a long-distance bus.

A central section of a major road bridge collapsed in northeast China early on Thursday, sending vehicles plunging into a river below, local officials and state media reported. The Xinhua news agency said at least three vehicles were seen falling through the gaping hole in the 500m-long cement and concrete bridge.

China has shut down 8 600 internet cafés in the past two months as part of an ongoing crackdown on the media, state press said on Tuesday. The crackdown comes after the propaganda ministry annnounced last October a new ”educational campaign” aimed at reaffirming Communist Party control over the press.

Seven people were killed, three injured and up to 150 000 evacuated after large amounts of toxic chlorine gas leaked from a factory in southwest China’s Chongqing municipality on Friday, state media said. Several explosions were also reported. The highly irritating, greenish-yellow gas began leaking from the plant on Thursday evening.

A woman who spent years petitioning the Chinese government for help against forced eviction has been sent to a labour camp for 18 months for posting articles on the internet detailing China’s abuse of petitioners, a rights group said on Thursday.

China’s cultural minister has called for tighter controls on the internet, including 24-hour surveillance and urging people to tell on each other, state media said on Friday. China is second only to the US for the number of people online. The number of users rose to 79,5-million by December 2003 from 59,1-million in December 2002.

China’s Agriculture Ministry on Thursday admitted problems in controlling an epidemic of bird flu, as it reported five new cases that took its total to 28 suspected or confirmed outbreaks. ”The way of [poultry] production is diversified, so this has brought some problems,” Vice-Minister of Agriculture Liu Jian said.

More than 10 000 birds died mysteriously in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, dropping like rain from the sky, state media reported on Thursday. Farmers and other witnesses in Sangongdian village in Taizhou city saw flocks of bramble finch suddenly fall from the sky on Tuesday.

A huge blast ripped through a northeastern Chinese fireworks factory on Tuesday, killing 29 workers and putting 19 others in hospital, state press reported. The explosion tore through two factory buildings of Changtu Safe Environment Color and Noise.

Health departments throughout China stepped up measures to combat the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) on Sunday, a day after authorities announced the nation’s first suspected case of the disease since July. Shanghai has been placed on ”high alert”, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Four more bodies were found on Monday to take the toll from a gas explosion in a coal mine in northern China to 20, state media said. Nine workers were rescued from the Longtai mine in Zhangjiakou city, Hebei province, following the blast on Sunday, the Xinhua news agency said.

Two strong earthquakes shook a remote region of northwestern China’s desertlands, killing at least eight people, the government said on Sunday. The quakes — magnitudes 6,1 and 5,8 — hit Gansu province within seven minutes, and damage to reservoirs left a large patch of land in danger of flooding.

At least three people were killed and 26 injured when an earthquake measuring 6,1 on the Richter scale struck southwestern China’s Yunnan province on Thursday — an area that was struck by an earthquake measuring 6,2 on the Richter scale in July. More than 12 000 homes collapsed following Thursday’s quake.