China, Deaths | featured news

The Chinese capital's heaviest rainstorm in six decades killed at least 37 people, flooded streets and stranded 80,000 people at the main airport, state media and the government said on Sunday.

Chinese dissident Fang Lizhi, whose speeches helped inspire the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, has died aged 76, says a fellow activist.

They are calling it the death that awakened the conscience of China. A 2-year-old girl crushed by two vans last week and then ignored by 18 passersby as she lay bleeding on the street died at 12:32 a.m. Friday of systematic organ failure at a hospital in the southern Guangdong province. By midday, there were 2 million condolence messages flooding the Internet for the girl, whose name was Wang Yue, or Yueyue for short.

Three major road accidents in China killed 56 people on the last day of a weeklong holiday, including 35 people who died when a bus collided with a car on a northern expressway, state media reported Saturday.

A bullet train in China's eastern province of Zhejiang derailed Saturday evening, with two carriages falling off a bridge, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Chinese state media said 14 rioters were shot dead earlier this week after storming a police station in the country's far west.

More flooding across central China has killed 41 people, state media reported Friday, bringing the total killed in seasonal flooding this year to at least 95.

Landslides killed at least 65 people and left hundreds missing Sunday in northwest China's Gansu province, the latest disaster caused by widespread flooding in the country.

A drunk bulldozer driver killed at least 11 people and injured 30 more when he took his vehicle on a rampage after an argument with a customer in northern China, officials said Monday.

More than 1,000 people have died or disappeared in severe flooding in China so far this year, and the heaviest rains are still to come, a senior official warned Wednesday.