Nine workers were killed and seven others trapped after a coal mine was hit by a gas outburst in central China’s Henan Province, local authorities said on Tuesday.

China’s military launched major air defence exercises on Tuesday, highlighting rising capabilities that are seen as tipping the balance of power in east Asia.

Fifteen people were killed in a blast at a coalmine in northern China on Saturday, Xinhua reported.

Workers began cleaning up a chemical spill in northeastern China on Thursday after more than 3,000 containers of chemicals were washed into a river by the worst floods to hit the country in more than a decade.

Traffic at the busy subway system here was disrupted briefly during the rush hour on Monday after a man jumped onto the tracks at a station.

China on Tuesday gave a guarded response to foreign secretary Nirupama Rao’s recent meeting with the Dalai Lama, saying it hopes India will abide by its commitment not to allow exiled Tibetans to conduct anti-China activities.

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday ruled out handing over the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to India but said the “non-state actors” who derailed the Indo-Pak rapprochement will “hopefully” be brought to justice in his country.

China executed on Wednesday the disgraced former chief justice of the country’s most populous metropolis, Cho-ngqing, a sentence meted out as part of a crackdown on organised crime laun-ched by the ci

Amid concerns expressed by India and the US about the new Sino-Pak nuclear deal, Pakistan has claimed that the agreement to build two atomic reactors was inked in 2009 itself during President Asif Ali

India and China plan to resume the next round of talks to resolve differences over demarcation of borders and conduct joint military exercises so as to boost bilateral ties, National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon said on Tuesday. Mr Menon, who is here on a four-day visit as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s special envoy, said India and China would be finalising dates to resume talks to resolve differences over demarcation of borders and to conduct joint military exercises.