China Daily reports the Ministry of Health (MOH) Thursday vowed to punish officials who underreport the H1N1 flu pandemic following criticism from a prominent medical expert who cast doubt on China's official death toll from the disease. Some medical...

Prominent Beijing human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong was taken to the public security station after he struggled with four plainclothes public security officers who blocked him from taking his daughter to school this morning. China Human Rights Lawyers Concern...

China Daily reports China's anti-corruption chief He Guoqiang on Wednesday asked discipline authorities to collect and use online public comments to facilitate their endeavor against corruption. He, secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection...

BBC News reports the probe, set up by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was widely expected to find in favour of the two officials. Police had accused the two men - who worked for the country's powerful anti-corruption watchdog, the KPK - of extortion...

China Daily reports Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will meet here Wednesday with US President Barack Obama, who is on his first state visit to China since his January inauguration. They will have a working lunch before Obama's sightseeing visit to the Great...

People's Daily reports US President Barrack Obama said in Shanghai on Monday that Internet has an enormous power in assisting information dissemination, and he personally has benefited from Internet. Answering a question at the town hall meeting...

Xinhua reports search engine giant Google is to send a representative to China next week to talk with the country's copyright watchdog to cool down Chinese authors' heated complaints against the company over copyright violations, said a Google senior executive...

BBC News reports it says these centres - known as black jails - are often in state-run hotels, nursing homes or psychiatric hospitals. Among those detained are ordinary people who have travelled to Beijing to report local injustices. Officials have...

China Daily reports a new regional regulation requiring people who test positive for HIV to inform sex partners of their condition within a month is widely considered well-intentioned but unrealistic. For the first time in China, health authorities...

China Daily reports detainees awaiting trial will no longer be forced to work at China's detention houses, thanks to a breakthrough being heralded by lawyers as legal progress in protecting their legitimate rights. The change is outlined in a draft regulation...

The Mainichi Daily News reports actress Noriko Sakai was handed a suspended sentence Monday in a Tokyo District Court ruling in her trial over drug use and possession. The court handed the 38-year-old actress, whose real name is Noriko Takaso, an 18-month...

SCMP reports China has formally requested to take a lead role in co-ordinating international anti-piracy operations off Somalia - an unprecedented move that would be an expansion of its historic deployment of warships to the Indian Ocean. Beijing officials...

AFP reports Taiwan's constitutional court said it would scrap an "unfair" law that means prostitutes can be punished but allows clients to go free. "The law violates the equality principle in the constitution and shall be invalidated within...

China Daily reports a court in East China's Zhejiang province will rehear a controversial trial that handed down what the public called a lenient sentence to two police civilian support officers who raped a high school girl. "After reviewing...

BBC News reports there are dozens of treatment centres offering to wean youths, mostly boys, from spending hours on the web. Many of them are military-style boot camps that rely on tough programmes of physical exercise and counselling. Two boys were...

Xinhua reports a man who tried to keep his wife from bad company by robbing her prostitute friend was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Jiangyin's People Court in east China's Jiangsu Province. Having divorced once, university graduate Lv Jianlei,...

China Daily reports anyone charging a fee for H1N1 vaccinations will be punished, the National Development and Reform Commission said yesterday. This comes two days after Health Minister Chen Zhu warned medical institutions across China carrying out...

SMH reports a woman called the "godmother" of a mafia-style gang in China's southern city of Chongqing has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for running underground casinos and bribing government officials. The trial of Xie Caiping...

China Daily reports a Supreme People's Court (SPC) official said that the threshold for laying charges of corruption and bribery should be raised to bring it more in line with today's conditions. "The 5,000 yuan (threshold) in 1997 and 2009...

China Daily reports Google officials yesterday admitted to having scanned more than 20,000 books under Chinese copyright protection. The world's largest Internet search engine has been in negotiations with China's copyright watchdog for scanning works...

BBC News reports the ministry of public security has set up a website with pictures of some of those kidnapped, in the hope of returning them to their families. The ministry website has pictures of 60 children, ranging from babies to young adults, who...

China Daily reports for the first time in China's history, rural people may be about to get as much say in national decision-making as their urban counterparts. The nation's top legislature yesterday started to discuss a draft amendment to a law that...

Xinhua reports China's top legislature started its bimonthly session Tuesday morning, with the focus on a draft amendment to the electoral law. The draft amendment to the law will undergo its first reading at the 11th meeting of the Standing Committee...

AFP reports Japanese pop star Noriko Sakai pleaded guilty Monday to illegal drugs charges and prosecutors demanded 18 months' jail in a trial that has sparked intense public interest and frenzied media coverage. More than 6,600 people lined up for just...

Xinhua reports six people convicted in connection with organized crime gangs were sentenced Tuesday to death at two courts in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. The No. 1 Intermediate People's Court handed down death sentences to Yang Tianqing...

The Mainichi Daily News reports the retrial of Toshikazu Sugaya, who was imprisoned after being falsely convicted over the murder of a 4-year-old girl in 1990, began in the Utsunomiya District Court on Wednesday, with Sugaya denying involvement in the killing....

BBC News reports Human Rights Watch said the 43 men and teenaged boys were taken in police sweeps of Uighur districts of Urumqi, and had since vanished without a trace. The riots and protests in the city in early July left nearly 200 people dead. China's...

China Daily reports China will make every effort to rescue the crew and the hijacked bulk carrier, the De Xin Hai, from pirates in the Indian Ocean, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said Tuesday. Ma told a regular press conference that the Chinese...

SCMP reports police in Guangzhou said they had smashed a network that produced and distributed fake invoices with a face value of about 100 billion yuan (HK$113.7 billion). A statement released by police in the city's Tianhe district at the weekend said...

Xinhua reports Fang Hongjin, a former anchorman for China Central Television (CCTV), had been detained over contract fraud in north China's Hebei Province, local police confirmed Sunday evening. Fang, a famous TV anchor in China, had been released on...