The story of Ai Weiwei's arrest has been told all around the world but that four of his friends have also disappeared due to their connections with Ai is just starting to garner attention. more ›

The first Chinese fatality of the great earthquake in Japan has been confirmed by the Chinese embassy in Tokyo. No information on the victim was released at the request of the bereaved family. All we know is that he/she was killed in Ishinomaki city, Miyagi prefecture, when the quake-triggered tsunami hit the area. more ›

Though reports are varied, it now appears that the current death from the Wenchuan earthquakes is somewhere between 17,000 and 20,000 (latter figure from the Time China Blog, although most of the media is still reporting the official count at a more conservative 15,000. It's still to0 early to say just how high that figure will climb once everything is said and done, but an earlier Time's estimate put that number at around 100,000 (their man Austin Ramzy is there right now). While we hope that this isn't the case, we can see why they would say that, because other sources put the amount of buried or missing at between 27,000 and a staggering 60,000, and time is running out to get these people out. more ›

Right after the earthquake struck, Olympic officials maintained that the torch relay would go on as planned as "the epicenter is not along the route of the torch relay". In fact, one day after the earthquake, China Daily was still offering this really happy and harmonious image of the torch relay. That, unfortunately, did not go down well with people, and after a huge outcry on the Internet which saw Olympic organisers roundly lambasted for being "inhuman", BOCOG , to their credit, has taken a complete about-turn. Apart from this one minute's silence that you see in the video marking the start of the relay, "elaborate ceremonies surrounding the event would be scaled back, procedures simplified and the number of staff reduced". more ›

BBC reports that the group of British tourists on their way to Wolong when the quake struck has turned up unharmed. So far, the official word from Xinhua is that there have been zero foreigner deaths (Note: report is from Tuesday morning), but a more recent report from AFP cites Xinhua as saying two Chinese-Americans and one Thai tourist in Sichuan have yet to be located. more ›