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CHENGDU, China (CNN)
A powerful 5.8 magnitude aftershock hit China’s Sichuan province Sunday, reportedly damaging more than 70,000 homes in the region where at least 60,000 people were killed by a powerful earthquake on May 12. More than 70,000 homes in the area were damaged by the aftershock, according to local television reports. Meanwhile, the death toll from this month’s earthquake in China reached 62,664, a government official said Sunday. Another 23,775 are still missing.

At the Sunday news conference, a civil affairs ministry official said rescue workers have pulled alive 6,537 people from the rubble of the May 12 earthquake. A water ministry official said at the same conference that 69 dams are in danger of bursting in Sichuan province. Since the quake struck, workers have made several dramatic rescues. But the numbers have dwindled in recent days as time has passed. And continued rain in the coming days threatened to make relief efforts more difficult.
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Up to 2.5 million survivors are clinging to life in the low-lying Irrawaddy delta, with thousands of people lining roadsides to beg for help in the absence of large scale government or foreign relief operations.

Aung Hla Tun
Reuters
Diplomats witnessed “huge” devastation in the Irrawaddy delta on Saturday and the toll of dead and missing from the cyclone rose above 133,000 people, making it one of the most damaging to hit Asia.

With about 2.5 million people clinging to survival in the delta, and the military government refusing to admit large-scale outside relief, disaster experts say the death toll from Cyclone Nargis which struck on May 2 could rise dramatically. Read more

The Canadian Press
CHONGQING, China — Chinese state media says more than 8,500 have died in Sichuan province alone from a massive earthquake.

The official Xinhua news agency said that another 10,000 people were believed hurt in one of the province’s counties after the 7.8-magnitude quake today. Nearly 900 students were trapped after their school collapsed about 100 kilometres from the quake’s epicentre. Xinhua reported students also were buried under five other toppled schools.

The earthquake struck in the middle of the afternoon when classrooms and office towers were full.

The temblor was felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand.

BEIJING - The death toll from a viral illness that is striking children across China has risen by two to 30, health officials said Thursday, as the number of reported cases jumped to nearly 20,000.

The latest deaths from hand, foot and mouth disease occurred on the island province of Hainan in China’s south, where 180 cases have been reported, Hainan’s health bureau said on its Web site.

It said the two children tested positive for enterovirus 71, a virus that can cause a severe form of the disease, a common childhood ailment that typically causes little more than a fever and rash. Read more