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Officers and soldiers from the People's Liberation Army navy are well prepared and determined to protect China's territorial integrity and marine interests, said naval officers stationed on the frontier island of Zhongjian in the South China Sea.

"Last year when I came home I told my wife that if there will be a war, I must fulfill my duties in my position," Qiu Hua, an officer from the naval garrison that guards the island, told China Daily.

Trading of live poultry suspended following deaths, report Shan Juan and He Na in Beijing, and Wang Hongyi in Shanghai.

Few stalls were open on Sunday in Shanghai's Wanshang flower and bird market in the wake of deaths from the H7N9 strain of bird flu. Sunday is usually the busiest day of the week as bird lovers of all ages wander around and listen to the chorus of thousands of birds.

On April 6, the local government ordered the suspension of all trading in live poultry and pet birds, but so far there has been no official directive to close the market.

The State Council will launch full investigations into two gas blasts at a coal mine in Jilin province that involve concealing the number of dead from the first blast, China's work safety watchdog announced.

The Babao Coal Mine in Baishan saw two explosions in four days in the last two weeks, and reports by authorities said 29 people were killed in the first blast and seven in the second.

However, the provincial government said on Sunday that another seven deaths from the first gas explosion on March 29 were deliberately not reported by the coal mine.

The Qingming Festival is traditionally a time for courtship, making sure the spirits are content and enjoying picnics and other outdoor activities with the coming of the better weather, report Cang Wei and Song Wenwei in Nanjing.

Many people think that Tomb-Sweeping Day, or the Qingming Festival, is for Chinese people to offer remembrances to their ancestors, but in ancient times, it was also a time for people to enjoy the arrival of spring and pray for love.

China's health authorities have promised transparency and pledged to mobilize resources nationwide to combat a new strain of deadly bird flu that has killed five people.

By Thursday night, the country's total number of confirmed bird flu cases increased to 14 - four in Jiangsu, six in Shanghai, one in Anhui and three in Zhejiang. One of the latest victims was a 48-year-old man from Jiangsu province, who transported poultry for a living. He died of H7N9 bird flu in Shanghai on Thursday.

As an icy nightfall wind whipped across Miyun reservoir, a White-naped Crane raised its wings with a lazy flap, almost like a yawn, before rising into the air. Five hundred meters away, 20 bird watchers shivered in the bushes as they attempted to capture the bird's exotic dance through cameras and binoculars. More than 500 of the birds had alighted by the reservoir, 90 kilometers northeast of Beijing's urban area, pecking, preening and shaking their tail feathers.

Four more people in East China have been confirmed to be infected with the H7N9 bird flu virus, as a nationwide screening program has been launched for the rare but lethal strain.

The health authority in Jiangsu province said four people living in different cities are in critical condition after they developed fever, coughing and other symptoms around March 20. They tested positive for H7N9 on Tuesday afternoon.

Two men from Shanghai, aged 27 and 87, were confirmed dead on Sunday from H7N9 infection, with a woman from Anhui province in critical condition.

President Xi Jinping on Tuesday stressed the importance of further mobilizing public support for tree planting, to aid the building of a "beautiful China".

The tree-planting campaign has been effective in boosting the recovery of forest resources and public awareness of environmental protection, Xi said at a high-profile tree-planting event on Tuesday in Beijing's Fengtai district.

The price of cemetery plots is now about 80,000 yuan ($12,880) a square meter - much higher than the rate for local luxury commercial apartments - in the capital of Guangdong province.

In Guangzhou Zhonghua Permanent Cemetery, an expensive plot, which covers less than 2 sq m, now costs 140,000 to 150,000 yuan - excluding the cost of gravestones, stone lions, landscaping and other charges.

An ordinary plot costs 40,000 to 100,000 yuan at the cemetery in Xintang township, Zengcheng, a suburb of Guangzhou.

Rescue workers searching for missing miners, buried by Friday's massive landslide near Lhasa, in the Tibet autonomous region, were forced to clear the site twice on Monday, as the risk of further landslides grew.

By 4 pm, 36 bodies had been recovered at the scene of the tragedy, out of 83 believed to be buried at the Jiama mining area of Maizhokunggar county, according to the rescue headquarters.

But thousands of rescuers had to stop searching from 4 pm onwards, as the risk of further landslides increased.

Apple Inc, the US electronics giant, appeared in court in Shanghai on Wednesday, accused of intellectual property right infringement involving software used on "Siri", its intelligent digital assistant.

Shanghai Zhizhen Network Technology Co, the developer of a voice technology called "Xiao i Robot", is alleging that the Apple assistant infringed its patent, in particular relating to "a type of instant messaging chat robot system".

Siri responds to a user's commands through voice recognition software.