By Rowan Callick and Zhang Yufei in Dujiangyan City BUILDERS and local officials in China's earthquake-shattered Sichuan province have been accused of

More than 12000 people were killed in Monday's earthquake in central China. The 7.9 quake also left thousands buried under rubble, and rescue efforts by

BEIJING, May 14 (Xinhua) - Samples collected so far indicate water quality in quake-hit areas have remained basically unchanged and are eligible for drink by Wednesday, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said here in Beijing.
The samples were collected along the Yangtze River and its distributary rivers from Panzhihua in southwestern Sichuan Province, Yibin in southern Sichuan, Leshan in central Sichuan and Luzhou in southeastern Sichuan, and Yichang in Hubei Province, where the Three Gorges Dam is.
thorities in Chengdu have been closely monitoring the quality of drinking water in the city for the past few days, and have found nothing abnormal," the ministry said, adding that the Chongqing Municipality is also free of quake-induced environmental pollution currently.

BEIJING (AP) - The official death toll from a powerful earthquake in central China has risen to almost 15,000.
The Xinhua News Agency reported on Wednesday that 14,866 have been killed — two days after the magnitude-7.9 quake hit central China.
tion. AP's earlier story is below.

By Edward Wong and Jake Hooker YONGAN, China - The battle for survival here is as stark as anywhere in the earthquake zone.
Wang Guofei and his younger brother drove Tuesday morning to look for their mother in the rugged county of Beichuan, where at least 5,000 people have died in Monday's earthquake. But the road had been washed out by a landslide, and Wang said he would return the next day and search for his mother on foot.
n 900 high school students were initially trapped. Only one survivor has been found: a girl pulled free by rescue team.

AP MIANYANG, China: The 20-year-old waitress was camped outside a restaurant, a borrowed pink down jacket offering little protection against the dank spring

By Lindsay Beck and Guo Shipeng BEIJING, May 12 (Reuters) - A powerful earthquake in southwest China has killed up to 5,000 people and left as many as 10,000 injured, state media said, as hundreds of children remained trapped in at least eight collapsed schools.
An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people were killed in Beichuan county of mountainous Sichuan province alone after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the region during the early afternoon on Monday, Xinhua news agency said, citing the local government.
helped dozens of students out of the ruins and five cranes were excavating at the site as anxious parents looked on, Xinhua said.

By VOA News Thousands of Chinese troops and medical teams have been dispatched to areas of Sichuan province, where the country's worst earthquake in decades

By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor Beijing - – As the death toll from Monday's earthquake mounted, China threw its Army into