On the buckled road to the epicentre of China's deadliest earthquake in decades, the stream of refugees fleeing collapsed homes and unburied corpses is almost outnumbered by a flow of anxious families trekking in. The town of Wenchuan and hundreds of smaller settlements have been cut off from traffic and telephones since the massive tremor on Monday which Beijing say may have killed more than 50,000.

China began three days of national mourning on Monday for more than 30,000 victims of an earthquake that struck a week ago. Public entertainment will be suspended, flags kept at half-mast and a three-minute silence observed to mark exactly a week since the quake, the government said. The national flag in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing flew at half mast after a ceremony at dawn. The Olympic torch relay, currently on its domestic leg ahead of the Aug. 8 opening in Beijing, will likewise be suspended for three days.

Cyclone Nargis may have done more than just wreck Burma's cities. It may also spell doom for the government.

Thousands of persons are being evacuated from around a lake and a river at risk of bursting in south-west China's earthquake-affected zone, said relief officials on Saturday. The disaster relief headquarters in the Beichuan County said it received reports of water levels reaching danger point at the Laoyingyan section of the Qianjiang River on Saturday. The river has been blocked by landslips caused by the earthquake. "It hasn't burst yet, but we asked people to leave because we need to prepare for the worst,' said an official.

The most powerful earthquake in China since 1950 shows the nation's insurance industry is decades behind those of the world's biggest economies. Just 5 per cent of the more than $20 billion of damages from the quake in Sichuan province is covered by insurance, according to estimates from an official at the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, who declined to be identified.

The focus in Asia is now on the earthquake that killed untold thousands in China this week. It's worth pausing for a moment to consider how that country's biggest quake in 58 years offers a reason for optimism. The contrast between China's impressive relief efforts and Myanmar's shameful failure to allow the rapid delivery of international aid after this month's cyclone is as huge as it is telling. And China's response differs markedly from how it dealt with an earthquake that killed 250,000 people in 1976 in the northeastern city of Tangshan.

China's main centers for designing, making and storing nuclear arms lie in the shattered earthquake zone, leading Western experts to look for signs of any damage that might allow radioactivity to escape. A senior federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue, said the United States was using spy satellites and other means to try to monitor the sprawling nuclear plants. "There appear to be no immediate concerns," the official said.

CHENGDU, China: Can earthquakes be predicted, their destructive impact forewarned? Most scientists would say no. But if some insistent Chinese bloggers are to be believed, nature provided enough warning to have saved many of those who perished this week. In the days before the deadly earthquake shook much of mountainous Sichuan Province, their stories go, ponds inexplicably drained, cows flung themselves against their enclosures and swarms of toads invaded the streets of a town that was later devastated by the quake.

BANGKOK: At risk of disease, abuse and forced recruitment into the armed forces, children are the most vulnerable survivors of the cyclone that hit Myanmar, many of them orphaned or lost, fending for themselves.

BEIJING: Four days after a powerful earthquake devastated a mountainous region of southwestern China, the nation's massive rescue and relief effort continued Friday, even though the hope of finding new survivors was dimming. Remarkably, relief officials said that they had rescued a child buried alive in the ruins of a middle school late Thursday, about 80 hours after the quake struck, and had also detected the sounds of several other children who could be trapped there.