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A powerful tremor registering 7.0 on the Richter scale (6.6 according to the US Geological Survey) and a series of strong aftershocks hit near the city of Yaan in southwestern China's Sichuan province on April 20, 2013, causing heavy casualties and losses.
Two quakes three minutes apart hit area in Sichuan province close to where 196 people lost their lives in April 2013.
The party head of Yaan city, Sichuan province, was removed from his post, the municipal government said on Sunday night on its official Sina Weibo blog.
President Xi Jinping yesterday visited areas of Sichuan hit hardest by last month's magnitude 7 earthquake, meeting survivors and inspecting reconstruction work at a Hong Kong-funded school building.
At 2.28 this afternoon countless families will be savouring lunch in honour of Mother's Day. But it will be a poignant moment for thousands of mainland mothers still mourning children who died in the catastrophic Sichuan earthquake that struck at that moment five years ago. The day after, this column closed its first comment with the words: "A great disaster has befallen China."
Two Communist Party mouthpieces yesterday reported the controversy in Hong Kong over the HK$100 million donation to earthquake victims in Sichuan - pointing the finger at the Red Cross Society of China.
The Hong Kong Red Cross has promised to monitor the use of the HK$12 million it has received in donations to help survivors of last month's earthquake in Sichuan province.
The legislature approved a controversial HK$100 million government donation to official Sichuan earthquake relief efforts yesterday, despite earlier worries over a possible filibuster.
About HK$172 million from Hong Kong corporations and individuals had been donated to Yaan earthquake relief efforts in Sichuan province, according to the central government's liaison office.
An article in yesterday's overseas edition of People's Daily claiming that only "a minority of Hong Kong people" were against the donation comes amid government plans to make a second application for the funding to the Legislative Council's special financial committee on Friday.
Mainland insurers are poised for profit growth in the second quarter, with insurance claims after the recent Yaan earthquake not expected to be high, while investment returns and premium income are likely to improve.
For chemical weapons read weapons of mass destruction. Western powers shall intervene in Syria, create another failed state that will become another fundamentalist justification for the global "war on terror" and then blame faulty intelligence that was accepted "in good faith".
Yaan, in central Sichuan province, will see an average of 1,200mm of rainfall across the region from May to September - nearly three times the national average.
The devastating earthquake that hit Sichuan less than a fortnight ago might have offered an interesting answer to the ongoing debate over the definition of "love your country, love Hong Kong".
The scandal-plagued Red Cross Society of China has received little more than half of the donations to aid earthquake relief in Sichuan last week - a much smaller share than the government's premier charity has raised in the past.
Residents of Lushan county in Sichuan province, the epicentre of Saturday's magnitude 7 earthquake that has claimed at least 196 lives, say they are concerned about corruption after local authorities announced a high figure for economic losses that will be used as the basis for rebuilding plans.
