Society

Forty-one passengers were dead from a bus fire Friday morning in Xinyang city, Central China's Henan province. The cause of the blaze is still being investigated.

Six passengers including the bus driver were pulled out alive by rescuers from the fire that happened at 4 am on a section of the Beijing-Zhuhai Highway in Xinyang. They have been sent to hospital.

China took the top two spots in qualifying for women’s 1-meter springboard diving at the world championships.

Wang Han was first with 306.60 points on Sunday, followed by teammate Shi Tingmao with 294.65.

Sharleen Stratton of Australia, who won a bronze medal in 3-meter synchro on Saturday, was third with 282.45.

China, the world's second largest economy, is stepping up its efforts to achieve "ecological civilization," officials and experts said at a world eco-forum that ended Sunday.

Altogether 14 Chinese provinces are striving to build themselves into "eco-provinces," where local governments seek to promote sustainable development with respect to environmental protection, said Li Ganjie, China's vice environment minister, at the Eco-Forum Global (EFG) 2011 in Guiyang, capital city of southwest China's Guizhou Province.

So far, more than 1,000 cities and counties have worked out blueprints and timetables to achieve eco-civilization which features harmonious relations between people and nature, as well as environment-friendly consumption and lifestyles, according to the vice minister.

Li said that experience learned from those pilot eco-cities would help other parts of China move towards eco-civilization, which the country has been promoting as a strategic objective for future development in recent years.

The two-day forum has attracted hundreds of government officials, scholars, NGO representatives and business people from around the world to exchange information in the fields of green economy and eco-civilization.

Rescuers in southwest China have called off their search for 21 coal miners trapped underground by a flood two weeks ago, saying the workers were "very unlikely to be alive", state media said Sunday.

The colliery in Guizhou province's Pingtang county flooded on July 2, leaving 23 miners trapped underground, and rescuers later retrieved two bodies.

The official Xinhua news agency said rescue work stopped Saturday afternoon. It quoted experts as saying the miners were "unlikely" to be alive, adding the area where they were believed to be located had been entirely submerged.

Li Shangkuan, head of the rescue headquarters, said 406,000 cubic metres of water had been pumped out of the shaft over the past two weeks — the equivalent of more than 160 Olympic-sized swimming pools.