Beijing - Typhoon Fung Wong (Phoenix), which lashed Taiwan on Monday morning, continued to strengthen as it headed toward China's east coast, and is expected to make landfall near Xiamen City before midnight, the official Xinhua news agency said Monday.

The storm was moving in a north-westerly direction Monday morning at wind speeds of 151 kilometres per hour at its centre, Xinhua cited the weather observatory in south-eastern Fujian province, where Xiamen is located, as saying.

Beijing  - A video calling for attacks in China during the Olympics games was placed in the internet Saturday by a purported Uighur separatist group.

In the three-minute-long video, a shrouded person claiming to be a commander of the Turkestan Islamic Party also claimed that the group was behind a series of explosions in China in the past months.

The video made reference with pictures seemingly taken off the Chinese internet of the July 21 attacks on buses in China's southern Yunnan province and a May 5 attack in Shanghai.

Beijing - Temporary measures designed to improve air quality for next month's Olympics have cut overall air pollution by about 20 per cent, Beijing officials said on Friday.

"I'm sure the effects have already been felt and are quite evident," Du Shaozhong, deputy director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, told reporters.

The aggregated level of major air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and particulate matter dropped this month by 20 per cent year-on-year compared with July 2007, Du said.

The city said it recorded 22 "blue sky" days in the first 25 days of July, and 13 more "blue sky" days year-on-year in the first six months of 2008.

Beijing - At least eight people died and others were feared trapped under rubble after a mosque under construction collapsed in north-western China's Qinghai province, state media said on Friday.

About 24 others were injured in the collapse at Taer town in Qinghai's Datong county on Thursday, including three in serious condition, the official Xinhua news agency said.

"The exact number of people at the scene is still unknown," the agency quoted a rescue official as saying.

Beijing - Chinese officials said Thursday they have smashed an international terrorist group that planned to attack an Olympic Games football site in the eastern city of Shanghai.

"We have obtained information that international terrorist organizations would likely launch an attack against an Olympic venue in the city during the Games," the official news agency Xinhua quoted Cheng Jiulong, Shanghai Public Security Bureau deputy director, as saying.

"We have staged raids and cracked a group of terrorists," said Cheng, who is also head of the Shanghai security office for the Olympics.

Beijing - A European business group on Thursday said it was concerned that China's pre-Olympic toughening of its visa policy could bring "serious problems" to EU firms.

"The introduction of such restrictions without warning creates serious problems for companies operating in China," the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said in a statement.