The two sides of a town divided by the Cumbrian floods were reunited today, after a temporary road bridge was opened.

We have been here before. One teacher's story yesterday of how her school collapsed in the Qinghai earthquake provoked a shiver of awful recognition.

The 2010 English cricket season is about to get underway.

The 82nd running of the week's centrepiece should provide an "I-was-there" moment. Kauto Star (3.20), going for his third Cheltenham Gold Cup, is poised to seal his greatness. The race has been hyped as the best-of-three decider between the defending champion and his Paul Nicholls-stablemate Denman, but that moment came and went last year and Denman has increasingly looked like a horse falling out of love with his job.

To call a new restaurant "Caravan" is to risk ambiguity. The word can suggest a camel journey, a romantic quest for Shangri-La, a drifting meander through exotic lands and undulating sand dunes, meeting strange women in transparent shawls and kohl-drenched eyes, their every movement dreamily soundtracked by the sexy wail of oud and zither. Sadly, it can equally suggest a dismal wet weekend in a rusting mobile home on Selsey Bill.

Beaten to within an inch of his life, Ai Weiwei is still defiant.

When it's time to have children, young professionals have long headed for London's leafy suburbs, but now buyers are moving further afield in search of domestic bliss. Gwenda Brophy reports

A Chinese court today sentenced an activist who investigated the deaths of thousands of schoolchildren in the country's massive 2008 earthquake to five years in jail for inciting subversion of state power, the man's lawyer said.

Moving abroad is often hard, but for singletons facing a language barrier it is even more difficult. It may be with this in mind that one of China's top panda breeding centres is seeking a language teacher, as well as a mate, for a female panda who flies to China from the US this week. Three-year-old Mei Lan, whose name means Beautiful Orchid, has been living at Zoo Atlanta in Georgia since her birth in September 2006. At her new home in Chengdu, where she will join a breeding programme, it is believed that a teacher will help her adapt faster.

The Caribbean is riddled with a complex network of tectonic fault lines resulting from the movement of the Caribbean plate which is slipping eastwards at a rate of about 2cm a year, relative to the vast North American plate further to the north.

In the bar of the House of Commons, you'll find MPs from both sides happily quaffing together, with none of the animosity one might expect. But such a collegiate atmosphere isn't present at crime-fiction conventions when two types rub shoulders. The writers of tough urban crime tend to gravitate together, while those who specialise in less sanguinary Home Counties mysteries – the "cosies" – tend to keep to their own. Of course, there are exceptions: Val McDermid may plumb the most gruesome reaches of psychopathology, but she's a passionate Agatha Christie aficionado.

Beijing responds to US call for greater civil liberties with sentence for activist who criticised official response to disaster

Some of the most violent earthquakes that have occurred unexpectedly in places with no recent record of tremors may be the aftershocks of previous earthquakes that took place decades or even centuries ago, scientists have discovered.

Regional police say a prominent opposition activist in the Russian province of Ingushetia has been shot and killed by unidentified gunmen.