Sina

One of China's renowned ancient towns was under water Wednesday as heavy rain hit the centre of the country, with tens of thousands of people evacuated from the area.
      

Staying cool is not easy these days. The summer heat is at times suffocating, the political agenda maddening, and it seems that the summer will get more and more heated with the upcoming Presidential elections. It will be hard to remain as cool as a cucumber when the political discourse gets more vicious.

The rose is more than a rose in this part of the world. The name of the rose, simply “gül” in Turkish, was once used to refer to all flowers, perhaps because it was the ultimate flower, perfect in shape, color, smell and moreover, in taste.

China's state censors on Thursday scrubbed the Internet of references to commemorations of the Tiananmen crackdown including a huge vigil in Hong Kong, extending a campaign of repression that has seen dozens of critics detained.