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The local police stopped parents who were trying to travel secretly from southwest China to Beijing this week to ask the central government for a full investigation into school collapses that killed their children during the May earthquake, several of the parents said Thursday. A leader of the grieving parents, Sang Jun, who lost his 11-year-old son, said in a telephone interview that he had been detained overnight and released only after more than 60 other parents gathered at the gates of the town government building to demand his release. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Parents who lost children in a particularly horrific school collapse during the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province scrapped their plan for a one-month mourning ceremony on Thursday after local officials warned them not to go through with it, two of the parents said. In telephone interviews, the two parents said the group's members were told not to contact one another and not to stay in the town of Juyuan, the site of the collapse of a middle school that left hundreds of children crushed to death. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Police officers here on Tuesday surrounded more than 100 parents protesting shoddy school construction and mourning the deaths of thousands of children during the recent earthquake. The police dragged away several crying mothers and removed some journalists trying to report on the event, according to witnesses and photographs of the protest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A fast-spreading viral outbreak in China has killed 22 children, sickened nearly 3,600 others and caused panic among parents in an impoverished corner of Anhui Province, government health officials said Friday. All of the fatalities, from lung problems and other complications, have been in children younger than 6, with a majority of them under 2. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hundreds of parents protesting shoddy school construction that they said led to the deaths of their children in the May earthquake were harassed by riot police officers on Tuesday and criticized by local government officials, the parents said Wednesday. Local officials were also trying to buy the silence of the parents by offering them about $8,800 if they signed a contract agreeing not to raise the school construction issue again, several parents said. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]