■ CHINA
Malnutrition hits poor kids
Nearly one-third of children living in China's poorest areas suffer from malnutrition, the government said yesterday. Citing a report from the Beijing-based Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety, the official Xinhua news agency said that 29 percent of children under the age of five living in poverty-stricken regions of southwestern China's Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, and in Qinghai in the northwest, were affected by the malady. By contrast, it said, child malnutrition in urban areas stood at only 1 percent.
■ HONG KONG
WTO protests allowed
The government announced on Friday that it would seal off a small area around the site of the World Trade Organization ministerial conference when it is held here in December. The government also offered to let protesters hold demonstrations at two sites within view of the convention center during the Dec. 13-18 gathering. The government had proposed earlier this year to ban demonstrators from a wide area around the center, located in Wanchai.
■ CHINA
Cadets confirmed dead
Eighty police cadets from an academy that was hit by a landslide caused by Typhoon Longwang last weekend have been confirmed dead, state media reported yesterday. Five other cadets remain missing, according to Xinhua. The typhoon brought sudden downpours, triggering a landslide that hit two houses in the academy stationed in the provincial capital Fuzhou last Sunday, washing away the cadets inside. Rescuers saved 57 others, 39 of whom were injured.
■ VIETNAM
Angry bear kills owner
A pet bear being kept at a restaurant for its bile attacked and killed its 75-year-old owner in Vietnam Friday, a local military officer said yesterday. The 300kg, 163cm bear was one of a pair held in a small cage at the back of the man's restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City for nearly 20 years, the officer said. "Tran Hoang Loc, the restaurant owner, was attacked and hurled to the ground by the bear when he was opening the cage to feed the two animals," said Nguyen Dinh Trung, an officer from the military unit in Thu Duc district who was later sent to shoot and kill the bear. One of the man's staff was also injured in the attack. "Loc was found dead with his body crushed and torn while his assistant had one of his arms torn off by the bear when he stepped in to help," Trung said.
■ CAMBODIA
Man jailed for killing rapist
A Cambodian father has been jailed for four years for murdering a man he caught sexually assaulting his daughter as he tried to rescue her, court officials said yesterday. Deputy prosecutor for the central provincial court of Kampong Thom, Ty Sokon Thal, told reporters that Part Thy, 56, had heard his 15-year-old daughter screaming on January 9, 2001 and had run back from fishing in the river to find a man identified as Tol Buntheoun in the act of raping her. "He picked up a machete and chopped Buntheoun to rescue his daughter. Buntheoun was seriously injured and died the next day, and Thy then turned himself in to police and admitted the crime," Sokon Thal said.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Chinese official flees
The second highest ranking member in the Chinese government missed a ceremonial Maori welcome at the New Zealand Parliament on Thursday in order to dodge a one-man protest over Tibet by a local politician. New Zealand police refused a demand by security guards with Wu Bangguo (吳邦國), chairman of China's National People's Congress, to remove Rod Donald, co-leader of the Green Party in Parliament, who stood at the red-carpeted steps of the building holding a Tibetan flag as he arrived.
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