■ China
Good manners needed
The success of Beijing's 2008 Olympic Games rests as much on showing good manners as on the quality of facilities and athletic performances, a senior delegate to the International Olympic Committee said. "It's the rude bus passenger or a witness to an accident who fails to lend a hand that stands in our way of staging an impressive Olympiad," He Zhenliang (何振梁) said on Monday in Shanghai. "People are talking about showcasing our culture and the country's economic power through the extravaganza, but I think good manners should be put at the top of our agenda," He was quoted as saying by the Shanghai Daily yesterday.
■ China
Activist's wife in appeal
Zeng Jinyan (曾金燕), the wife of Chinese AIDS activist Hu Jia (胡佳), who disappeared while under police guard, appealed publicly at a news conference at a Beijing hotel yesterday for help in finding him, expressing fears for his health. Hu was last seen on Feb. 16 while under house arrest after he joined activists who were holding a hunger strike to protest violence against dissidents. Other hunger strikers have been detained, but Zeng said she has received no response from police after filing a missing person's report.
■ Japan
Hokkaido volcano erupts
Mount Meakandake on the northern main island of Hokkaido, about 890km northwest of Tokyo, erupted at 6:28am yesterday, spewing a small amount of ash into the air, the Meteorological Agency said in a news release. About 8,500 residents of the nearby town of Ashoro have been advised not to go near the 1,499m volcano, but no evacuation order has been issued, said Keiichi Kamada, a Hokkaido Prefectural official.
■ Afghanistan
Police defuse shrine bombs
Police in Kabul defused two bombs yesterday near a Shiite shrine where tens of thousands of people had gathered for the Nowruz religious festival, the country's anti-terrorism chief said. The bombs were discovered hidden near the Sakhi shrine, the second most important Shiite place of worship in Afghanistan, General Abdul Manan Farahi said. The festival carried on without interruption as police patrolled the area on horses, in cars and on foot. Nowruz is an ancient Persian festival celebrated on the first day of spring in several countries including Afghanistan and Iran.
■ Malaysia
KFC bosses' homes attacked
Unidentified attackers threw gasoline bombs at the homes of two senior KFC officials, a news report said yesterday. No injuries were reported. The Molotov cocktails were thrown on Saturday night at the homes of KFC Holdings (Malaysia) Bhd executive director Ahmad Aznan Nawawi and another senior officer, whose identity was withheld, the Star newspaper said, quoting police. It was not clear whether the attacks against the employees of the US-owned restaurant franchise were related to recent anti-American sentiment over US policies in the Middle East and the war in Iraq. The report quoted police as saying they were investigating whether business rivalry could have been a motive for the attack.
■ Japan
Climbers found dead
Two mountain climbers were found dead on a peak in the northwest of the country yesterday, after being trapped by high winds and snow for more than a day, police said. The two climbers, both women, were part of a group of nine people trapped on Sennokura, a 2,026m peak in the northwestern prefecture of Niigata, by one of a series of winter storms that struck the northern part of the country over the past few days. The other seven climbers were rescued. On Monday, three people froze to death on Yatsugatake, a mountain in the central prefecture of Nagano.
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