■ CHINA
Landslide buries road
A landslide buried a road and threatened a school in a major city in southwestern China, prompting the evacuation of more than 6,300 students and residents, a news report said yesterday. No injuries were reported. The landslide occurred on Thursday in the industrial metropolis of Chongqing, the Xinhua news agency said. It said monitoring of the hillside alerted authorities to the impending slide, allowing them to clear the area before it hit. Some 4,200 students at the nearby Fuling No. 5 Middle School were sent home as a safety measure and nearby residents were evacuated, Xinhua said.
■ CHINA
Bird flu kills 4,850 birds
Bird flu has killed 4,850 poultry in northwest China, the Xinhua news agency said on Friday. The outbreak occurred in Turpan, a city in the Xinjiang region, on Dec. 29 and a state laboratory confirmed the presence of the pathogenic H5N1 virus on Thursday, Xinhua said. Some 29,383 birds were slaughtered as a result, it said. The last reported outbreak in poultry occurred in September, when 9,830 ducks died in southern China near Hong Kong.
■ THAILAND
Insurgents kill Muslim man
Suspected separatist insurgents have shot dead a Muslim man and wounded two others on the anniversary of the start of a bloody rebellion in Thailand's far south, police said yesterday. The 43-year-old villager was killed in a drive-by shooting on Friday evening near a mosque in Yala Province, where two security officials were also wounded in a shooting and a bomb attack, local police said. Friday marked the fourth anniversary of a militant attack on an army base in Narathiwat Province, which revived long-running tensions and kick-started a separatist insurgency that has left more than 2,800 people dead. The south was an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until Buddhist Thailand annexed it more than a century ago, provoking decades of animosity.
■ JAPAN
Company offers pet subsidy
Hoping to send the message that pets are life-long partners not disposable accessories, a Japanese maker of medicines for animals has begun giving employees who own dogs or cats a monthly "family allowance" for their pets. The number of pets in Japan has grown with greater affluence and a falling birth rate and there are now more pet cats and dogs than children under age 15, but about 310,000 cats and dogs are put down annually, said Tokyo-based Kyoritsu Seiyaku Corp. Employees who own dogs and cats cn get a "family allowance" of ¥1,000 yen (US$9) per month.
■ JAPAN
Prisons prepare for elderly
Faced with a prison population aging as rapidly as the rest of the country, Japan is to build new jails with disabled access, including elevators, slopes for wheelchairs and grab-bars in toilets and baths. The three new penal facilities will offer healthy meals and may also have specialists in nursing and rehabilitation on staff, a Justice Ministry official said on Friday. The number of prison inmates aged over 60 rose to 8,700 in 2006 from 3,500 in 1997. Those with disabilities are currently spread around the country, making it difficult for wardens to deal with them, the ministry said. The three new penal facilities will each accommodate about 360 people and total building costs are estimated at ¥8.3 billion.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
'Dassies' under the hood
A car-owner in Johannesburg was driven to desperation when she found a family of Cape Hyrax, small animals that resemble guinea pigs, living in the engine of her BMW. Hoping to shake off the short-eared, short-tailed creatures known locally as "dassies," she drove at high speed to a dealership on the other side of town, but failing to do so dumped the vehicle there without giving an explanation. Astonished staff at the BMW dealership phoned Johannesburg Zoo and asked them to come and rescue the animals as the car had been abandoned in their carwashing area and was interfering with their work, a zoo official said.
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