■SOUTH KOREA
Landslide kills two
A landslide at a construction site killed two workers yesterday and trapped four others in a large, caved-in pit, a news report said. About 150 police and rescue workers using cranes and other equipment were trying to save the trapped workers at the site in Pangyo, south of Seoul, Yonhap news agency reported. The accident happened early yesterday when an H-shaped beam supporting a side of the 22m deep, rectangular pit collapsed. Four other workers were injured in the cave-in. Construction began at the site in September to build a nine-story chemical research center.
■HONG KONG
YouTubers love a hissyfit
A video of a hysterical passenger screaming at airline staff and writhing on the floor after missing a flight has become a YouTube hit. By yesterday, the three-minute clip of the furious woman had racked up close to 40,000 hits in three days. The video starts with the screaming woman running towards the departure gate and bouncing off a female security guard, after she learned that her flight has been closed. She then starts banging a desk before collapsing to the floor and rolling around, while maintaining a high-pitched wail. The footage, entitled “A woman missed her flight at the boarding gate HKIA” appears to have been shot with a mobile phone from behind the staff desk. The woman was traveling on a Cathay Pacific flight to San Francisco on Feb. 4, a Cathay spokeswoman said.
■PHILIPPINES
Manila to talk with MILF
The government is poised to resume peace talks with Muslim separatist rebels, months after fresh fighting left more than 300 dead, an official said yesterday. The government is ready to reopen negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), presidential peace adviser Avelino Razon told DZBB radio. Malaysia has been brokering the talks, which began in 2003 shortly after the MILF agreed to a ceasefire. But it pulled its peace monitors off troubled Mindanao Island last year because of the slow pace of progress.
■CHINA
Fireman honored as ‘martyr’
A fireman killed in a spectacular inferno that engulfed the new state-run central TV station has been laid to rest as a “revolutionary martyr,” state press reported yesterday. Zhang Jianyong’s (張建勇) funeral at Beijing’s Babaoshan revolutionary cemetery on Saturday was attended by some of the country’s best-known TV celebrities, the Beijing Morning Post reported. Zhang was killed while fighting a blaze last Monday, caused by illegal fireworks, which engulfed a building attached to the new headquarters of China Central Television.
■MALAYSIA
Police make huge drug bust
Police found 84kg of cannabis worth more than 345,600 ringgit (US$100,000) while investigating complaints related to an abandoned vehicle, a news report said yesterday. The cannabis was recovered early on Saturday from the trunk of an old car that was believed to have been abandoned for more than a year in a car park in central Petaling Jaya City. Following the discovery, police later raided an apartment nearby where a 21-year-old man was arrested with 2.4kg of cannabis, district police chief Ariunaidi Mohamed said. “He was in the midst of destroying the drugs when my officers raided the unit,” Mohamed was quoted as saying by the Star newspaper. Initial investigations showed that the drugs were brought in from a neighboring country.
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