■CHINA
Tourists snub France
Chinese tourists are avoiding France because of President Nicolas Sarkozy and his country’s attitude toward Tibet, a senior Chinese tourism official said on the weekend. “Chinese tourism to France has reduced a lot because they [Chinese tourists] don’t like what Sarkozy did before the Olympics and afterwards,” Chamber of Tourism vice president Ji Xiao Dong said on the sidelines of a global tourism conference in Brazil. Ji said he was referring to pro-Tibet protests in France in the lead-up to the Olympic Games last year and to talks last December in Poland between Sarkozy and Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
■CHINA
Third swine flu case found
An 18-year-old student in Beijing who recently returned from a US university has swine flu, the country’s third confirmed case, the Health Ministry said. The woman, a native of Beijing identified only by her surname, Liu, arrived in the city May 11 on a Continental Airlines flight and went to a hospital three days later with a fever, headache, cough, sore muscles and other symptoms, the ministry said late on Saturday. The hospital suspected Liu had swine flu and transferred her to the Beijing’s infectious diseases hospital late last week, the ministry said. Lab tests by the country’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the diagnosis on Saturday.
■HONG KONG
Acid attack injures 30
Thirty people were injured in one of the territory’s busiest shopping districts when two bottles of acid were hurled down a street, a police spokesman said yesterday. The bottles were tossed into a crowd on Saturday in Mongkok district in Sai Yeung Choi street — the same street where 46 people were injured in a similar attack in December. The injured — mostly young people who suffered burns to their faces, limbs and shoulders — were admitted to hospital. All had been released by yesterday except a 16-year-old girl, a government spokeswoman said. Police said they had not ruled out the possibility that the same person or people carried out both attacks.
■AUSTRALIA
Tall people earn more
The taller you are, the more you earn, but being fat doesn’t affect your pay, researchers said yesterday. Being 5cm above average can increase a worker’s pay by an average of 1.5 percent, Andrew Leigh from the Australian National University and Michael Kortt from Sydney University found. “We see this effect both for men and women, but it’s strongest for men,” Leigh said. There was no obvious explanation for the effect of height on earnings, they said of the study that found no correlation between weight and wages. “This is in contrast with previous studies that used older data from the United States and Germany and found that people with higher BMI [body mass index] scores earned lower wages,” Leigh said.
■VIETNAM
Six killed by lightning
Lightning killed six farmers harvesting their rice paddy fields, police said yesterday. The lightning on Saturday also injured 10 others in three different communes in central Nghe An Province, a policeman in Yen Thanh district said. “Rain was not heavy when the accident happened,” he said, refusing to be named. The victims, aged between 16 and 53, all died instantly, officials said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
McCanns to sue former cop
The parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann said on Saturday they will sue the former Portuguese police officer who handled the investigation into their daughter’s disappearance. Kate and Gerry McCann are to take action for defamation over comments made in the media by Goncalo Amaral. In a statement, the McCanns said: “We, together with our three children Madeleine, Sean and Amelie, are taking this legal action against Goncalo Amaral over his entirely unfounded and grossly defamatory claims — made in all types of media, both within Portugal and beyond — that Madeleine is not only dead, but that we, her parents, were somehow involved in concealing her body.” Portuguese police named Kate and Gerry McCann as “arguidos,” or formal suspects, in their daughter’s disappearance in September 2007, but prosecutors announced last July that they were no longer suspects.
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