■CHINA
Bus crash kills 13 people
Thirteen people were killed and 41 injured after a bus plummeted off a mountain road in north China, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The bus, carrying 54 passengers, was traveling to Taiyuan in Shanxi Province when the accident occurred, it said. Ten people were killed instantly, and three others died on way to the hospital, it said. The bus had been rented from a tourism agency and was carrying customers of the Taiyuan-based Jinwanxia healthcare products company. A traffic policeman at the scene reportedly said it had been raining and the road was slick.
■CHINA
Ban on US pork removed
China has agreed to end its ban on US pork products, which has been in place since the swine flu outbreak began earlier this year, US officials said on Thursday. The WHO has said the A(H1N1) influenza, cannot be contracted by eating meat. But China was one of a number of countries that restricted pork imports from the US and Mexico, where the swine flu epidemic originated in the spring. “China’s intent to remove its H1N1-related ban on US pork marks an important step forward in cooperation between the countries on agriculture issues,” said US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who was in China this week along with other top US trade officials.
■HONG KONG
Bottom attacker jailed
A Vietnamese worker began a three-month jail sentence on Friday for pricking two women on the bottom in Hong Kong, claiming he did so because he could not resist their “big buttocks.” Pham Van Diep, 43, used a toothpick and a piece of wire to prick the buttocks of two women, aged 20 and 38, in September and last month. The attacks raised fears of random syringe attacks similar to the incidents reported in Xinjiang in September. Pham appeared in court on Thursday for sentencing after earlier pleading guilty to two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Psychological reports presented to the court said Pham did not have a “big buttock” fetish and he had changed his story saying he had attacked the first victim because she was blocking his way.
■MALAYSIA
Lawmakers told to marry
Legislators in the poor conservative Muslim northeastern state of Kelantan should marry single mothers to help care for their children, a state representative suggested. The state’s family and health committee chairwoman Wan Ubaidah Omar said that legislators should be awarded prizes for increasing their “quota” of wives. “What I mean by quota is adding to the number of wives,” Wan Ubaidah, a female legislator said, according to Thursday’s Star newspaper. Polygamy is legal in Malaysia for Muslims, who account for 55 percent of the 28 million population.
■JAPAN
PM hates whale meat
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has revealed he dislikes whale meat, the Sankei Shimbun reported yesterday, in an unusual confession for the chief of a country that defies Western criticism of whaling. “I hate whale meat,” Hatoyama said during a meeting with his visiting Dutch counterpart, Jan Peter Balkenende, on Monday at his office, the report said. The Netherlands is one of several anti-whaling countries that allows the radical environmental group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to register a vessel in the country. The group’s activists have repeatedly harassed Japanese whaling vessels in Antarctic waters.
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