Briefly

VIETNAM

Bus accident kills 30 war veterans

HANOI — A bus wreck in the Central Highlands killed 30 Vietnamese war veterans and injured four persons, Danang police said yesterday.

The bus crashed while crossing a pass on the Ho Chi Minh Trail about 90 miles east of Kontun, said Dao Hong Mon, Danang’s traffic police chief. The driver apparently was not familiar with the road and lost control of the bus, which fell more than 250 feet into the valley below.

Also yesterday, military officials announced that the remains of 43 Vietnamese soldiers killed in Laos during the Vietnam War have been recovered. They were “recently found and unearthed” in southern Laos, and “three cases have been identified with names, addresses and units,” state-run Vietnam News Agency reported. The remains will be repatriated and reburied, it said.

INDONESIA

Life sentence urged for Australian tourist

BALI — Indonesian prosecutors stopped short yesterday of demanding the death penalty for an Australian woman accused of smuggling drugs into this resort island, saying she should be jailed for life instead.

Beauty therapist Schapelle Corby, 27, from Queensland’s Gold Coast, wept after hearing the sentence request, which came after a call by Australia not to impose a death sentence.

Miss Corby is accused of smuggling 9 pounds of marijuana into Bali last year. She denies knowing the drugs were there, and her attorneys are investigating whether the marijuana was planted in her luggage.

JAPAN

Court OKs tax break for Korean public hall

KUMAMOTO — A facility owned by a pro-Pyongyang ethnic Korean group is eligible for tax breaks because of its public nature, the Kumamoto District Court ruled yesterday, rejecting demands by a support group for Japanese kidnapped to North Korea that the city government stop its preferential tax treatment.

The court ruled in favor of the local government’s argument that the tax break applies to the community hall owned by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan because it serves as a public facility for ethnic Korean residents.

Presiding Judge Takemoto Nagamatsu said the facility “is of public interest” and is used to promote learning and social welfare, just like other community centers.

Weekly notes …

China announced yesterday that it will be able to phase out ozone-depleting substances two years ahead of targets in the Montreal protocol aimed at protecting the earth’s ozone layer. Li Xinmin, an official of the State Environmental Protection Administration, told an Asia-Pacific meeting of the United Nations Environment Program that chlorofluorocarbons were reduced by 55 percent from 1997 levels and halon production and use was cut by 85 percent, Xinhua News Agency reported. … Russian ecologists in Vladivostok warned yesterday against construction of a pipeline linking Siberian oil fields and Pacific seaports, saying it could poison the entire coastline and its national parks. “Construction and exploitation of an oil terminal in Perevoznaya will inevitably have a negative impact on the entire coastline,” said Sergei Bereznyuk, director of the Phoenix ecological fund.

From wire services and staff reports