World briefs

JAPAN Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that Japan’s government is drawing up contingency plans in case a crisis on the Korean Peninsula sends an influx of refugees to Japan. Abe told a parliamentary session that the government is formulating measures including protecting foreigners, landing procedures, building and operating shelters, and screening asylum seekers.

KOREA Viewing his adversaries in the distance, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence traveled to the tense zone dividing North and South and warned Pyongyang that after years of testing the U.S. and South Korea with its nuclear ambitions, “the era of strategic patience is over.”

NORTH KOREA Tensions have spiked in recent weeks over North Korea’s advancing nuclear technology and missile arsenal. But in Pyongyang, people seem not to notice a difference.

CHINA Economic recovery is gaining momentum, with growth ticking up to a 6.9 percent annual pace in the first three months of the year.

CHINA Ten people have died and five were injured when a bus veered off a highway and fell into a river in southern China. The Xinhua News Agency reported that four people went missing in the accident yesterday morning in Guizhou province. The state news agency says the 19-seat bus was travelling from Kaiyang county on the outskirts of the provincial capital to the Qiannan Bouyei-Miao Autonomous Prefecture when it went off a highway and into the river.

NEPAL A former Sherpa guide who was the first person to scale Mount Everest 10 times has been hospitalized after suffering a brain hemorrhage, an official said. Ang Rita (pictured) was rushed to a hospital in Kathmandu last week after he fell unconscious, said the Nepal Mountaineering Association. He was still in serious condition on yesterday, but his situation was improving.

SRI LANKA Rescuers were digging through heaps of mud and trash that collapsed onto a clutch of homes near a Sri Lankan garbage dump, killing at least 29 people.

TURKEY President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a historic referendum that will greatly expand the powers of his office, although opposition parties questioned the outcome.

PORTUGAL  A small plane crashed Monday beside a supermarket near Lisbon, killing four people on board the aircraft and one on the ground. Four people were slightly injured, emergency services said. The dead included the Swiss pilot, three French passengers on the plane and a Portuguese truck driver