KUALA LUMPUR - A BUS skidded off a highway, smashed into a tree and plunged into a ditch in southern Malaysia early on Sunday, killing nine people and injuring 19 others.

The bus was heading to neighbouring Singapore when it spun out of control in southern Johor state and crashed, a police spokesman told The Associated Press.

BANGKOK - THAILAND'S political crisis is battering the kingdom's economy just as the global financial crisis begins to bite, analysts say, but a power vaccuum at the top means nothing is being done to help.

BANGKOK - THAILAND'S main opposition party called on Sunday for an emergency parliament session to prove its majority in a bid to form the next government and end months of political chaos, as loyalists of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra struggled to stay in power.

A new administration should bring some semblance of stability to this Southeast Asian nation, which has been gripped by political uncertainty since August when protesters - driven by a single-minded hatred for Thaksin and his allies - seized the prime minister's office and later overran the capital's two airports in a bid to topple government.