Bus plunges into ravine in Myanmar, 19 killed

YANGON • Nineteen people were killed and 21 injured after their bus toppled into a ravine in eastern Myanmar, police said yesterday.

The bus was carrying around 40 passengers from central Bago province when it plunged off a highway near Myawaddy, a town on the Thai border, on Friday.

A hospital in Mae Sot, the Thai town across the border, took in seven patients from the crash who were in "critical condition", a medical worker said.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

WHO: Cut dose amid polio vaccine shortage

GENEVA • Faced with a shortage of polio vaccine, the World Health Organisation has urged countries to resort to smaller, fractional doses to ward off outbreaks of the crippling disease.

French group Sanofi and Serum Institute of India make the main vaccine used to combat polio, the inactivated polio vaccine. The WHO called for two smaller doses of the vaccine to be injected under the skin at six and 14 weeks after birth, instead of a single, larger inter-muscular dose.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Actor's jacket in Dirty Dancing goes for $87k

LOS ANGELES • A leather jacket worn by the late US actor Patrick Swayze in the film Dirty Dancing has sold for US$62,500 (S$87,300) at an auction in Los Angeles, the BBC reported.

Hundreds of other items belonging to him, such as a surf board from Point Break and a shirt he wore in Ghost, also went under the hammer.

Swayze died in 2009 from pancreatic cancer. He was 57.