The opening of a regional highway from Bangkok through Laos to south-western China's Yunnan province has encouraged more traffickers to try smuggling drugs into China, state media said Friday.

Chinese state media on Wednesday said the country's largest gay pride event was of "profound significance" for tolerance and social progress.

The eight-day Shanghai Pride 2009, which began Sunday, was a "good showcase of the country's social progress alongside the three decades of economic boom," the official China Daily said.

China's Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. (BAIC) has expressed interest in securing a stake in General Motors Corp's up-for-sale European Opel and Vauxhall operations, according to a news report.

A Chinese energy official has hinted that the country will adjust its nuclear power development plan, state media reported Saturday.

"The golden time for China's nuclear power development has come," Zhou Xi'an, director of the General Affairs Department of the National Energy Administration was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.

Beijing - A collision between a bus and a truck Saturday morning killed 18 people and left another 22 injured in south-western China, local media reported. A passenger bus traveling in Chuxiong prefecture, Yunnan Province, veered off the road early morning after being hit from the rear by a truck, according to the Xinhua news agency.

Sixteen passengers on the bus died, along with two passengers in the truck.

The truck collided with the bus, after the bus driver slowed to avoid a swerving vehicle ahead, the report said.

Rescuers were searching on Sunday for about 13 miners trapped underground after a coal shaft flooded in the central Chinese province of Hunan, state media reported.

Water flooded into the mine in Hunan's Changning city from around 5 pm on Saturday, the semi-official China News Service quoted local officials as saying.

Police were looking for the mine owners, who failed to report the accident and fled the scene, making it more difficult to establish the exact number of people trapped underground, the agency said.

Carbolic acid spilled into a river from a chemical plant and forced the suspension of tap water supplies to more than 1 million people in the eastern Chinese city of Yancheng on Saturday, state media reported.

Officials shut down the Biaoxin Chemical Company and police detained the owners for questioning after the acid polluted two of the three water plants in the city of 1.5 million on Friday, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Nearly 1,500 new cars drive out every day onto the already-clogged streets of Beijing, which has been ranked among the world's most polluted cities.

"The growing number of automobiles is creating serious traffic pressure and safety risks in the city," Song Jianguo, head of the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.

The Chinese capital registered 65,970 new cars in the first 45 days of the year, creating an average daily increase of 1,466 vehicles, the bureau said.