Asia News

HOHHOT, China (AFP) - China on Tuesday declined to release updated figures revealing how many children have been affected by the tainted milk scandal, as it attempted to boost confidence in its food safety standards.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Officials in the north Chinese province at the heart of a toxic milk scandal hid a coal mine explosion in July that killed more than 30 miners, state media reported.

COPENHAGEN (AFP) - Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said in an interview published Wednesday he supported the idea of the Afghan government holding talks with the Taliban, albeit with some conditions.

SRINAGAR, India (AFP) - Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's description of Islamic militants in Kashmir as "terrorists" has been greeted with dismay and anger by separatist groups in the disputed region.

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has fired two short-range missiles into the Yellow Sea, a news report said on Wednesday, in a move likely aimed at dialing up tension as global powers try to have it abide by a nuclear disarmament deal.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US federal judge has ordered a group of 17 Chinese Muslim Uighurs held at the Guantanamo Bay military jail in Cuba to be released in the United States, officials have said.

TRAMKOK, Cambodia (Reuters) - Sok Sarin flashes a toothless grin as he looks at his newly built house and remembers how the other farmers laughed when he pioneered new rice-growing techniques in his district in southern Cambodia.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and India plan to sign a potentially lucrative agreement on Friday to open up nuclear trade between the two countries for the first time in three decades, sources familiar with the matter said.

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea has fired short-range missiles into international waters in the Yellow Sea as part of a routine military exercise, a defence ministry official said Wednesday.

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thailand suffered its worst political violence in more than 16 years as police battled protesters who besieged the Parliament Tuesday in their struggle to change the country's system of democracy. One woman died and more than 400 people were injured.

TOKYO - North Korea has fired a short-range missile into the Yellow Sea, media reports said Tuesday.

BEIJING - Lawyers advising the families of children sickened in China's tainted milk scandal said Tuesday they are facing growing official pressure to withdraw from the cases.

BEIJING - China's foreign ministry suggested Tuesday that it hopes Chinese human rights activists will not win this year's Nobel Peace Prize, saying the award should go to the "right people."

Protesters have occupied Thailand's seat of government for six weeks, demanding the resignation of governments they say are proxies for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Military leaders ousted Thaksin in a 2006 coup, accusing him of corruption. A look at recent events:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Afghan refugees ordered out of a Pakistani war zone begged Tuesday for bus fares and flowed over the border into their homeland, worsening a humanitarian crisis resulting from an army offensive against Taliban militants, officials said.

MALE, Maldives - To supporters, President Mamoun Abdul Gayoom is a hero who turned a poor nation of fishermen into a tourist paradise and the economic success story of South Asia.

BEIJING - More than a hundred villagers in southern China have been poisoned by after drinking water apparently contaminated with arsenic, official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday.

NEW DELHI - The Dalai Lama underwent a second medical checkup in as many months Tuesday and doctors cleared him to resume foreign travel, said a spokesman for the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

KATMANDU, Nepal - Hindu and Buddhist priests chanted sacred hymns and cascaded flowers and grains of rice over a 3-year-old girl who was appointed a living goddess in Nepal on Tuesday.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Sri Lanka's top opposition party called Tuesday for an international investigation into a bomb attack the previous day that killed a popular former army general and 26 others.

KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. and Afghan troops clashed and called airstrikes on a group of insurgents in southern Afghanistan, killing 43 militants, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

BANGKOK, Thailand - One man has died in a car explosion in the Thai capital of Bangkok that occurred amid anti-government riots.

BEIJING - Rescuers rushed tents, food and water to villagers in Tibet on Tuesday after an earthquake and scores of aftershocks rattled the capital and surrounding areas, killing at least 10 people and collapsing hundreds of houses.

SEOUL, South Korea - The United States and North Korea are being flexible in their effort to reach a compromise to resolve the dispute in the North's nuclear disarmament process, South Korea's foreign minister said Tuesday.

BEIJING - A planned multibillion dollar U.S. arms sale to Taiwan threatens China's national security and has cast a pall over military relations between Beijing and Washington, the foreign ministry said Tuesday.

SRINAGAR, India - Schools, businesses and government offices reopened Tuesday and vehicles were back on the streets in Indian Kashmir as authorities lifted a two-day curfew in the troubled Himalayan region.

TOKYO - Three sumo wrestlers and a former instructor went on trial Tuesday for allegedly beating a younger wrestler to death during training last year.

BANGKOK, Thailand - A Thai official says Deputy Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh has tendered his resignation to take responsibility for violent clashes outside Parliament between police and protesters.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim slammed a government bid to move his sodomy trial from a lower court to the High Court, saying Tuesday that he fears he will end up facing a biased judge.