Asia News

HONG KONG (AFP) - Hong Kong's pro-democracy parties won more than one third of seats in weekend elections, retaining the key power to veto legislation in the city's legislature, results showed Monday.

HONG KONG - Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp has won more than a third of seats in legislative elections, retaining its veto power over major legislation.

NEW DELHI (AFP) - China's foreign minister arrived in India on Sunday for talks with top officials on a long-standing border row which triggered a brief but bloody war in 1962, officials said.

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AFP) - Bangladesh's elite security force, the Rapid Action Battalion, has arrested a student and three of his friends for hacking into its website, a spokesman for the unit said Sunday.

HONG KONG (AFP) - Hong Kong voters headed to the polls Sunday in lower numbers, with the city's pro-democracy parties scrambling to avoid heavy losses and several high-profile politicians facing potential defeat.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The odds of the U.S. Congress passing a U.S.-India civil nuclear deal this year are long, U.S. congressional aides and analysts said on Sunday, but the deal is all but certain to win approval eventually.

PATNA, India (AFP) - India was grappling on Sunday with the task of feeding and housing close to a million villagers displaced by huge floods in the eastern state of Bihar, as the rescue effort wound down.

SEOUL (AFP) - South Korean state prosecutors have indicted more than a quarter of Seoul's city councillors for corruption in the biggest crackdown on local legislatures, officials said Sunday.

KOLKATA, India (AFP) - Tata Motors can go ahead with making the world's cheapest car at a factory in eastern India after talks yielded a compromise ending violent protests against the plant, officials said Sunday.

BEIJING - Several days a week, Wu Ruiyao hits the gym, where she sweats on a treadmill, tones her abs in a group exercise or stretches under the guidance of a personal trainer.

PATNA, India - At least 50,000 people in India have refused to abandon their homes in flood-ravaged northern Indian despite pleas by authorities to evacuate, an official said Sunday.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The death toll in a massive suicide blast in Pakistan's militant-plagued northwest reached 35, officials said Sunday, as the country prepared for Benazir Bhutto's widower to take over as president.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Two suicide attackers detonated bombs inside the police headquarters in Afghanistan's second-largest city Sunday, killing six policemen, officials said.

NEW DELHI - India's government and business groups were jubilant Sunday over a hard-won endorsement from nations that supply nuclear material and technology, a decision that paves the way for a landmark civil nuclear energy accord between India and the United States.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Two American diplomatic outposts in Pakistan received envelopes containing an unknown white powder last week, sparking a security scare, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said Sunday.

MANILA, Philippines - Two landslides triggered by heavy rains buried more than 20 houses in a remote gold-mining village in the southern Philippines, leaving at least 11 people dead and 16 others missing, officials said Sunday.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Sri Lanka's air force launched attacks on two Tamil separatist camps in the embattled north Sunday, and infantry clashes elsewhere in the region killed eight rebels and three soldiers, the military said.

YANGON, Myanmar - A Myanmar junta official said Sunday there is "no indication" that detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is on a hunger strike but implied the government has not sent anyone to make sure.

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thailand's embattled prime minister denied a rift with the army Sunday and dismissed the possibility of a coup when he travels to the U.N. General Assembly in New York later this month.

BEIJING - Twenty-three people were trapped in a flooded coal mine in central China, authorities said Sunday.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Benazir Bhutto's widower swept Pakistan's presidential election on Saturday, offering hope for stability to a nuclear-armed country feeling intense U.S. pressure to crack down on Islamic militants.

As of Saturday, Sept. 6, 2008, at least 513 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures Friday at 10 a.m. EDT.

VIENNA, Austria - The U.S. gained key international backing Saturday for a bitterly contested plan to sell peaceful nuclear technology to India — a South Asia powerhouse that has tested atomic weapons but has refused to sign global nonproliferation accords.

The following are some of the major challenges facing Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was elected Pakistan's president by lawmakers Saturday.

HANOI, Vietnam - At a vacant lot in downtown Hanoi, Catholics have gathered to worship the Virgin Mary — and pressure the communist authorities.

SURABAYA, Indonesia - With the dollar a day he earns scrounging for scrap metal and paper, Jumadi can't buy his family beef or even chicken. But until now, the rail-thin scavenger could at least afford soy.

TOKYO - The dead body of an unidentified woman was found curled up in a suitcase in a Tokyo hotel room, a day after the foul smell of her body prompted the evacuation of dozens of guests, police said Saturday.

BEIJING - Chinese President Hu Jintao urged flexibility and a peaceful resolution of Iran's nuclear ambitions in a meeting with his Iranian counterpart on Saturday, days after Tehran announced it has increased its number of operating centrifuges.

SRINAGAR, India - Thousands of angry people took to the streets in Indian Kashmir to denounce the killing Saturday of a protester by government troops who fired rubber bullets and tear gas shells at Muslim demonstrators chanting anti-India slogans, an official said.