Asia News

WASHINGTON - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Monday that Indian and U.S. officials will sign a memorandum intended to improve cooperation on energy security, clean energy and climate change.

BHUBANESWAR, India (AFP) - India carried out a night-time test of a nuclear-capable, medium-range ballistic missile off its eastern coast on Monday, a defence official said.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Monday accused a U.S. congressional advisory panel of bias for a report in which it said the Chinese government appeared increasingly to be piercing U.S. computer networks to gather useful data for its military.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama planned a ninth session with top advisers on Afghanistan on Monday as he neared a decision on whether to send troops and fought Republican charges that he is taking too long to make up his mind.

COLOMBO (AFP) - Sri Lanka's president Mahinda Rajapakse Monday announced he was calling a snap election to seek a second term, six months after his security forces defeated separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.

MELBOURNE, Australia - A kangaroo startled by a man walking his dog attacked the pair, pinning the pet underwater and slashing the owner in the abdomen with its hind legs. The Australian, Chris Rickard, was in stable condition Monday after the attack, which ended when the 49-year-old elbowed the kangaroo in the throat.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Monday completing a 2005 U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal would boost investment opportunities in his country, a hopeful sign for U.S. companies eyeing India's potential $150 billion market in power plants.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers and exiled Chinese dissidents urged President Barack Obama on Monday to intervene with China's government on behalf of Jiang Tianyong, a rights activist who tried to see Obama while he was in China last week.

WASHINGTON - A senior Pentagon official says that preventing roadside bombs from killing troops has proven to be tougher in Afghanistan than in Iraq because of the austere conditions there.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Rescuers plucked a woman from choppy waters Monday, some 25 hours after she jumped from a crowded ferry that sank in a storm off Indonesia's Sumatra island. At least 29 people drowned, and 20 others were missing.

SYDNEY - Conjoined Bangladeshi twins who were separated in a marathon surgery last week left intensive care on Monday and were adjusting well, hospital officials said.

HEGANG, China - The coal mine that exploded in northern China, killing 104, had too many workers underground in an effort to increase output, a government official said Monday, exposing the risks often taken to meet the country's insatiable energy demands.

GUANGZHOU, China - Hundreds of residents worried about property values and health risks protested Monday against the planned construction of a trash incinerator in the southern boomtown of Guangzhou.

BEIJING - A veteran dissident was sentenced Monday to three years in prison after casting a spotlight on poorly built schools that collapsed during China's massive earthquake last year, killing thousands of children — an apparent government attempt to squelch such information.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - The genocide trial of a prison chief for Cambodia's Khmer Rouge entered its final stage Monday, as closing arguments began in the historic effort to assign responsibility for the deaths of 1.7 million people three decades ago.

KABUL - The U.S. on Monday agreed to hand out millions of dollars in development aid to provinces in Afghanistan that have eliminated or reduced the production of opium poppies, the raw ingredient in making heroin.

PARACHINAR, Pakistan - Pakistan's army fought Islamist militants for control of a northwestern district on Monday, killing 18 of them in an escalating campaign against insurgents intent on toppling the U.S.-allied government.

MANILA, Philippines - Dozens of gunmen hijacked a convoy carrying journalists, and family and supporters of a candidate for provincial governor, killing at least 21 of the travelers Monday in the southern Philippines' worst political violence in years.

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Gunfire hit the home of two American lecturers in Indonesia's western province of Aceh on Monday, but no one was injured.

CANBERRA, Australia - A man who blames the Church of Scientology for his brother's suicide added his voice Monday to calls for an Australia Senate inquiry into the religion.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Sri Lanka's president signed a decree Monday calling for early elections, hoping to take advantage of his popularity after ending the country's 25-year civil war to win a new six-year term.

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine police searched for an American who escaped after allegedly killing a government official's son in a road-rage shooting — the second homicide case against him, officials said Monday.

BEIJING - Beijing on Monday criticized a U.S. government report that said Chinese spies are aggressively stealing American secrets, saying the report was "full of prejudice" and warning that it could damage US-China relations.

SYDNEY - A U.S. Navy serviceman was found not guilty Monday of sexually assaulting a prostitute at a brothel while on shore leave in Australia's biggest city.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Eight women set out Monday from their base camp on Antarctica to ski to the South Pole in a trek to mark the 60th anniversary of the Commonwealth grouping of 53 former British colonies.

CANBERRA, Australia - Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum seekers were separated at an island immigration detention center after a riot left 37 injured, an official said Monday.

NEW DELHI - The Dalai Lama defended President Barack Obama from criticism that he has been too soft on China, saying Sunday that the U.S. leader just has a different approach to dealing with the Asian giant.

GAUHATI, India - Suspected militants set off two bombs outside a police station in India's restive northeast on Sunday, killing seven people and wounding more than 50, police said.

MUMBAI, India - The walls that the rockets blew out have not been repaired, and the plaster is a dense scattershot of bullet holes. Dozens of holes, blasted by grenades, pockmark the linoleum floors.