Asia News

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Tuesday welcomed the Indian leader to the White House, opening an elaborate state visit that will include talks designed to overcome differences on climate change and U.S. ties with Indian rivals China and Pakistan.

NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga - A 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the Pacific island nation of Tonga, sending panicked residents into the streets at night, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

NEW DELHI - A government investigation released Tuesday reportedly implicated dozens of Hindu nationalist politicians — including a former prime minister — in the 1992 demolition of a mosque that sparked deadly communal riots.

KABUL - Fifteen current and former Afghan ministers are under investigation over allegations of corruption that have plagued the government of President Hamid Karzai, the attorney general's office said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON - The White House braced for a tough sell of President Barack Obama's long-awaited decision on whether to commit tens of thousands of new U.S. forces to the stalemated war in Afghanistan, even as the president met with top advisers for possibly the last major deliberations before an announcement.

KATMANDU, Nepal - Hundreds of thousands of Hindus gathered at a temple in southern Nepal on Tuesday for a ceremony involving the slaughter of more than 200,000 animals, a festival that has drawn the ire of animal-welfare protesters.

AMPATUAN, Philippines - The Philippine president placed two southern provinces under emergency rule Tuesday as security forces unearthed more bodies, pushing the death toll to 46 in some of the deadliest election violence in the nation's history.

KANPUR, India (AFP) - Opener Gautam Gambhir top-scored with 167 as India piled up a record 417-2 on the first day Tuesday of the second cricket Test against Sri Lanka.

AMPATUAN, Philippines (Reuters) - The Philippines placed two southern provinces and a city under emergency rule on Tuesday after gunmen killed 46 people in a brutal election-related massacre that has shocked the country.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Ships in the south Pacific Ocean have been alerted that hundreds of icebergs believed to have split off Antarctic ice shelves are drifting north toward New Zealand, officials said Tuesday.

CANBERRA, Australia - Australia's opposition leader Tuesday pledged his party's support for contentious legislation proposed by the government aimed at curbing the country's greenhouse gas emissions.

BEIJING - China executed a dairy farmer and a milk salesman Tuesday, the only two people sentenced to death in a scheme to water down infant formula with an industrial chemical that left at least six children dead and sickened more than 300,000.

ISLAMABAD - Five Pakistani army officers have been detained for questioning over possible links to two U.S. terror suspects accused of plotting an armed attack on a Danish newspaper, intelligence officials said Tuesday.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - The former prison chief whose trial by Cambodia's genocide tribunal is coming to an end was a willing, even enthusiastic, participant in atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, prosecutors charged Tuesday.

KABUL - A remote-controlled bomb planted in a water station exploded in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing six members of a family, including four children, authorities and a relative said.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Pakistani troops killed 18 militants in a fresh offensive Tuesday against insurgents blamed for a wave of recent bombings in the main northwestern city of Peshawar.

BEIJING - Renowned Chinese literature translator Yang Xianyi has died, China's official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday. He was 94.

BEIJING - China will send two giant pandas to an Australian zoo this Friday as part of a joint research program.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.