Asia News

URUMQI, China - Several mosques in riot-hit Urumqi opened for Friday prayers, despite notices posted earlier saying they would be closed in the wake of ethnic violence that left 156 dead.

URUMQI, China (AFP) - Thousands of fearful people poured into bus and train stations to escape China's Urumqi city after deadly ethnic unrest, as several mosques were ordered shut for the main Muslim day of prayer.

JAKARTA (AFP) - Indonesian opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri's campaign team refused to concede defeat to an apparent landslide election win by incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Chinese security officials accused four detained staff of Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto Ltd of bribery on Friday as Australia sought to avert a diplomatic row centered on the massive iron ore trade.

BANGKOK (AFP) - Thailand's government announced a complete ban on protests on the southern resort island of Phuket during a regional summit that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to attend.

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese wholesale prices fell at the fastest pace yet last month, data showed, deepening concern that renewed deflation could hinder a recovery in the world's number two economy.

BEIJING (AFP) - Emergency officials were evacuating more than 400,000 people after an earthquake hit southwest China, killing one person, injuring hundreds and flattening more than 18,000 homes.

URUMQI, China (Reuters) - Hundreds of Uighur Muslims crowded into at least one mosque in riot-stricken Urumqi on Friday after authorities relented on a decision to close mosques for the main day of prayer to minimize ethnic tension.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia said China's arrest of a top Rio Tinto executive for alleged spying was linked to fraught iron ore negotiations, as Chinalco denied the move was payback for a collapsed deal.

KHAR, Pakistan (AFP) - Around two dozen gunmen attacked a checkpoint, killing four policemen, in Pakistan's increasingly violent tribal belt where air strikes killed more than 10 militants, officials said.

ISLAMABAD - Militants overran a security post and killed four officers in a northwestern Pakistani region that the army claimed to have cleared of insurgents earlier this year, a government official said Friday.

MANILA, Philippines - Scientists say the Philippines' most active volcano is rumbling again while emitting steam and a strong glow at the summit crater that can be seen with the naked eye.

SEOUL, South Korea - Cyber attacks that caused a wave of Web site outages in the U.S. and South Korea used 86 IP addresses in 16 countries, South Korea's spy agency told lawmakers Friday, amid suspicions North Korea was behind the effort.

YANGON, Myanmar - Riot police deployed outside Myanmar's main prison Friday as the trial of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi resumed, a week after the ruling generals blocked efforts by the U.N. chief to save her from a possible five-year prison term.

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea has delayed sending two convicted U.S. journalists to a prison labor camp, in a possible attempt to seek talks with Washington on their release, a scholar who visited the North said in an interview published Friday.

BEIJING - A moderate earthquake rocked southwest China killing one person, injuring at least 324 others and collapsing some 18,000 homes, state media said.

As of Thursday, July 9, 2009, at least 647 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 Thursday at 10 a.m. EDT.

KABUL - Afghanistan's government has revised a law that stirred an international outcry because it essentially legalized marital rape, officials said Thursday. The new version no longer requires a woman submit to sex with her husband, only that she do certain housework.