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TOKYO: Japan's popular politician Taro Aso formally announced Friday that he would take part in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's presidential election to succeed outgoing party leader and Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda. Aso is widely seen as the front-runner in the upcoming election. Former Defense Minister Yuriko Koike, Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Kaoru Yosano and Nobuteru Ishihara, former LDP policy chief, have also decided to run in the race.
-- Xinhua
YANGON: Myanmar's detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has refused to accept food rations for three weeks, her party said Friday, calling on the military regime to take steps to ensure her "survival." Her National League for Democracy party said the 63-year-old, who has been under house arrest for most of the last 19 years, had apparently stopped accepting most of her daily food rations.
-- AFP
SEOUL: South Korea's nuclear envoy called Friday for swift action to end the deadlock in nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea after the communist state took initial steps to restart its atomic plants. "It is an important moment in which North Korea should resume the disablement measures and enter the six-way talks process," Kim Sook said as he left for Beijing for talks with his US, Chinese and Japanese counterparts. The envoys will discuss the North's move toward restarting its reactor in protest at Washington's failure to drop it from a terrorism blacklist.
-- AFP
MONTREAL: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is set Sunday to seek to dissolve parliament and call snap elections for October 14, ending the longest minority government in the country's history, media reported Thursday. Press group Canwest and public broadcaster Radio-Canada reported that Harper would meet with Canada's governor general on Sunday morning to make his request, bringing an end to his minority Conservative government and prompting an immediate campaign season that would last less than six weeks.
-- AFP
NEW YORK: A Pakistani woman labeled an al-Qaeda supporter refused to appear in federal court in Manhattan of New York on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. Aafia Siddiqui reportedly refused to answer charges that she tried to kill US soldiers and FBI agents after they detained her this summer in Afghanistan.
-- Xinhua
MIAMI: Tropical Storm Hanna closed in on the southeastern US coast on Friday after leaving 136 dead in Haiti as a powerful hurricane swept across the Atlantic, posing a potential threat to Caribbean islands and the United States. Hanna pushed through the Bahamas on its way to the US Atlantic coast, prompting emergency preparations before its expected arrival late Friday after having caused flooding and landslides in Haiti that left thousands homeless.
-- AFP
TBILISI: A US navy flagship delivered aid Friday to a Georgian port bombed last month by Russian jets, drawing an angry response from Russia that said it was hardly suited to delivering humanitarian aid. The Mount Whitney, flagship of the US Sixth Fleet, is the last of three vessels sent by the United States to deliver blankets, hygiene kits, baby food and infant care supplies to Georgia after its five-day war with Russia.
-- AFP
BEIJING: China dispatched large numbers of soldiers and armed riot police to quell two major protests, officials and a rights group said Friday, in the latest public discontent to rock the communist nation. In central Hunan province Thursday, 5,000 soldiers and armed police converged on a furious crowd of up to 10,000 demanding money back from an alleged fundraising fraud, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said.
-- AFP
KIEV: US Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday pledged support for Ukraine and pointed to Russia as the reason for the country's woes as he held talks with the squabbling president and prime minister. Cheney spoke first with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and later met President Viktor Yushchenko as he looked to heal wounds in Ukraine's ruling coalition on a tour to bolster key US allies following the conflict in Georgia.
-- AFP
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