Asia News

Oman police are reported to have arrested 24 Indians, including 13 women, in a raid for allegedly practicing sorcery and cheating people. The police reportedly seized skulls, bones, magic stones and chains during the raid. The alleged sorcerers were staying in a residential flat near the Muttrah roundabout and were luring clients by offering them fortune and relief.

Several Western embassies here on Wednesday received letters containing suspicious powder and threats to poison NATO soldiers in Afghanistan, Pakistan officials said.

A Myanmar vice president with close ties to former junta chief Than Shwe has become a monk, officials said on Wednesday, in a move observers believe could strengthen the hand of the country's reformers.

China and Japan have exchanged a fresh round of claims and counter claims over a tiny but crucial outcropping in the Pacific Ocean, with Tokyo asserting that a UN commission had endorsed its stand on the atoll being an 'island' while Beijing rejecting it as "baseless".

Italy on Wednesday seized a hotel complex and land belonging to the family of slain Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in the latest such confiscation, a media report has said.

The Sri Lankan Supreme Court has ruled that freedom of expression was not an absolute right and could be restricted.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino named two "special envoys" to China on Tuesday amid a tense territorial dispute between the two countries over a shoal in the South China Sea.

The US has said that it will have more consultations with India on New Delhi reducing dependence on Iranian crude.

LeT founder Hafiz Mohammad Saeed has served legal notices on two Pakistani journalists for allegedly concocting a report about his secret meeting with US Ambassador Cameron Munter, seeking Rs 100 million as damages.

Ailing virologist Khalil Chishti, detained in Rajasthan for nearly two decades on charges of involvement in a murder, on Wednesday arrived in Pakistan after being given special permission by India's Supreme Court to return home to meet his family.