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COLOMBO : Tensions escalated Wednesday over the arrest of Sri Lanka's former army chief, Sarath Fonseka, with violent clashes outside the Supreme Court, where his wife petitioned for his immediate release.
Opposition parties who backed Fonseka in his failed challenge to President Mahinda Rajapakse in January elections also demanded his release and said they feared for his safety in military custody.
Fonseka was arrested by troops at his office in Colombo on Monday night and, according to the defence ministry, will be court-martialled on charges of conspiring against the government.
COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has dismissed parliament to pave the way for a snap election in April as political tensions mounted over the arrest of his main rival Sarath Fonseka.
Rajapakse, who was returned to power last month after defeating former army chief Fonseka in a bitter election battle, dissolved the assembly from midnight Tuesday, two months early, his spokesman Lucien Rajakarunanayake said.
A formal announcement on the date for the election is expected later this month but officials said it was likely to be held on April 8.
BEIJING: China warned on Tuesday of a continued "grim" food safety outlook following the re-emergence of a tainted milk scandal and called for strengthened efforts nationwide to contain the threat.
The order by a Cabinet-level food safety committee marked the first high-level government response to revelations that tainted milk powder that was supposed to have been destroyed after a 2008 scandal had reappeared in stores.
In the 2008 health scare, milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine led to the deaths of six babies and sickened 300,000 others who had been fed baby formula made from the tainted dairy.
YANGON: Detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi believes it is too early for her party to decide whether to take part in Myanmar's national elections this year, her lawyer said on Tuesday.
Nyan Win, who is also the spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), said the Nobel Peace Laureate had told him that "this is not the time to decide."
"Daw Suu said we cannot say at this moment whether to participate in the election... The main reason she gave is the lack of freedom of information," Nyan Win said, using a term of respect for Suu Kyi.
WASHINGTON: US commanders are weighing plans to send more American troops to northern Afghanistan, a region under the command of German forces, a US official said on Tuesday.
The likely deployment follows a rise in violent attacks by insurgents around Kunduz and elsewhere in regional command north, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
German media have reported about 2,500 US troops would head north, including about 1,000 focused on training Afghan security forces.
TOKYO - Japanese automaker Honda on Wednesday has recalled 437,763 vehicles worldwide, mostly in North America, to fix defective airbags.
"Honda has decided to expand a recall related to a defect in the driver’s SRS airbag installed on certain vehicles produced in 2001 and 2002 and has issued a notification in North America and Japan," it said in a statement.
"This recall also will be conducted in other affected regions and countries," it added. "The total number of vehicles subject to this expanded recall is 437,763 units worldwide."
SEOUL: North Korea's severe food shortages are expected to worsen this year after a poor grain harvest in 2009, South Korean officials said Wednesday.
The unification ministry, which handles cross-border relations, said the communist state produced an estimated 4.11 million tons of grain last year, a five per cent drop from 4.3 million tons in 2008.
Annual demand is 5.4 million tons, according to the state-run Korea Rural Economic Institute (KREI) in Seoul.
KUALA LUMPUR: The judge hearing Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy trial was accused of lying Wednesday, in a blistering attack as the defence sought to disqualify him from the case.
Anwar, who faces 20 years in jail if convicted of illicit sexual relations with a young former aide, has condemned the allegations as a political conspiracy to sideline the opposition.
He has accused High Court judge Mohamad Zabidin Diah of refusing to rein in "biased" media coverage including the publishing of a photo taken during a closed-door hearing at the apartment where the encounter allegedly took place.
SEOUL: A top UN envoy pressed on Wednesday with attempts to bring North Korea back to nuclear disarmament talks, amid speculation Pyongyang is desperate to end its international isolation.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon's top political adviser Lynn Pascoe is making a four-day visit to the North - the first by a high-level UN official since 2004.
The North's nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-Gwan is also expected to hold more talks Wednesday in the Chinese capital after discussions Tuesday with Beijing's representatives, Yonhap news agency said.
SALANG, Afghanistan: Rescuers recovered the bodies of 165 people killed by a series of avalanches on a treacherous Afghan mountain pass in one of the country's worst such disasters, an official said Wednesday.
A heavy blizzard struck the busy road connecting the capital Kabul to the north of the country Monday, triggering avalanches that buried people in vehicles on the strategic pass and wounded dozens of travellers.
"According to the latest information from the area, 165 of our countrymen have been killed and 135 have been injured," Suraya Dalil, acting public health minister, told reporters.
SEOUL: North Korean Premier Kim Yong-Il has apologised for a bungled currency revaluation that sent food prices soaring and sparked public unrest, a South Korean welfare group said in a newsletter.
Good Friends said the premier expressed regret for "confusion and instability" caused by wrongly fixed prices at state-run shops, during a recent meeting of senior members of the Pyongyang municipal people's committee.
The group, which has extensive contacts in the communist North, cited sources there for its report. Premier Kim is in charge of the economy under supreme leader Kim Jong-Il.
YANGON: A Myanmar court on Wednesday sentenced a US citizen to three years in prison for fraud and forgery, his lawyer told AFP, despite calls by 50 US lawmakers for his release.
Rights activist Kyaw Zaw Lwin, also known as Nyi Nyi Aung, was sentenced to three years in jail for forging an identity card, one year for failing to declare currency at customs and one year for violating immigration law.
"He has to serve the prison terms concurrently," said his lawyer Nyan Win, who also represents the country's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
KATHMANDU: As Haiti counts the cost of last month's devastating earthquake, experts are warning of the potential for an even greater disaster in another of the world's poorest countries, Nepal.
Geologists said it is only a matter of time before a major earthquake hits Nepal's densely populated capital Kathmandu, where 2.5 million people live in cramped, poorly-built housing with little or no awareness of the dangers.
Nepal sits on the border between two huge plates that have moved together over millions of years to form the Himalayas.
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Sri Lanka set for snap election