Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

By JOE McDONALD

BEIJING (AP) — One of China’s most prominent figures in global finance says Beijing should press Washington to end their tariff battle by clamping down on exports of goods needed by American companies, according to news reports Monday.

The comments by Lou Jiwei, a former finance minister and chairman of China’s sovereign wealth fund, follow reports regulators are squeezing American companies by slowing down customs approvals and stepping up environmental and other inspections.

SEOUL, September 17. /TASS/. The North and South Korean leaders will hold bilateral negotiations on Tuesday and Wednesday, said a spokesperson for the South Korean president’s administration at Monday’s briefing for journalists.

"Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un will hold two rounds of bilateral negotiations - on Tuesday and Wednesday," the administration official stressed.

BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, will start formal operation and open to Chinese astronomers in 2019, according to the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC).

FAST has discovered 44 new pulsars since its trial operation began in September 2016, and it is still being improved, said Li Di, chief scientist of FAST, in a recent astronomy forum held in Xuyi County, Jiangsu Province.

MANILA, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- At least 30 miners were killed and 13 others went missing in a landslide in the northern Philippines, a high-ranking military official said on Sunday.

Lt. Gen. Emmanuel Salamat, chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Northern Luzon Command, said a total of 43 miners were trapped when Typhoon Mangkhut smashed the Philippines early on Saturday. Rescuers are still trying to search for the missing miners who are trapped inside a tunnel in Itogon, a town in Benguet province.

BEIJING, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- China added around 375 million jobs from the start of the reform and opening-up in 1978 to 2017, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The number of rural and urban jobs in the country totaled 776 million at the end of last year, up 93 percent from 1978, an NBS report showed.

Urban jobs reached 425 million at the end of 2017, up 346 percent from 1978.

Beijing, Sep 12; PTI:  Nine people were killed and 46 others injured when a man drove his SUV into a crowd and later went on a stabbing spree in China's Hunan province on Wednesday evening.

The attack took place as people had gathered in a square by the river in Hengdong county.

The driver, Yang Zanyun, 54, first ploughed through the people with his vehicle and later got out of it and went on a rampage attacking people with a knife.

Hanoi, Sep 13 (AP) Myanmar's handling of its Rohingya Muslims, 700,000 of whom have fled to Bangladesh amid a brutal counterinsurgency campaign, could have been handled better, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and leader Aung San Suu Kyi said Thursday.

Myanmar is facing international pressure over atrocities allegedly committed by its military in the crackdown that followed August 2017 attacks by Rohingya militants on security forces. The army is accused of committing mass rape, killings and setting fire to thousands of homes.

BEIJING; 12 Sep 2018; (AP) — Amid a worsening tariff battle, China is putting off accepting license applications from American companies in financial services and other industries until Washington makes progress toward a settlement, a business group says.

SHANGHAI, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- China has launched its first domestically built polar research vessel and icebreaker "Xuelong 2" or "Snow Dragon" which will be operational in the first half of 2019.

The vessel was deployed in Shanghai on Monday and will go through a series of tests and interior decoration before beginning official operations, according to its builder Jiangnan Shipyard Group.

The launch of the vessel has extensively boosted China's polar research and expedition capabilities, said the builder.

Beijing, Sept 10, IRNA – In the framework of the new Silk Road program, China has established a new railway between Inner Mongolia and Iran for logistics purposes.