Asia News - AP

BALI, Indonesia - While great nations fretted over coal, oil and global warming, one of the smallest at the U.N. climate conference was looking toward the heavens for its energy.

BANGKOK, Thailand - Allies of deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra declared victory Sunday in Thailand's first election since the military coup that deposed him.

LARKANA, Pakistan - Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto accused the government Sunday of failing to crush Islamic militants, days after a suicide bombing killed 56 people during prayers in a mosque.

AHMADABAD, India - India's main Hindu nationalist party swept to an impressive election victory Sunday in the western state of Gujarat after a bitter campaign fought in the shadow of deadly 2002 anti-Muslim riots that still scar the state.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Echoing pledges by the leaders of France and Australia, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi emphasized his county's long-term commitment to Afghanistan in a meeting with President Hamid Karzai on Sunday, the presidential palace said.

BEIJING - Police were searching for the culprits behind the beheading and skinning of a rare Siberian tiger at a zoo in central China, state media reported Sunday.

NOIDA, India - On the campus of Amity University, pretty much everything is a work in progress.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Making the first-ever trip to Afghanistan by a French president, Nicolas Sarkozy met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday to discuss the political and military situation in the war-torn country.

SEOUL, South Korea - A cargo rail service between North and South Korea will be expanded to take passengers starting next year, but only South Koreans will be allowed to cross the border by train, the Unification Ministry said Saturday.

LUCKNOW, India - Police on Saturday arrested two men suspected of being Islamic militants involved in a series of explosions that ripped through courthouse complexes in three north Indian cities last month, killing at least 16 lawyers.

BEIJING - The owner and four employees of a Chinese coal mine where an explosion killed 171 miners were sentenced Saturday to prison terms ranging from 3 1/2 to six years, state media reported.

HONOLULU - In a long and speckled career overseas, I have witnessed many unusual Christmases. None were more peculiar than the two spent in the exile capital of the godless fathers of Chinese communism, whose heirs are sponsors next August of the originally pagan Olympic games.

HANOI, Vietnam - Limited human-to-human bird flu transmission may have occurred in Pakistan, but no new infections have been reported for two weeks and there appears to be no threat of further spread, a top World Health Organization official said.

TOKYO - Humpback whales are safe — at least for now.

BEIJING - After 800 years at the bottom of the sea, a merchant ship loaded with porcelain and other rare antiques was raised to the surface Friday in a specially built basket, a state news agency reported.

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan's foreign minister on Saturday urged the United States to not "overreact" to the island's planned referendum on U.N. membership after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice objected to the move.

As of Friday, Dec. 21, 2007, at least 405 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 Dec. 15, 2007, at 10 a.m. EST.

KATMANDU, Nepal - Nepal's top court ruled Friday that the government must create new laws to protect gay rights and change current ones that might be tantamount to discrimination, an official said.

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea may not be able to permanently shut down its nuclear facilities by the end of the year as initially promised, but it appears committed to the process and to declaring all its nuclear programs, the main U.S. envoy to South Korea said Friday.

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan - Tens of thousands of people on Friday marked the first anniversary of the death of longtime President Saparmurat Niyazov, laying flowers at monuments to the autocratic leader and streaming to his mausoleum.

KATMANDU, Nepal - The living goddess likes bubble gum.