Colombo  – Sri Lanka's Navy and Air Force jointly destroyed a cluster of Tamil rebel boats off the island's north-eastern coast on Tuesday morning, killing at least six rebels, military officials said.

Fighting broke out after the Sri Lanka Navy's elite Special Boat Squadron (SBS) confronted a cluster of sea tiger boats off Nayaru, more than 370 kilometres north-east of Colombo, shortly before dawn.

The navy destroyed two of the boats while the air force, which were called in to support the sailors, destroyed five of the boats fleeing the area.

The information technology industry suffered most from the ongoing world economic crisis. But it is still optimistic to recover to high growth rate in coming times. IT sector would use the situation for advantage in next growth cycle.

CII President and ICICI Bank CEO, K V Kamath, demanded more measures to improve liquidity conditions in the monetary system of the country. He said that inflation rate is continuously coming down and financial institutions can expect more injection of credit in next policy review of the Reserve Bank.

Beijing  - Rescue workers pulled 32 miners from a flooded coal shaft in central China on Tuesday after they were trapped underground for 23 hours, state media said.

The miners rescued from the Gaomendong mine in Henan's Jiaxian county, near the city of Pingdingshan, were all in poor health and were rushed to a local hospital for treatment, the official Xinhua news agency said.

One other miner pulled out of the shaft had already died and another remained missing, the agency quoted Pingdingshan city government spokesman Dong Yuxi as saying.

Havana  - Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived for a visit to Cuba hours after the two countries had signed a series of economic agreements.

Hu, who last visited the Caribbean island in 2004, arrived Monday in Havana for a two-day stay that is to have an economic focus.

A statement by Cuba's government said the trip was a gesture of the deep friendship between the two Communist countries.

In the midst of the launch of the new Windows Live services, which included the update to Games for Windows Live yesterday, the Microsoft Store officially opened for US businesses.

Previously, the company opened at UK, Germany, and Korea, and both hardware and software would be sold by Microsoft. Furthermore, it also offers the option to purchase software, either as physical media or as a download.

The store would instantly provide many versions of Vista (both full versions and upgrades) and Office and its related components.