Colombo  - Sri Lankan government troops Monday claimed to have killed at least 200 Tamil rebels and recovered 150 bodies during fierce fighting over the past five days.

The Defence Ministry in a statement said heavy fighting broke out last Thursday in parts of Mullaitivu district, 390 kilometres north- east of the capital Colombo, which represent the last remaining areas held by the rebels.

The army has thrown in special forces and commando troops and has seized a large haul of weapons in its operations, the Defence Ministry added.

Bhubaneshwar, Mar 9: Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) President Ashok Singhal on Monday accused Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik of being ‘anti-Hindu’ after his fallout with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state.

Singhal said that Patnaik is ‘anti-Hindu’ and this is the reason for his fallout with BJP.

"I never expected him to act in this manner. I never expected that he would fool Hindus like this," said Singhal addressing a news conference here.

The BJP on Saturday withdrew support to Patnaik''s Biju Janata Dal (BJD) following breakdown of seat-sharing talks for the forthcoming state assembly and parliamentary elections. The BJP and BJD had jointly contested the 2004 polls.

Beijing - Chinese forces have tightened border controls between the Tibet Autonomous Region and neighbouring countries ahead of "expected sabotage activities" by supporters of the exiled Dalai Lama, state media said on Monday.

"We have made due deployment and tightened controls at border ports, and key areas and passages along the border in Tibet," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Fu Hongyu, the political commissar of the public security ministry's Border Control Department, as saying in Beijing.

Tokyo - Japan's top opposition leader was facing increasing pressure to step down after his secretary was arrested for allegedly taking illegal corporate donations, Japanese media reported Monday.

Ichiro Ozawa, president of the Democratic Party, rebuffed mounting calls for his resignation within his own party even after Takanori Okubo, also an accountant for Ozawa's political group Rikuzankai, was arrested last week.

Japan's two largest newspapers said more than half the people surveyed wanted Ozawa to step down as the opposition leader.

Rebkong, China - "We are not celebrating the New Year this year," said a burgundy-clad Tibetan monk at the Rongwo Buddhist monastery in China's western province of Qinghai.

"We don't have a happy life. We have no freedom," the monk told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa to explain why he was boycotting the festivities to mark the start of the Tibetan New Year, or Losar, in late February.

He left the conversation to speak to his two companions, who knew little Chinese.

"They said they daren't speak the truth. They should say, 'Everything's OK,'" the monk said, referring to recent propaganda trips organized by the Chinese government to monasteries in the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Beijing - When Herge's Adventures of Tintin spread from Belgium across Europe in the 1960s, Tintin's fictional travels in Tibet featured in one of the most popular strip-cartoon stories.

So influential was Tintin in Tibet that in June 2006 it won the International Campaign for Tibet's Light of Truth award, presented by the Dalai Lama, for its "significant contribution to the public understanding of Tibet."

"For many, Herge's depiction of Tibet was their introduction to the awe-inspiring landscape and culture of Tibet," the campaign's Tsering Jampa said at the time.