Nice, France - Russia supports the idea of holding a summit of the world's greatest powers in 101 days' time to debate the reform of the global financial system, a Kremlin official said Friday.

"As I understand it, we support" a proposal from French President Nicolas Sarkozy to hold a summit of the world's 20 greatest powers 100 days after a similar meeting planned in Washington on Saturday, Natalia Timakova, spokeswoman of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, told journalists at an EU-Russia summit in Nice, France.

Kuala Lumpur, November 14 : Non-governmental organisations in Malaysia have been warned by the police not to oppose the National Fatwa Council ruling against tomboy behaviour, insisting that their move might affect the country’s safety.

"Such protests can trigger dissatisfaction within the Muslim community and this could cause tension,” New Straits Online quoted Inspector-General of police Tan Sri Musa Hassan as saying.

Kabul - Four suspected al-Qaeda-associated militants and 12 Taliban insurgents were killed while 20 others were wounded in two separate operations in Afghanistan while three Afghan police injured in a suicide attack in Khost province, officials said on Friday.

Arsala Jamal, Khost province governor, said that at least three Afghan police were injured in a suicide attack in Bak district of south-eastern Khost province.

A suicide attacker detonated an explosives-filled car near a police vehicle just outside of Khost city, injuring three police official, the governor said.

London, Nov 14 : Increasing numbers of people in Britain are choosing to be buried at sea in order to get more eco-friendly.

More and more people are opting for a watery send-off at the two locations off the British coast - near Isle of Wight and Newhaven in East Sussex - where the burials are allowed.

Their bodies are wrapped in cotton sheets and placed inside plywood coffins, which have concrete attached.

Grieving relatives and friends are then taken on a boat to one of the two locations off the British coast.

John Lister, a director of the Britannia Shipping Company, based near Sidmouth, Devon, which has collected deposits from 150 people who have left instructions for a sea burial, said that everything would degrade.

Beijing - Pirates off the coast of Somalia have seized a Chinese fishing boat and 24 crew including Vietnamese, Philippine and Japanese citizens, Chinese state media reported on Friday.

The Chinese vessel was held off the coast of the southern Somali port of Kismanyu late Thursday, the government's official Xinhua news agency reported from Mogadishu, the Somali capital.

The agency quoted an unidentified pirate leader as saying on the local Shabelle radio station in Mogadishu that the 24 crew were all "fine."

Washington, Nov 14 : A female rhinoceros has successfully given birth to a healthy offspring after being artificially inseminated (AI) with frozen and thawed semen, say German researchers.

Experts at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, Zoo Budapest and the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, have revealed that using semen collected from a 35-36 year-old Southern white rhinoceros, frozen for 2 to 3 years and then thawed, a 30-year-old female rhinoceros was artificially inseminated in two attempts.

The first failed, but the second resulted in pregnancy and the birth of a healthy offspring.