Bangkok  - Thai opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva on Friday pledged to try to host the 14th ASEAN summit in early February if he is elected prime minister next week.

Thailand, which was scheduled to host the 14th summit of the Association of South-East Asian Nations on December 15-18, had to postpone the annual event until March because of political chaos in Bangkok.

Hong Kong - Hong Kong stocks fell almost 5.5 per cent Friday as markets across the Asian region reacted to the collapse of a US car industry bail-out plan.

Hong Kong-listed Chinese shares led the declines with losses approaching 7 per cent, spurred by disappointment over the lack of further stimulus measures from Beijing at a key annual economic conference that ended Wednesday.

The blue-chip Hang Seng Index closed down 855.51 points, or 5.48 per cent, at 14,758.39. Turnover was 58.7 billion Hong Kong dollars (7.57 billion US dollars).

Lahore/Islamabad, Dec 12 : The crackdown against Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) is still continuing in Punjab after the Interior Ministry imposed a ban on the outfit.

The government placed JuD chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed under house arrest and the offices of the JuD have been sealed by the police.

According to police sources, the central office of the Dawa Jamia Alqadsia have been sealed in Lahore.

Besides, many activists have been nabbed in several cities. Police have arrested three persons in Lahore and sealed two centers of the Dawa Ayesha Siddiqua and the Mubarak Masjid.

Islamabad - Pakistan's foreign minister complained Friday that the Indian government was not cooperating in jointly investigating last month's Mumbai attacks which were allegedly masterminded by a Pakistan-based militant group.

"The government of Pakistan has already initiated investigations on its own," Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in a televised statement.

"However, our own investigations cannot proceed beyond a certain point without provision of credible information and evidence pertaining to the Mumbai attacks.

Seoul - South Korea's top diplomat said Friday that despite North Korea's backsliding at the international negotiations over giving up its nuclear weapons, the six-party talks still remain valid.

"It is still premature for us to say all of our efforts at the six-way talks ended up a failure," said Foreign Minister Yoo Myung-Hwan in a forum with lawmakers. "So it's premature for us to doubt the validity of the six-way talks."

The collapse of the latest round of talks, involving China, Japan, Russia, the United States and the two Koreas, which ended Thursday in Beijing, denies a diplomatic trophy to the lame-duck administration of outgoing US President George W Bush.

London, Dec 12 : The US government has unveiled a new "Star Wars" flying robot that can shoot down enemy ballistic missiles.

According to a report in the Telegraph, the Multiple Kill Vehicle, or MKV-L, is designed to hover in the air under its own power and track missiles before blasting them out of the sky.

The MKV-L was developed by a team of scientists led by contractor Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company.

The weapon is the latest addition to the US's controversial missile defence shield, formerly referred to as "Star Wars" when first announced by the Reagan administration in the 1980s at the height of the Cold War.