Beijing, Apr. 18 : A Chinese police officer has publicly apologized for arresting a blogger, who wrote against a local party for illegally acquisitioning farmland.

"I would like to apologize to Wang and his family as I am partly responsible for the incident. There was not enough evidence to arrest Wang Shuai on defamation charges," the China daily quoted Qin Yuhai, Director of Henan Provincial Public Security Bureau, as saying.

Beijing- China announced a 10-billion-dollar investment fund Saturday for supporting infrastructure development in the 10-nation South-East Asia region.

Addressing the opening of the Bo'ao Forum for Asia, a regional economic meeting on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, Premier Wen Jiabao said the world economic crisis requires Asian nations to build confidence and strengthen cooperation.

"We should accelerate the development of regional and subregional transport, power and communication infrastructure to gradually achieve interconnectivity and form a network," Wen said.

Beijing, Apr. 18 : China wants the United States to engage the Democratic People''s Republic of Korea (DPRK) directly to ease escalating tensions over Pyongyang''s renewed nuclear weapons activities.

The China Daily quoted Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi as saying in an interview with Japan''s Nikkei newspaper on Friday that the Six-Party Talks hosted by Beijing remain the way forward in making the Korean Peninsula nuclear free, despite Pyongyang''s declaration this week that it would boycott the talks for good and resume work at shuttered atomic facilities.

Beijing  - An explosion in the dynamite warehouse of a coal mine killed at least 18 people in central China's Hunan province, state media reported Saturday.

Two people were missing after the blast destroyed the three-storey warehouse Friday in Yongxing County in Chenzhou city.

Police were investigating the cause of the blast and searching for three of the mine's shareholders, the official news agency Xinhua quoted Yongxing County head Xie Guanghui as saying.

But the report also said one of the shareholders had already been "put under control."

Taipei  - Taiwan and China held talks Saturday to prepare for an upcoming dialogue to promote cross-strait links.

Several documents are to be drafted at the talks that are to be signet at a summit to be held in late May in Nanjing, China. It would be the fourth Taipei-Beijing dialogue since 1993 and the third since President Ma Ying-jeou took office in May.

Beijing  - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said China is willing to mediate in talks over Iran's nuclear development, state media reported Saturday.

Wen said in a meeting with Parviz Davoodi, first vice president of Iran, that China respects Iran's development of a nuclear programme for non-aggressive purposes, the official Xinhua news agency said.