Beijing

Sanya (China), Apr. 18 : Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao hopes that Iran will resume talks with world powers soon to resolve the standoff over the nuclear issue.

During his meeting with Iran''s Vice-President Parviz Davoudi, Wen said the Muslim country should take up the nuclear issue to the 2009 Boao Forum for Asia.

The meeting came two days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged for warmer ties with Washington and announced that Teheran will offer a new package for negotiations, the China Daily reports.

Beijing, Apr. 18 : Lewis Hamilton has expressed surprise over the exit of Ron Davis from Formula One, but was not disappointed.

"I wasn't disappointed," said Hamilton. "I was surprised as I hadn't heard about it. I was just as surprised as the rest of my team. Of course, Ron has been a huge force in supporting my life and he still plays a key role in that," the Daily Express quoted hamilton as saying after he had set the fastest time during first practice in China.

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.