London, Apr 1 : The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, has said that India would emerge a more successful country from an economic perspective in the long run in comparison to China.

In an interview to the Financial Times in London, Dr. Singh said: "The Chinese have certain advantages: the fact that it''s a single party government. But I do believe in the long run in the fact that India is a functioning democracy, committed to the rule of law. Our system is slow to move, but I''m confident that once decisions are taken they are going to be far more durable."

Beijing - China has detained an environmentalist and writer on suspicion of subversion after he initiated an independent investigation into the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake, a rights group said on Wednesday.

Tan Zuoren, a local activist based in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, was accused of "inciting subversion of state power" after mobilizing volunteers to investigate why school buildings collapsed in the earthquake, the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) said in a statement.

Beijing  - The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday called for urgent action to halt an "alarming" rise in the spread of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB).

"The situation is already alarming, and it is poised to grow much worse, very quickly," said WHO director-general Margaret Chan.

"If MDR-TB is not vigorously addressed, it stands to replace the mainly drug-susceptible strains currently responsible for 95 per cent of the world's TB cases," Chan said.

Beijing  - China on Wednesday launched a partnership with the Gates Foundation to fight the growth of drug-resistant tuberculosis and develop a prevention model that could be used in other nations.

The partnership, announced at a World Health Organization ministerial meeting on tuberculosis, will be supported by a 33-million-dollar grant over five years from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Taiwan, China military officers to meet for first time in 60 years Taipei Taiwan said Tuesday it will send military officers to a security forum held by the United States in Hawaii in August, where they will meet participating Chinese officers.

The announcement came as China said it would do the same, in what would be the first face-to-face encounter of military officers, 60 years after the two sides split at the end of a civil war.

Beijing - China on Tuesday denied that it has spied on computers belonging to foreign governments and other organizations, saying the claims by Canadian researchers were caused by a "China threat virus."

Some groups and individuals outside China "are fabricating lies of so-called Chinese computer spies," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said, when asked about the Canadian report that some 1,300 computers worldwide might have been infiltrated by the largely China-based "GhostNet" system.