LILLE, France (AFP) -- French health authorities said Friday they suspected a third person of being infected after coming into contact with a man confirmed to be suffering from a new SARS-like virus that has killed 18 people, mostly in Saudi Arabia."We have a third suspected case this morning, a nurse from Douai" in northern France, the deputy director of the regional ARS health agency, Sandrine Segovia Kueny, told France Bleu Nord radio.A 65-year-old man is in intensive care in a hospital in Do

BEIJING (AFP) -- North Korean visits to China have multiplied over recent years, a Chinese newspaper reported, underscoring growing political and business links between the isolated nuclear-armed state and its sole major ally.There were a total of 180,600 visits by North Koreans to China in 2012, nearly twice as many as the 103,900 only three years previously, the investigative Southern Weekly said in its latest edition, citing official data."Ordinary people in North Korea are not free to go abr

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) -- A woman buried in the wreckage of a collapsed garment factory building for 17 days was rescued Friday, a miraculous moment set against a scene of unimaginable horror where the death toll is more than 1,000 and still rising.The woman survived in a Muslim prayer room in the basement of the eight-story Rana Plaza building, where crews have been focused on recovering bodies, not rescuing survivors, for days. Trapped in wreckage finally exposed by heavy equipment, she waved

China's new local-currency loans exceeded estimates last month while money supply expanded at a faster pace, as policy makers maintained credit support for the economy after first-quarter growth unexpectedly slowed.Lending was 792.9 billion yuan ($129 billion) in April, the People's Bank of China said today in Beijing, compared with the median estimate of 755 billion yuan in a Bloomberg News survey. M2 money supply rose 16.1 percent from a year earlier, following March's 15.7 percent advance.Inf

NEW DELHI (AP) -- A second suspect was arrested Monday in the rape of a 5-year-old girl who New Delhi police say was left for dead in a locked room, a case that has brought a new wave of protests against how Indian authorities handle sex crimes.Pradeep Kumar, a 19-year-old garment factory worker, was arrested Monday in the eastern state of Bihar, about 1,000 kilometers from New Delhi, and was being brought to the capital, police said.Police said questioning of the first man arrested in the case,

BELGRADE (AFP) -- Serbia's government on Monday approved an EU-brokered deal to normalise ties with breakaway Kosovo, a historic agreement aimed at turning the page on the Balkans' last simmering trouble-spot 14 years after the end of hostilities.The government has accepted the "first accord on principles which regulate normalisation of relations, reached during the dialogue on Kosovo in Brussels" on Friday, said a statement issued after a cabinet meeting.The government has instructed ministries

LUSHAN, China (AP) -- The tent village that sprang up in two days to house quake survivors in mountain-flanked Lushan is no ordinary refugee camp. China's full range of disaster response is on display:  Trucks with x-ray equipment, phone-charging stations, bank tellers-on-wheels -- even a tent for insurance claims.The efforts under way Monday in mountainous Sichuan province after a quake Saturday that killed at least 188 people showed that the government has continued to hone its disaster reacti

BANGKOK (AP) -- A leading international rights group on Monday accused authorities in Myanmar, including Buddhist monks, of fomenting an organized campaign of ethnic cleansing against the country's Rohingya Muslim minority that killed hundreds of people and forced 125,000 from their homes.Human Rights Watch also described the bloody wave of violence and massacres in western Rakhine state last year as crimes against humanity, and slammed the government of President Thein Sein for failing to bring

TOKYO (AP) -- A U.N. nuclear watchdog team said Japan may need longer than the projected 40 years to decommission its tsunami-crippled nuclear plant and urged its operator to improve plant stability.The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency team, Juan Carlos Lentijo, said Monday that damage at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is so complex that it is "impossible" to predict how long the cleanup may last."As for the duration of the decommissioning project, this is something that you can defi

SHANGHAI (AFP) -- A World Health Organisation official reiterated Monday there is still no evidence that a new strain of deadly bird flu is passing in a "sustained" fashion from person to person, despite fears some family members may have infected one another."Right now we do not see evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission", Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's assistant director-general for health security and environment, said at a press conference.He added, however, that officials "are always wo

The education ministry said Monday it plans to match the class sizes of primary and secondary schools to international standards by 2020 in an effort to provide a better educational environment.Under the plan, the class size of primary schools will be cut to an average of 21 students per class by 2020 from last year's 24.3. The average number will be reduced to 23 from 32.4 at middle schools, with the number to be lowered to 23 from 32.5 for high schools.The goals are designed to be in line with

The main opposition Democratic United Party (DUP) alleged Monday that then President Lee Myung-bak ordered the country's national spy agency to post illegal political comments on the Internet ahead of last year's presidential election.Following a four-month-long probe, police said last week that two employees of the National Intelligence Service were found to have posted the comments on behalf of the agency in a bid to influence the tight presidential race.However, the online activities were not

South Korea is reviewing all options to break the deadlock over the suspension of an inter-Korean industrial complex and minimize the damage on local firms operating there, the unification ministry said Monday.Factories in the complex in the North Korean border city of Kaesong have been idle since April 9, when Pyongyang pulled out all of its 53,000 laborers. The North has remained resolute in blaming South Korean provocations for the current impasse, raising concerns that there would be no reso

South Korea's central bank said Monday it plans to aggressively map out measures to stabilize the financial markets as high currency volatility is feared to hurt the Korean economy."While closely monitoring the financial markets, if needed, we plan to pump liquidity into the financial system and flexibly manage the macro-prudential measures," Bank of Korea Gov. Kim Choong-soo told lawmakers.The governor said that the central bank continues to keep tabs on possible outflow of foreign capital and