Peshawar, Sept 26: The Afghanistan Government has refuted Pakistan’s claims that the kidnapped Afghan Ambassador-designate Abdul Khaliq Farahi didn’t take enough security measures to protect himself.

Sultan Muhammad Baheem, the spokesman for Interior Ministry of Afghanistan, said that Farahi was an experienced diplomat and that he had not shown any carelessness in ensuring his security.

Baheem said the Afghan Government didn’t blame any group or individual, and that neither they have received any demand nor had been contacted by the kidnappers.

Both the governments wanted to resolve the matter amicably and recover the abducted envoy safe and sound, The News quoted him as saying.

Hong Kong - The number of US dollar millionaires grew by 22.7 per cent in India and 20.3 per cent in China last year as the ranks of wealthy in the Asia-Pacific region swelled to 2.8 million, according to a report Friday.

Vietnam saw the fastest growth in millionaire numbers with a 24.2 per cent increase although its overall number of high net worth individuals with assets worth over one million US dollars was just 1,200.

In 2007, China had 415,000 millionaires and India 123,000, the report said. The country with the most millionaires in the region, however, was Japan with 1.51 million, a 2.2 per cent increase on 2006.

Jakarta - Going home for Eid al-Fitr is seen as an obligation for Muslims, but when you live in Indonesia - the world's fourth most-populous nation which is also the world's most-populous Muslim country - the journey can be a logistical nightmare.

The obstacles do not daunt millions of Muslims who have just completed the Ramadan month of fasting - during which they are barred from eating, drinking or having sex from dawn to dusk - and are now ready to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, or what the locals call Lebaran.

"Going home for Eid al-Fitr celebration is quite an exhaustive journey. But we're happy," claims Sungkono, the father of three. "It's an occasion of double joy - and a double headache."

Lahore, Sept 25: NWFP Governor Owais Ghani has said that the US should talk to Mullah Omar in order to negotiate peace in Afghanistan. Further elaborating his suggestion, he said that the West must hold talks with the Taliban as “Al Qaeda was regrouping from Iraq to Afghanistan”.

Urging the US to ‘talk’ to militant commanders in Afghanistan to establish peace, Ghani said: “They have to talk to Mullah Omar, certainly – not maybe, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Jalaluddin Haqqani group.”

Lahore, Sept 25: The Fidayeen-e-Islam (FI), a terrorist outfit which claimed responsibility for the Marriott Hotel suicide blast in Islamabad last Saturday killing 60 people, has reportedly threatened to target every person facilitating the US Army in Pakistan.

In a message received by an Arab TV office in Islamabad, the FI rejected the Pentagon’s claim that only two US marines had been killed in the Marriott blast, reported the Daily Times.

Beijing  - At least one person died and tens of thousands were evacuated Wednesday as Typhoon Hagupit brought gales and torrential rain to much of southern China.

The storm first hit the Philippines, where rescuers struggled to save 13 miners trapped for two days in a flooded shaft as the nation's death toll from Hagupit rose to eight, officials there said.

The rescue operation was slowed down by floodwaters inside the mineshaft in the northern town of Itogon in Benguet province, 225 kilometres north of Manila, said Chief Superintendent Eugene Martin, a regional police chief.