Beijing - Richer, developed nations should lead the effort against climate change and help developing nations reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, China said Wednesday.

Longtime industrialized nations have a duty because of their historic responsibility for the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to provide cooperation, financing and technology transfers to poorer, developing countries, China's cabinet said in the White Book, their foremost policy document on climate change.

Hong Kong - Hong Kong stocks staged an astonishing recovery Tuesday, rebounding by more than 14 per cent just one day after suffering their worst one-day fall for 11 years.

Beijing - Chinese shares gained 2.81 per cent on Tuesday following a strong rebound in Hong Kong.

Taipei  - A city councilman who allegedly incited a mob to attack a visiting Chinese official last week claimed Tuesday that he was beaten by gangsters linked to China.

"They punched me twice in the chest and demanded that I apologize to Zhang Mingqing or I would be killed," Wang Ting-yu, a city councilman of the southern city of Tainan, said in a news conference in Taipei.

He said he received a phone call from an acquaintance identified as Huang Ju-yi, who asked for a meeting in Taipei last Thursday. When he went to Huang's office, he was taken to another room where some 20 men who he said looked like gangsters surrounded him.

Beijing/Khartoum - Five Chinese oil workers kidnapped in Sudan have been slain by their abductors, the Chinese embassy in Khartoum said.

Sudanese authorities told the embassy Monday that five of nine Chinese workers abducted on October 19 were killed, China's official Xinhua news agency reported.

Two more of the abducted workers were missing, and two escaped, the Sudanese government said.

The Sudan Tribune, quoting Foreign Ministry officials, said the bodies and the two escaped workers, who were injured, were found in a small village in the Kordofan area.

The embassy "strongly condemned" slayings and asked Khartoum to continue search operations for the two missing workers.

Moscow - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Moscow on Monday to seek a long-delayed deal on energy ties with Russia and discuss the global financial crisis.

Wen will hold talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev in his two-day visit to the capital before heading to oil-rich Kazakhstan for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security grouping of Central Asian states.