Taipei - A senior Chinese official was assaulted Tuesday by a group of pro-independence activists during a visit in the southern Taiwan city of Tainan, threatening to undermine high-level China-Taiwan talks planned for this month in Taipei.

Zhang Mingqing, vice chairman of the Association of Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), was mobbed by a group of activists led by city councilor Wang Ting-yu of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party during a sightseeing trip in Tainan.

ARATS is a state-funded mainland agency charged with dealing with the island in the absence of formal diplomatic ties.

New Delhi, Oct. 20 : India''s "Look East Policy" came in for severe criticism from South East Asia experts while discussing Asian security architecture here today.

Initiating the discussion on "Regional Security Architecture in Asia: Role of CSCAP in ARF Track 2 Process" at Observer Research Foundation, Professor Tony Milner, a prominent member of Australia''s Foreign Affairs Council, said India could have done "much better" while "deep changes are on the way" in the region where the security architecture in a messy situation. He opined that India''s soft power could have been used for better results.

Hong Kong - Banks in Hong Kong, China and Macau have been asked to help finance construction of a 37-billion-Hong-Kong-dollar (4.74-billion-US-dollar) bridge across the Pearl River estuary, government officials said Monday.

The institutions, including some of the region's largest financial players including HSBC, Standard Chartered and the Bank of China, have been approached to see if they are willing to partially bankroll the 35-kilometre-long link.

Beijing/Khartoum  - Nine Chinese oil workers have been kidnapped by an unknown group in Sudan, state media said on Monday.

The nine workers were seized at an oil field in Southern Kordofan State close to Sudan`s strife-torn Darfur region, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Chinese embassy officials as saying.

No group has claimed responsibility for kidnapping the workers, who were employees of the China National Petroleum Corporation, the agency reported from Khartoum.

Beijing/Khartoum - Nine Chinese oil workers have been kidnapped by an unknown group in Sudan, state media said on Monday.

Beijing - Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on Monday toured a "special economic zone" in the southern island province of Hainan as he began a six-day visit to China.

Members of the 70-strong Vietnamese business delegation travelling with Nguyen wanted to learn from China's experience in developing its special economic zones, the official Xinhua news agency reported from Hainan.

China developed the economic zones from the 1980s as insulated coastal areas designed to attract foreign capital and pilot the opening of the economy.

Nguyen visited Hainan's Yangpu economic zone on Monday and will attend a Sino-Vietnamese economic cooperation forum on Tuesday, the agency said.