Taipei- A Taiwan man who drove two nails into his forehead is recovering from the wounds, but faces charges of defamation for accusing his "mainland Chinese wife" of attempting to murder him, a media report said Saturday.

On August 15, Lin Shang-mian, 71, a retired man in Pingtung City, was rushed to hospital with a 6-centimetre nail and a 5-centimetre screw lodged in his forehead, cable TV channel TVBS reported.

Beijing - Chinese President Hu Jintao and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held talks on Saturday, amid ongoing differences between Iran and Western nations over its nuclear programme.

China's official Xinhua news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying Iran and China had "developed a sound cooperative relationship through exchanges and communication in multiple areas."

Hu thanked the Iranian leader for his country's help after the devastating Sichuan earthquake in May and for its support for the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics, the agency said.

Beijing - US and Chinese officials on Saturday discussed the latest setback in the six-nation process to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, after a US envoy said his key concern was the verification mechanism for the dismantling of the programme.

US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill met China's chief envoy in the nuclear talks, Wu Dawei, and said his South Korean and Japanese counterparts also planned to meet Wu in Beijing on Saturday.

Hill said late Friday that North Korea had indicated concerns about how the disablement and dismantlement of its nuclear facilities would be verified.

"They are very clear they have concerns about the verification protocol," Hill told reporters.

Vienna, Sept 6: With China joining the Group of Six like-minded countries that have expressed reservations in granting India-specific waiver, the crucial two day meeting of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) remained inconclusive and a fresh meeting is slated for Saturday.

The US battled hard overnight to clinch the India-specific waiver for India from the NSG with diplomats moving back and forth poring over a revised draft.

China appeared to have raised concerns that put roadblocks in the way of a consensus.

Beijing - China on Saturday launched two satellites for monitoring the environment and natural disasters, state media said.

The satellites were launched by a Long March-2C rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launching Centre in the northern province of Shanxi, the official Xinhua news agency said.

They were designed to "enhance the country's capacity to prevent and reduce natural disasters", the agency quoted Bai Zhaoguang, a lead scientist on the satellite project, as saying.

Beijing - Riot police have quelled two violent protests by thousands of people in southern and eastern China, in the latest of several recent clashes between ordinary residents and local authorities, officials and a rights group said on Friday.

Up to 30 people were detained for questioning after riot police broke up a protest by migrant workers demanding compensation for a teenage boy who was seriously injured after he climbed into a textile factory in the eastern city of Ningbo, police said.

"There are now 20 to 30 under investigation and being interviewed," a police officer in Ningbo's Xiangshan county told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by telephone.