BEIJING - MORE than 200 taxi drivers in southern China smashed cars and besieged a government office in the country's second such strike in a week, an official and state media said on Monday.

The cabbies gathered at the government headquarters in the city of Sanya on Hainan island early Monday to protest contract terms and competition from unlicensed cab drivers, a city official told AFP by phone.

HONG KONG - INTERNATIONAL investors on Monday condemned the Philippines government for what they call a land-grab on the holiday island of Boracay and said it had now become an 'ugly' place to live.

The Boracay Land Owners' Association held a press conference in Hong Kong to draw international attention to their ongoing battle to overturn a 2006 move by the Philippine government declaring that the whole island belongs to the state.

HYDERABAD (India) - THOUSANDS of Indian Muslims have united to endorse a religious edict condemning terrorism as un-Islamic, a scholar said on Monday.

The two-day weekend meeting in the southern city of Hyderabad drew around 6,000 Muslim clerics and scholars, and came after India was hit by a wave of bombings by suspected Islamist militants across the Hindu-majority nation.