BEIJING - MORE than half of Beijing's prostitutes do not use condoms despite sexual transmission having replaced drug use as the most common infection route for HIV, state media said on Tuesday.

Just 47 per cent of the 90,000 sex workers in China's capital used condoms, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Fang Laiying, director of the municipal public health bureau, as saying.

ATHENS - CHINESE President Hu Jintao promised to expand maritime trade with Greece after finalising a US$1 billion (S$1.51 billion) container-port concession deal on Tuesday.

Under the agreement, China's Cosco Pacific will receive a 35-year concession to manage two container terminals at Greece's main port of Piraeus.

KARACHI - PAKISTAN'S parliament will hold a session next week to talk about United States missile attacks on militant targets in the north-west of the country, defence minister Ahmed Mukhtar said on Tuesday.

Washington has apparently stepped up missile strikes from unmanned drones against suspected Al-Qaeda and Taleban hideouts in tribal areas despite protests from Islamabad that such action violates international law and could deepen resentment of the US in the world's second-largest Islamic nation.