TAIPEI - PRESIDENT Ma Ying-jeou on Sunday said his efforts to ease nearly six decades of hostilities that have occasionally brought Taiwan to the brink of war with China, have paid off.

The two split in 1949 at the end of a civil war, and tensions between them flared frequently during the eight years the island was ruled by the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party until Ma of the China-friendly Kuomintang took office in May.

PESHAWAR (Pakistan) - TWENTY-SEVEN people were killed and 15 hurt on Sunday in a suspected suicide car bomb attack in an area of northwest Pakistan rocked by a violent campaign to impose Islamic law, police said.

The blast destroyed a school in the town of Buner on the edge of the restive Swat valley, where voters were casting ballots in a parliamentary by-election, and caused the collapse of a nearby market, police said.

BEIJING - BEIJING invested a record 16 billion yuan (S$3.4 billion) this year in Tibet, whose economy suffered severely after waves of unrest in March, Chinese state media reported on Sunday.

Tibet's industrial economic growth fell 11 per cent on year in 2008's first half while fixed asset investment dropped 10.3 per cent due to the violence, Xinhua reported, citing the Tibetan Development and Reform Committee.