AMRITSAR (India) - TWO protesters were killed in India on Monday as mobs went on the rampage after a guru was shot dead in fighting between rival Sikh communities in Austria, police said.

The two men were killed in separate incidents when police opened fire to disperse angry crowds who rioted in many cities and towns across the northern state of Punjab.

MANY Singaporeans see Government help as an entitlement, something they would tap on as a first port of call rather than as a last resort, said a backbencher in Parliament on Monday.

Mr Sam Tan, MP for Tanjong Pagar GRC, is worried that Singaporeans might have been so mollycoddled by the Government that they have become 'practised at the craft of recession cushioning', and so accustomed to the government largesse.

BEIJING - CHINA'S government says it is 'resolutely opposed' to the nuclear weapons test carried out by communist neighbour and ally North Korea.

A Foreign Ministry statement says the North carried out Monday's test in defiance of the international community and its own commitments to denuclearise the Korean peninsula.

SEOUL - NORTH Korea test-fired three short-range missiles on Monday, the same day it conducted an underground nuclear test, South Korea's military said.

'North Korea (test)fired a short-range missile from Musudan at around 12pm (11am Singapore time) and two more short-range missiles from Wonsan at around 5pm,' a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff told AFP. He gave no more details.