HUA HIN (Thailand) - ASIAN countries should club together to boost their influence on the global financial stage and find 'co-ordinated positions' ahead of key world meetings, a summit statement said on Sunday.
Leaders of 16 countries agreed at the East Asia Summit (EAS) in Thailand that they should try to work out how to increase their influence in important decision-making bodies like the G-20.
TOKYO - JAPAN'S Democratic Party won two by-elections for parliament's upper house on Sunday, media projections showed, a nod of voter approval in the first national polls since the party took power last month.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ousted the long-dominant conservative Liberal Democratic Party to usher in a government that promised to focus spending on consumers rather than companies and steer a diplomatic course less subservient to security ally Washington.
SYDNEY - AUSTRALIA will form a civilian crisis-response corps to enable the rapid deployment of experts to regions hit by natural disaster or unrest, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Sunday.
The prime minister, who is in Thailand for an annual summit of Asian leaders, said his government would provide A$52 million dollars (S$67 million) for the initiative, which he expects to be fully operational by early 2011.
KUALA LUMPUR - THE embattled leader of Malaysia's top Chinese political party said he will stay on, according to a report on Sunday, reversing his earlier pledge to resign after losing a vote of confidence.
The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), the second-largest party in the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, has been divided by a power struggle between president Ong Tee Keat and a rival who was suspended over a sex tape scandal.
