YANGON - MYANMAR authorities have arrested 19 defectors from their ally North Korea and plan to charge them with illegally entering the country, a senior police official said on Saturday.

The group of mostly men were trying to make their way to South Korea via China and Southeast Asia, an increasingly popular route for North Koreans trying to escape chronic hunger and repression in their communist homeland.

MANILA - BODIES lay scattered in all directions as scores of Filipinos took part in a massive exercise on Saturday, simulating a suicide bombing on Manila's overhead railway.

The exercise saw people playing victims in the overhead trains, lying on the floor, supposedly injured or dead with simulated blood splashed over the train seats, eyewitnesses said.

KUALA LUMPUR - MALAYSIA'S foreign minister has praised the Iraqi journalist who tossed his shoes at President George W. Bush, saying it was the 'best show of retaliation' for the US invasion of Iraq.

Dr Rais Yatim praised 'the shoe-throwing act by that remarkable reporter who gave President Bush his final farewell last week'.