Viet PM unlikely to contest top party post

HANOI • Vietnam's Communist Party congress yesterday voted to accept Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung's decision to decline a nomination to a top committee, several party sources said, ruling out the possibility of his contesting the leadership.

Mr Dung, 66, who had served two terms as premier, was overlooked by the elite politburo when it agreed before the congress on its nominations for key leadership posts in the secretive party. The sources said the congress also allowed the incumbent president, Mr Truong Tan Sang, to withdraw.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Bangladesh's ex-PM faces sedition charge

DHAKA • Bangladesh opposition chief Khaleda Zia was ordered yesterday to appear in court to answer a sedition charge, in another blow to the beleaguered former premier which will likely anger her supporters.

Zia was ordered to appear in the chief metropolitan magistrate's court on March 3 for questioning the official number of deaths during Bangladesh's war of independence against Pakistan in 1971.

The government says three million people were killed in the war, but independent researchers say the overall death toll was much lower.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

32 quarantined after Mers case in Thailand

BANGKOK • Thailand has quarantined 32 people as it seeks to prevent the spread of Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) after a second case of the virus was detected last Friday, a Health Ministry official said yesterday.

In the latest case, the virus was found in a 71-year-old Omani man travelling to Bangkok.

REUTERS