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Sydney, August 11: Rio Tinto Ltd said on Tuesday that it was still unaware of any evidence to justify China’s detention of four employees on spying allegations, as the Australian government urged Beijing to speed up the case.

Rio, the world’s third-largest mining company, issued a statement today welcoming news that detained Australian citizen Stern Hu had received a second visit by Australian consular officials since the four were detained more than five weeks earlier.

Sydney, August 11: A charter plane carrying 13 people including nine Australians to a popular tourist site in Papua New Guinea vanished on approach to an airport on Tuesday, the airline and Australia’s Foreign Minister said.

The twin-engine plane left the capital of Port Moresby en route to an airport near the country’s Kokoda Track, a mountainous 100-kilometre (60-mile) trail. The plane’s crew radioed air traffic controllers as it was approaching the airstrip, but the aircraft never landed, said Allen Tyson, a spokesman for Airlines PNG.

Los Angeles, August 11: A judge on Monday said he had approved several business deals involving Michael Jackson’s estate, including a movie from performance video shot in the King of Pop’s final days alive.

Lawyers representing the executors of Jackson’s will and attorneys for his mother, who is one of the main beneficiaries of his estate, were in a Los Angeles court to review several agreements made since Jackson died suddenly on June 25.

Seoul, August 11: The chief of South Korean conglomerate Hyundai has traveled to North Korea seeking the freedom of an employee held by the communist regime — a week after a trip by former President Bill Clinton sealed the release of two American journalists.

The 44-year-old South Korean technician, who has only been identified by his family name, Yu, was detained four months ago for allegedly denouncing the North’s political system. He worked in a joint industrial park where South Korean-run factories employ North Korean workers.

Yangon, August 11: Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi could finally hear the verdict in her internationally condemned trial Tuesday after a series of delays in the case in which she faces a possible five-year jail term.

Officials said the release from hospital late Monday of a US man who sparked the trial by swimming to the Nobel peace laureate’s house meant the judgment may now go ahead as scheduled at Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison.

Moscow, August 11: Russia is postponing sending a new ambassador to Ukraine due to a crisis in relations, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday, expressing hope ties would improve under a “new leadership” in Kiev.

“I want to inform you that under the current anti-Russian course of the Ukrainian leadership, I have taken a decision to postpone sending a new ambassador to Kiev,” Medvedev said in a letter to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.

Washington, August 11: Small plane and helicopter pilots traverse the Grand Canyon, skirt the rims of Hawaiian volcanos, and soar along crowded urban highways in the sky that are sometimes literally under the radar, relying mostly on their eyes to guide them. Nowhere is that more challenging than in the narrow air corridor over the Hudson River.

Nine people — two men and a boy from a Pennsylvania family in a single-engine Piper and five Italian tourists and a pilot in a tour helicopter — died last weekend in a collision in the congested flyway, which is popular with sightseers.

Seoul, August 11: North Korea will free a South Korean worker on Tuesday after detaining him for nearly five months for allegedly insulting the country’s rulers, South Korean broadcaster YTN said, quoting informed sources.

The release could ease tension on the Korean peninsula that have risen following the North’s May 25 nuclear test and threats to attack the South while easing concern among investors about a rupture in ties leading to chaos.

A South Korean Unification Ministry official would not comment on the YTN report.

Port Blair, August 11: A major earthquake of magnitude 7.6 struck in the Indian Ocean off India’s Andaman Islands early on Tuesday, but a tsunami alert for India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh was later cancelled.

There were no reports of a tsunami or of any casualties from the tremor, officials said. It coincided with a 6.5 magnitude earthquake that jolted Tokyo and surrounding areas of Japan. There were no reports of major casualties from that quake either.

Jerusalem, August 11: Israel will hold Lebanon responsible for any future Hezbollah attack should the Iranian- and Syrian-backed militia be brought into Beirut’s incoming government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday.

Though U.S.-backed Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri bested Hezbollah in a June ballot, he is holding talks on a new coalition expected to include the Shi’ite group and its allies. Hezbollah has a minister in the outgoing cabinet.

London, August 11: A British security guard arrested in Iraq over the shooting death of two of his colleagues said a drunken brawl led to the incident, in comments published here Tuesday.

Danny Fitzsimons, an employee of British-based security firm ArmorGroup, also claimed to The Times newspaper that he was acting in self-defence.

Two security contractors, one British and the other Australian, were killed in an alcohol-fueled shooting inside the Iraqi capital’s secure “Green Zone” on Sunday, officials have said.