Malaysia gets tougher on migrants: Malaysian Deputy Prime

Malaysia gets tougher on migrants: Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Tuesday said that in the last two months 15,037 illegal immigrants had been arrested from Indonesia alone. He said that heavier penalties were planned and border security was being stepped up. They are held in detention camps before being deported in an ongoing drive which aims to evict a total of some 30,000 illegal immigrants from Sabah alone. The action in Sabah is in line with a tougher approach throughout Malaysia, which is home to 750,000 legal foreign workers and hundreds of thousands of mainly-Indonesian illegal immigrants. --AFP

Taipei vows not to provoke China: Taiwan Defense Minister Tang Yao-ming has assured the United States in a landmark meeting with U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz that Taipei will not make any provocative moves in dealing with rival China, a television station reported Tuesday. In his 100-minute closed- door meeting with Wolfowitz in Florida, Tang said the Taipei government will do its utmost to stabilize ties with the mainland, according to Taiwan Television Enterprise. --AFP

Singapore's visa requirements draw fire: Middle Eastern participants at a medical conference in Singapore said on Tuesday that tougher visa requirements imposed on them by the city-state after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were discriminatory. Singapore announced in October that people holding passports from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt and Pakistan would have to apply for visas before visiting the country, citing "the global security situation." --AP

Astronauts aim for pre-dawn touchdown: Space shuttle Columbia's astronauts aimed for a landing before daybreak on Tuesday, leaving behind a more formidably powerful Hubble Space Telescope able to peer across the universe almost to the beginning of time. -- AP

U.S. hails Sri Lanka rebel vow to honor truce: The United States said on Tuesday it was encouraged by a promise that Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers rebels would honor a Norwegian-brokered truce designed to lead the way to direct peace talks with the government. -- Reuters