Indonesia

Southeast Asian leaders form economic union

Ten Southeast Asian nations signed an ambitious accord Tuesday establishing a Europe-like economic community by 2020.

But the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, meeting in Bali, emphasized that the agreement, part of a blueprint dubbed Bali Concord II, was limited to economic relations. It would not create a political union like Western Europe’s or a military alliance akin to NATO, although it calls for a regional security community to combat terrorism and other transnational crimes.

ASEAN includes the fledgling democracies of Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia; the limited democracies of Malaysia and Singapore; the communist regimes of Laos and Vietnam; an absolute monarchy in Brunei; and a military dictatorship in Myanmar.

Mexico

Jimmy Carter unveils plan to help build homes

Former President Jimmy Carter vowed Tuesday to help ease Mexico’s housing deficit, saying the world’s greatest challenge was closing the gap between rich and poor.

Carter on Tuesday was in Mexico City to announce that Habitat for Humanity International plans to build 150 homes in Mexico next year.

Carter said he and his wife, Rosalynn, would spend five days next year hammering nails with more than 4,000 volunteers. The volunteers will build 75 homes in central Puebla state and another 75 in the Gulf state of Veracruz.

North Korea

Japan barred from nuclear talks

North Korea dealt a blow Tuesday to prospects for further multilateral talks aimed at curbing its nuclear weapons development, saying it will not allow Japan to participate in any new dialogue because it is untrustworthy.

In August, the United States, China, Russia, the two Koreas and Japan held talks in Beijing aimed at addressing the North’s nuclear ambitions. Tokyo used the talks to raise another issue it considers pivotal — abductions of its citizens decades ago by the communist state.

South Africa

Prosecution ends in Biko murder case

The five policemen who were accused of killing anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko in 1977 won’t be prosecuted because of insufficient evidence, justice ministry officials said Tuesday in Johannesburg.

A murder charge could not be supported in part because there were no witnesses to the killing, officials said.

Charges of culpable homicide and assault were also considered, but because the killing of the black consciousness movement leader occurred in 1977, the time frame for prosecution had lapsed.

China

Heath official held for sharing AIDS secret

China has detained a provincial health official, Ma Shiwen, for allegedly making public a classified document showing that officials knew about an exploding AIDS problem in the countryside years before the government acknowledged its existence, doctors and human rights activists said.

The AIDS epidemic in Henan was touched off in the early 1990s when provincial health officials began to push a plan encouraging peasants to sell their blood. Dealers bought blood from villagers and pooled it, mixing healthy blood with HIV-infected blood. They extracted plasma, a blood component with medical uses, and re-injected the rest of the blood back into the farmers’ arms. AIDS spread quickly through the poor communities.

Henan’s authorities tried for years to repress all reporting about the disease.