In the World

DHARMSALA, India - Several hundred Tibetan exile leaders gathered in northern India yesterday for a meeting widely expected to determine the direction of the movement that has struggled for decades to win autonomy from China.

The weeklong meeting that begins today was called by the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, saying that new ideas were needed following the repeated failure of talks with China.

Yesterday, the Dalai Lama's envoys to the last round of talks with Beijing issued a statement saying they had presented China with a detailed plan on how Tibetans could meet their needs of autonomy within the framework of the Chinese constitution.

But China had apparently rejected the plan and recent "Chinese statements distort the position and proposal we have outlined in our paper," the statement said. Chinese officials said no progress had been made in talks two weeks ago.

- AP

BEIJING - China should move quickly to provide rural areas with better education, health, social security and employment services to sustain the country's economic growth during the global slowdown, a U.N. agency said yesterday.

Despite the progress Beijing has made in reducing poverty and increasing life expectancy and literacy, rural citizens in China still have less access to basic public services than city dwellers, the U.N. Development Program said.

In its China Human Development Report, the U.N. agency said such gaps pose challenges to equitable human development in the country. China announced a nearly $600 billion package this month to boost economic growth. It was unclear, however, how much of that would be spent on rural programs.

- AP

JAKARTA, Indonesia - A powerful earthquake jolted eastern Indonesia today, killing at least one person, crumpling homes and briefly triggering a regionwide tsunami warning, officials said as they surveyed the damage. Thousands of people fled homes, hotels and hospitals in the middle of the night.

The U.S. Geological Survey put the quake's magnitude at 7.5 and said it struck 54 miles from the nearest city, Gorantalo, located on Sulawesi island. It was followed by two strong aftershocks.

Even after local officials lifted the tsunami alert, frightened Sulawesi residents were refusing to return to their homes. Indonesia is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

- AP

An Israeli air strike

killed four Palestinian extremists as they fired mortars from the Gaza Strip yesterday, Palestinian officials said, just hours after another group of extremists struck Israel in a separate rocket attack. According to the Israeli military, Palestinians have launched more than 170 rockets and mortar shells in the last two weeks.

A small plane crashed

on a remote island off British Columbia's southern coast yesterday, killing seven of the eight people on board. One passenger walked away from the wreckage of the amphibious airplane operated by Pacific Coastal Airlines that went down on Thormanby Island, rescue officials said.