Greek deputies who have been carrying pistols and daggers into parliament must now hand them over at the door, parliamentary speaker Evangelos Meimarakis announced Thursday. The measure targets in particular the 18 deputies from the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, several of whom say they circulate armed and who resort to angry and violent outbursts both inside and outside the building. Meimarakis earlier in the week announced he had a metal detector reinstalled at the parliament's entrance after one party member was expelled in a highly publicised incident.

Japanese and Indian leaders are set to announce next Wednesday a 71 billion yen loan from Tokyo for subway construction in the western Indian city of Mumbai, a Japanese Foreign Ministry official said Thursday. During a meeting in Tokyo, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh are also expected to reach an agreement on advancing talks for a civil nuclear cooperation pact between the two countries.

North Korea expressed willingness Thursday to hold talks with other regional powers to defuse tensions on the Korean Peninsula, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported, a sign Pyongyang may be shifting its recent bellicose posture to a mode of dialogue to extract aid or concessions from other countries.

BEIJING, May 23 (Yonhap) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's special envoy met with another top Chinese party official Thursday, the second day of his scheduled three-day trip here seen as aimed at mending frayed ties between the two countries. Vice Marshall Choe Ryong-hae, director of the General Political Bureau of North Korea's People's Army, flew to Beijing on Wednesday. Shortly after his arrival, he had met with Wang Jiarui, the head of the central committee's external affairs of the Communist Party of China (CPC).