Sri Lanka Military Says 17 Tiger Rebels Killed Last Updated: Aug 8 2008 8:14AM COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan troops killed 17 Tamil Tiger rebels in fighting in the far north of the island, the military said on Friday, while the rebels said military shelling killed three civilians, including an infant, and injured 16. The fighting in the island's far north came as government forces continued their push against the rebels' northern stronghold. "Troops had killed 17 LTTE terrorists and 35 were wounded from the fighting on Thursday," said military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, referring to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). "Four soldiers had also died and 16 were wounded."   Taiwan's New Top U.S. Diplomat Unaware Of Arms Sale Freeze Last Updated: Jul 25 2008 8:37AM Taiwan's top new diplomat to the United States said on Friday he is unaware of any U.S. freeze on arms sales to the island, despite conflicting media reports on the subject over the last two weeks. The United States is Taiwan's top arms supplier, insisting the island needs to deter any potential attack from political archrival China, which considers Taiwan part of its territory and has threatened to take it back by force if necessary. Recent reports in local and international media cited a top U.S. military official as saying the United States has instituted a freeze on new arms sales to Taiwan. "There is no such word of a 'freeze' used by the Bush administration," said Jason Yuan, the new representative to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, which acts as Taiwan's de facto embassy.   Eleven Dead As Tropical Storm Pounds Taiwan Last Updated: Jul 18 2008 8:01AM Eleven people, including a baby girl, have been killed and three more are missing in Taiwan as Tropical Storm Kalmaegi brought strong winds and heavy downpours, rescuers said Friday. The one-year-old girl and her teenage uncle were killed when their house in the southern county of Kaohsiung was hit by a mudslide, the National Fire Agency said. The girl's pregnant mother was lightly injured and has been airlifted to safety with her husband. "It happened so fast... I didn't have time to save them," the husband told ERA News. In central Taichung, an army captain fell into a gutter in his barracks amid bad weather and drowned, the fire agency said. One couple died when the boat they were being rescued in capsized, it said. Rescuers have evacuated some 80 people trapped by mudslides or floods in the worst-hit central and southern Taiwan, where electricity and water supplies in hundreds of thousands of households were affected.   China Steps Up Tourism To Taiwan Last Updated: Jul 18 2008 7:59AM Large groups of Chinese tourists are set to begin arriving in Taiwan as restrictions are further relaxed. Most will fly in on newly inaugurated direct weekend charter flights, which began operating earlier this month. China had promised that that from Friday it would allow up to 3,000 of its citizens to visit Taiwan every day. The move is another sign of how ties between the two sides have warmed since the election of Taiwan's President, Ma Ying-jeou. Building trust. Nearly 2,000 Chinese tourists will arrive in Taiwan this weekend, all travelling in mandatory tour groups. Their visit is the result of agreements reached between officials from China and Taiwan last month - which also saw a deal reached on establishing direct weekend charter flights. Up until now, China has tightly regulated the number of people allowed to travel to Taiwan, with fewer than 300,000 visiting each year, compared to nearly five million trips made to China by Taiwanese visitors.   US Imposes Arms Sales Freeze On Taiwan Last Updated: Jul 17 2008 8:41AM WASHINGTON : The United States has frozen arms sales to Taiwan following concerns expressed by China and amid warming ties between Beijing and Taipei, top US military commander in Asia Admiral Timothy Keating said Wednesday. The decision was made after having "reconciled Taiwan's military posture, China's current military posture and strategy that indicates there is no pressing, compelling need for, at this moment, arms sales to Taiwan," he said. There had been no "significant" arms sales from the United States to Taiwan "in relatively recent times," he acknowledged at a forum of the Washington based Heritage Foundation. "It is administration policy," he said. Taiwan experts said Keating was the first official to confirm the freeze following reports last month that senior US officials were holding up an 11 billion dollar arms package and the delivery of dozens of F-16 jets for Taiwan, possibly until President George W. Bush leaves office.