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ULAN BATOR, April 21 (Xinhua)– About 10,000 education and health workers demonstrated Wednesday to demand that the government increase their pensions and minimum rate of pay.

\”We will fight resolutely and we will win. If government does not fulfill our demand by April 23, we will go on strike,\” B.Ganbaatar, head of the Mongolian Labor Union (MLU), said at the demonstration.

The government, the MLU and the Mongolian Employers Union (MEU) held trilateral talks on Thursday but no results have yet been achieved.

The government and the MEU suggested increasing salaries by 20 percent this year. The MLU, however, wants salaries raised by 110 percent for this year and next.

\”The salary of civil servants is about 1.9 to 3.3 million MNT (1,300 to 2,300 U.S. dollars) a year now. The government has not increased the salary since 2008 but the prices of consumer goods have increased several times, which has worsened the life quality of the civilians. We have expressed our request regularly to the government, unfortunately our request was not treated seriously and resolved,\” the MLU said.

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WELLINGTON, April 22 (Xinhua) — An earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale struck off the Samoa Islands on Thursday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The quake, occurred at 05:20 a.m. Thursday New Zealand Time ( 1720 GMT Wednesday), was centered 198 km southwest of the Samoa capital of Apia at a depth of 32 km.

No immediate tsunami alert was issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center following the quake.

There were no reports of casualties or damages so far.

A magnitude 8.0 earthquake on Sept. 29, 2009 triggered a tsunami which killed at least 143 people in Samoa, 32 in American Samoa and nine in Tonga.

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SINGAPORE, April 21 (Xinhua) — Singapore Airlines said that it has reinstated all flights to and from European destinations as of Wednesday evening.

\”As of April 21, 2010 1830hrs, all flights will resume normal schedules with the exception of SQ327, Munich-Singapore, on April 21, originally scheduled to depart 1335hrs (Munich time), now retimed to depart 1600hrs (Munich time), \” the airline said in a statement.

\”We are mindful that with the full reinstatement of flights, customers may be anxious to be on the first flights to their destinations. We would therefore like to strongly encourage customers who can defer their travel to do so,\” it added.

Local TV broadcaster said the airline is estimated to lose 40 million Singapore dollars (about 29 million U.S. dollars) as a result of the disruptions to flights caused by ash clouds from a volcano in Iceland.

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TAGUM CITY, Philippines, April 21 (Xinhua) — Four tribesmen were killed in a spate of retaliatory killings involving tribal clans in southern Philippines over the weekend, police said on Wednesday. The killings, called pangayao or tribal war, affected several villages in Mindanao island\’s Bukidnon and Davao del Norte provinces, and could possibly spread to other tribal communities whose residents have relatives involved in the incidents, according to Senior Inspector Michael Seguido, police chief of Talaingod town in Davao del Norte that borders Bukidnon.

The murders started on Sunday when a chieftain of the Ata- Manobo tribe shot dead his son-in-law who belonged to another clan, due to personal grudges, Seguido said.

Outraged, the victim\’s family set out to kill the chieftain or anyone from his tribe but instead murdered another person who belonged to another group.

The Ata-Manobos are people inhabiting the rugged mountains bordering Davao del Norte and Bukidnon who are into farming and occasional hunting.

\”These people kill indiscriminately when they are on a pangayao. They do not even distinguish if their victim was the real culprit of their kin\’s death,\” Seguido said, adding the killings are usually being done using machetes or homemade shotguns used for hunting wild boars.

Complicating Sunday\’s incident was the murder by the family of the second victim of another person, a chieftain from another clan, whose kin in turn, sought out the chieftain who started it all, killing him.

With the death of the chieftain, the police official said, the cycle of murders has somewhat been broken and ended.

\”But I believe this is far from over. The family of the datu ( chieftain) who started the killings and was the last to be murdered could go on with their own revenge, and, we have another round of pangayao again,\” Seguido said.

The police official said he has asked the military and the tribal elders to step in and meddle.

\”(Pangayao) is already part of their culture. But if unchecked, it could threaten other communities and result to more bloodshed,\” he said.

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KHOST, Afghanistan, April 21 (Xinhua) — Afghan security forces, backed by NATO-led forces during a cleanup operation, killed six Taliban militants in Afghanistan\’s eastern Paktika province, spokesman for the provincial administration said on Wednesday.

\”A joint operation was launched by Afghan police, army and international forces in Tor Ghra area this morning at around 10 a. m. local time, as a result, six militants were killed in the gun fight during the operation,\” Mukhlis Afghan, the spokesman, told Xinhua.

He said that the combined forces also recovered a handful of weapons including five Kalashnikovs, a heavy machinegun, a RPG 7 ( rocket launcher) and two communication equipments on the ground.

Taliban militants, whose regime was toppled in a U.S.-led military campaign in last 2001, have so far made no comments.

However, a Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in talks with media from undisclosed location claimed that his men launched an explosion attack Wednesday in southern Afghanistan and left over a dozen security guards dead and injured.

Meanwhile, the Afghan authorities confirmed the explosion but said that none were killed or wounded in the blast.

Taliban militants have vowed to speed up their attacks against the Afghan government and its western backers this year in the central Asian state.

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PYONGYANG, April 21 (Xinhua) — The Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People\’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) issued a memorandum on the nuclear issue of the Korean Peninsula, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Wednesday.

The memorandum said the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is the invariable stand of the DPRK, but confidence-building is the premise, noting that it was the U.S. that introduced nuclear weapons into the Korean Peninsula for the first time.

It said the DPRK once worked hard to establish a nuclear-free zone through peaceful dialogue and negotiation. However, those efforts proved invalid. The DPRK was forced to \”deter the U.S. nukes with its own nukes, not making a verbal appeal only.\”

According to the document, the nuclear weapons deployed by the U.S. in South Korea steadily increased from the 1950s to the 1970s.

The DPRK will join \”the international nuclear disarmament effort with an equal stand with other nuclear weapons states,\” the memorandum said.

In the recent \”Nuclear Posture Review,\” the Obama administration failed to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against countries like the DPRK and Iran, which it said violate and quit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In a statement released April 9, a spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry denounced the \”Nuclear Posture Review\” as pouring cold water on restoring six-nation talks.

The spokesman said the DPRK developed nuclear weapons for the purpose of \”deterring the U.S. attack and defending its sovereignty and right to existence.\” The country has so far \”sincerely implemented its international obligation as a responsible nuclear weapons state.\”

The DPRK withdrew from the NPT on Jan. 10, 2003.

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