President Hu Jintao won a second five-year term as China’s Communist Party chief today, heading a new leadership line-up that features potential successors, yet could invite a divisive battle to succeed him.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told China’s president he is committed to a peaceful resolution of the stand-off over the North’s nuclear ambitions as he wrapped up a week-long, secrecy-shrouded trip to his last major ally.

CHINA hopes to conduct a space walk in 2007 and might recruit women into its next group of astronaut candidates, a senior space programme official said yesterday following the safe completion of the nation’s second manned mission.

The two astronauts on China’s second manned space flight landed before dawn today, shown live on state TV as they emerged from their capsule smiling and waving after a five-day mission.

NORTH KOREA, in a significant shift in a year-old nuclear crisis, said it was prepared to consider a US offer of security guarantees in return for Pyongyang dropping its atomic weapons programme.