In news from Asia, the Obama administration has rejected a Chinese proposal to hold emergency multiparty talks with North Korea. Beijing had called for the six-party talks to resume after a North Korean artillery barrage killed four people, including two civilians, on a South Korean island last week. Meanwhile, a diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks indicates China supports the reunification of the Korean Peninsula if North Korea were to collapse. Cheng Guoping, the Chinese ambassador to Kazakhstan, was reported to have told U.S. Ambassador Richard Hoagland that “China hopes for peaceful reunification in the long-term, but he expects the two countries to remain separate in the short-term.”