More than 200 firefighters were on Monday battling a major blaze at a recycling plant in Britain after a falling Chinese lantern set 100,000 tons of paper and plastic alight.

Ten firefighters suffered minor injuries as they fought to put out the flames at the plant in Smethwick, just outside Britain's second city Birmingham in central England, the local fire department said.

The United States is encouraging "terrorism" in Xinjiang, Chinese state media said Monday, also claiming that separatists in the region -- which has a large Uighur minority -- had fought alongside Syrian rebels.

Beijing denies that the unrest in the vast region bordering Central Asia -- which last week left at least 35 people dead -- is due to ethnic tensions between Uighurs and China's majority Han.

Indian Kashmir largely shut down on Monday and hundreds of police were deployed in the troubled region's main city after the weekend shooting of two civilians by the army, a police chief said.

The shutdown to protest against the shootings came as a police officer and a militant were killed in a separate incident south of the main city Srinagar, said Kashmir's police chief Abdul Gani Mir.

Philippine slum dwellers hurling rocks, improvised explosives and human excrement fought running battles with riot police Monday around a sprawling Manila shanty town that is set for redevelopment, an AFP photographer saw.

Police said an officer was hospitalized with a head injury while several residents of the North Triangle slum were briefly detained, though none were charged and were later released.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sought Monday to present a united front against North Korea's nuclear ambitions as he met his counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea.

Kerry, meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific meeting in Brunei, said that the two "both reaffirmed strongly the seriousness" of commitment to the denuclearization of North Korea.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew expressed hope the economic sanctions aimed at stopping Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program will work, because "the alternatives are worse."

Lew -- whose Treasury Department is tasked with enforcing the sanctions -- was speaking Sunday at a conference in Aspen, Colorado.

Thousands of protesters, some waving British colonial-era flags, marched in Hong Kong Monday to denounce the city's leaders and demand universal suffrage on the 16th anniversary of the territory's handover to China.

Tropical Storm Rumbia brought rain and strong winds as demonstrators bearing banners saying "Democracy now" and "Down with the Chinese Communist Party" started off from the city's landmark Victoria Park to march to the financial district of Central.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday urged progress on a code of conduct to govern the hotly disputed South China Sea, after ally the Philippines warned of a Chinese military build-up in the strategically vital waters.

"We very much hope to see progress on a substantive code of conduct to help ensure stability in this vital region," Kerry told foreign ministers of Southeast Asian nations at a meeting in Brunei.

Afghan security forces shot dead a would-be suicide bomber in central Kabul on Monday outside an intelligence agency office and close to the EU mission, officials said.

The attacker, who was wearing military uniform, was killed as he approached the National Directorate of Security (NDS) office early in the morning.

North Korea Monday slammed South Korean President Park Geun-Hye for "hurting its dignity" with her call for denuclearization and said its atomic weapons could never be a bargaining chip.

"Park Geun-Hye let loose a whole string of provocative remarks seriously hurting the dignity and social system in the DPRK (North Korea) while visiting China," the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said in a statement through state media.