Internet giant Google on Thursday joined a top journalists' rights group in rewarding a collective of Iranian women bloggers for their reporting on last year's post-election unrest. The online journalists of women's rights blog we-change. org were given the "Net Citizen" award, a new prize by Google and French media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) to defend freedom of expression online.

Other world leaders should follow the example of US President Barack Obama and meet the Dalai Lama despite China's objections, the Tibetan spiritual leader's envoy to Europe said Thursday. "President Obama did not give in to this pressure and met with his holiness the Dalai Lama," Kelsang Gyaltsen told reporters in Madrid after a meeting with Spanish legislators.

US President Barack Obama Thursday called on China to embrace a "market oriented" exchange rate for its yuan currency, saying such a move would help rebalance the global economy.

China's human rights record was poor last year and worsened in areas, particularly the troubled western region of Xinjiang, the US State Department said Thursday in an annual report.

Google said Thursday that it was in talks with China on the future of the US Internet giant in the Asian nation, after the firm threatened to leave over cyberattacks and state web censorship. "We are indeed in active discussions with the Chinese government but we are not going to engage in a running commentary about those conversations," Google China spokeswoman Marsha Wang told AFP.

China said Thursday that South Korea's foreign minister would visit Beijing next week for the latest round of talks on how to get North Korea back to stalled nuclear disarmament negotiations. Yu Myung-Hwan would meet his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi during the mid-week visit, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.

China on Thursday joined international condemnation of Israel's plan to build 1,600 new homes in east Jerusalem and called on the Jewish state to put an end to the settlement project. "We request the Israeli side to stop the establishment of new Jewish settlements and make concerted efforts and concrete actions to contribute to the resumption of peace talks," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.

A top Google executive reaffirmed Wednesday that the Internet giant is prepared to leave China if Beijing says it must censor Web searches or quit the country. "Google is firm in its decision that it will stop censoring our search results for China," Google vice president and deputy general counsel Nicole Wong told a key US House of Representatives Committee.

Uganda will next month decide which international oil firm will carry out production and development of its nascent petroleum industry, an energy ministry official said Wednesday. Uganda is currently weighing rival bids from France's Total and the Chinese state-controlled giant CNOOC to take over assets in the oil-rich Lake Albert region.

Airbus chief executive Thomas Enders said on Wednesday that his decision to build aircraft in China has paid off, with the quality matching that of Europe and the local market taking off. "The quality of Airbus aircraft from Tianjin today is just as good as from Toulouse or Hamburg," the company's other plants in southern France and northern Germany, Enders told the German daily Die Welt.