The Washington Post reported this week that China has moved military police units into positions along its 870-mile frontier with North Korea and ordered them to take over border patrol duties from military police units. The Foreign Ministry said the Army took charge of defending the border in early September. Analysts said the change could be intended to put pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

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Bangladesh Foreign Minister Morshed Khan urged South Korea to legalize the status of 17,000 Bangladeshis working there without permission, during a meeting this week with South Korean Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Kim Jae-sup.

"I urged the Korean foreign minister to take steps to reduce the trade imbalance by providing more Bangladeshi people with employment in South Korea," Khan told reporters.

South Korean law allows amnesty to those who have stayed for less than four years, but those who have stayed without permission more than four years will be deported, Kim said.

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Ireland has established a new unit in the Department of Justice to process 11,000 residency claims from the immigrant parents of Irish-born children. A Supreme Court ruled last January that non-national parents of Irish-born children did not have an automatic right to remain in the country, resulting in a backlog of such cases. In July, the Government said the outstanding applications would be subject to "individual consideration." Around 150 workers will be transferred from other departments in order to process the cases.

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Charting a new approach to immigration last week, the European Union considered implementing national quotas for legal immigrants during a meeting of EU interior ministers. The 15 EU countries have never before pooled together resources for immigration, and the subject remains a controversial one in Europe, where quotas have long been considered taboo.