Italian clothing firm Benetton went ahead Saturday with a controversial ad campaign featuring key world figures kissing each other, despite outcry last week from the Vatican and the White House.

A photo-montage of an embrace between the Pope and a Muslim cleric was dropped after the Vatican threatened legal action but the rest of the campaign remains unchanged.

Premier Wen Jiabao told U.S. President Barack Obama that China would increase the flexibility of the yuan while stressing that reforms had already had an effect, state television reported Saturday.

"We are closely watching the changes to the yuan's exchange rate ... and will encourage the yuan's flexibility in both directions," CCTV quoted Wen as saying at a meeting with Obama on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Indonesia.

U.S. President Barack Obama held previously unannounced talks with China's Premier Wen Jiabao Saturday, after a week of sharp exchanges between the two nations during Obama's Pacific tour.

Obama and Wen met on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, following public spats over currency, trade and a territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

President Barack Obama on Friday hailed the East Asia Summit as the top forum for tackling the region's seething maritime row with China, setting a course for confrontation with Beijing.

The Chinese government has testily declared the South China Sea dispute off-limits at Saturday's talks, to be attended by Obama, China's Premier Wen Jiabao, and 16 other nations including several with claims over the waterway.

President Barack Obama said Friday he would send Hillary Clinton on the first trip to Myanmar by a U.S. secretary of state for 50 years to see if Washington can "empower" a nascent reform process.

Obama said in Indonesia that he made the decision after speaking directly for the first time with democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and noted "flickers of progress" from the Myanmar government but said that more needed to be done.

Barack Obama said Thursday he received the "most unique gift" since becoming American president when he was presented with a framed crocodile insurance policy in northern Australia.

Obama made a whirlwind stop in Australia's tropical north to address troops in Darwin on his way to Bali, where he is due at the East Asian Summit.

Southeast Asian leaders Thursday held talks on the Indonesian island of Bali dominated by a maritime dispute with China and a debate over whether to reward Myanmar for fledgling reforms.

With the Eurozone lurching through a debt crisis, raising the spectra of the region's export markets drying up, there is also pressure on the 10-member bloc to speed up the integration of its potentially huge common market.

The United States will deploy up to 2,500 Marines to northern Australia as the two nations expand their 60-year-old military alliance, the U.S. and Australian leaders announced Wednesday, rankling China.

The announcement by President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard came as the allies adapted their military posture to face a new security era marked by the rise of China.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will announce new support for the Philippines and flood-hit Thailand as she shores up ties with key U.S. allies, officials said Tuesday.

Clinton arrived Tuesday in the Philippines and will head later this week to Thailand, part of a renewed U.S. focus on Asia. President Barack Obama is travelling separately to Australia, another longtime ally in the region.

A popular Hawaiian recording artist turned a top-security dinner of Pacific Rim leaders hosted by President Barack Obama into a subtle protest with a song in support of the "Occupy" movement.

Makana, who goes by one name, was enlisted to play a luau, or Hawaiian feast, Saturday night for leaders assembled in Obama's birthplace Honolulu for an annual summit that is formulating plans for a Pacific free-trade pact.