Emotions are running high in the dispute over the Kuril Islands. Russia and Japan have been divided over ownership of the islands since the 1950s, but this had long since ceased to be a hot-button issue. How can we explain the unexpected surge in interest in this largely dormant territorial dispute? The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 renewed hope that the dispute with Japan would be settled.... 

In 2010, China mined the record amount of gold in the world. The production volume of nonferrous metals in China amounted to 340.88 tons, which is 8.57% higher than a year earlier, and continues to grow. In recent years, China has consistently increased the amount of its gold reserves. Nevertheless, experts believe that China has a long way to go to reach the level of the world leading economies. According... 

Hena Begum was a fourteen year old girl growing up in the Shariatpur region of Bangladesh until her forty year old cousin decided to rape her. After she was raped, the rapist and his family then beat her until she was unconscious. Next, the local Sharia (Islamic) courts ruled that yound Hena should receive 101 lashes for the crime of adultery — for the crime of being a child raped by an adult. The... 

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak has called for new strategies to help secure a stable supply of food amid growing concerns about a global food crisis. South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak called Monday for new strategies to help secure a stable supply of food amid growing concerns about a global food crisis. “The likelihood of a global food crisis is rising due to climate change. We need... 

A number of Chinese companies have been involved over the years in various scandals involving fake or tainted goods. Perhaps the most dangerous of all involve food, including the now famous 2008 milk scandal in which Chinese-made milk was found to contain the toxin melamine. The end result was 290,000 victims who fell ill and 11 suspected cases of death. Now there are reports from Singapore media... 

Residents of a Papua New Guinea mining town say they found a man with a history of drug abuse allegedly eating his screaming, newborn son during a sorcery initiation ceremony. Police said locals on the outskirts of the town of Tabubil, in Western Province, woke on Thursday to the screams of the baby. Beset with the grisly sight of the father allegedly eating his child, an angry mob chased him to the... 

A lone protester steps into the path of an oncoming tank near Tahrir Square as demonstrations continued for a sixth straight day, January 30, 2011, in Cairo, Egypt. Could the popular revolt against authoritarian regimes of the Middle East ever spread to China, the world’s most populous nation? And if so, does the United States have a policy to deal with it? The ticklish question has been hovering... 

A Somali pirate, hooded, arrives at South Regional Headquarters Korea Coast Guard in Busan, South Korea, on Sunday. Five Somali pirates captured during a raid on a hijacked cargo ship in the Arabian Sea were brought Sunday to South Korea, where they could face life imprisonment, the coast guard said. The men were arrested as South Korean commandos raided the South Korean-operated Samho Jewelry earlier... 

China blocks "Egypt" searches. China blocked the word “Egypt” from micro-blog searches in a sign that the Chinese government is concerned that protests calling for political reform in the country could spill into China’s internet space. Skip related content Searches on Sunday for “Egypt” on micro-blog functions of Chinese web portals such as Sina.com and Sohu.com... 

China is planning to create the world’s biggest mega city by merging nine cities to create a metropolis twice the size of Wales with a population of 42 million. City planners in south China have laid out an ambitious plan to merge together the nine cities that lie around the Pearl River Delta. The “Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One” scheme will create a 16,000 sq mile urban area... 

Sun Shili shows off his drawings of extraterrestials in human guise. In the industrialized West, there evolved the prevailing Pseudo-religious dogma that human beings are at the centre of ‘G-d’s creation in the universe’. This dogma is the ideological motivation behind the on-going de-legitimization of the verfiable contact that people have had with Extraterrestrials (ETs). This apparent dogma... 

A US engineer who sold military secrets to China has been sentenced to 32 years in prison. Weeks after China conducted a flight test of its new J-20 stealth fighter, a US federal court was on Monday set to sentence Indian-American Noshir Gowadia, a former engineer of B-2 stealth bomber, who has been convicted of selling military secrets to Beijing. In August 2010, Mumbai-born Gowadia, 66, was convicted... 

In this March 28, 1999 file photo, Yugoslav army experts check the wreckage of a downed American F-117 aircraft, in the village of Budjanovci, 30 miles northwest of Belgrade. Chinese officials recently unveiled a new, high-tech stealth fighter that could pose a significant threat to American air superiority — and some of its technology, it turns out, may well have come from the U.S. itself. Balkan... 

There are reports that North Korea has forced hundreds of people to witness the executions of two people caught reading South Korean propaganda. South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper is reporting that a North Korean woman was sentenced to die after being caught reading a propaganda leaflet from the South. A high ranking military officer was also charged with pocketing dollar bills sent with the... 

Hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens remain stunned today after China’s official government television news station Xinhua made their unprecedented January 4th announcement that the American President, Barak Obama, was preparing to announce to the world the existence of extraterrestrial races currently on our planet and fueled by what they called was a “extraterrestrial disclosure race”...