UbuneBlog

Japan plans to buy at least a fifth of the initial installment of the bonds being sold to finance Europe’s bailout fund, which is aimed at rescuing Ireland. Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Tuesday that his government plans to buy “more than 20% of bonds” that will be issued by the fund in its initial […]

THE lifeless bodies of two tiny babies are being given their final bath before burial in Karachi, after they were left to die in the southern Pakistani city’s garbage dumps. ‘They can only have been one or two days old,’ says volunteer worker Mohammad Saleem, pointing at the two small corpses being gently washed by […]

CHINA has denied it is in discussions with North Korea about stationing Chinese troops over the border in the isolated state, state media reported Monday. ‘China will not send a single soldier to other countries without the approval of the UN,’ an official at the defence ministry, who refused to be named, was quoted as […]

YOUNG South Koreans are flocking to join the Marines in response to North Korea’s deadly attack on a border island garrisoned by the corps, an official said on Monday. A total of 4,553 hopefuls have applied for 1,011 openings in the elite corps this month, pushing the competition for places to a record high, said […]

A CHINESE farmer has been sentenced to life in prison for avoiding highway tolls adding up to more than 3.5 million yuan (S$683,900). State media this week reported that a court in the central province of Henan sentenced Shi Jianfeng on Dec 21 for fraud. He was also fined 2 million yuan. The news caused […]

BANGLADESHI security forces said on Saturday they had arrested the alleged leader of a gang responsible for amputating the limbs of children and forcing them into begging. Omar Faruq, 30, was arrested on Friday in a Dhaka suburb, said Colonel Zia Ahsan of the elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). ‘He has admitted that his gang […]

Many southerners are voting for an independent Sudan this week, thirsting for freedom from the north. They equate sharia or Islamic law that President Omar al-Bashir has vowed to strengthen with slavery. Al-Bashir has declared that if Southern Sudan votes in favor of separation, sharia will become the main source of Sudan’s Constitution, Islam the […]

IRAN has arrested about 70 Christians since Christmas in a crackdown that demonstrates the limits of religious tolerance by Islamic leaders who often boast they provide room for other faiths. The latest raids have targeted grass-roots Christian groups Iran describes as ‘hard-liners’ who pose a threat to the Islamic state. Authorities increasingly view them with […]

A TOP US Navy official downplayed concerns about China’s first stealth fighter on Wednesday but admitted America had been surprised by the pace of some of the Asian juggernaut’s military development. On the eve of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates’s visit to Beijing, photographs indicated a prototype of the J-20 had been completed after tests […]

A STATE-RUN news agency says 24 children, aged between nine months and 16 years old, have been hospitalised for lead poisoning caused by battery factories in their east China village. The official Xinhua News Agency said late on Wednesday local authorities have shut down two battery factories in Anhui province’s Huaining county that were blamed […]