Asiapcf [9]

Japanese officials have begun laying the groundwork for next month's unprecedented visit by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to North Korea.

Demonstrators in South Korea have set fire to a North Korean flag in protest at what they say is the communist regime's failure to account for hundreds of South Koreans kidnapped by the North.

Military officials in India say 20 soldiers have been killed and five injured in an ambush by rebels in the northeastern state of Tripura.

A record 55-year sentence handed down to a gang rapist in an Australia court has left the legal profession and community groups divided over the merits of such severe sentencing.

The remains of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl were moved from a mortuary to the airport here Wednesday in preparation for their return to the United States.

China's popular and widely publicized sale of personalized car number plates has been suspended after just 10 days.

North and South Korea have agreed to restart stalled talks next week in an effort to get the reconciliation process back on track.

North and South Korea have agreed to restart stalled talks next week in an effort to get the reconciliation process back on track.

A judge sentenced six men to death by hanging Sunday for their roles in the gang rape of a woman whose brother was accused of having relations with a higher-caste woman, the prosecutor said.

As a baseball strike loomed Friday, Carol Costello, CNN anchor, talked with CNN Correspondent Ryan Chilcote, who is in Afghanistan with U.S. troops. He talked baseball with them to see how the possible work stoppage plays with them from the distance of their posts in Kandahar.

South Korea's government has been dealt another blow, after parliament rejected President Kim Dae-jung's second nominee for prime minister.

The government of Sri Lanka says it has agreed to a key demand from the Tamil Tiger rebels granting them access to sea passage between key bases in the north and east of the country.

Peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger separatists will begin in mid-September, a source in Thailand's Foreign Ministry said.

The U.S. State Department plans to take over responsibility for the security of Afghan President Hamid Karzai from the U.S. military, a spokeswoman said Saturday.

The group behind Sydney's annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras has gone into voluntary administration after failing to find a last minute backer to pull it out from a mountain of debt.

Organizers of Sydney's gay and lesbian Mardi Gras said Thursday they have just 24 hours to obtain a veritable queen's ransom to save the event from bankruptcy.

Ten people have been killed in weekend clashes in the Kashmir region as violence intensifies ahead of state elections in the troubled region.

Police and security agencies are on heightened alert for militant attacks in New Delhi on or around India's Independence Day, and in the disputed region of Kashmir in the lead up to local elections, Indian media report.

It was an ambush that took a week to trigger.

The U.S. Consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi suspended operations on Monday because of security threats, consulate officials told CNN.

The two Koreas, still technically at war having never signed a peace treaty at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, have clashed several times over the western sea border in the past several years.

The acquittal of six Indonesian military commanders accused of inciting a wave of militia violence in East Timor three years ago has triggered a growing storm of protest from human rights groups, diplomats and politicians.

Toe sucking in U.S. television sitcom Ally McBeal and pregnancy on the Friends series have proved a step too far for Malaysia's censorship board which has banned these and over 100 other items from television and movie screens this year.

Tommy Suharto, the son of former Indonesian President Suharto, says he will not appeal his 15-year jail term for murder, claiming that although he is innocent of the charges he sees no point in appealing.

A small aircraft with 18 people on board, most of them foreigners, crashed in bad weather in west Nepal on Thursday, authorities said.

Turkmenistan's President Saparmurat Niyazov, who last week renamed the month of January after himself, has decreed a new system for dividing up the ages of his people.

In the first of two deadly raids, militants have attacked a group of Hindu pilgrims on the Indian side of Kashmir, killing eight and wounding 32, 14 of them seriously, Indian police sources told CNN.

Two U.S. Special Operations soldiers have been wounded in an intelligence-gathering operation in southern Afghanistan, a military spokesman said Monday.

Salvage experts are battling uncooperative weather in a bid to rescue the UK warship Nottingham after it hit a rock in the Tasman Sea almost a month ago.

The UK government has announced it will pay Afghan asylum seekers to return home voluntarily.

Any further investigation into the reported massacre of Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan will be in the hands of the Afghans, the United Nations said Wednesday.

The U.S.-led United Nations Command in South Korea and officials from North Korea have agreed to embark on a series of steps to prevent further clashes along the disputed sea border that separates the two Koreas.

Two men suspected of planning attacks on embassies in Kyrgyzstan last spring have been deported from the Central Asian nation to China, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing confirmed to CNN on Friday.

The trial of three Islamic militants charged with committing a deadly car bombing at the United States' consulate in Karachi is scheduled to start August 10, court officials in Pakistan said Saturday.

The U.S. Consulate in the Pakistani city of Karachi is moving in response to a series of terrorist attacks, an American official said Friday.

Low-lying Pacific nations have chided the United States for not signing the Kyoto Protocol and have urged Australia to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Low-lying Pacific nations have chided the United States for not signing the Kyoto Protocol and have urged Australia to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

U.S. Special Forces have killed four Afghans and injured a fifth in eastern Afghanistan after one of them attempted to open fire, a coalition spokesman said Wednesday.

The general in charge of the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan said Sunday he supports an investigation into allegations that hundreds of Taliban prisoners suffocated and were dumped into mass graves after surrendering to U.S.-backed forces last year.

A U.S. Air Force HH-60 medevac helicopter crashed early Tuesday on takeoff from Urgun-e in eastern Afghanistan, lightly injuring six airmen, a military spokesman said.

In a sign that Al Qaeda and Taliban remnants could still be active inside Afghanistan, U.S. Special Operations Forces recently discovered a weapons cache that included newly manufactured mortar rounds, military spokesman Col. Roger King said Thursday.

The United States believes Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf wants to develop democracy in his country, but recent constitutional amendments he dictated could make that harder to accomplish, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Thursday.

The United States believes Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf wants to develop democracy in his country, but recent constitutional amendments he dictated could make that harder to accomplish, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Thursday.

In the third attack on U.S. forces in three days, an American paratrooper was shot in the chest Wednesday by unknown assailants while on reconnaissance patrol in eastern Afghanistan, a military spokesman said Thursday.

Special Forces troops in Afghanistan have found two anti-aircraft guns and four mounts for other guns near a village where a U.S. airstrike killed several civilians in July, military officials said Tuesday.

High-level talks between North and South Korea finally began on Monday after a disagreement over the timetable for discussions delayed the start of the meeting.

U.S. Special Operations forces have found two caches of weapons and ammunition near the Afghan town of Khowst, a spokesman for the U.S. military forces in Afghanistan said Friday.

Health and fire authorities in New Zealand are investigating how a woman undergoing a routine caesarian birth procedure came to be set on fire.

A standoff between the International Cricket Council and the sport's players is no closer to resolution after India's cricketers refused to sign a contract for the upcoming Champions Trophy tournament in Sri Lanka.