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Recent migrants to Australia are highly satisified with life in their new country and have few complaints, according to a study commissioned by Australia's Department of Immigration.

Australia's parliament will next week debate the nation's involvement in any military action against Iraq following fresh talks with senior U.S. officials.

Beijing has underscored China's vulnerability to terrorism in the run-up to the September 11 anniversary.

The brief dispatch from Xinhua, China's state-run news agency, reporting the telephone conversation between Presidents Jiang Zemin and George W. Bush last Friday said much about Beijing's ambivalence toward the Iraqi crisis.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's detailed dossier on Iraq's weapons program and claims it poses an immediate world threat have so far failed to convince the international community of the need to invade Iraq.

A top British envoy is in Beijing to try to garner support for a proposed U.N. resolution that would compel Iraq to disarm or face military action.

World leaders have reacted cautiously to the decision by Iraq to re-admit weapons inspectors with hope tempered by varying degrees of mistrust over Baghdad's motives.

President Chen Shui-bian has once again rejected China's terms for reunification, saying the self-ruled island would never give up its freedom, democracy or human rights.

It's the legacy thing. The activities of the top leaders the last month or so before the 16th Communist party congress tell a lot about their personalities, worldviews -- and the future of reform.

China has accused the U.S. navy of violating international law by coming within 200 nautical miles of its shores without approval.

In dramatic scenes, Chinese security forces have foiled a daring defection attempt by about a dozen North Korean asylum seekers in Beijing.

A jealous shopkeeper has confessed to spiking breakfast foods with rat poison which sparked one of China's worst ever food poisoning outbreaks, state media has reported.

Chinese authorities have smashed 44 bases of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which Beijing says is behind massive terrorist activities in the restive Xinjiang region.

Whether private businessmen will be inducted into the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) ruling Central Committee has become a focus of attention of the upcoming 16th party congress.

Beijing has welcomed the United Nations Security Council's classification of the East Turkestan Independence Movement (ETIM) as a terrorist organization.

Communist China has the highest number of the world's richest people under the age of 40 outside America, a list compiled by U.S. business magazine FORTUNE shows.

U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan have been ordered to shave and wear regular uniforms to look more like U.S. soldiers rather than locals, according to an official at the U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida.

Two envoys of the Tibetan leader in exile, the Dalai Lama, are visiting China in the first official contact between the two sides in nine years.

A delegation of exiled Tibetans arrived in China this week, but China's Foreign Ministry refused to comment on whether they will discuss reopening official ties between Tibet and Beijing.

A snack store owner has been sentenced to death for spiking a competitor's breakfast foods with rat poison, resulting in the deaths of more than 30 people in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing.

Indonesian migrant workers living in camps in the East Kalimantan town of Nunukan are continuing to die in squalid conditions, bringing the death toll to 67, according to local relief workers.

Indian rail officials are divided over the possible cause of a train derailment Monday that has left as many as 100 people feared dead.

The prolonged drought in much of Australia will rip $2.1 billion (Aust. $3.8 billion) out of the nation's economy, according to the latest government figures.

Investigators in French Polynesia say they have mapped out where former NBA player Bison Dele's luxury catamaran was sailing when he and two companions disappeared.

Fifteen members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement have gone on trial for hijacking a television broadcast in March to air a protest film.

Afghanistan has repatriated several dozen Pakistani prisoners, former Taliban fighters who were captured by the Northern Alliance and the U.S.-led coalition.

Suspected Islamic militants on Thursday launched an audacious assault on troops near the heavily-guarded funeral of Kashmir's assassinated law minister.

An abortive grenade attack on a U.S. Embassy property in Jakarta has killed one of the attackers and resulted in the capture of another.

A high intensity bomb was discovered and defused at a Lahore police station Thursday morning, just a few minutes before it would have exploded, police said.

Details of a proposed anti-subversion law that has the backing of Beijing have been released by the Hong Kong government.

Hong Kong says it is ready to pass an anti-subversion law, five years after its handover to China.

A pet shop owner in recession-weary Hong Kong has come up with a novelty way to boost his business.

The Commonwealth group of nations is set to step up pressure on Zimbabwe over its controversial land-redistribution program and the erosion of democratic institutions by President Robert Mugabe and his government.

Terrorist killings at a temple in the western Indian state of Gujarat earlier this week were the latest in a series of religious incidents that have the potential for igniting mass violence.

India's state-owned rail system is the largest in the world, carrying some 11 million passengers every day on more than 100,000 kilometers of track.

Indonesian police say they are questioning a German man of Arab descent over connections to a senior Southeast Asia al Qaeda operative who allegedly planned attacks on U.S. interests in the region.

Prison terms of between four and 20 years have been handed down to 15 members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement for hijacking state television broadcasts in China, Xinhua news agency reported.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin hopes to use his forthcoming American tour to build personal networks that will facilitate further trips to the United States as a senior statesman.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin is wrestling with a series of thorny diplomatic issues in his last couple of months as Communist party General Secretary and head of its Leading Group on Foreign Affairs (LGFA).

Two gunmen and a young bystander have been killed in a four-hour shoot-out between Karachi police and several gunmen in a residential building.

Amid high tension, state polls have opened in the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir state.

Less than two weeks before elections in the disputed region of Kashmir, independent candidate Sheikh Abdul Rahman has been shot and killed along with three others -- including two of his supporters.

A voting machine in one of Kashmir's most sensitive areas lies in the center of the room with no pretence of allowing voters privacy.

Women rarely come out for rallies in Kashmir. And when they do, it's wearing burqas and veils so they cannot be recognized.

Kashmir's law minister Mushtak Ahmad Lone has been assassinated by a gunman who shot him point blank as he was giving a speech at an election rally.

In the face of three separate attacks that left at least two dead and 16 injured, India's leaders have praised the resilience of voters and the success of elections taking place in Kashmir.

Japan's controversial financial services minister is likely to keep his post in a cabinet reshuffle next week, according to a newspaper report.

A painting on the wall of a school in Pyongyang shows a U.S. soldier captured during the Korean War. In a shoe factory in Sinuiju, another poster depicts an attack on the United States.

The death toll from South Korea's worst typhoon in decades has risen to 113 as severe flooding has delayed key North-South talks.

British male model James Gooding has ended four months of speculation that he has got back together with Australian pop diva Kylie Minogue, according to newspaper reports.