Daily News Channel
In the summer of 2006, in the immediate aftermath of North Korea’s unexpected long-range missile launch, the Chinese government quietly sent a senior envoy, former foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan, to Pyongyang to express Beijing’s displeasure. Tang cooled his heels for a couple of days, before finally meeting — briefly, diplomatic sources have said — with leader Kim Jong Il. Just three months later, in October 2006, North Korea again defied the world and tested a nuclear bomb for the first time
When North Korea conducted a nuclear test in 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised tough consequences for North Korea’s actions but said the door was still open for negotiations. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said pretty much the same thing last month when North Korea lobbed a long-range rocket, prompting fears that it could hit Japan or even Hawaii. The broken record was replayed this week when President Obama called for “stronger international pressure” after North Korea turned pyrotechnics into an extreme sport, with an apparent nuclear test followed by a series of missile launches
Even before the mystifying Kim Jong Il took power in 1993, the outside world has tried mightily to figure out how the North Korean regime works. Spy satellites are trained on suspected nuclear sites 24 hours a day.
The location may have been the first hint. The 23rd European Union-Russia summit on Friday was held in the Russian Far East city of Khabarovsk, a former Tsarist army outpost just a few dozen miles from the Chinese border and 5,000 miles east of Western Europe. The location seemed more aimed at inducing jet lag and awe at Russia’s size than at forging agreement on energy, an issue that has consistently soured relations between the two powers over the past months — and which the summit failed to resolve
A passerby pushed a would-be suicide jumper off a bridge in southern China because he was angry at the jumper’s "selfish activity," Chinese media reported Saturday.
For most of the past five years, the Chinese gambling mecca of Macau seemed a sure bet. After the local government ended a decades-old gaming monopoly in 2002, some of the biggest casino and hotel operators in the world rushed in with new projects, eager to tap into the hoards of wealthy Chinese who increasingly flocked to the “Asian Las Vegas.” The first American company to enter the market was Las Vegas Sands, which opened the Sands Macau casino in 2004 — and earned back its $285 million investment in only a year. U.S
As the sun rises over the Singapore Strait another long day for Arnold Lee begins. On a launch chugging out of Singapore harbor, the shipping agent’s job that morning is to smooth the immigration process for three anxious-looking seamen, from Greece, Ukraine and Romania, who are joining the crew of a 200-m-long bulk carrier anchored an hour southeast of Singapore.
Chinese authorities were explicit: Tear down the nation’s first sex-themed amusement park before it gets going full steam.
When I first saw Zhao Ziyang up close in 1987, he had just become the new party chief at the closing ceremony of a landmark Communist Party congress. Zhao seemed on top of his game: relaxed, confident and poised to break the old Communist mold. Inside the Great Hall of the People, he walked around an elongated U-shaped table, set up for a “cocktail reception” for Chinese and overseas media.
In the Himalayan resort town of Nathiagali, a party is under way.