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China: Pentagon military report distorted

China on Thursday accused the United States of distorting facts in a Defense Department report on Beijing’s military power. The report — called the “Military Power of the People’s Republic of China” — said the country is developing longer-range ballistic and anti-ship missiles that are “shifting the balance of power in the region.” Such military expansions could help Beijing secure resources or settle territorial disputes, said the report, released by the Pentagon on Wednesday. “This is a gross distortion of the facts and China resolutely opposes it,” ministry spokesman Qin Gang told journalists in Beijing.

Is the Economy Starting to Recover? Or Just Less Bad?

Could it be that things are beginning to get better for the U.S. economy? Nope, no real chance of that

Questions pour in for Obama’s online town hall meeting

During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt reassured anxious Americans through his famous fireside chats over the radio.

Behind Obama’s Speech to the Muslim World

When President Obama visits Turkey early next month, some observers are expecting he will use the occasion to deliver on his promise to deliver a major foreign policy speech from a Muslim nation in his first 100 days. But indications are that he will not give the speech in Turkey. The White House and State Department have not yet decided on the location for the speech, which is meant to undo some of the damage done to America’s image in the Muslim world during the George W.

2-Min. Bio: Accused Nazi John Demjanjuk

It took a special brand of cruelty to stand out amid the horrors of the Holocaust, but “Ivan the Terrible” was no ordinary sadist. As a Nazi guard, Ivan earned his sobriquet by ushering thousands of prisoners — sometimes hacking them with a sword as they passed — into the gas chambers at Poland’s Treblinka death camp. After the war, he vanished.

Behind South Africa’s Snub of the Dalai Lama

Nobody ought to have been surprised that South Africa chose to heed China’s concerns and deny a visa to the Dalai Lama — not because of the South African government’s poor record of responding to human-rights crises in its own neighborhood, but because of China’s growing diplomatic influence and assertiveness thanks to its status as the great hope of an ailing world economy.

Saudi girl in marriage case wins appeal

An appeals court in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has rejected and refused to certify a court ruling allowing a 47-year-old man’s marriage to an 8-year-old girl, said a relative of the girl with knowledge of the proceedings.

One million people at risk in Darfur, U.N. says

More than one million people in Darfur are at risk of losing food, water and shelter in coming months, following the expulsion of international aid groups by Sudan’s government, the United Nations’ chief humanitarian coordinator said Tuesday. The statement by coordinator John Holmes comes after a joint U.N.-Sudanese assessment of the situation. The information was gathered from March 11-18 in hopes of stemming further troubles in Darfur after Sudan’s government expelled 13 international relief organizations from the wartorn region

Arab-Kurd Tensions Could Threaten Iraq’s Peace

Even as Iraq’s Sunni-Shi’ite divide appears to be tenuously mending, another seam in the country’s patchwork multiethnic and sectarian society is on the verge of unraveling. Territorial disputes between Arabs and Kurds — in the provinces of Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala — now pose a serious risk of violence. In recent months, long-standing hostility between the two communities has escalated, whipped up by resurgent Arab secular nationalism

Ian McKellen: The Player

In a trailer on the edge of a film set beneath an underpass in downtown Cape Town, Ian McKellen, 69, is musing about fame and death, and what the papers will say when he goes. “ ’GANDALF DIES,’ I expect,” he says.