CHINA

Kofi Annan, the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, acknowledged Saturday that his mission to end the bloodshed had failed, amid reports of heavy fighting in northern Syria.

Asian stock markets face the week with sentiment leaning negative as economic news, particularly from China, is likely to disappoint investors.

Ever since Bloomberg first reported rumors of a new, smaller iPad, the internet has been ablaze with rumors over the expected announcement of the iPad Mini. While Apple hasn't yet made an announcement about the device, manufacturer reports suggest the rumors might be accurate.

The tech world has been filled with high-profile lawsuits over the past week. Just as Internet giants Yahoo and Facebook settled their differences over alleged patent infringement, Apple is the latest company hit with a patent-related lawsuit.

Wenzhou, probably the most Christian city in China, has a vibrant Catholic community. But two-thirds of these Catholics choose to worship without government oversight, a fact that highlights how faith in today's China can still be a murky, semilegal affair.

China and India are set to sink billions of dollars into Afghanistan, perhaps the world's last great untapped center for natural resources. Where is the U.S.?

The Indian government has taken a major step toward its ambitious vision of achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by initiating a $5.4-billion plan that would allow the government sector doctors to prescribe generic drugs to the patients free of cost.

China's announcement of the unexpected interest rate cut this week has given an indication to market players that policymakers are increasingly rattled by the state of the economy.

Most Asian markets rose this week as investor confidence was boosted by expectations of stimulus measures from central banks globally to regain the economic growth momentum.

As the U.S. government spends an unprecedented amount of money to fix the economy, there's an equal need to raise the cash needed to pay for those fixes. As a result, Uncle Sam is forced to borrow from countries with high savings rates, such as China, to help cover the budget deficit.

Former Republican presidential candidate and Utah governor Jon Huntsman said he will not attend the party's convention this summer, continuing his critique of Republican orthodoxy.

Hopes that emerging markets will lead the world out of the global economic slowdown are beginning to dim.Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), voiced her concerns over the strength of the global economy, emphasizing that emerging markets, which currently account for two-thirds of global growth, were showing signs of weakening.

One of the biggest first-person shooter gaming titles on the market will expand to mobile platforms in the near future. Activision has just confirmed that its recently established studio in Leeds will develop handheld and iOS versions of ?Call of Duty.?

Amazon got into the hardware game in 2007 with its popular e-book reader, the Kindle. Five years, three Kindle generations and a tablet later, the world's largest online retailer is reportedly building its first-ever smartphone to compete with Apple's iPhone and Google's Android platform.

Apple has been known in the mobile and PC world for its resistance to viruses and malware. However, the iOS App Store has just been infected with its first case of malware, causing newly updated apps to crash upon opening.

Eighteen years after China first started construction, nine years after it first started producing electricity, the world's largest power station is now, finally, fully operational.

Is Pakistan an enemy of the United States? For the past two years, the Obama administration has doggedly maintained that the South Asian nation remains a vital American ally, even as it has grappled with what it itself admits is a ?complicated? relationship.

Russia and China are not attending the Paris summit.

U.S. stock index futures point to a slightly lower open Friday as the interest rate cuts announced by central banks in Europe and China on Thursday failed to convince investors that the measures will be sufficient to rejuvenate the struggling global economy.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says the anti-government protests in his country are not comparable to the Arab Spring protests elsewhere, and that it's not people, but terrorists, who want to oust him from power.

Asian stock markets declined Friday as investors remained cautious ahead of U.S. employment data due later in the day while major central bank?s actions to stimulate the global economy failed to calm market jitters.