CHINA

China's annual investment on railway construction could fall to about 500 billion yuan ($78.7 billion) a year, retreating from ambitious heights mapped out in a plan for the sector that has struggled with high debts, an official Chinese newspaper said on Tuesday.

It's confirmed - Naomie Harris and Berenice Marlohe are going to star as the new leading ladies in the 23rd '007' or James Bond film.

Russia is the latest country to ramp up their space exploration efforts. On Wednesday, Russia will launch a probe into space with a mission of collecting information on the Martian moon, Phobos.

An anti-dumping trade complaint filed last month against Chinese subsidized solar cells is at the heart of the matter.

Putin and Gilani also reportedly discussed other important topics, including battling against terrorism and extremism.

Ever since Ai Weiwei was hit with a $2.4 million tax bill, or 15 million yuan, donations have been flying over the wall of the artist's compound in northeastern Beijing on the backs of paper airplanes.

Pigeonpea - a minor agricultural crop more common in rural backyards than plowed fields, reached a milestone Sunday when Indian and Chinese researchers announced the decoding of the plant's genome.

It’s a historic week in aviation in the United States as both Unites Airlines and Alaska Airlines make maiden commercial voyages powered by biofuels.

Asia's central bankers have two main choices for coping with Europe's debt crisis: Wait it out and hope for a safe resolution, or take out an insurance policy in the form of an interest rate cut.

Retailer Best Buy Inc. said it would buy Carphone Warehouse's stake in their U.S. mobile-phone joint venture for about $1.3 billion and plans to close 11 big box stores in the UK as part of its reorganization strategy.

The moves are the latest sign Best Buy is scaling back its overseas ambitions to focus on its main U.S. business, which faces stiff competition from discounters and online retailers. Earlier this year, the U.S. group dropped plans for Best Buy-branded stores in China and Turkey.

HTC Corp said on Monday it will put equal investment weight on emerging markets next year as it does in developed ones like the U.S. and Europe, and will dip its toes back into the tablet market with a new model next year.

The collapse of BP's planned sale of a $7 billion stake in an Argentinean unit has renewed investor concerns about its strategy, a fortnight after Chief Executive Bob Dudley said the group had reached a turning point after its Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Groupon's Chinese daily deals business Gaopeng said on Monday it had sold counterfeit luxury watches by accident and will compensate its irate buyers in its latest struggle in expanding in the potentially lucrative market.

DragonWave Inc. (NASDAQ: DRWI) announced its plans in acquiring the microwave transport business from Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) in a cash and stock transaction valued at about $154 million.

Stock index futures pointed to a sharply lower open for equities on Wall Street on Monday, with futures for the S&P 500, for the Dow Jones and for the Nasdaq 100 down 1.2 to 1.3 percent.

Stock index futures pointed to a sharply lower open for equities on Wall Street on Monday, with futures for the S&P 500, for the Dow Jones and for the Nasdaq 100 down 1.2 to 1.3 percent.

China's yuan exchange rate is within a basically reasonable level, and it is not the root cause of the China-U.S. trade imbalance, Commerce Minister Chen Deming said in remarks published on Monday.

Gold prices gained nearly 1 percent on Monday after Greece's politicians sealed a deal to form a coalition government, while continued uncertainty about resolving the zone's debt crisis supported safe-haven demand in bullion.

A human resources graduate from Venezuela, whose ambition is to work with children, was crowned Miss World 2011 at a glittering beauty pageant in London on Sunday.