World number one Dinara Safina and third seed Venus Williams crashed out in major upsets at the China Open in Beijing on Monday. Venus was the first to go as she lost for the second successive week to Russian teenager Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. The American superstar was beaten by the 18-year-old in Tokyo last week and continued her recent sorry form with a 3-6 6-1 6-4 defeat in the Olympic Tennis Center in the Chinese capital. Pavlyuchenkova twice served for victory ...

The glaciers in the Himalayas are receding quicker than those in other parts of the world and could disappear altogether by 2035 according to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The result of this deglaciation could be conflict as Himalayan glacial runoff has an essential role in the economies, agriculture and even religions of the regions countries. The Himalayan glaciers form the world's largest ice body outside of the polar caps. Popularly known ...

"China is not on the Internet, it's basically an intranet. Everything is banned by the Great Firewall," says Sherman So, co-author of "Red Wired: China's Internet Revolution." With 338 million Internet users in June 2009, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), China is no longer a niche market of the online industry. Chinese is the second most common language on the Internet, according to The Economist, and quickly gaining ground on English. As the former technology writer ...

When we requested an interview with members of the Communist Youth League, I expected an army of suits with well-rehearsed answers. Instead, we met three students casually dressed in jeans, just 18 to 23 years old. The interview was arranged by the State Council Information Office, in advance of the upcoming 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Unlike many government-sanctioned shoots, it was not carefully choreographed or closely monitored. The students did arrive with a ...

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will visit North Korea for two days next month, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Monday. The trip set for October 4 to 6 is at the invitation of North Korea's government, according to KCNA. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had no information on the visit. The planned visit comes amid efforts to draw North Korea back to six-party nuclear disarmament talks. North Korea pulled out in April, protesting the United ...

A U.S. drone crashed in northern Iraq Saturday morning, damaging the Mosul branch of the powerful Iraqi Islamic Party -- the nation's largest Sunni political party, a U.S. military spokesman confirmed. "He summited the mountain at 27,000 feet," spokesman George Arzt said. "He went down to a base camp at 23,000 [feet]. He slept and never awakened." Earlier, another Maloney spokesman had said her husband died in a "mountaineering accident." The congresswoman was in New York at the time of ...

World leaders converge Tuesday in New York to focus on climate change, with the clock ticking down toward a summit this year in Denmark, where a global climate change pact is to be signed. Negotiations for the global pact have stalled, and Tuesday's gathering is aimed at jump-starting those talks. Chinese President Hu Jintao, U.S. President Barack Obama, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Rwandan President Paul Kagame are among ...

Manganese Bronze, the maker of the classic London taxi and a former niche player in Coventry's once booming car-making arena, is now the last car company in the city and enjoys the curious status of being the biggest London-listed car maker by volume. However, it is struggling with the recession. Production is down to 12 vehicles a day during a four-day week in the UK and is barely at break even. Priced between 30,000 and 34,000, they are not cheap. ...

The route to my ancestral home is etched into my heart. Unfortunately, not knowing the address is a problem in the ever-changing urban geography of Chenghai, an industrial town 30-minutes from Shantou in China's Guangdong province. A motorcycle taxi took me bouncing, meandering through the town's crowded alleyways toward the end of a recent tour of mainland China. After the driver gave up and left me in an ancient-looking alley, near where more than 200 people supposedly carry the surname ...

China is sending 7,000 officials to the western city of Urumqi after last week's deadly protests over a strange series of syringe stabbings, state-run media reported. The officials, known as "harmony makers," are meant to ease tensions after demonstrators, demanding better police protection, clashed with police for two days. The unrest left five people dead and 14 injured. "The officials will go door to door to explain policies and solve disputes," said Wang Lequan, secretary of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous ...