Scientists fear that the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus — which began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003 — could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, potentially sparking a pandemic that kills millions. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds.
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Russia’s deployment of extra troops in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has brought the prospect of war “very close,” a minister of ex-Soviet Georgia said on Tuesday.
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Move over ugly American, make room for the ugly Chinese.
In Seoul on Sunday, groups of Chinese students accosted protesters demonstrating against China’s treatment of North Korean refugees and Beijing’s policies in Tibet. The attacks by the Chinese occurred as the Olympic torch wended its way on its seemingly never-ending journey around the world. The South [...]

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History dictates that protecting and maintaining a nation’s industrial base is critical to its national security and to winning wars. This is why taking out an enemy’s manufacturing infrastructure, as America did to Germany and Japan during World war II, is the first step in rendering it defenseless.
Yet today in America, despite the menace of [...]

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In his new book, “The Post-American World,” Mr. Zakaria writes that America remains a politico-military superpower, but “in every other dimension — industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural — the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance.” With the rise of China, India and other emerging markets, with economic growth sweeping much of [...]

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DEBKAfile’s political sources report that circles closest to Ehud Olmert, prime minister and leader of the Kadima party see little hope of him surviving the political fallout from the new, as-yet unpublished police investigation against him.
Tuesday, May 6, is seen as marking the critical point in the inquiry, after which the police and general prosecution [...]

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The Pentagon is going to resuscitate its Fourth Fleet, with the mission of patrolling Latin American and Caribbean waters.
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The plan to install a military base in Paraguay, close to Bolivian gas fields, was denounced by Brazil and Argentina. Ecuador has made it known that the American military base installed in Manta until 2009 will not [...]

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Dmitry Oreshkin, a Russian political analyst, says beefing up the Victory Day parade is just one of many steps that Putin has taken toward resurrecting the hallmarks of the Soviet empire and the country’s former glory.
“He gives free rein to the Soviet dream,” Oreshkin says. “The huge number of people who were brought up in [...]

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NEW DELHI: The absence of nuclear-powered submarines armed with nuclear-tipped missiles has come back to haunt the Indian defence establishment, even though plans are afoot to test the China-specific Agni-III missile within this week.
Though tabs were being kept on China’s underground nuclear submarine base on the southern tip of the Hainan Island in South China [...]

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They’re educated, richer and more aggressive toward the West.
As human rights protesters dogged the Beijing Olympics’ torch relay around the world, as supporters of Tibet condemned the violent crackdown in Lhasa, and as Darfur activists demanded change in China’s Sudan policy, Chinese young people worked themselves into a different form of righteous anger. In online [...]

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, have promised a harmonious dual leadership. But as Medvedev prepares to be inaugurated as Russia’s new president, the two leaders’ supporters are already gearing up for a power struggle. By Uwe Klussmann in Moscow more…

Photo Gallery: The ‘Putvedev’ Era Begins
EU Condemns Saber Rattling: Russia and Georgia [...]

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It has fuelled a 17-year economic boom in which truck drivers can earn £60,000 a year, property prices have soared and there are not enough pilots to fly desperately needed mining engineers into dusty desert camps.
Australia is growing rich from China’s insatiable appetite for raw materials, selling billions of pounds worth of iron ore, coal [...]

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China reported a jump today in the number of children sickened with hand, foot and mouth disease, saying more than 9,700 cases have been reported.
At least 24 deaths in the central province of Anhui and Guangdong province in the south have been blamed on enterovirus 71, one of several viruses that cause the disease, the [...]

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