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China's factory growth cooled to multi-month lows in February as domestic demand dipped, weighing on firms already hit by slack foreign sales and underlining the patchiness of the country's economic recovery.

China plans major bond market reform to raise the money the ruling Communist Party needs for a 40 trillion yuan ($6.4 trillion) urbanization program to buoy economic growth and close a chasm between the country's urban rich and rural poor.

An Indonesian mother was so concerned that her nine-year-old son's small penis would ruin his life that she drowned him in the bath. Police in the capital Jakarta said today that the woman, 38, told them her son had a small penis before he was circumcised but that it was even smaller after the operation. Spokesman Rikwanto said the mother believed the boy would have a 'bleak future' because of the size of his genitalia.

Ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman met North Korea's Kim Jong Un on Thursday on the third day of his improbable journey to Pyongyang, telling the leader "You have a friend for life," a delegation spokesman said.

"Hello world from comms center in (hash)Pyongyang." That Twitter missive, sent Monday from Koryolink's main service center in downtown Pyongyang using my iPhone, marked a milestone for North Korea: It was believed to be the first tweet sent from a cellphone using the country's new 3G mobile data service.

Park Geun-hye is sworn in as South Korea's president, making her the first woman to lead the East Asian nation.

At least four people die in Bangladesh as police clash with Islamists protesting against bloggers they accuse of blasphemy.

Koryo Tours, in conjunction with IT firm Nosotek and the Government have developed North Korea's first ever PC "game" - Pyongyang Racer. "Collect petrol barrels to keep your car full of fuel. If you don't, you will run out of petrol and the game ends."

Police were searching villages in western India on Friday for suspects in the rape and killing of three young sisters, as Indians still angry over the fatal gang rape of a woman on a New Delhi bus in December face another heinous sexual attack....

What do you buy the nation that already seems to have everything? That is the question facing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as he aims to spend more than $100 billion on infrastructure in the next 15 months to help revive his country's economy. But with its gleaming bullet trains, jungles of elevated highways and strings of man-made islands, ultra-modern Japan doesn't appear to want for much.