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China and its neighbors in Southeast Asia must move determinedly to draw up a code of conduct to help resolve disputes in the South China Sea, and should refrain from threats and coercion that have sent tension skyrocketing, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday.

One of the masterminds behind file-sharing website The Pirate Bay was arrested last week in Cambodia, months after he was due to begin a one-year prison sentence in Sweden.

North Korea says a typhoon that hit the peninsula last week killed 48 people and left 21,000 homeless. The update from the official Korean Central News Agency said Monday that Typhoon Bolaven also left more than 50 people injured or missing, damaged 50,000 hectares (123,550 acres) of farmland and destroyed or inundated 6,700 houses.

China’s manufacturing sector shrunk in August for the first time in nine months, according to government data released over the weekend, in yet another sign that the Chinese economy is slowing just as its leaders prepare for a delicate power transfer this fall.

Tens of thousands of people on a central Philippine island returned home on Saturday after a tsunami alert was lifted following a 7.6 magnitude undersea quake, as local authorities began work to repair damages to public infrastructure.

A 7.6-magnitude quake struck off the eastern coast of the Philippines late Friday, killing at least one person in a house collapse and triggering tsunami warnings in the region that sent coastal residents fleeing to high ground.

China's outgoing President Hu Jintao is angling to promote one of his closest allies to the military's decision-making body, sources said, in a move that would allow him to maintain an influence over Beijing's most potent instrument of power.

North Korea has made significant progress in the construction of a light water atomic reactor over the past year, a U.N. watchdog report said, a facility that may extend Pyongyang's capacity to produce material for nuclear weapons.

The sign inside the mausoleum of Chiang Kai-Shek tells visitors to “please bow or show your respects” to the general who fought a bloody civil war against Mao Zedong and then fled China for Taiwan, where he spent years plotting to retake the mainland from its Communist rulers.

Scientists have found alarming levels of the lung disease tuberculosis in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America that are resistant to up to four powerful antibiotic drugs. In a large international study published in the Lancet medical journal on Thursday, researchers found rates of both multi drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) were higher than previously thought and were threatening global efforts to curb the spread of the disease.