Islands | featured news

China recently established a larger army garrison and expanded the size of an ostensible legislature to govern a speck of land, known as Yongxing Island, more than 200 miles southeast of Hainan. The goal of that move, Mr. Wu said, is to allow Beijing to “exercise sovereignty over all land features inside the South China Sea,” including more than 40 islands “now occupied illegally” by Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Saturday that the government is considering buying islands in potentially gas rich territory claimed by both Japan and China, in a move likely to anger Beijing.

Two small islands in South Asia's first marine biosphere reserve have sunk into the sea primarily as a result of coral reef mining, experts say.

Rescuers battled rough seas Tuesday to reach remote Indonesian islands pounded by a 10-foot tsunami that swept away homes, killing at least 113 people... Also Tuesday, the country's most volatile volcano, Mount Merapi, 800 miles to the east, started to erupt at dusk as scientists warned that pressure building beneath its lava dome could trigger one of the most powerful blasts in years.

The tension between China and Japan is at its all time high during the present times. On 16 October 2010 a large number of protesters came out on the roads in central city of China, Chengdu, shouting slogans against Japan.

Thousands of protesters marched through Tokyo on Saturday to demonstrate against what they called China's invasion of disputed islands that both countries claim.

Evacuation alarms sounded in Hawaii’s vulnerable coastal areas as the region prepared for what federal officials say could be a dangerous tsunami.

At least 32 people have been killed by floods and mudslides caused by an unusually violent rainstorm on the Portuguese resort island of Madeira, officials said on Saturday.

A powerful 8.0 magnitude earthquake in the Pacific off the Samoa islands region generated a tsunami and waves of more than five feet had already been observed, U.S. government agencies said on Tuesday.

After two centuries of an epic infestation, Alaska's Rat Island finally may merit a name change. The island, part of a national wildlife refuge in the sprawling Aleutian chain, appears to be pest-free for the first time since rats overran it after a Japanese sailing ship wrecked there in the late 1700s.