Asia, Britain | featured news

Foreign ministers from the G8 group of rich countries failed to patch up deep divisions over Syria or come up with a plan on North Korea during a meeting in London on Thursday.

The murder of the British businessman, Neil Heywood, is still seen as stemming from a financial dispute, but the intelligence links add an enticing subplot to his death.

Myanmar's Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday began an emotional visit to Britain, where she left her family 24 years ago and took up her famous struggle against the military dictatorship in her homeland.

The British businessman whose murder has sparked political upheaval in China was poisoned after he threatened to expose a plan by a Chinese leader's wife to move money abroad, two sources with knowledge of the police investigation said.

The U.K. soccer giant chose Singapore for its $1 billion IPO so it could have a dual-share structure—one with voting rights and one without—that enables its owners to effectively retain control of the team.

A book chronicling a Chinese tragedy under Mao has won Britain's richest nonfiction book award, the Samuel Johnson Prize. Frank Dikotter's "Mao's Great Famine" won the 20,000 pound ($32,000) award at a ceremony in London on Wednesday.

Austria on Monday called for European nuclear power plants to face stress tests to reassure people worried by the crisis in Japan while Britain and France urged calm.