China's monthly trade surplus jumped 16.4 percent in June to $31.6 billion, official data showed Thursday, as exports and imports both rose in the latest sign of recovering strength in the world's second-largest economy.
A lone gunman killed at least six people, most of them children, during a domestic dispute in Texas that triggered a tense ongoing standoff with armed police.
Canadian pop star Justin Bieber, who has been in trouble with the law in recent months, got two years of probation in Los Angeles Wednesday over an egg-throwing attack.
A lost Van Dyck painting spotted on a British television programme failed to find a buyer at a Tuesday auction despite estimates it would fetch 1,000 times its original price.
Japan's Mitsui O.S.K. Lines announced plans for the world's first regular commercial shipping route through the Arctic Ocean, starting in 2018, in an attempt to reduce sailing times.
US technology giant Apple has lost a lawsuit against a Chinese state regulator over patent rights to voice recognition software such as the iPhone's "Siri", a Beijing court said.
A dozen mothers in an asylum-seeker camp have reportedly attempted suicide so their children can be settled in Australia, piling pressure on Prime Minister Tony Abbott who said Wednesday he would not be morally blackmailed.
Typhoon Neoguri bore down on the Japanese mainland after slamming into the southern Okinawa island chain, killing two people and leaving a trail of damage.
Federal investigators are probing how vials of smallpox made their way into a storage room at a Food and Drug Administration lab near the US capital, health authorities said.
The Syrian National Coalition, the main exiled opposition group seeking the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, elected Saudi-based Syrian opposition figure Hadi el-Bahra as its new president.
The Israeli air force bombed 160 targets in the Gaza Strip overnight as it pressed a widescale campaign to stop volleys of Palestinian rocket fire, an army official said.
Islamist Shebab rebels carried out a major bomb and armed attack on Somalia's presidential palace late Tuesday, penetrating the heavily fortified complex in the capital Mogadishu before blowing themselves up.
Indonesians voted in the tightest and most divisive presidential election since the downfall of dictator Suharto, pitting Jakarta governor Joko Widodo against Prabowo Subianto, an ex-general with a chequered human rights record.
