More than 1,000 villagers clashed with police in central China following a land dispute with construction workers that left one person dead, reports said Thursday. Fighting initially broke out Tuesday between villagers in Liling city in Hunan province and construction workers at a building site ...

The family of missing Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has been tipped for a Nobel Peace Prize, has defected to the United States, rights activists said Thursday. New York-based Human Rights in China and Radio Free Asia said Gao's wife and children arrived in the United States on Wednesday and were seeking asylum. "It was extraordinarily difficult to ...

The head of an Egyptian firm which is launching a mobile phone service in North Korea arrived Monday in the capital Pyongyang, official media in the secretive communist state reported. The Orascom Telecom Holding delegation is headed by its chairman and CEO Naguib Sawiris, the Korean Central News Agency said without giving details of the purpose of the visit. Orascom ...

A mobile phone service will be launched this month in North Korea but it is unclear who will be allowed to use it in the secretive communist state, a news report said Thursday. The service is due to begin in Pyongyang on December 10, US broadcaster Radio Free Asia said in a Korean-language website report which quoted a Chinese trader ...