China is the third nation to develop its own satellite navigation system, after the US and Russia. While it will be open to the public, analysts worry about its military uses.

North Korea's outlook has earned it the title of the 'hermit kingdom.' The country is both cut off from the wider world and intensely focused on its neighbors.

Politicians on both extremes think voters want stubborness in the budget battle. They're wrong.

AP - Last-minute shoppers gave merchants a solid lift during the final week before Christmas, a mall trade group said Wednesday.

AP - North Korea's next leader escorted his father's hearse in an elaborate state funeral on a bitter, snowy day Wednesday, bowing and saluting in front of tens of thousands of citizens who wailed and stamped their feet in grief for Kim Jong Il.

AP - Iran's navy chief warned Wednesday that his country can easily close the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, the passageway through which a sixth of the world's oil flows.