China’s new President Xi Jinping hailed the strength of ties with African nations today, in a keynote speech given on his first trip as head of state to the continent.

Russia’s defence industry rolled out the red carpet for new Chinese President Xi Jinping amid speculation of top military deals as he wound up his high-profile visit to Moscow saying that the bond between the two countries provided “strategic balance to global order”.

After a Chinese tour group was robbed in Paris on Wednesday, China today called for stepped up security for its tourists in France.

German auto giant Volkswagen will recall 384,181 vehicles in China over gearbox defects, it said today after state television criticised it over the issue.

Engineers at Fukushima today partly succeeded in getting cooling systems back online after a power outage underlined the still-precarious state of the nuclear plant two years after the tsunami.

Toyota Motor will recall 2,09,000 sport utility vehicles it has sold in the United States due to a possible seat-belt fault, Kyodo News reported today.

Amid concerns over thousands of carcasses of pigs clogging Shanghai river, a court in China’s Zhejiang Province today convicted 46 people involved in processing and selling meat from diseased pigs.

Anti-nuclear rallies took place across Japan today on the eve of the second anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster, urging Japan’s new government to abandon nuclear power.

China’s annual consumer inflation rebounded to a 10 month high of 3.2 per cent in February fuelled by 6 per cent rise in food prices.

China today said cyberspace needs “rules and cooperation, not war” and refuted the allegations as “politically motivated” that the country’s military was involved in hacking attacks on US and other foreign targets.