JAPAN

It is just amazing how we never learn from other people's mistakes.

Asian stock markets mostly advanced Wednesday but gains were capped as investors are opting for caution ahead of the EU summit that begins on Thursday.

The Chinese government has spent billions to buy Japanese stocks as the euro zone crisis lingers, in an effort to diversify its investments, the AFP reported.

South Korea announced it will halt imports of Iranian crude oil as the European Union's ban on insuring oil shipments from Iran comes into effect toward the end of the month.

According to the Economic and Social Research Institute's latest Perinatal Statistics Report, Ireland's birth rate increased nearly 30 percent over the past ten years, equating to about 17,000 more births in 2010 than ten years prior.

Nissan Motor Company (Tokyo: 7201) CEO Carlos Ghosn was the highest-paid CEO in Japan in the last fiscal year with a salary and bonus totaling 987 million yen ($12.5 million), according to Reuters.

A new study says the swine flu pandemic of 2009 might have killed as many as 579,000 people. The original count, compiled by the World Health Organization, put the number at 18,500.

Asian Stock markets mostly declined Tuesday as market participants continued to doubt the ability of European leaders in tackling the debt crisis at a European summit later this week.

In the 1950s, a consumer who wanted to buy eyeglasses borrowed $40 from the bank. Fast-forward to 2012: how about using your digital wallet to buy those glasses with your mobile phone? Maybe later this year.

The market sentiment is likely to remain subdued in the coming week as increasing expectations of a further global slowdown and economic headwinds from the euro zone will continue to weigh.

UNESCO's World Heritage Committee meets this week to select new additions to the World Heritage List. But with little money and over 900 sites already, is the World Heritage emblem now just a fancy name for a lame duck?

Japan's economy appears to be weakening in the April-June quarter as business conditions deteriorate and exports flatten off, suggesting that the recovery may have lost momentum.

Just weeks after E3 2012, Nintendo has announced its next release in its family of gaming products. Fans may be awaiting more information on the Wii U console, but the company has just unveiled its Nintendo 3DS XL handheld, a follow-up to the three-dimensional portable gaming device.

Four years ago, for every five shipping containers that Asia sent to the U.S., America sent back only two, resulting in gluts of empty containers at U.S. West Coast ports and a widening trade deficit with countries like China and Japan.

Asian stock markets declined Friday, following a slump in the Wall Street overnight, as weak manufacturing reports from Europe, China and the U.S. dampened hopes for a global economic recovery.

Asian shares fell Friday and the safe-haven dollar hovered near its highest in a week-and-a-half after weak manufacturing data from the United States, Europe and China heightened fears over the outlook for global growth.

Japan's gaping trade shortfall with the EU could exacerbate its fiscal woes by worsening its debt situation and subjecting Japanese government bonds to rising yields in the face of mounting market fears and increasing skepticism among U.S investors.

Asia's top buyers of Iranian crude oil have found ways to continue the imports, bypassing the U.S. and European Union sanctions on trade with Tehran, to avoid depending entirely on the Saudi Arabian oil amid unsteady supplies from Libya and Iraq.

The millionaires in Asia outnumber their counterparts in North America for the first time while the overall financial wealth of high net worth individuals (HNWI) declined across all regions except the Middle East, according to a new study.

Asian stocks struggled and commodities fell broadly on Thursday after the Federal Reserve ramped up monetary stimulus by expanding Operation Twist, but disappointed some investors who had been hoping for more aggressive measures.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday extended its monetary stimulus to a U.S. economic recovery that looks at risk of stalling, renewing its effort to depress borrowing costs by selling short-term bonds to buy longer-dated ones.