JAPAN

Collated medallists after the eighth day of pool competition on day 16 of the world swimming championships in Shanghai on Sunday (* indicates medal winners on Sunday):

Congressional leaders and President Obama reached a deal to raise the federal debt ceiling in an effort to avoid the first U.S. default but a series of crucial votes in both chambers of Congress remain before the President can sign it into law.

Japan's top government spokesman welcomed the U.S. debt ceiling agreement on Monday and said he hoped it would stabilise markets.

Russian cosmonauts will undertake a spacewalk leaving the International Space Station on Wednesday to move a cargo boom from one airlock to another, install a prototype laser communications system and deploy Ham Radio's amateur micro-satellite.

The world population is expected to breach seven billion this year, which is more than twice the number of people that lived on the earth just 50 years ago, according to recent projections by the United Nations. Is the world prepared for it?

The global population will likely exceed seven billion in 2011 and is expected to exceed nine billion by 2050. By 2100, it will reach 10 billion, said a Harvard School of Public Health press release about an article published in Science magazine.

Russian Space Agency Roscosmos went back on its words on Thursday after an uproar over a statement by agency?s deputy head, who said on Wednesday that Russia and its partners plan to sink the International Space Station in the ocean.

Hollywood is on global expansion overdrive, with the international box office racking up a larger percentage of overall film revenues than ever before.

How much does Brian Cashman care about bolstering the rotation?

Nokia and Samsung has been demoted with Apple becoming the top smartphone vendor in the fierce global mobile device war. According to reports, Apple has sold over 20 million iPhones along with over 9 million iPads in the second quarter.

Hollywood is on global expansion overdrive, with the international box office racking up a larger percentage of overall film revenues than ever before.

Nokia's tale of woe continues while Apple soars higher than ever before. The companies continue to head in opposite directions.

Former New York Yankee pitcher Hideki Irabu was found dead on Wednesday. His body was reportedly found by his friend. He was 42 years old.

"Higgs Boson," "Large Hadron Collider (LHC)" and CERN seem to have more or less become household words, even though it will take many patient sessions with a physicist to fully understand what is going on at CERN and what are the implications of a research of this large a scale.

The Russian space agency's deputy head Vitaly Davydov?s comments forced Russia?s space agency to back off from an international outcry on Thursday.

Japanese imports of rare earths from China fell 13 percent in June to 1,386 tonnes as a rise in prices made it unaffordable to many Japanese hi-tech companies.

Star baseball player Hideki Irabu was found hanging in his California home, and the police have said it was a case of 'apparent suicide'.

Former New York Yankee pitcher Hideki Irabu was found dead on Wednesday. His body was reportedly found by his friend. He was 42 years old.

Asian stocks struggled and the dollar wavered on Friday as U.S. lawmakers squabbled over a compromise to avoid an unprecedented debt default, while growing worries about Europe's debt crisis weighed on the euro, adding to investor wariness.

Now that NASA is done with its Space Shuttle Program, the $100 billion International Space Station it worked so hard to build will stay afloat in space until at least 2020, according to comments by Russia's space agency.

Space Exploration Technologies, a privately owned firm developing a space taxi with U.S.-government backing, plans to launch its second test capsule on November 30 and send it all the way to the International Space Station, a company manager said on Thursday.