Security guards stand outside a Louis Vuitton shop in Shanghai ahead of its opening. The luxury group plans to put the brakes on worldwide growth to preserve the exclusivity of its brands.

 On February 4th, Japan’s Finance Minister Taro Aso and senior Myanmar officials discussed bilateral economic cooperation, including how to help small Japanese businesses enter the emerging market.

An overview of the cremation

A 22-year-old man injured in the disco fire in Brazil has died, bringing the death toll to 237, officials said Sunday.

A 5.5-magnitude earthquake struck off eastern Taiwan on Saturday, the island's Seismology Center said, but there were no immediate reports of any damage or casualties.

French President Francois Hollande declared on January 28 that Mali’s military forces, supported by nearly 3,000 French soldiers, are pushing north in an offensive against Islamist rebels.

Senior officials from 21 member economies of the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum convened in Indonesia on January 27-28 to attend APEC’s sub-committee on Standards and Conformance (SCSC).

Japanese auto giant Toyota said Wednesday it would recall nearly 1.3 million vehicles globally due to airbag and windscreen wiper problems.

  For the study, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle analyzed data from two prior population-based case-control studies involving a total of 1,549 men diagnosed with prostate cancer and 1,492 age-matched healthy controls. The men were Caucasian and African-American Seattle-area residents and ranged in age from 35 to 74 years. Participants were asked to fill out a dietary questionnaire about their usual food intake, including specific deep-fried foods. The researchers found that men who ate French fries, fried chicken, fried fish and/or doughnuts at least weekly had an increased risk of prostate cancer that ranged from 30 to 37 percent. Weekly consumption of these foods was associated also with a slightly greater risk of more aggressive prostate cancer. The researchers controlled for factors such as age, race, family history of prostate cancer, body-mass index and PSA screening history when calculating the association between eating deep-fried foods and prostate cancer risk. Possible mechanisms behind the increased cancer risk, the researchers hypothesize, include the fact that when oil is heated to temperatures suitable for deep frying, potentially carcinogenic compounds can form in the fried food. They include acrylamide (found in carbohydrate-rich foods such as French fries), heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (chemicals formed when meat is cooked at high temperatures), aldehyde (an organic compound found in perfume) and acrolein (a chemical found in herbicides). These toxic compounds are increased with re-use of oil and increased length of frying time.

A spokesman for the EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on Monday Iran had not agreed to her proposal, issued on behalf the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany, to meet at the end of January.

The sexual assault of 59 military recruits by drill instructors at a Texas air base was a "stunning" case that cannot be allowed to happen again, the top U.S. Air Force general told lawmakers on Wednesday as he testified before Congress about steps to address the problem.