A planned computer hardware and software upgrade for the United Nations is more than three months behind schedule and appears headed to exceed its budget by over $50 million, Fox News reported September 1.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai declared on December 8 that his country would not be capable of paying for the armed forces necessary to maintain internal security until at least 2024.

The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China — were joined by Germany in expressing disappointment over Iran’s reluctance to accept an International Atomic Energy Agency plan designed to forestall Iran’s nuclear weapons development.

Afghanistan is seen as the second most corrupt country in the world according to Transparency International, trailing behind only Somalia. Iraq did not fare much better in the rankings, coming in three spots behind Afghanistan at number five.

Communist China has executed nine men for crimes committed during violent, ethnically motivated riots that took place in China’s Xinjiang region in July. Eight of the men were from the Muslim Uighur minority, and the other was reported to be from the Han majority, although the official China News Service did not specify this.

The American television reporters who were imprisoned in North Korea, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, say they were “violently dragged” from Chinese soil into North Korea by North Korean soldiers. They now suspect their Korean-Chinese guide may have deliberately led them into a trap, AP reported on September 2.

More people die every single day in India from tuberculosis and diarrhea-related diseases than the total number who have perished worldwide from the H1N1 (swine flu) virus since its initial outbreak. Yet the Indian media’s constant focus on H1N1-related deaths, currently in the low 20s for all of India, has people rushing to purchase face masks in a panic that experts say is unjustified.

Following violence in China’s Xinjiang region on July 5, Communist Chinese authorities were quick to blame the Internet. Members of the predominantly Muslim ethnic group known as Uighurs used the Internet to spread information about what they say was a violent crack down on a peaceful protest.

“North Korea's Kim moves to anoint youngest son as heir,” Reuters announced in the title to a June 2 release. The North’s current communist dictator, Kim Jong-il, is apparently considering his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, to be his successor. USA Today reported also on June 2 that the South Korean paper Dong-a Ilbo was saying that North Koreans are singing a song “hailing the dictator's third son as ‘Commander Kim.’ ”

According to Times Online for December 17, researchers led by Professor Mike Stratton of the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge, England, have cracked the genetic codes of two human cancers: small-cell lung cancer and malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.