Rich socialite Alva Belmont spent a fortune building a Chinese teahouse behind her mansion estate in this seaside resort for Gilded Age industrialists. Now, nearly a century later, the Chinese are arriving in her backyard.

With China's image battered by the turmoil over Tibet and the torch relay, a human rights activist is urging Chinese leaders to pardon long-jailed prisoners in a gesture that could help dispel the rancor surrounding the Beijing Olympics.

Two years after coming out of the bush, Nepal's Maoists are marching across the Himalayan kingdom - just not in the way many thought they would.

Communist rebels fatally shot five policemen and a luggage porter and seriously wounded two others in an attack on a railroad station in eastern India, police said Monday.