Kyodo News via Associated Press The body of longtime North Korean leader Kim Jong-il lies in state Tuesday in a memorial palace in Pyongyang, North Korea. The Stalinist Northeast Asian nation is in an 11-day period of official mourning.
"We can pay this money, but we need to know why we have to," Chinese artist Ai Weiwei says Tuesday of China's demand for $2.4 million in back taxes and fines from the dissident, who was detained for nearly three months earlier this year. "We cannot just unwittingly hand over a sum of money." (Kyodo News via the Associated Press)
Liu Xia, wife of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, is cut off from the outside world by the Chinese government. (Kyodo News via Associated Press)
** FILE ** China's military is seeking to purchase an unspecified large number of Russia's next-generation Saturn AL-117S jet engines, Russian officials are quoted as saying. The engines reportedly are used in at least one of the prototypes of the newest Chinese fighter, the stealth J-20 (pictured before a runway test in Chengdu, China, in January). (Kyodo News via Associated Press)
Kaisei Kubota and his grandmother, Yae, pray Saturday for victims in the northeastern Japanese town of Miyako, part of an area devastated by the March 11 tsunami. (Kyodo News via Associated Press)
ASSOCIATED PRESS/KYODO NEWS A villager pats a stray dog that came into her house during a brief visit to her house located near the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, in Kawauchi, Fukushima prefecture, northern Japan, last Tuesday.
Reporters surround National Police Agency Chief Takaharu Ando (center) for news on the search effort in Futaba, a town now almost deserted near the radiation-spewing Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan. Soldiers joined the effort Monday to find the remains of some of the 11,900 people still missing since the tsunami hit March 11. (Kyodo News via Associated Press)
** FILE ** In this April 12, 2011, photo released by the Japan Defense Agency via Kyodo News, Japanese soldiers wash an armored vehicle to remove potential radiation contamination at J-Village, a soccer training complex. The sports complex is about about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. (AP Photo/Japan Defense Agency via Kyodo News)
Residents of Iitate village listen Wednesday to their mayor explain a government plan to evacuate residents from the village that is about 24 miles from the radiation-spewing Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in northeastern Japan. (Kyodo News via Associated Press)
