Expectations are growing in Japan that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping for an ice-breaking chat next month, while an aide signaled Abe may postpone visits to a shrine for war dead that have infuriated Beijing in the past.
China took last place in an aid transparency index listing 68 donors released on Wednesday, which said the majority of the world's donors were not sharing enough information about their activities.
Fighting intensified between India and Pakistan in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir on Wednesday, wounding a dozen along a more than 200-km (124-mile) stretch of border.
The captain of a South Korean ferry that capsized in April killing about 300 people, most of them school children, apologized in court on Wednesday for his failure to rescue passengers in the country's worst maritime disaster for decades.
