NEW YORK — Speeches in the European Parliament rarely rate attention, and the same, sadly, can be said of the remarks of the EU’s first “foreign minister,” Catherine Ashton, who has been struggling to establish her position as the international voice of Europe since taking office in December. But Ashton, who has suffered the slings and arrows of turf-conscious French, German, British and other European foreign ministries for months now, on Wednesday did something rarely done by diplomats: She was frank.

MATSUYAMA, Japan — Japan is going "pluthermal" and anti-nuclear activists are up in arms. The term, coined by Japan, refers to using mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel containing plutonium in nuclear reactors, instead of normal uranium fuel. Ignoring months of protests and sit-ins, Japan's first nuclear reactor went "pluthermal" last December.

MOSCOW, Russia — Many Western observers were shocked not just by what they found within the new military doctrine that Russia adopted last month, but by what appeared to be missing.

Editor's note: China's Bubble is a four-part multimedia series on an emerging threat to China's booming economy — a residential real estate bubble, particularly in the business and finance hub of Shanghai.