Diplomats from Japan and China have said they are concerned after public protests in both countries about their territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea. In three Chinese cities, several thousand people unfurled banners and shouted anti-Japanese slogans. In the Japanese capital Tokyo, more than 1,000 nationalists attended the second anti-China rally to be held there since the dispute worsened last month.
Members of an entire Anglican church in southern England are taking up an offer by the Pope to convert to Roman Catholicism. The parishioners of St Peter's in Folkestone in southeast England voted to defect because they oppose the ordination of women bishops. Here is our religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott.
The church council of St Peter's in Folkestone decided in a vote to begin the process of converting to Catholicism. It comes a year after Pope Benedict made his controversial offer of a place in the Roman Catholic Church in which Anglicans could retain some of their practices and traditions. It's most unlikely that the congregation of St Peter's which lies in the diocese of the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will be allowed to take their church with them.
And the death has been announced of Benoit Mandelbrot, a maverick mathematician famous for his groundbreaking study of shapes known as fractals. He was 85 and died in the United States. Benoit Mandelbrot used fractal geometry to measure outlines, such as clouds and coastline, which were once considered unmeasurable. For example, an island on a map may appear smooth, but zooming in closer and closer reveals jagged edges that reproduce themselves to infinity.