News Headlines - 26 December 2015

▽Top Syrian rebel leader killed in air strike in Damascus suburb | Reuters

A top Syrian rebel leader and head of the most powerful insurgent group in the eastern suburbs of Damascus was killed in an aerial raid that targeted the group's headquarters, rebel sources and the Syrian army said on Friday.

▽Japan grows an island to check China’s territorial ambitions - FT.com

China’s artificial islands are fuelling a new struggle for control of Asia’s oceans, but while the regional superpower dredges military bases out of the ocean, Japan is growing an island in a bathtub... The bathtub, full of baby coral growing on iron plates, sits in a greenhouse at the Deep Seawater Research Institute on the island of Kumejima. Workers explain how they brought coral from Okinotorishima and harvested eggs. They will grow the baby corals in this laboratory for a year then transplant them back to the atoll.

▽Japan considering 'comfort women' fund after decades-long dispute with South Korea - Telegraph

Japan and South Korea look set to settle a bitter dispute over Japanese wartime sex slaves, which has strained relations between the two countries for more than half a century.

▽Japanese Researchers Likely to Claim 113th Chemical Element Discovery

Japanese researchers from the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science (RNC) will most likely be given credit for discovering a new chemical element (number 113 in the periodic table), the Sankei Shimbun newspaper reports.

▽Nintendo 2DS finally coming to Japan bundled with the original Pokemon games

Two years after its western release, the Nintendo 2DS is finally coming to Japan.
The handheld will be available in four semi-transparent colors (red, green, blue, and yellow), all of which come matched with one of the original Pokémon games pre-installed the system.