This gesture represented an early ripple before a wave of modernity was allowed to sweep through his secretive mountain kingdom, a world all of its own between China and the northeastern tip of India.

BBC: Bhutan, the kingdom of the clouds

It has investments in Australia, Brazil, China, Iceland, Guinea, Russia, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

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Part of the research study included a survey of 500 business travellers and executives from the US, United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil and China.

BBC: Business travel is big business

While Obama has spoken of his hope of agreeing with Russia on a reduction in the number of nuclear warheads, we are nowhere near to seeing an end to nuclear weapons, which are currently in the possession of the U.S., Russia, China, India, the United Kingdom, France, Pakistan and Israel.

CNN: Analysis: Did Obama win Nobel for not being Bush?

But in a third analysis of research in biology and medicine, though, China barely made a dent, with the United Kingdom coming in a distant second to the U.S.. SciVal says American researchers published 250, 000 scientific papers on biology or medicine, 29% of the global total, in 2009.

FORBES: China Passed The U.S. In Information Technology. What's Next?

Also speaking today were the representatives of the United Kingdom, Uganda, Mexico, Costa Rica, France, Libya, Japan, Burkina Faso, China, Croatia, United States and Viet Nam.

UN: Security Council