It conjures up visions of sci-fi movies and video games but advances in high-tech weaponry are raising fears of a space arms race. China is looking to boost its military power in space. Visiting air force headquarters on Monday, President Xi Jinping told officers to 'speed up air and space integration and sharpen their offensive and defensive capabilities'. Beijing maintains that its space programme is peaceful but that stance was questioned when China used a ground-based missile to destroy one of its own satellites in orbit in 2007; and a rocket launch last May, billed as a research mission, was suspected of being a test for a new anti-satellite weapon. The US has developed its own futuristic weaponry and is planning to deploy the world’s first-ever combat laser. The Laser Weapon System looks like a small telescope, but it's powerful enough to fire laser beams through steel. The laser is capable of shooting down things like enemy drones, but unlike in the movies, you will

Pro-Russian armed men reportedly take control of Ukrainian troop carriers in Slovyansk, as soldiers are "taken hostage". Pro-Russian armed men have taken control of Ukrainian troop carriers that were driven into the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk, the Reuters news agency reported. A soldier manning one of the carriers now under the control of pro-Russian separatists said on Wednesday, that he was a member of Ukraine's 25th paratrooper division from Dnipropetrovsk, and that they had switched support to Russia. "All the soldiers and the officers are here," he said. "We are all boys who won't shoot our own people." The news comes as Ukraine's defence ministry said a pro-Russian armed group had taken two of its soldiers "hostage" in the separatist eastern region of Lugansk. The ministry said an officer and a soldier were seized by "extremists" and taken to an unknown destination after they pulled over to repair their vehicl

By ABC Obviously if there is bloodshed in the east, I think that president Putin will be forced to take some sort of measures. I think that what people don't understand in the West is that there are strong feelings running in Russia. Download Audio Transcript  " ABC " - CHRIS UHLMANN: Western governments say Russia is orchestrating the violence in Ukraine. As you would expect, the view on this crisis is very different in Russia. In a phone call, president Vladimir Putin told his US counterpart Barack Obama that the speculation was unfounded. So to get a Russian view of the crisis, I spoke with Alexander Nekrassov, who is a former adviser to the Kremlin. Alexander Nekrassov, the West is saying that Russian soldiers are behind the unrest in eastern Ukraine. Is that correct? ALEXANDER NEKRASSOV: The Russian government has already indicated several times - and very recently foreign minister Lavrov said - that Russia has no presence in eastern Ukraine at all - neither soldiers