A controversial Italian doctor announced Friday that the world's first human head transplant was "imminent" and that it would take place in China because his efforts to get backing for the project were ignored by the medical communities in the U.S. and Europe. "The Americans did not understand," Sergio Canavero said in a press conference in Vienna, Austria, as he discussed a surgery that if it works will be an audacious and near-miraculous therapy that defies decades of scientific wisdom, raises profound biomedical ethical questions and represents another area in which Beijing is seeking to assume the mantle of global leadership from climate to economic governance. Canavero said the Chinese government and Ren Xiaoping, a Chinese doctor with whom he is partnering to perform the procedure, would confirm the surgery's date "within days." Canavero previously vowed to hold the operation before the end of the year. "Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to restore China back to greatness and he