International

LONDON—Richard Branson, billionaire founder of the Virgin group, has revealed he was targeted by a fraudster posing as Britain’s defense minister who tried to get him to contribute $5 million to a supposed secret ransom payment. Appealing for information to help identify the conman, Branson said he suspected the same person had later impersonated him […]

A strong magnitude-6.0 earthquake struck off the Pacific Island nation of Tonga on Wednesday, Oct. 18. It hit 12 a.m. local time around 62 miles south-southeast of Pangai, a village, the U.S. Geological Survey said. There were no immediate reports of damage by the quake. A tsunami warning was also not issued by the Pacific […]

North Korean despot Kim Jong Un reportedly had a third child after there was speculation over why his wife Ri Sol Ju, a former singer, disappeared from the public eye for several months. The South Korean Yonhap News Agency reported that Kim and Ri had their third child in February. The news outlet cited South […]

North Korea has once again warned of “nuclear war,” but it added a new wrinkle in its threats by saying it intends to make a missile capable of hitting the U.S. East Coast. On Monday, Oct. 16, North Korea’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Kim In Ryong warned that the situation on the Korean Peninsula, which includes […]

Malaysia said on Tuesday it has received proposals from three companies offering to continue the search for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which has been missing since 2014, but no decision has been made yet. MH370 vanished three years ago somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people […]

PARACHINAR/PESHAWAR, Pakistan—A suspected U.S. drone strike killed five people on the mountainous Pakistan-Afghanistan border, government and militant sources said on Tuesday, days after a Canadian-American couple held hostage by the Taliban were freed from the same area. Taliban sources said at least five members of the Pakistan-based Haqqani militants, allied to the Taliban, were killed […]

Warships from eight NATO countries participated in live-fire self-defense exercises of ship and missile systems near Scotland on Sunday, Oct. 15, the U.S. Department of Defense said. Ships from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States defended against a medium-range missile as well as three anti-ship cruise missiles. […]

WASHINGTON—The United States for the time being will stay in an international nuclear deal with Iran, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said on Sunday, Oct. 15, adding that the Trump administration wanted to weigh a “proportionate” response to Tehran’s actions on the world stage. “I think right now, you’re going to see us […]

South Korea is scrambling to patch up vulnerabilities in cyberspace, after a shocking report emerged that North Korean hackers had stolen a large cache of military documents last year. The compromised information includes a top secret war plan to remove Kim Jong Un, the head of the North Korean regime. On Oct. 9, Democratic Party […]

The United States is withdrawing from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), citing the U.N. agency’s “anti-Israel bias.” The U.S. State Department alerted UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova on Oct. 12 of its decision to withdraw from the organization, requesting to remain only as an observer. Its withdrawal will take effect on Dec. […]

Is this your worst nightmare? Only for the superstitious. Brave airline flyers boarded flight number 666 to HEL, (the code for Helsinki Airport in the capital of Finland) today on Friday, Oct. 13—for the last time. While most would probably avoid this flight, Finnair, the largest airline in Finland has been flying fearless passengers from Copenhagen, Denmark, to […]

The U.S. and South Korean militaries will soon form a plan to create a new joint command between the two countries, becoming effective when Seoul regains its wartime operational control (OPCON) of the country’s troops. The Ministry of National Defense announced the plans on Thursday, South Korean media agency Yonhap News reported. The announcement comes a day before […]

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Thursday that Hurricane Ophelia is now the 10th hurricane of the 2017 season. The storm is moving to the northeast, and it has maximum sustained winds of 90 mph, the agency said. It’s currently located about 700 miles southwest of the Azores islands. “There are no coastal watches or […]

Lola Ogunyemi, the model that outraged social media users felt was denigrated in an ad for Dove soap, said the ad wasn’t racist at all. Ogunyemi explained that the screenshots of the longer, 30-second TV ad confused the context and made the ad seem like something it wasn’t. The pictures posted to social media show […]

A young bride died of a mysterious illness while vacationing on her honeymoon in Fiji, it was reported. Kelly Clarke, a nurse from Sydney, Australia, was with her husband Chase at the Outrigger resort in Fiji’s Sigatoka. She began feeling sick on Wednesday, Oct.4, according to the Daily Telegraph. At first, she thought it was a […]

North Korean hackers may have stolen a trove of documents from South Korea, including plans to assassinate communist dictator Kim Jong Un. South Korean lawmaker Rhee Cheol-hee, who sits on the defense committee, confirmed the hack to BBC. The hackers stole 235 gigabytes of documents, 80 percent of which are yet to be identified. The […]

STOCKHOLM—U.S. academic Richard Thaler, who helped popularize the idea of “nudging” people toward doing what was best for them, won the 2017 Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for his work on how human nature affects supposedly rational markets. Influential in the field of behavioral economics, his research showed how traits such as lack of self-control […]

As more evidence mounts about the state-sanctioned practice of organ harvesting in China, the public is calling for light to be shed. Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH), an organization dedicated to raising awareness about the phenomenon, recently announced that in the past year, it has garnered 245,000 signatures from people around the world calling […]

MOSCOW—The Kremlin said on Monday that talks with Saudi Arabia over Moscow supplying Riyadh with advanced S-400 air defense missile systems had gone well so far despite talk of a possible U.S.-Saudi arms deal. Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Saudi Arabia‘s King Salman for talks at the Kremlin last week during which Saudi Arabia said it had signed a memorandum of understanding on the purchase of the S-400s. A day later, the Pentagon said […]

ANKARA—The U.S. mission in Turkey and subsequently Turkish mission in Washington mutually reduced visa services after a U.S. mission employee was detained in Turkey last week, saying they needed to reassess each other’s commitment to the security of their personnel. Last week, a U.S. consulate employee in Istanbul was arrested on charges of links to […]