South Korea on Monday banned sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets into the North, in a move rights activists condemned as a violation of free speech and a "misguided strategy" to please the North Korean regime. Activist groups have long sent flyers critical of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un...

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab called on authorities in Hong Kong to stop targeting Jimmy Lai on Monday after the democracy activist and media tycoon was charged under the city’s national security law. “The Hong Kong National Security Law breaches the internationally-binding Joint...

Hackers believed to be working for Russia have been monitoring internal email traffic at the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, according to people familiar with the matter, adding they feared the hacks uncovered so far may be the tip of the iceberg. The hack is so serious it led to a...

US President Donald Trump has rejected a plan for early COVID-19 vaccines for the White House staff.  Trump's remarks came after multiple reports said that senior US government officials will lead the nation by getting vaccinated. "People working in the White House should receive...

Japan and South Korea grappled with surging coronavirus cases and growing public frustration on Monday as Japan’s prime minister tiptoed around a contentious travel subsidy programme while an anxious South Korean president warned of harsh curbs. Japan reported more than 3,000 new cases on...

Long a mere formality, a vote on Monday by members of the Electoral College to formally recognize Joe Biden as the next US president has taken on unusual import this year with Donald Trump stubbornly refusing to admit defeat. The results of the November 3 vote have been certified by each of...

Sudan's Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok arrived in Ethiopia on Sunday with what a senior Sudanese government source said was an offer to mediate in the conflict in its northern Tigray region, a proposal Ethiopia's government dismissed as unnecessary. Hamdok, who was accompanied by Sudanese...

 Shortly after President-elect Joe Biden’s victory last month, Cabinet hopeful Marcia Fudge pointedly noted that Black people are often typecast into positions such as housing secretary. On Friday, Biden announced Fudge, a prominent Black congresswoman from Ohio, was his nominee for...

Just days after bushfires threatened an Australian World Heritage site, thousands were bracing for floods on the subtropical east coast on Sunday, with beaches closed and the authorities urging people to sandbag their homes. With as much as 475 millimetres (18.7 inches) of rain in the...

Four Azeri servicemen were killed when their units were attacked in areas adjacent to the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said on Sunday. Authorities in Armenia said six of their servicemen had been wounded in what they described as an Azeri military...

Dozens of Taliban fighters were killed in fierce overnight fighting between Afghan forces and militants who attacked multiple checkpoints in the insurgent bastion of Kandahar, officials said Sunday. Taliban militants attacked checkpoints in five districts surrounding the city of Kandahar,...

The first trucks carrying a COVID-19 vaccine for widespread use in the United States were set to pull out of a Michigan manufacturing plant Sunday, with the shots that are critical to stopping the nation's coronavirus outbreak destined to reach states a day later. Shipments of the Pfizer...

South Korea reported 1,030 new coronavirus cases Sunday, a record high for a second day in a row as the country struggles to tackle a third wave of infections. The country had previously been held up as a model of how to combat the pandemic, with the public largely following social...

 The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a lawsuit backed by President Donald Trump to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, ending a desperate attempt to get legal issues rejected by state and federal judges before the nation’s highest court. The court’s order was its second this...

The United States could start injecting the first Americans with the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine by Monday, the country's health secretary said Friday. Alex Azar told news channels that final details were being ironed out, after an expert committee convened by regulators voted to grant...

In a development the United Nations calls "disturbing," Ethiopia Friday said it is returning thousands of refugees who ran from camps in its Tigray region as war swept through, putting them on buses back to the border area with Eritrea, the country the refugees originally fled. The news...

US President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were named Time magazine's 2020 "Person of the Year" on Thursday for their election victory over Donald Trump. "For changing the American story, for showing that the forces of empathy are greater than the furies of...

Hong Kong media tycoon and Beijing critic Jimmy Lai was charged under a new national security law Friday, accused of colluding with foreign forces, the latest pro-democracy figure targeted under the legislation. The city's new national security unit charged him "with one count of 'collusion...

In another record-high daily death toll from COVID-19, the US for the first time has seen the number of fatalities top 3,000. According to a running tally by Johns Hopkins University, a total of 3,124 fatalities and more than 221,000 cases were recorded on Wednesday. The grim milestone...

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday renewed a call for a change of leadership in Armenia, while offering the country the chance of joining a regional cooperation group alongside Azerbaijan. Erdogan made the comments in Baku, where he reviewed a military parade marking Armenia’s...