Firas and Zeina survived Beirut's port explosion unscathed but still sustained severe injuries -- not in the disaster itself but in the heavy-handed crackdown on the street protests that followed. Firas Hamdan, 33, a lawyer who was filming one demonstration, was hit in the heart by a lead...

Thousands of people fled their homes in northern California on Wednesday as hundreds of fast-moving wildfires spread across the region, burning houses and leading to the death of a helicopter pilot. In Vacaville -- a city of about 100,000 people located between the state capital Sacramento...

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called a rare congress of the ruling Workers' Party for January to address policy "shortcomings" and lay out a new five-year plan for the isolated nation's moribund economy. Kim made the announcement at a full meeting of the party's central committee on...

Worn down by economic crisis and traumatised by Beirut's monster blast, the Rafic Hariri murder verdict after a 15-year wait for "the truth" came as an anti-climax for despondent Lebanese. The Netherlands-based special court set up to investigate and try suspects in the 2005 assassination...