Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
China said Tuesday it is making every effort to ensure stability on the Korean Peninsula, responding to implications from U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump that it isn't putting enough pressure on Pyongyang over its nuclear program. Beijing didn't cause the nuclear crisis currently gripping the peninsula, but would oppose the spread of nuclear weapons, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters at a daily news briefing.
Now here's something you don't see every day: an F-16 fighter jet buzzing through the skies of North Korea and launching - fireworks. The plane roaring over people's heads at the country's first air show Sunday was actually a remote-controlled mock-up of the fabled U.S Air Force fighter.
The UN Security Council adopted a US-drafted resolution calling on all states to end nuclear weapons testing, a move that came over the opposition of some Republican lawmakers in Washington. The proposal passed the Security Council on Friday with 14 votes in favour and Egypt abstaining.
Iranian President Hasan Rouhani should be treated as an international pariah, not an honored guest, former Sen. Joe Lieberman said at a rally outside United Nations headquarters on Tuesday, a day before Rouhani is scheduled to speak there. Lieberman compared the Iranian regime to that led by Kim Jong-un in North Korea, saying both were "brutal" and totalitarian and spend "much too much money building weapons to threaten to their neighbors."
US President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang agreed on Monday to step up cooperation in the United Nations Security Council and in law-enforcement channels after North Korea's fifth nuclear test, the White House said. China and the United States are also targeting the finances of Liaoning Hongxiang Industrial, a Chinese conglomerate headed by a Communist Party cadre, that the Obama administration thinks has a role in assisting North Korea's nuclear program, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
North Korea's fifth nuclear test in defiance of international efforts has once again raised the question: why does a seemingly united world not stop the rogue nation from making trouble? Since it started testing missiles in 1993, the isolated state's nuclear and missile programmes, though erratic and often failures, have stirred up one crisis after another, despite sanctions unanimously imposed by members of the United Nations Security Council since 2006. Over the past decade, Pyongyang has been conducting nuclear tests at intervals of two or three years.
North Korea on Wednesday scoffed at the US Air Force's show of force a day earlier, saying Washington was "bluffing" and "blustering" with the flyover of B-1 bombers. "They are bluffing that B-1Bs are enough for fighting an all-out nuclear war," said a statement from Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency.
Four days after North Korea's fifth and possibly most powerful nuclear weapons test, the US Air Force responded with a show of force on Tuesday, flying two powerful B-1 bombers over South Korea. North Korea claimed Friday's test showed it had a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on ballistic missiles, a possibility that increases fears for US allies in the region and also poses a threat to US bases in South Korea, Japan and Guam.
Just a quick reminder that tomorrow, Sunday Cheryl Rofer, who was a chemist at Los Alamos Nuclear Labs and has worked on nuclear cleanup efforts, will be doing an Ask Me Anything with the Balloon Juice community about the recent North Korean nuclear weapons test tomorrow from 10 to 11 AM EST.
After the Democratic People's Republic of Korea announced it has successfully carried out another nuclear test on Friday, the international community voiced its strong condemnation over the event. The DPRK's state-run television made the announcement early Friday, making the test the fifth of its kind in the country.
The test -- Pyongyang's fifth and most powerful -- had enough force to "rip the heart out of a city," one expert said. It marks one more step in North Korea's efforts to develop the missiles and miniaturized warheads needed to reach its perceived enemies.
Hillary Clinton said Friday it was time for a "rethinking" of America's strategy for North Korea following the regime's latest test of a nuclear weapon. Donald Trump and his campaign chief, meanwhile, refused to outline the Republican presidential candidate's plans for defusing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
A key Republican lawmaker demanded on Friday that the Obama administration implement tougher sanctions against North Korea after its Thursday nuclear test of its largest nuclear bomb so far. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said the test shows the U.S. needs to be tougher on North Korea, and blamed the Obama administration for failing to implement the sanctions options approved by Congress just this year.
In another round of high-level purges in North Korea, Kim Jong Un has allegedly offed two senior officials by use of anti-aircraft guns, reports the Korea JoongAng Daily. The young dictator Kim Jong Un reportedly executed two high-ranking officials with an anti-aircraft gun earlier this month, a source inside the reclusive North Korea told the JoongAng Ilbo.
South Korea and the U.S. have agreed to share information about submarines in North Korean waters after the North successfully launched a ballistic missile from a submarine last week. A meeting of Navy brass from the two sides "discussed ways to analyze and share information about the maritime environment in the sphere of operations in waters around the Korean Peninsula," a military source said on Sunday.
In July, the US agreed to equip South Korea with America's most advanced missile defense system in order to counter North Korean threats. China, Pyongyang's closest ally, has said that since the bilateral decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery the North's missile tests have expanded and are poised to increase.
Passengers watch a TV screen broadcasting a news report on North Korea's submarine-launched ballistic missile fired from North Korea's east coast port of Sinpo, at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea, August 24, 2016 The UN Security Council late on Friday condemned a series of missile launches by North Korea after failing to do so earlier this month when China had wanted a statement also to oppose the planned deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea. North Korea test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Wednesday which flew about 500 km in the direction of Japan, the latest in a series of launches by the isolated nation in defiance of UN resolutions.
Some defense analysts have warned the U.S. Navy is not capable of dealing with all the ocean-borne threats in our modern world. This week, North Korea provided a reminder of how the naval power situation is changing.
Income inequality has surged near levels last seen before the Great Depression. The average income for the top 1 percent of households climbed 7.7 percent last year to $1.36 million, according to tax data.