Kuwait announced a "total curfew" will start Sunday to fight the coronavirus, but did not yet specify details.

Israel would rather have the United States keeping its 400 soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula, especially on the backdrop of growing tensions there and increased jihadist activity.

Turkey supports the embattled Tripoli government against rebel forces from the east led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter.

An exclusive report, citing sources on the ground in Syria and Libya, says Syrian teenagers are being sent to Libya to take part in the civil war there.

The US commander of Operation Inherent Resolve hopes allied forces will return to Iraq once the COVID-19 crisis subsides.

A California appeals court on Tuesday overturned most of a 2017 jury verdict awarding Quincy Jones $9.4 million in royalties and fees from the Michael Jackson estate over the use of Jones-produced Jackson hits in the concert film "This Is It" and two Cirque du Soleil shows.The state's 2nd District C...

Few images conjure the 1930s Depression like people standing in soup lines while farmers dump food they can't sell. That is a tragedy Southeast Asia is fighting to avoid, though it is starting to happen in pockets around the world in the midst of COVID-19. Supply chain disruptions, driven by the pan...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Wednesday the German soccer league Bundesliga can resume playing later this month, ending a two-month pause prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.Merkel made the announcement as one of a range of containment measures being relaxed, following a meeting with the c...

The United States is rallying support to back Taiwan's observer status in the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, leading into its annual meeting May 17-21."Today, I want to call on all nations, including those in Europe, to support Taiwan's participatio...

Online purchases rose by more than 11 percent on-year in March amid the COVID-19 pandemic.Statistics Korea said on Wednesday that total online transactions amounted to about US$10.3 billion, which accounted for about 28 percent of all retail sales, the highest proportion on record.Food was the main ...

Two people had the dubious distinction of being the first to wear electronic tags on their wrists for violating quarantine rules. Health authorities said the two were wearing the devices from 6 p.m. Tuesday and will have to keep them on for the rest of their self-quarantine period. One was caught in...

Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul visited the border truce village of Panmunjom on Wednesday, just three days after North Korea fired at a South Korean guard post in the demilitarized zone.Kim also visited the site of a guard post in the border town of Paju, Gyeonggi Province that was dismantl...

North Korea is close to completing a missile storage facility near Pyongyang Sunan International Airport. The facility is "almost certainly related to North Korea's expanding ballistic missile program," the Beyond Parallel website at the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported Tuesda...

A meme based on an image from a video clip of Lisa, a member of K-pop girl group Black Pink, has gone viral among global celebrities on Twitter. Lisa uploaded the 1 minute, 20 second video, which shows her performing a sexy dance routine, on her personal YouTube channel on April 20. Hollywood celebr...

U.S. electronic cigarette maker Juul Labs is pulling out of the Korean market just a year after its launch here amid health concerns over its products.The company announced on Wednesday, "We decided to stop operations in Korea, and have notified sellers here."Launched in the U.S. in 2015, Juul, a li...

K-pop boy band Bangtan Boys, also known as BTS, will give speeches during a virtual commencement event along with global figures including former U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, and pop star Lady Gaga. "Dear Class of 2020," organized by YouTube, will be streamed on June 6 to celeb...

Domestic air passenger numbers bounced back to over 100,000 last weekend for the first time in 10 weeks amid signs that the coronavirus epidemic is easing. Many Koreans chose the long weekend to travel to Jeju and other destinations in the south.According to the Korea Civil Aviation Association on W...

With the Korea Baseball Organization's regular season kicking off with no spectators allowed in the stadium, a large number of baseball fans have turned online to cheer for teams they support. The number of viewers who watched any of the five season opening games streamed online was 1.49 million in ...

Samsung chief Lee Jae-yong apologized on Wednesday for a massive fiddle that allowed him to take over leadership of the publicly traded conglomerate from his ailing father.Without offering to surrender his own position, Lee promised to end the hereditary transfer of leadership at some point in the f...

Samsung chief Lee Jae-yong faces two major legal hurdles over his underhand takeover of management control from his incapacitated father, who fell into a coma after a heart attack in 2014.The first legal hurdle is an ongoing investigation into Samsung BioLogics, which is accused of intentionally inf...

Korean automakers announced dismal overseas sales in April, with Hyundai's plummeting 70 percent and affiliate Kia's 55 percent. The U.S. and European economies have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, the total sales of Korea’s five automakers declined 51.6 percent on-year last ...

The National Intelligence Service here said Wednesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un did not have any heart treatment as widely rumored before he resurfaced last week.In a closed-door briefing to lawmakers, the NIS said Kim is believed to have conducted state affairs even when he was out of th...

The nominal Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee, who is in a vegetative state, remains Korea's richest man and one of only four Koreans on Bloomberg's list of top 500 billionaires in the world. The others are acting Samsung chief Lee Jae-yong, Seo Jung-jin, CEO of biopharmaceutical company Celltrion, and K...

The Environment Ministry is fining Mercedes-Benz W77.6 billion for illegally tampering with emissions tests, the biggest fine ever for a carmaker here (US$1=W1,225). The ministry on Wednesday said Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Porsche tampered with the emissions of around 40,000 diesel cars sold in Kore...

The Bundesliga soccer season will resume on May 16 in empty stadiums, picking up right where it left off two months ago amid the coronavirus pandemic.Thursday's announcement comes one day after clubs were told the season could restart following a meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and t...

A unanimous Supreme Court on Thursday threw out the convictions of two political insiders involved in the "Bridgegate" scandal that ultimately derailed the 2016 presidential bid of then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The justices found evidence of deception, corruption and abuse of power in the sch...

Authorities in southern India say at least five people are dead after a gas leak at an industrial plant Thursday.Over 100 residents in the city of Visakhapatnam were taken to local hospitals after a leak of styrene gas was detected coming from the LG Polymers chemical plant located on the outskirts ...

U.S. stocks closed higher Thursday as investors appeared more optimistic about an economic recovery. The Dow Jones industrial average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index were all up 1 percent.  For the tech-heavy Nasdaq, Thursday's close put it back in positive territory for the first time ...

The Trump administration is defending its decision not to release a detailed coronavirus reopening plan for the U.S., maintaining they would have been too narrowly-focused for the country's 50 states.The administration's defense comes in response to an Associated Press report that it shelved a repor...

Korea's exports of coronavirus test kits last month amounted to more than US$200 million, or eight times the month before, according to the Korea Customs Service on Thursday.They were exported to 103 countries.Brazil imported US$30 million worth of test kits, which is the biggest proportion of 13 pe...

Messaging app giant Kakao posted record sales in the first quarter thanks to increasing demand for services during the coronavirus epidemic.The company said Thursday that sales for January to March jumped 23 percent on-year to over W868.4 billion, and operating profit soared 219 percent to over W88....

Tours to the border truce village of Panmunjom could resume as early as next month.Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul told reporters Thursday that improved security measures will ensure that tours can resume on a trial basis after they were suspended last October as a preventive measure against Afri...

Genres: Comedy and Romance Running Time: 92 min. Directed by: Woody Allen Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Elle Fanning Synopsis: A young couple arrives in New York for a weekend where they are met with bad weather and a series of adventures.

Genres: Thriller Running Time: 106 min. Directed by: Francis Annan Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Ian Hart Synopsis: Based on the real-life prison break of two political captives, Escape From Pretoria is a race-against-time thriller set in the tumultuous apartheid days of South Africa.

"Eight," the new single by singer IU and Suga, a member of boy band Bangtan Boys, also known as BTS, swept many global music charts shortly after its release on Wednesday."Eight" reached No. 1 on major music-streaming sites here including Melon. It also topped iTunes charts in some 59 countries.The ...

Actress Choi Ji-woo posted a handwritten letter with a photo of herself showing her "baby bump" on her fan site on Thursday. "I now have 15 days left before my baby's due date. I took a selfie in front of my house. As I got pregnant at a late age and am preparing for delivery amid the coronavirus ep...

The KLPGA Tour has raised the total purse for its first major championship of the season, which resumes next week after a break of several months due to the coronavirus epidemic.The KLPGA said Thursday that it decided to raise the prize money for the KLPGA Championship from W2.3 billion to W3 billio...

U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly demanding US$1.3 billion a year to maintain American troops in Korea. That is a whopping 53.3 percent higher than the W1.4 trillion Korea had to pay last year. A senior U.S. official told the Chosun Ilbo on Thursday, "The U.S. faces many difficulties, includ...

Eastar Jet is expected to lay off dozens of workers after a voluntary retirement program drew only around 60 applicants. The troubled budget carrier decided last month to lay off 22 percent of its 1,600 employees, and now its takeover by Jeju Air has been delayed, savings are even more urgent. Accor...

Korea saw the biggest drop in private consumption on record last year even before the coronavirus epidemic struck.According to Statistics Korea on Thursday, the average monthly spending of households fell 3.2 percent to W2.46 million in 2019 (US$1=W1,226). That was the biggest decline since the gove...

President Moon Jae-in's approval rating has stood at over 60 percent for a third week running despite the dire state of the economy.Moon, who marks his third year in office this weekend, seems to owe his recovered popularity to the relatively smooth handling of the coronavirus epidemic. But it also ...

The government will stockpile 100 million face masks to prepare for a second wave of coronavirus but will also send them to about 70 countries in need."We've already allocated the budget necessary to stock up 100 million masks," Minister of Food and Drug Safety Lee Eui-kyung said Thursday. "Some 70 ...

The consolidated central government balance, which is derived by subtracting total fiscal spending from earnings, has resulted in a staggering W45 trillion deficit in the first quarter (US$1=W1,226). The fiscal deficit grows even further to W55 trillion if losses from the National Pension Service an...