VATICAN CITY (AFP) -- French President Emmanuel Macron made his first official visit to the Vatican on Tuesday where he held an unusually long meeting with Pope Francis. The tete-a-tete between the Argentine pontiff and Macron in the Vatican‘s ornate library lasted 57 minutes -- the longest between Francis and a head of state. Past talks between the pope and a president have never exceeded 50...

HANOI (AFP) -- Flash floods and landslides killed 15 people in Vietnam‘s mountainous north, officials said Tuesday, after storms ravaged homes and wiped out crops and infrastructure. At least 12 people are still missing after the weekend floods, and hundreds of police and soldiers have been deployed to help clean-up efforts. Vietnam is frequently lashed by harsh weather in the rainy season be...

A Korean Air plane carrying 176 passengers and 13 crew members made an emergency landing at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport Saturday night. No injuries were reported, according to Kyodo News. The Boeing 777-200 heading from Seoul’s Gimpo Airport to Tokyo was forced to land 25 minutes ahead of schedule at 8:40 p.m. Saturday after a fire alarm went off in the cockpit. There was no actual fire on the plane...

Four South Koreans have died and four others have been injured in a traffic accident in Oregon, the United States, Seoul's foreign ministry said Saturday. According to the ministry, a minivan carrying the eight people collided with a pickup truck in Oregon's Clatsop County at around 11:00 a.m. on Friday (local time). The four people taken to hospitals sustained injuries that are not life-threat...

The foreign ministry said Sunday that there are no reports of South Korean passengers on a plane that crashed in Cuba. "The South Korean Embassy in Mexico confirmed through the Cuban government that there were no South Korean passengers," said an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A total of 110 people were reported dead Friday when the Boeing 737 crashed close to Jose Marti Internati...

Veteran spy Gina Haspel will become the first female director of the CIA after six Democrats joined Republicans in a Senate confirmation vote that overrode concerns about her role in the spy agency's harsh interrogation program after 9/11. Thursday's 54-45 vote split both parties, and the margin was the closest for a CIA nominee in the nearly seven decades that a nod from the Senate has been req...

US business leaders on Tuesday said South Koreans may be able to enter the United States without having to stand in long lines or speak with customs officials at airports starting early next year. To sidestep lines, the "difficult and sometimes threatening" interviews when they enter the US, about 1,000 out of seven million Koreans with valid passports have enrolled in the global entry program w...

PARIS (AP) -- The man behind a deadly knife attack in central Paris was born in Chechnya and had been on police radar for radicalism, and his parents have been detained for questioning, French authorities said Sunday. Counterterrorism investigators are working to determine whether the man who stabbed five people in a busy neighborhood in the heart of the French capital Saturday night had any...

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) -- At least nine people were killed and more than 30 injured when militants detonated bombs and stormed a government building Sunday in a continuing attack in an eastern Afghan city, officials said. A thick column of smoke rose into the sky after two explosions near Jalalabad‘s directorate of finance, the Nangarhar provincial governor’s spokesman Attaullah Khogyani ...

A statue honoring Korean women who were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II will be displayed at the Capitol Building in Washington next month, according to a New York-based Korean-American group. “The upcoming exhibition of the statue will be a historic moment, just as the moment back in 2007 when the US House of Representatives approved a resolution urging Japan t...

Iran on Saturday welcomed steps towards detente between North and South Korea but warned that the United States was unqualified to play a role since it did not "respect its commitments." The foreign ministry said the meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the South's President Moon Jae-in was "a responsible and effective step towards regional and global stability." But ministry spo...

Regional powers welcomed Friday’s Panmunjeom Declaration, but advised caution. US President Donald Trump reacted quickly to the developments with tweets. “After a furious year of missile launches and Nuclear testing, a historic meeting between North and South Korea is now taking place. Good things are happening, but only time will tell!” Trump wrote on Twitter, just over an hour after the decl...

South Korean-born musician Sarah Yunji Moon was at home playing her flute in Saskatoon, Canada, when she first heard the tragic news on Monday -- that at least 10 died after a man drove a van into pedestrians near Yonge and Finch area in Toronto, a district widely considered as a mini Koreatown. The principal flutist at the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra used to live there during her high school...