World Leaders Gather For Family Photo at G20 Meeting in Osaka

As the leaders of the world’s largest economies convene on Friday in Osaka, Japan, for the 14th G20 Summit, headlines are likely to focus on meetings between world leaders.

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  • In Thanksgiving address, Biden says, 'We're at war with a virus, not with one another'

    President-elect Joe Biden delivered a Thanksgiving address acknowledging the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and the political strife that have both taken hold of the country.

  • Trump campaign caught sharing fake newspaper cover on election result

    In a now-deleted tweet, Tim Murtaugh attempted to mock the media for projecting Joe Biden as president-elect by sharing a doctored headline declaring ‘President Gore’ in 2000

  • Operator of notorious South Korean online sex trafficking ring sentenced to 40 years

    A South Korean court has sentenced the operator of a vast online sex trafficking ring to 40 years in prison in a case that outraged the nation. Cho Ju-bin, 25, oversaw a group of 38 accomplices who befriended and then blackmailed at least 74 women into sharing explicit videos that were then posted in pay-per-view internet chat rooms. Sixteen of the victims were less than 16 years old, the age of consent in South Korea. The Seoul Central District Court on Thursday found Cho guilty of violating laws to protect minors from sexual abuse and of making a profit from producing and selling abusive footage, Yonhap News reported. Indicted on 14 criminal charges, including inducing another person involved in the trafficking ring to rape a teenage girl and concealing more than £70,000 in criminal proceeds, prosecutors had initially demanded a life sentence on the grounds of the “irreperable damage” Cho had caused his victims. They had also requested that he be obliged to wear an electronic monitoring device for 45 years. In a petition to the court, one of the women said Cho, who had worked in an orphanage and adopted the online name “The Doctor”, was “evil” and deserved a 2,000-year prison term. Passing sentence, the judge said: “The accused has widely distributed sexually abusive content that he created by luring and threatening many victims.” Media reports have suggested that some of the video clips showed a group of men raping a teenage girl in a motel room, while others included images of the word “slave” cut into a woman’s body. One video showed girls “barking like dogs”, the Kookmin Ilbo newspaper reported. Cho operated the chat room on the Telegram messenger service, with at least 10,000 people accessing the site and paying as much as £1,000 for access. Authorities have been tracing people who used the site and have identified serving police officers and teachers as among the users. Cho’s arrest in March sparked fury across South Korea after prosecutors initially refused to name the suspect before his trial opened. Within days, more than 5 million people had signed petitions on the home page of Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, demanding that the authorities withdraw his right to anonymity. A committee of senior judicial officials, a psychologist and a psychiatrist weighed the public’s right to know and took the unprecedented step of naming Cho. He was then brought out in handcuffs from a police station in central Seoul to face the public. “I apologise to those that I hurt”, Cho said. “Thank you for putting a brake on the life of a devil who could not be stopped.” South Korea’s Ministry of Justice has been the target of criticism for its failure to deal with the growing use of technology to carry out sex crimes, with one ministry official admitting that the case had been “a disaster” and apologising for its “lukewarm response” to online sexual abuse cases.

  • Mass COVID inoculations needed in vaccine-sceptic France - scientist

    France could return to some sort of post-coronavirus normal in about a year if as many as 80% to 90% of its population are vaccinated against the disease, a government scientific adviser said on Thursday. Arnaud Fontanet, a leading epidemiologist, told BFM TV France needed to get a vaccination rate of up to 90% for a return to ordinary life by next autumn. According to an Ipsos poll for the World Economic Forum, only 59% of French respondents said they would get a COVID-19 vaccine if it became available, compared with 67% in the United States and 85% in Britain.

  • South Korean intelligence believes North Korea is nervous about dealing with Biden administration

    There's a reason why North Korea has remained quiet about the United States presidential election, The Associated Press reports.South Korean lawmakers were briefed by the country's National Intelligence Service on Friday, and one of the issues addressed was reportedly Pyongyang's anxiety about the incoming Biden administration. The briefing's contents could not be independently verified by news organizations, but Seoul's spy agency alleges North Korea has ordered overseas diplomatic missions to refrain from provoking the U.S., reportedly warning its ambassadors there will be consequences should any of their acts or comments rattle folks in Washington.One South Korean lawmaker said the NIS believes North Korea is nervous that the friendly relationship between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will be rendered moot when President-elect Joe Biden steps into the Oval Office in January, so the government apparently wants to ensure tensions remain relatively at ease for now. The NIS does expect North Korea will hold a military parade around the same time as Biden's inauguration as a show of force, although they've done so with Trump in office, as well. Read more at The Associated Press.More stories from theweek.com 7 cartoons about America's COVID Thanksgiving Our parents warned us the internet would break our brains. It broke theirs instead. Make America Laugh Again

  • Six US oil executives jailed for corruption in Venezuela after being lured to business meeting

    Men plead innocence following arrest in 2017 as State Department demands release

  • Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh assassinated

    An Iranian scientist long suspected by the West of masterminding a secret nuclear bomb programme was killed in an ambush near Tehran on Friday, likely to provoke confrontation between Iran and its foes in the last weeks of Donald Trump's presidency. Iran's armed forces chief of staff vowed "severe revenge" for those behind the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who died of injuries in hospital after armed assassins fired on his car, state media reported. "Terrorist groups and the leaders and the perpetrators of this cowardly attempt should know that severe revenge awaits them," he said Fakhrizadeh has long been described by Western countries as a leader of a covert atomic bomb programme halted in 2003, which Israel and the United States accuse Tehran of trying to restore in secret. Iran has long denied seeking to weaponise nuclear energy.

  • Trump's national security advisor and his entourage were said to be treated as 'human petri dishes' in Vietnam, as the US COVID-19 outbreak worsens every day

    Robert O'Brien's airplane crew was also not allowed to enter Vietnam and had to spend the night in Thailand, Bloomberg reported.

  • Russia lodges official protest with U.S. over naval incident

    Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday that it had lodged an official protest with the United States over a naval incident in the Sea of Japan, which it said was a provocation designed to disturb the peace. Russia had said on Tuesday that one of its warships had caught and chased off a U.S. destroyer operating illegally in its territorial waters in the Sea of Japan. The U.S. Navy denied wrongdoing and accused Moscow of making excessive maritime claims.

  • Shawn Mendes says he used to trade sleep for 2-hour workouts out of fear that his fans would stop liking him if he wasn't in perfect shape

    The 22-year-old "Wonder" singer told British GQ that girlfriend Camila Cabello helped him to change his perspective on his body.

  • One dead after speeding minivan hits NY monument

    A woman was killed in a Thanksgiving Day crash after a speeding minivan plowed into the McKinley Monument in downtown Buffalo, New York, police said. The unidentified male driver was in critical condition after the crash Thursday morning. (Nov. 27)

  • Florida governor accused of ‘killing spree’ after extending ban on cities from imposing own mask mandates

    Miami-Dade mayor Daniella Levine Cava calls decision ‘deeply frustrating’

  • Biden's win hides a dire warning for Democrats in rural U.S.

    Democrats once dominated Koochiching County in the blue-collar Iron Range of northern Minnesota. “We’ve got to see if we can get the Democratic Party to moderate and accept the fact that rural Minnesota is not getting more conservative,” said Bakk, who announced last week that he would become an independent after serving 25 years as a Democrat. The party lost House seats in the Midwest, and Democratic challengers in Iowa, Kansas, Montana and North Carolina Senate races, all once viewed as serious threats to Republican incumbents, fell, some of them hard.

  • Kiowa Pilot Becomes First Active-Duty Soldier to Earn Extremely Rare Astronaut Device

    Lt. Col. Anne McClain is one of three currently serving active-duty Army astronauts.

  • Doctors in China jailed for harvesting organs from patients

    Six people in China, four of whom are doctors, have been sentenced to prison for illegally harvesting organs from patients, often car accident victims or those with severe brain damage. A court in Anhui province has handed down terms of 10 to 28 months to the group of six, declaring them guilty of harvesting organs from 11 deceased patients, according to Chinese state media. The detailed judgment, issued in July but made public only now, described a network of doctors from different hospitals who worked together on the organ harvesting scheme. After identifying potential candidates, the doctors would then approach patients’ families and ask them to sign fraudulent consent forms agreeing to organ donation on behalf of their deceased relatives. Families, however, believed they were signing legitimate papers. Operations to remove the organs were performed by the doctors in delivery vans disguised as an ambulance, according to state media. China has long struggled to manage voluntary organ donation and experts have said that there isn’t enough to meet demand. Human rights experts have long drawn attention to the practice of harvesting organs from prisoners, including political dissidents who have been put behind bars, in order to supply a lucrative organ trade. Last year, an independent tribunal in the UK led by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, concluded that China was a “criminal state,” which “beyond reasonable doubt” had committed crimes of humanity, acts of torture, and found that enemies of the state were medically tested and killed for their organs. The China Tribunal heard evidence over six months, and in a judgement that took one-and-a-half hours to read, concluded that followers of Falun Gong, a religious spiritual practice, were among those used as a source for forced organ harvesting. The finding also said there was a risk Uighurs, an ethnic Muslim minority persecuted by the Chinese state, have suffered similar treatment. Last year, a study published in BMC Medical Ethics journal found “highly compelling evidence” that China was falsifying organ donation numbers, potentially masking the source and fueling further concern that transplants were still coming from prisoners. In 2005, former health minister Huang Jiefu publicly acknowledged that China had indeed harvested organs for transplant from executed prisoners. Beijing, however, has long denied doing so.

  • Inching toward exit, Trump says he'll leave if Biden wins Electoral College vote

    U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he will leave the White House if the Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden, the closest he has come to conceding the Nov. 3 election, even as he repeated unfounded claims of massive voter fraud. Speaking to reporters on the Thanksgiving holiday, Republican Trump said if Democrat Biden - who is due to be sworn in on Jan. 20 - is formally declared the winner by the Electoral College, he will depart the White House.

  • Zoom nightmare come true: New Jersey school board member resigns after streaming bathroom break during meeting

    Stop taking Zoom into the bathroom. A New Jersey school board member accidentally broadcast her bathroom break during a board meeting and resigned.

  • Trump says he knows whether he'll attend Biden's inauguration but keeps decision private

    President Trump said Thursday he will "certainly" leave the White House if the Electoral College, as expected, casts its votes for President-elect Joe Biden on Dec. 14, formalizing his victory.Taking questions from reporters for the first time since the election after addressing U.S. troops stationed around the world on Thanksgiving, Trump was asked if he would depart on his own accord. "Certainly I will, and you know that," he said. The Washington Post notes it was the first explicit commitment Trump has made about vacating the White House, although his advisers have maintained he would do so for some time.That said, Trump remains determined to expose widespread voter fraud in swing states, despite there being no evidence. "It's going to be a very hard thing to concede, because we know that there was massive fraud" he said.Trump also said he's decided whether he will attend Biden's inauguration, but he wanted to keep the suspense going and refused to reveal the answer. "I don't want to say that yet," he said. Read more at The New York Times and The Washington Post.More stories from theweek.com 7 cartoons about America's COVID Thanksgiving Our parents warned us the internet would break our brains. It broke theirs instead. Make America Laugh Again

  • Fists and pig guts fly in Taiwan parliament debate on U.S. pork

    Legislators from Taiwan's main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party threw pig guts and exchanged punches with other lawmakers in parliament on Friday as they tried to stop the premier taking questions, in a bitter dispute over easing U.S. pork imports. President Tsai Ing-wen announced in August that the government would, from Jan. 1, allow imports of U.S. pork containing ractopamine, an additive that enhances leanness but is banned in the European Union and China, as well as U.S. beef more than 30 months old. While welcomed in Washington, and removing a roadblock to a long sought after U.S. free trade deal for Taiwan, the KMT has strongly opposed the decision, tapping into public concern about food safety after several high-profile scandals in recent years.

  • In Thanksgiving Message, Trump Says ‘We’re Like a Third-World Country’ Because He Lost Election

    In a surprise news conference on Thanksgiving Day, President Trump took questions from the press for the first time since losing re-election—but he doubled down on his “rigged” election claims and appeared to deny the reality that his presidency is ending, saying it will be “very hard” for him to concede to Joe Biden.“I think it’s not right he’s trying to pick a Cabinet,” Trump complained after railing against the supposed “massive fraud” that he claims gave Biden victory.Reiterating his claims of voter fraud in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia despite the fact that state authorities have already certified the election results in those states, Trump appeared to become combative when asked if he would concede if the Electoral College votes for Biden on Dec. 14. Although he eventually did say he would exit the White House if the vote were not in his favor, that answer came after he first repeatedly cast doubt on the Electoral College and election in general. “It’s going to be a very hard thing to concede. Because we know there was massive fraud,” he said when first asked if he would concede. Pennsylvania Certifies Biden as Winner, Driving Stake in Trump’s Legal Effort“Time isn’t on our side … this was a massive fraud, this should never take place in this country, we’re like a third-world country,” he said, suggesting that faulty vote-counting machines gave Biden millions of extra votes.Asked a second time if he would concede if the Electoral College votes for Biden, Trump responded, “Well if they do they made a mistake,” before saying it’s a “possibility” and scolding a reporter who pressed him on the issue: “Don’t talk to me that way, you’re just a lightweight.”Asked by another reporter if he would “leave this building” if the Electoral College elects Biden, he said, “Certainly, I will.”While Trump and his legal team have repeatedly looked to throw out votes in states that Joe Biden carried, none of their challenges have proved successful.Key states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia—all of which Trump carried in 2016, before flipping blue this year—certified their results this week, ensuring they will send a Democratic slate of voters to the Electoral College. Wisconsin and Arizona, two more states that flipped to Biden, are set to certify their results next week.“Massive fraud has been found. We’re like a third world country,” Trump said, before launching back into allegations of voter fraud that have been repeatedly rebuffed in court and by state election officials of both parties.“I did so well ... that they didn’t know what to do,” he said at one point of election results in Georgia, claiming that ballots for him were “thrown away.”“I don’t know what is going to happen. I know one thing, Joe Biden did not get 80 million votes. And I got 74 million but there were many ballots thrown away, so I got much more than that. But I got 74 million, 74 million is 11 million more than I got last time. … And it’s millions more than Hillary Clinton got.”Underneath all of the bravado, Trump at one point slipped up and blasted “the Biden administration,” apparently inadvertently recognizing Biden’s win.While Trump has refused to concede and maintained that somehow, he would win states he had already lost, his administration has relented behind the scenes.Earlier this week, Emily Murphy, the head of the General Services Administrations—a Trump appointee—signed off on a letter officially allowing the presidential transition to begin. Murphy had previously refused to do so, a partisan move from a historically non-partisan agency.Even Trump appeared to have a moment of clarity Thursday regarding a potential COVID-19 cure and his future (or lack thereof) in the White House.“Don’t let Joe Biden take credit for the vaccine,” he said.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.