North Korea's Kim Jong Un admits nation facing "worst-ever situation"
CBSN
Seoul, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un acknowledged his country is facing its "worst-ever situation" as he addressed thousands of grassroots members of his ruling party during a major political conference in Pyongyang.
Experts say Kim is facing perhaps his toughest moment as he approaches a decade in rule, with North Korea's coronavirus lockdown unleashing further shock on an economy devastated by decades of mismanagement and crippling U.S.-led sanctions over his nuclear weapons program. The North's official Korean Central News Agency said Kim made the comments during an opening speech at a meeting of the Workers' Party's cell secretaries on Tuesday.An Israeli attack on Iran damaged facilities at a secretive military base southeast of the Iranian capital that experts in the past have linked to Tehran's onetime nuclear weapons program and at another base tied to its ballistic missile program, satellite photos analyzed Sunday by The Associated Press show.
A Northern Ireland man was sentenced Friday to a minimum of 20 years in prison after being found guilty by a U.K. court in what has been described as the biggest criminal "catfishing" case in the country. Alex McCartney, 26, had pleaded guilty earlier this year to a charge of manslaughter in a Northern Ireland court after a young American girl who was among the thousands of alleged victims he blackmailed online died by suicide.
Kazan, Russia — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday presided at the closing session of a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, praising its role as a counterbalance to what he called the West's "perverse methods." The three-day summit in the city of Kazan covered the deepening of financial cooperation, including the development of alternatives to Western-dominated payment systems, efforts to settle regional conflicts and expansion of the BRICS group of nations.
Gisele Pelicot, the woman at the center of the mass-rape trial that's shocked her own country of France and the world, told her husband in court on Wednesday that she still "did not understand why" he had drugged and raped her for nearly a decade, along with dozens of other men he invited into their home.