SEOUL – South Korea and the United States are considering staging their first large-scale joint live-fire demonstration in six years in 2023 amid North Korea’s growing military threats, Seoul’s defence ministry said on Thursday.

More than nine years after Croatia became the European Union’s newest member, the country is on a roll to make the most of its status as the EU member in the Balkans

SEOUL – North Korea’s foreign ministry denied a media report it supplied munitions to Russia, calling it “groundless,” and denounced the United States for providing lethal weapons to Ukraine, the North’s official KCNA news agency reported on Friday.

SAN SALVADOR  – El Salvador will receive a $150 million loan from Latin American development bank CAF to strengthen its education system, the lender said in a Wednesday statement.

LOS ANGELES – NASA has formally retired its Mars InSight lander, the first robotic probe specially designed to study the deep interior of a distant world, four years after it arrived on the surface of the red planet, the U.S. space agency announced on Wednesday.

KUALA LUMPUR  – Malaysian towns were left inundated with muddy water in the wake of torrential rains, footage shared on social media and verified by Reuters showed on Wednesday, forcing more than 72,000 people to evacuate as rainfall and floods were forecast to persist.

MEXICO CITY  – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday he would uphold diplomatic ties with Peru, a day after Lima announced that it was expelling the Mexican ambassador due his country’s interference in Peru’s domestic affairs.

WELLINGTON – The New Zealand government said on Wednesday that having listened to concerns raised by farm groups it was making changes to its proposed plans to price agricultural long-lived gases and biogenic methane that mainly comes from cow and sheep burps.

GENEVA – A World Health Organization official said on Tuesday that 10 million people, or about a quarter of Ukraine’s population, may suffer from a mental health disorder in relation to the conflict there.

EL TOCUYO, Venezuela – Julio Perez, a 38-year-old auto mechanic, sold his car and tools to make the dangerous journey from Venezuela to the United States.