Drugs, arms, and terror: A high-profile defector on Kim's North Korea

People need to be able to decide for themselves whether to be vaccinated against Covid-19, Colorado Republican congressman Ken Buck has said. “I don’t believe in vaccine mandates,” he told BBC News’s Hardtalk programme’s Stephen Sackur. “I don’t believe that the government should require individuals to put a foreign substance in their body for disease…

Actor George Takei, most well-known for his role as Lt Sulu in the science fiction series Star Trek, has talked about why he decided to hide his sexuality for so long. Takei said that as a teenager he realised that societal attitudes meant you could not be gay and be hired as an actor in…

Quarantine-free travel between Australia and New Zealand will bring a significant economic windfall to both countries, Chris Zeiher, the Asia-Pacific spokesperson for Lonely Planet has said. He told BBC World News: “We are definitely excited about the fact that for the first time in over 12 months there will be a freedom of movement between…

Western countries with higher rates of obesity are seeing more deaths from coronavirus than Asian countries with less obesity, the World Obesity Federation’s Dr Olivia Cavalcanti has said. She told BBC World News it was not clear why overweight people were more at risk, but could be due to an inflammatory response of the body….

Leaders of individual countries need to work for the good of the world as a whole if we are to be better prepared to tackle pandemics, the World Health Organization’s special envoy for Covid-19, has said. “Unless we work for the good of all, we are all going to end up in a lot of…

The Delta variant of Covid-19 is spreading rapidly throughout the world and has been detected in 124 territories the World Health Organisation has said. An emergency room doctor in the United States has told BBC World News about how the initial narrative of it being a virus which kills older people is now problematic as…