An 80-year-old Japanese climber reached the summit of Mount Everest on Thursday, becoming the oldest person to scale the world's highest mountain, his website and a Nepalese official said.

Finance Minister Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) said in the Legislative Yuan yesterday that now is not the right time to introduce an energy tax, and confirmed that the tax will not to be launched in 2014.

Prime Minister David Cameron vowed on Thursday that Britain would be resolute against violent extremism following the gruesome murder of a soldier by two suspected Islamists on a London street.

Examination Yuan Minister Kuan Chung (關中) yesterday fired back at accusations that recent civil servant pension law amendments will fatten high-level officials, rejecting the idea that the adjustments were meant to benefit only some civil servants.

Panicky investors dumped shares on the Tokyo market Thursday, sending the main index plunging more than seven percent on weak Chinese data after months of sharp climbs.

A British soldier was hacked to death by two men shouting Islamic slogans in a south London street on Wednesday, in what the government said appeared to be a terrorist attack.

President Barack Obama will seek to draw attention away from a series of domestic scandals with a speech on Thursday that defends the U.S. use of drones abroad and lays out a vision for closing the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

President Ma Ying-jeou said yesterday that a row between Taiwan and the Philippines is not a dispute between the two countries' peoples but between the people of Taiwan and the Philippine government.

Japan on Wednesday posted its worst April trade deficit as a weak yen ramped up import costs and helped extend the run of monthly shortfalls to the longest in more than three decades.

The Federal Reserve's monetary stimulus is helping the U.S. economy recover but the central bank needs to see further signs of traction before taking its foot off the gas, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday.

Culture Minister Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) yesterday said that the lack of Public Television Service Foundation (PTS) board member candidates that is preventing it from operating is the "biggest international scandal that Taiwan has ever had."

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) yesterday said it has declined a Philippine request for bilateral judicial assistance for the time being, as the Philippine government still refuses to provide a video of the entire killing incident of a Taiwanese fisherman on May 9.

North Korea sent one of its top military officials as a "special envoy" from its leader Kim Jong-un to Beijing on Wednesday, accompanied by a high-powered delegation in what appeared to be a bid to mend frayed relations with its most important ally.

Residents began returning home to their flattened Oklahoma town after a giant tornado killed at least 24 people, destroyed countless homes and reduced one elementary school almost entirely to rubble, killing seven children inside. Authorities said they were confident that all survivors and bodies had been found.