South Korea

RANCHO MIRAGE -- Inbee Park, a 24-year-old from South Korea who won the U.S. Open in 2008, earned her second major golf title Sunday with an emphatic four-stroke victory in the Kraft Nabisco Championship at Mission Hills Country Club. Park shot a final-round 69 to finish with a four-day total of 15-under-par 273. Park earned a winner's check of $300,000. It was her ninth career win. Four of them came on the LPGA circuit in Japan. A ninth-place finish was Park's best previous finish here, and she becomes the fourth-youngest player to win the Kraft Nabisco event as well as the third Korean, along with Grace Park in 2004 and Sun Young Yoo last year.

BEIJING -- In a sign of China's exasperation with its rogue ally, North Korea, newly installed Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday condemned nations that throw the “world into chaos.” Without mentioning North Korea by name, Xi told delegates at an international forum in Boao, southern Hainan province: “No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains. " Xi advised turning “our global village into a big stage for common development, rather than an arena where gladiators fight each other.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South Africa's former president, Nelson Mandela, has been discharged from the hospital after 10 days undergoing treatment for pneumonia,  officials said Saturday. Mandela's discharge was a huge relief for South Africans, after the anti-apartheid hero was hospitalized with breathing difficulties last month. His late-night admission alarmed South Africans, who revere Mandela for his role in fighting apartheid and ushering in a period of reconciliation after the first democratic vote in 1994.

The Obama administration is reacting responsibly to a series of provocations from North Korea, shoring up defenses while seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis. But even if North Korea is deterred from attacking South Korea or U.S. forces for the foreseeable future, the defiance it has demonstrated in the last several weeks renders more elusive than ever achievement of the administration's ultimate goal: a Korean peninsula without nuclear weapons. Last month the U.N. Security Council - including China, North Korea's longtime patron - approved new economic sanctions after North Korea conducted a third nuclear test.

SEOUL - When North Korea last weekend declared it was in a state of war, threatening to use nuclear weapons against South Korea, reduce its presidential palace to ashes and mercilessly sweep away the warmongers, residents of Seoul reacted much as they always do. They yawned. Decades of living in the shadow of an erratic, menacing neighbor have made South Koreans almost deaf to the rhetoric from the North. Many people maintain a blase attitude, shrugging off the bombastic threats as another case of "the boy who cried wolf.

MOSCOW -- North Korea has recommended that foreign embassies and consulates evacuate their personnel from the country given rising tensions with the U.S. and South Korea, a top Russian official said Friday. "This suggestion was received by all the consulates in Pyongyang, and now we are trying to clarify the situation," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters during a visit to Uzbekistan. "We put before our North Korean neighbors several questions necessary to be asked in such a case.

SEOUL-- Many South Koreans have maintained their general blasé attitude toward North Korea regardless of recent bombastic rhetoric from Pyongyang, in some cases treating it as a case of “the boy who cried wolf.” The chance of a war with North Korea or a nuclear attack by the communist regime seems too farfetched to worry much, many South Koreas said this week. An entertainment cable channel offered humorous tips on what to do if a war breaks out that included the host enjoying a curry and rice MRE, the ready to eat meal used by the military.

As North Korea continues to threaten the U.S. and South Korea with war rhetoric, hackers have taken over the country's social media accounts and many of its websites. North Korea's Twitter and Flickr accounts began pushing content Thursday that is unlike what the two social media accounts normally do, making it appear that the North Korean social media accounts had been compromised. That was followed by Anonymous, a decentralized hacker group, taking responsibility for hijacking the accounts.

BEIJING - North Korea is sometimes mocked as the mouse that roared, one of the poorest countries in the world threatening two economic and military giants, the United States and South Korea. But under Kim Jong Il and now his 30-year-old son, Kim Jong Un, North Korea has proved itself the master at playing a poor hand. Indeed, it uses weakness to its advantage. Like a barefoot man who doesn't fear the man with shoes, North Korea behaves like it has nothing to lose. PHOTOS: Following Kim Jong Un South Korea has twice the population and 40 times the economic might of North Korea.

Beneath a map depicting the battle plan for “Target Mainland U.S.,” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is shown in state propaganda photos being briefed by his generals on preparations for attacks on Guam, Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast. Other scenes show the plump, baby-faced leader touring gun emplacements, watching landing maneuvers on the snow-dusted coast and peering southward through binoculars from a promontory near the DMZ. Although bombast is a seasonal ritual in North Korea -- unleashed each spring, when the United States and South Korea carry out military exercises -- this year's belligerence has escalated to alarming levels that have diplomats and security analysts worrying the verbal barrage could be more than bluster.