Germans have the highest quality of nationality for the sixth year in a row, followed by both French and Danish, according to the Henley & Partners – Kochenov Quality of Nationality Index (QNI). While the United Kingdom ranked 12, and United States 29.

It s being called one of the biggest data hacks in history, and now the Equifax breach is spreading around the world. After the Atlanta-based credit-rating organization admitted that the Social Security, credit-card and driver s license numbers of up to 143 million American consumers were hacked from its computer systems over a two-month period last summer, the company s affiliates on two other continents have also seen their data compromised.

The US leader and Moon Jae-in agreed during a telephone call this morning to exert stronger sanctions on the hermit kingdom following its nuclear and missile tests this week. Park Soo-hyun, spokesman for South Korea s Blue House, said: The two leaders agreed to strengthen cooperation, and exert stronger and practical sanctions on North Korea so that it realises provocative actions leads to further diplomatic isolation and economic pressure.

Millions of Florida residents were without power Tuesday as the remnants of Hurricane Irma spun northwest into the US mainland, drenching the region and causing rivers to overflow. Most of the Sunshine State however appeared to have dodged forecasts of catastrophic damage despite dire early warnings. But Irma s overall death toll jumped to at least 40 after Cuba reported that 10 people had been killed there over the weekend.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in London for talks Thursday on international efforts to pressure North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs, and on the chaos in Libya. Tillerson was meeting first with senior British and French officials. All three nations are permanent members of the UN Security Council which this week approved new sanctions to punish Pyongyang’s Sept. 3 atomic test, its largest to date.

Turkey has signed a deal with Russia to buy S-400 missile defence systems in its first major weapons purchase from Moscow, Turkish newspapers Tuesday quoted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as saying. The accord for the surface-to-air missile defence batteries is Ankara s most significant pact with a non-NATO supplier. "Signatures have been made for the purchase of S-400s from Russia. A deposit has also been paid as far as I know," Erdogan said in comments published in the Hurriyet daily and other newspapers.

Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday used the first Latin America visit of a sitting Israeli prime minister to praise President Mauricio Macri’s effort to solve the bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center in 1994 that killed 85 people. Argentine courts have blamed the attack on Iran. But no one has been brought to trial in either that case or the deadly 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. Iran denies playing a role in either attack. “We know without a doubt that Iran and Hezbollah initiated and backed up the attacks,” Netanyahu told reporters. Hezbollah is an Islamist militant group based in Lebanon.

The Syrian government s powerful Lebanese ally Hezbollah has declared victory in the Syrian war, dismissing remaining fighting as "scattered battles", a pro-Hezbollah newspaper reported on Tuesday. The comments by Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah mark one of the most confident assessments yet by the government side as it regains swathes of territory in eastern Syria in a rapid advance against Islamic State (IS) militant group.

President Emmanuel Macron’s presidency is facing its first big public test, as unions hold nationwide protests against changes to labor laws that they fear corrode job security. The prominent CGT union is leading Tuesday’s protests, calling for strikes across transport and other public sector businesses and planning some 180 demonstrations.

Hurricane Irma, which has toppled cranes, swallowed streets and left millions without power, weakened to a Category 1 storm Monday but remained dangerous as it continued its furious climb up Florida s southwest coast. Warnings of hazardous storm surges remained in effect through vast swaths of peninsular Florida, where more than six million people had been ordered to flee Irma s path -- one of the biggest evacuations in US history.

Communal tensions appeared to be rising across Myanmar on Monday after two weeks of violence in Rakhine state that have triggered an exodus of about 300,000 Rohingya Muslims, prompting the government to tighten security at Buddhist pagodas. A mob of about 70 people armed with sticks and swords threatened to attack a mosque in the central town of Taung Dwin Gyi on Sunday evening, shouting “this is our country, this is our land”, according to the mosque’s imam, Mufti Sunlaiman.

Arab countries and Qatar should enter into direct talks to solve a diplomatic dispute, Russia s foreign minister said on a trip to Saudi Arabia on Sunday, urging all parties to restore regional unity. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt severed ties with Qatar on June 5, accusing it of supporting terrorist groups - a charge it denies.

Packing 130-mph (210-kph) winds, Hurricane Irma knocked out electricity to more than 1 million Florida homes and businesses on Sunday and threatened the state s Gulf Coast with potentially catastrophic flooding. The storm, one of the most powerful ever recorded in the Atlantic, passed over the Florida Keys archipelago off the state s southern tip and was on a course for the state s western coast, which was expecting storm surges - water driven ashore by the winds - of up to 15 feet (4.6 m), according to the National Hurricane Center.

Cyprus police arrested a 36-year-old man Sunday for allegedly driving one of two boats that brought 305 Syrian refugees to the Mediterranean island’s northwestern coast.

President Donald Trump has welcomed the leader of Kuwait to the White House, and is meeting with Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah. Trump says he will discuss the diplomatic crisis involving Qatar and its Arab neighbors. The president also says that the two have he calls a "great relationship."

French police unearthed a second stash of explosive materials near Paris on Thursday after a similar find in a nearby suburb on Wednesday, a justice official said as three suspects were questioned by anti-terrorism investigators. Thursday’s swoop was carried out at a garage rented by one of the three detained in the wake of Wednesday’s raid on an apartment in Villejuif, on the southern edge of the French capital, the source said.

The European Union’s highest court ruled on Wednesday that EU states must take in a share of refugees who reach Europe, dismissing complaints by Slovakia and Hungary and reigniting an angry row between east and west. The government of Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Victor Orban was characteristically blunt about the European Court of Justice, calling its decision to uphold an EU policy drafted in the heat of the 2015 migrant crisis as “appalling” and denouncing a political “rape of European law and values”.

A U.S. commander on Wednesday apologized for leaflets dropped in Afghanistan that were deemed offensive to Islam. The leaflets dropped Monday night, which encouraged Afghans to cooperate with security forces, included an image of a dog carrying the Taliban flag, said Shah Wali Shahid, the deputy governor of Parwan province, north of Kabul. The flag has Islamic verses inscribed on it, and dogs are seen as unclean in much of the Muslim world.

North Korea could be preparing another missile launch, Seoul said Monday as it stepped up its defences following Pyongyang s biggest-ever nuclear test and declaration it had a hydrogen bomb. The South and the United States will deploy more of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile launchers that have infuriated Beijing, the defence ministry said. The announcement came after Seoul fired an early morning volley of ballistic missiles in an exercise simulating an attack on the North s nuclear test site.

A plan President Donald Trump is expected to announce to remove a shield from deportation for young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children is being embraced by some top Republicans and denounced by others as the beginning of a “civil war” within the party. The response was an immediate illustration of the potential battles ahead if Trump follows through with a plan that would hand a political hot potato to Republicans on the Hill who have a long history of dropping it.

French Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian met Libyan officials in Tripoli on Monday to offer support for a deal between political rivals signed in Paris aimed at stabilizing the North African country. Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Seraj and the divided nation’s eastern commander Khalifa Haftar in July committed to a conditional ceasefire and to work toward elections, but the agreement did not include other key factions.