A senior North Korean diplomat warned a meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York that "a spark of fire could set off a thermonuclear war" on the Korean Peninsula.

Pak Kil-yon, Pyongyang's vice-foreign minster, put the blame for the tense state of inter-Korean relations firmly on South Korea's conservative government and claimed the citizens of the North feel "shame" and "political terror."

Monday's speech was the first time a representative of North Korea has addressed the General Assembly since Kim Jong-un assumed power after the death of his father in December last year.

"Since taking office, the current South Korean government has caused the worst situation in North-South relations by making all inter-Korean agreements null and void," Pak said, referring to pacts with previous South Korean administrations that sought reconciliation between the two ideological enemies and an expansion of economic co-operation.

Describing relations between the two governments as in "total bankruptcy," Pak dismissed the South Korean government of Lee Myung-bak with the comment, "History will bring them to justice."

Neither the United States nor the UN escaped criticism, with Pak saying recent joint military manoeuvres between the US and South Korean troops were "reckless provocations."

The controversial "Defeat Jihad" advertisements that went up in New York last month could soon be coming to the nation's capital pending a ruling expected in DC District Court this week.

When the American Freedom Defense Initiative attempted to purchase ad-space earlier this year to propagate its mission of defeating the spread of so-called "Islamorealism,"officials in both New York, NY and Washington, DC rushed to put a halt on their plans. The signage, subways ads that read, "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man: Support Israel/Defeat Jihad," were quick to be condemned by Muslim-Americans who viewed the work as hateful to Muslims.

The group's plea to put signs up in subways across New York ended up with a fight in District Court, where a Manhattan federal judge eventually sided with the AFDI and the organization's founder, Pamela Geller, opining that the First Amendment protection of speech allowed for her group to go ahead with their plans there. Now the case will be discussed in a courtroom in DC, where Geller intends on also having the adverts on display.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority had originally agreed to cut a deal with the AFDI, but a wave of anti-American sentiment that swept the Muslim World last month, especially the September 11, 2012 incident in Benghazi that killed US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, had them rethinking their contract. The WMATA temporarily pulled the plug on the planned launch date of September 24, insisting that the agency would be required to "re-evaluate" the signage as they feared the anti-Islamic rhetoric would "expose passengers to terrorism and threaten their safety," court documents obtained by POLITICO reveal.

In 2002, Thomas Harkins was permanently removed by the Catholic Church after 20-plus years of allegations that the former clergyman had molested children at parishes across the East Coast. Today, he's your friendly TSA agent.

Despite being excommunicated and forced to pay around $195,000 to settle civil lawsuit relating to a barrage of sex-crime charges in the greater Philadelphia area, Harkins, now 65, didn't have a problem finding a new job after being booted from the Catholic Church in 2002. Shortly after, he was hired by the Transportation Security Administration and assigned to a position that required him to routinely pat-down young children and subject them to the evasive, hands-on body scans that have become a hallmark of post-9/11 America.

The Church reached out to the TSA and told the federal agency of Harkins' sordid pass - which includes several allegations that suggest the priest molested young girls as early as 1979. He was transferred in 2000 to a prison to serve as a chaplain there and, two years later, permanently removed from the Catholic community.

As a TSA agent, Harkins touched passengers - children and adults, alike - until 2004. At that point, the Philadelphia Inquirer has learned, he was promoted to a supervising provision where he remains today, overseeing checked baggage. Now he maintains a quiet life as a federal security staffer, despite once looking at a life in jail for a series of sex crimes.

Because those crimes never made it through a full court trial, however, the TSA says they have their hands tied.

"An allegation alone does not warrant dismissal or automatically disqualify applicants from employment with the TSA," spokeswoman Ann Davis tells the Inquirer.

The Philadelphia Police Department is in hot water after a video has surfaced showing an officer with the force striking a woman in the face during this weekend's Puerto Rican Day parade.

Video was published on YouTube over the weekend that documents the events immediately before an unidentified woman in attendance at Sunday's was sucker-punched by a large police officer, prompting blood to gush from the victim's face.

"Philadelphia Police Brutality" was uploaded by Youtube user Gisela Valentin on Sunday and by Monday afternoon the clip had made it to the front page of the popular sharing-site Reddit and was generating new comments every few seconds.

Although the police department has yet to issue a formal explanation for the assault, the evidence caught on camera paints a story that has many laptop critics to condemn the cops for assaulting a woman seemingly without provocation.

Gunmen opened fire on students in a northeast Nigerian college, shooting some of them dead and stabbing others. Police say an Islamist extremist group could be behind the attack, but are also looking into possible links with student union elections.

­Local sources say the attackers mainly targeted students who live in rented accommodation outside the campus of the Federal Polytechnic in Mubi.

The massacre is being blamed on Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, but officials say they do not rule out the possibility of political rivalry between college groups ahead of student union elections.

The town of Mubi is located in Nigeria's troubled northeast which has seen such violence previously, including January when gunmen killed at least 12 people.

Williamsburg, Kentucky - A Chinese restaurant forced to shut its doors after getting caught with a dead deer in the kitchen.

It happened Thursday afternoon at the Red Flower Chinese Restaurant in Williamsburg.

"We were actually joking about the, you know, the whole Chinese restaurant. You know some rumors that you hear," says Katie Hopkins, a customer of the Red Flower restaurant.

But, Hopkins and her friends never imaged what would happen next, after finishing up a buffet lunch.

"Two of the workers came in wheeling a garbage can and they had a box sitting on top of it. And hanging out of the garbage can, they were trying to be real quick with it. So that nobody could see it. But there was like a tail, and a foot and leg. Sticking out of the garbage can and they wheeled it straight back into the kitchen," adds Hopkins.

Hopkins immediately called the health department to describe what she saw, "Many people eat there. A lot of locals eat there on lunch breaks and stuff. It was very disturbing. There was actually a blood trail that they were mopping up behind the garbage can."

Paul Lawson, the environmental health inspector in Whitley County says this is the craziest thing he's ever seen.

When French peasants stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, they weren't just revolting against the monarchy's policies. They were also hungry. From the French Revolution to the Arab Spring, high food prices have been cited as a factor behind mass protest movements. But can food prices actually help predict when social unrest is likely break out? Yes, say a group of researchers who use mathematical modeling to describe how food prices behave. Earlier this summer, their model had predicted that the U.S. drought would push corn and wheat prices high enough to spark social unrest in other parts of the world.

"Now, of course, we do see this happening," says Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Science Institute in Cambridge, Mass. And unless those food prices come down, the researchers warned last week, more waves of riots are coming.

Eurozone unemployment has hit a record high, revealing further evidence of a two-speed Europe as increasing numbers of young people in Spain, Greece and Italy desperately seek work while Germany's jobless rate continues to fall.
The eurozone unemployment rate was 11.4pc in August, up from 10.2pc last year. Data from the EU statistics agency Eurostat estimated that 25.5m men and women were out of work over the period, 18.2m of whom were in the eurozone.

Compared with the previous month the number of unemployed people in the EU rose by 49,000 and in the eurozone by 34,000.

The overall unemployment rate in Spain has reached 25.1pc, while the latest data from Greece for June shows a figure of 24.4pc. The outlook is far more optimistic in Germany, however, where just 5.5pc of people are out of work.

California - A man who decided to try out his costume and dress up ahead of Halloween prompted an explosives scare in downtown San Mateo Monday that resulted in the dispatch of a police bomb squad, authorities said.

Police received several calls about a man in a car front of a market along the first block of East 4th Street wearing what witnesses described as a full gas mask and army gear with several grenades hanging around his neck.

The San Mateo County sheriff's bomb squad responded and evacuated a half-block area about 9:30 a.m.

Police detained the costumed man and said an "inert grenade" was found in his car, but they also indicated there was "no current danger" to the public.

Russia, Moscow - A Moscow appellate court postponed a hearing on Monday in the case of the punk protest band Pussy Riot after one of three defendants said that she wanted to fire her lawyers because of disagreements.

The three women, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, and Maria Alyokhina, 24, were convicted in August of hooliganism and sentenced to two years in a prison colony for staging a "punk prayer" in Moscow's main Russian Orthodox cathedral last February. They said the stunt was intended to protest against Vladimir V. Putin, who was running for president at the time, and to criticize support for Mr. Putin by the church patriarch, Kirill I.

The prosecution of the three women, two of them mothers of young children, became an international sensation, and prompted wide criticism of Russia over the suppression of political speech. The women received support from a number of major music stars, including Sting and Madonna, as well as many governments. On the day of their conviction and sentencing, supporters rallied in dozens of cities around the world, many wearing colorful balaclavas - Pussy Riot's trademark head gear.

But the judge who convicted the women, Marina Syrova, said that political comments were spliced into a video of the stunt later and that her verdict was based on the infiltration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the women's behavior in front of the altar, which she said amounted to "the insult and humiliation of the Christian faith and inciting religious hatred."