The U.S. Geological Survey says a magnitude 6.6 earthquake has hit northern Japan near a major city.
The agency says the earthquake struck the island of Hokkaido about 3 a.m. local time on Thursday.
The quake's epicenter is about 27 kilometers east of the city of Tomakomai, which has a population of about 175,000, and about 65 kilometers southeast of Sapporo, which is a major metropolitan area of 1.9 million people.
The quake triggered a blackout across a wide area of Hokkaido and it affected telephone service and television broadcasting in Sapporo.
Two bombs exploded at a wrestling club in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Wednesday. At least 20 people have been killed, more than 60 wounded.
Police said a suicide bomber blew himself up inside the club which is in a mainly Shiite neighborhood. A second explosion happened nearby as victims of the first explosion were being cared for.
A Trump official writes The New York Times that senior staff is pushing back against an "amoral" and "impetuous" president.
Someone identified as a senior official wrote an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times under the headline "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration."
The official writes many senior officials are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of Trump's agenda and his worst inclinations.
The writer's account says success is the massive tax cut and rollbacks of environment regulations, but says there is a two-track presidency underway: one in which the president embraces autocrats like Vladimir Putin and another that seeks to preserve U.S. relations with like-minded democracies.
"This isn't the work of so-called deep state," the writer says. "It's the work of the steady state."
Warren Levinson, New York.
This is VOA news.
The president is responding to The New York Times op-ed. He called the editorial "gutless" and "a disgrace."
His spokeswoman called the anonymous official a "coward," and said the writer should resign. She also called on The Times to issue an apology for publishing the piece, calling it a "pathetic, reckless and selfish" op-ed.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Pakistan's newly elected Prime Minister Imran Khan Wednesday.
Before the meeting Khan had said that he was optimistic. He could improve his country's relationship with the U.S.
The United States has suspended aid to Pakistan, claiming it has failed to fight terrorists.
At the airport before leaving for India, Pompeo said he was hopeful that a foundation had been laid to move forward.
"We talked about their new government, the opportunity to reset the relationship between our two countries across a broad spectrum -- economic, business, and commercial, the work that we all know that we need to do to try and develop a peaceful resolution in Afghanistan, which benefits certainly Afghanistan, but also the United States and Pakistan."
The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Burundi has accused the country's government and members of its allied youth league of gross violations of human rights, which it says in some cases might constitute crimes against humanity.
Correspondent Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva on the commission's findings.
In its new 250-page report, the Commission of Inquiry on Burundi documents summary executions, arbitrary arrests, forced disappearances, acts of torture and sexual violence among other forms of abuse.
Burundi has been in turmoil since 2015, when President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for and won a controversial third term.
Inquiry commission president Doudou Diene says the constitutional referendum organized in May and the campaign for the upcoming elections in 2020 have triggered acts of persecution, threats and intimidation.
Lisa Schlein, for VOA news, Geneva
The retrial of an American alleged to have participated in a massacre of unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2007 ended Wednesday in a hung jury.
The judge declared a mistrial after the jury said it remained deadlocked after more than two weeks of deliberations in the case of Nicholas Slatten.
Slatten was accused of firing the first shots of a one-sided firefight on September 16, 2007, in Nisour Square in Baghdad. Armed American contractors fired machine guns and threw grenades into traffic, killing or injuring 31 people.
You can find more on these and other late breaking and developing stories, from around the world, around the clock, at voanews.com and on the VOA news mobile app. I'm Christopher Cruise, VOA news.
