Nation & World

Here are Thursday’s developments in the latest round of provocative moves by the communist state.

The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly approved the first U.N. treaty to regulate the estimated $60 billion global arms trade on Tuesday.

With the Senate soon to vote on initiatives including expanded background checks of gun purchasers and increased penalties for gun trafficking, a scan through data from polls about gun laws underscores how attitudes for the most part seem to be close to pre-Newtown levels.

On a wide variety of issues — gay marriage, tax policy, implementing Obamacare, the death penalty — states are moving in polar opposite directions from one another.

A vow Tuesday from North Korea that it will restart a nuclear reactor that eventually could make about one bomb’s worth of plutonium a year further escalates tensions that were already high due to that nation’s almost daily threats, NPR’s Louisa Lim tells our Newscast Desk.

North Korea says it has moved its artillery and ballistic missiles into “combat posture” for possible use against targets in South Korea, Guam, Hawaii and the U.S. mainland.

China has reportedly signed a deal to buy new submarines and Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets from Russia, the first such arms deal in nearly a decade.

Syrian rebels carried out mortar and rocket attacks on Sunday and Monday in what appeared to mark a new escalation in the fighting over the Syrian capital.

Secretary of State John Kerry is on an unannounced trip to Baghdad Sunday, and according to an official, the buzzword of the trip is “engagement.”

After four years of self-imposed exile, Pakistan’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf has come home. His plan is to run for office and reclaim political influence, but death threats and legal battles complicate his return.