The World: Latest Stories

Doctors and nurses use gallows humor to get through the day. But when is laughter in medicine OK, and when does it cross the line?

Kurt Andersen and Mary Harris, the host of Only Human, check out something called laughter yoga.

The neuroscientist Sophie Scott says modern science is missing a big part of human experience by ignoring laughter.

How does laughter yoga make you feel? And can laughing improve your health?

Comedian Chris Gethard says comedy helped him when he was suffering from depression—but it wasn’t until he got help that his career took off.

When northern Peru's agricultural region was hit by back-to-back extreme weather events, fruit production normally bound for the US was decimated.

Fifteen months into Lyndon Johnson's presidency, the country still knew little about the Vietnam War. This changed in February 1966, when Sen. William Fulbright began the first televised, public hearings into the administration's handling of the conflict.

Chicago is home to more than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims who have settled there in the last five years. And from over 8,000 miles away from Myanmar, they want their voices to be heard.

The United States will reduce the number of refugees it is prepared to welcome for resettlement to only 45,000 over the next year — just over half the figure for 2016, officials said Wednesday.

Tuesday was a historic day for women in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom's leader issued a decree that will allow women to drive. It's the culmination of a battle they had fought so hard for, for years.

Recovery efforts by FEMA and other US federal government agencies are only getting started. And they're going to take a very long time to complete.

The US tax code is notoriously dysfunctional. Meanwhile, countries from New Zealand to Estonia have devised equitable, effective tax structures.

Women in domestic violence shelters are among the most vulnerable during natural disasters. Without a network of friends and family, they often find themselves wondering how to get out of a storm's path.

Nearly all of the island's 3.4 million residents have seen direct impacts from the storm.

When Twitter comedian and author Jonny Sun began to write his book, "everyone's a aliebn when ur a aliebn too," he had to write down the rules of the cutesy grammar of the language he invented.

As the death toll rises, engineers inspect buildings that may yet topple with another quake.

What happens if the US starts to stumble toward nuclear war?

North Korean officials say a tweet by President Donald Trump on Saturday was a "clear declaration of war." But Twitter says it won't be taking down Trump's tweet because of its "newsworthiness."

Wesley Bocxe famously documented Mexico's deadly 1985 earthquake. But 32 years later to the day, another massive earthquake toppled his home.

Everything people post on Facebook actually lives somewhere in real life — like a small town in central Oregon decimated by the loss of manufacturing industries.

Journalist Mary Kay Magistad grew up thinking about the Vietnam War, and it helped launch her career as an international correspondent. The former World China correspondent and host of Whose Century Is It? talks about how Vietnam shaped her.

About 154,000 people are eligible to renew their status for two more years. But not everyone thinks it's worth it.

Muslim Americans are responding to President Donald Trump's Travel Ban 3.0. And they're saying that despite the inclusion of two non-Muslim countries, it's a Muslim ban.

In Cold War Yugoslavia, Mexican mariachi music found a devoted audience.

Angela Merkel won, but a far-right party will be at the forefront of German politics for the first time since WWII.

A German far-right party won parliamentary seats after campaigning against policies that welcomed refugees. One of those refugees, Ahmad Wali Temory, hopes to preserve the policies that brought Afghans like him to the country.

People are running out of supplies, and it's unclear whether help is on the way.

Ricardo Rosselló, Puerto Rico's governor, called for more aid from the Trump administration on Sunday night and compared the crisis to the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.

“It’s crazy that those four words were so impactful,” says Lesego Legobane. “I didn’t even dream of getting 10 retweets.”

Everyone gets chicken, and the chicken get antibiotics.

Researchers examining soil cores from an early Roman harbor found correlations between layers of lead and the city’s economic growth.

With its silky fur and bandit-masked face, the black-footed ferret cuts a cute, if lethal figure on the American plains. It’s also the star of a great comeback story.

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have focused attention on the problems with US flood disaster programs.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday announced a plan aimed at "protecting election integrity." The announcement comes just two weeks after the company revealed that a Russian company purchased roughly $100,000 in political advertisements during the 2016 US presidential campaign.

Alfredo Richner and his family were in Puerto Rico when Hurricane Maria came barreling through.

With so much destruction from this season's hurricanes in the Caribbean, there are going to be a lot of people on the move, looking to start their lives in new places. Casually, we often call these people "climate refugees." But the term is problematic.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un have engaged in the sort of rhetorical rumble that wouldn't sound out of place in the world of professional wrestling. But these two nuclear-armed national leaders might be more similar than most people realize.

This is the untold story of Los Angeles’ Filipino Tiki bartenders.

In an April 1965 address to the nation, President Lyndon Johnson laid out his argument for expanding US involvement in Vietnam. From archival audio, we now know that Johnson had believed for at least a year that the conflict was a disaster in the making. Why did he continue to push for escalation in a war he didn't think was worth fighting?

The director of a new Baltimore production of "M. Butterfly" got to meet the real French embassy worker at the heart of the story. And he came away with even more questions.

Journalist Jamal Khashoggi lives in Washington, DC, but his home is in Saudi Arabia. He wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post that may make going home difficult — and dangerous.

How “American Masters” creator Susan Lacy created the definitive portrait of Steven Spielberg.

Music performed by symphony orchestras sounds sublime from the 17th row, but on stage? Not so much.

“BoJack Horseman” creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg talks about making fun of Hollywood clichés — and trying not to become one.

The traditionally male-dominated field of shark research is changing thanks to scientists like Alison Kock and Cynthia Wigren.

Songs of resistance are at the core of Songhoy Blues' latest album. In fact, they titled their album "Résistance." The band hails from Mali and tackles issues like racism and voter apathy.

Soviet officer Stanislav Petrov committed an act of bravery in 1983 that probably prevented a nuclear conflict. Yet he was largely unheralded in Russia.

Russia is celebrating the Kalashnikov rifle as "a cultural brand." It has literally put the weapon's inventor, Mikhail Kalashnikov, on a pedestal. A statue was unveiled in Moscow on Tuesday, amid much pomp and ceremony.

More than 200 people are dead as buildings collapse in dense sections of Mexico City.

Some neighborhoods in Miami only got power on Tuesday, 10 days after the Irma hit.