Scott Neuman

North Korea rejected further peace talks with Seoul on Friday on the same day it launched at least two projectiles — the sixth such test in a month, according to South Korea's military.

The statement from North Korea followed a speech on Thursday by South Korean President Moon Jae-in marking the 74th anniversary of Korean independence. In it, Moon vowed reunification of the Korean peninsula by 2045 — a subject that Pyongyang views as provocative.

Asian and European markets put in a mixed performance a day after fears of a looming global recession triggered an 800-point drop in the Dow — one of the biggest one-day sell-offs on Wall Street ever.

In Asia, indexes in China and Hong Kong were mostly in positive territory, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite and Hang Seng both posting modest gains. South Korea and India were also up.

President Trump has proposed a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to discuss how to "humanely solve" months of protests that have wracked Hong Kong.

In a Wednesday evening tweet, Trump called Xi "a great leader who very much has the respect of his people."

"He is a good man in a 'tough business,' " the president added. "I have ZERO doubt that if President Xi wants to quickly and humanely solve the Hong Kong problem, he can do it. Personal meeting?"

Japan's new emperor followed in his father's footsteps, expressing "deep remorse" for his country's role in World War II as part of an annual ceremony marking its surrender, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe followed another recent tradition on Thursday — sending an offering to the Yasukuni shrine that honors, among others, some of Japan's most notorious war criminals.

Updated at 2:30 p.m. ET

Operations at Hong Kong International Airport appeared to be returning to normal on Wednesday after riot police used batons and pepper spray to break up days of protests there that had brought flights to a standstill.

A poor showing for Argentina's President Mauricio Macri and a surge for his leftist opponent sparked fears of a possible default on the country's IMF loans, sending the peso to its lowest level in nearly two decades and causing a massive sell-off in the country's stock market.

Although Macri, who belongs to the center-right Republican Proposal party, was not expected to do well in Monday's primary, populist Alberto Fernández and his running mate, ex-president Christina Kirchner, scored 15 points higher in their primary for Citizen's Unity.

Updated at 12:02 p.m. ET

Hong Kong police cracked down on pro-democracy protesters demonstrating Tuesday at Hong Kong International Airport after they caused serious flight disruptions for a second day at one of the world's busiest aviation hubs.

Television footage showed tense confrontations late Tuesday between protesters wearing masks and local police. Protesters appeared to be barricading themselves inside a terminal using luggage carts as police tried to get them to leave.

A day after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested nearly 700 people in sweeping raids at several food-processing plants in Mississippi, officials said Thursday that nearly half of those detained had already been released.

Updated at 6 a.m. ET

Hundreds of protesters in Hong Kong waved banners and passed out anti-government leaflets to passengers arriving at the city's airport, as they sought to bring international attention to their campaign for greater freedom in the Chinese territory.

"Dear travelers," some of the flyers read in English, "Please forgive us for the 'unexpected' Hong Kong. You've arrived in a broken, torn-apart city, not the one you have once pictured. Yet for this Hong Kong, we fight."

A typhoon with sustained top winds of 130 mph is churning at sea as it heads for a landfall on China's eastern coast Saturday, expected to bring heavy rain and flooding.

Beijing on Friday issued its highest warning for super typhoon Lekima, which is expected to come ashore near the city of Ningbo in Zhejiang province in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday.

Updated at 11:20 a.m. ET

Kyrgyz police detained former President Almazbek Atambayev on Thursday after an earlier arrest attempt in which security forces were forced back by a hail of bullets from political supporters barricaded inside his rural home near the capital, Bishkek.

Japan's foreign ministry is cautioning its citizens residing in the United States to be alert to "the potential for gunfire incidents" after a spate of mass shootings in recent days.

The concern came as at least two other nations – Uruguay and Venezuela — issued travel warnings for the U.S. in the wake of shootings in Gilroy, Calif.; Dayton, Ohio; and El Paso, Texas, in which a total of nearly three dozen people were killed.

Updated at 9:35 a.m. ET

Pakistan's prime minister warned that a move by India to strip Kashmir of its special status could lead to war between the two countries and the "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims in the restive Himalayan region.

Imran Khan cited a suicide attack in February that killed at least 40 Indian security forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir and was followed by airstrikes and a dogfight between Indian and Pakistani pilots.

Amid weeks of mass anti-government demonstrations in Hong Kong that have frequently turned violent, Beijing on Tuesday issued a stark warning to protesters: "those who play with fire will perish by it."

The remarks, at a news conference in Beijing, were made by Yang Guang, a spokesman for the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council.

He said China has "tremendous power" to put down the protests and warned that anyone who engages in "violence and crimes ... will be held accountable."

A consortium of scientists hoping to build the world's largest optical telescope on Hawaii's tallest peak has applied to site it instead in the Canary Islands amid ongoing protests by Native Hawaiians who oppose construction of the instrument on what they consider a sacred volcano.

Astronomers say the Thirty Meter Telescope, or TMT, will have a dozen times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. For weeks, protesters have delayed the start of construction on the Big Island's Mauna Kea volcano.

India's government on Monday took the extraordinary step of revoking Kashmir's constitutionally guaranteed special status, a move that would tighten its control over the country's only Muslim-majority state.

In a decree issued by President Ram Nath Kovind, Article 370 of India's Constitution was rescinded amid protests and criticism of the move, which would turn the state into a union territory.

Nuon Chea, who served as Pol Pot's chief lieutenant during Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s, has died at 93, according to a U.N. tribunal which found him guilty last year of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

North Korea has reportedly conducted a third test launch in just over a week, firing what appeared to be short-range ballistic missiles, according to South Korean officials.

The presidential office in Seoul said the South Korean and U.S. militaries believe the test involved short-range ballistic missiles. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff noted that they flew about 137 miles and reached an altitude of 15 miles, traveling at the hypersonic speed of Mach 6.9.

Women in Saudi Arabia will be allowed to obtain passports and travel abroad without a male "guardian" to accompany them, according to a change in the law published on Friday that ends a long-standing practice in the kingdom that has drawn international criticism.

The change in the law allows women over the age of 21 to apply for a passport without a male sponsor and to leave Saudi Arabia unaccompanied. It was not immediately clear when the change would take effect.

Boris Johnson, Britain's new prime minister, saw his parliamentary majority reduced to a single vote on Friday after his governing Conservative Party lost a special election just as it faces a tough fight over Brexit.

The Tories were defeated by the opposition Liberal Democrats in a contest for the seat of Brecon and Radnorshire in Wales. Jane Dodds won 43% of the vote to 39% for Conservative Chris Davies, who was battling to retain his seat after being convicted of expenses fraud.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani lashed out at new U.S. sanctions imposed on the country's foreign minister, calling the Trump administration move "childish."

On Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced sanctions on Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, blocking him from doing business with Americans and restricting his access to any property he might have in U.S. jurisdictions. The move is seen as part of the administration's ratcheting up of pressure on Iran amid increased tensions between the two countries.

North Korea says that a test-firing it conducted this week was of a battlefield weapon new to its arsenal, contradicting a South Korean assessment that the launch on Wednesday was of a pair of previously known short-range ballistic missiles.

The official Korean Central News Agency said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed satisfaction after overseeing the successful test of "a newly developed large-caliber multiple launch guided rocket system on July 31."

Princess Haya bint al-Hussein of Jordan, one of six wives of the ruler of Dubai, has asked a U.K. court for protection after she fled the United Arab Emirates earlier this year with her two children.

A week after similar tests, North Korea has again fired two short-range missiles into the waters that separate it from Japan, according to South Korea's military.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff announced that the missiles, which flew about 155 miles and reached an altitude of 18 miles, were launched about 20 minutes apart early Wednesday morning from the Kalma area near North Korea's Wonsan port, according to the Yonhap news agency.

A woman has been charged in connection with a hacking breach at Capital One bank that exposed information from more than 100 million credit applications over a 14-year period – what is thought to be one of the largest such attacks in recent years.

Authorities in Seattle have charged Paige A. Thompson, who also goes by the handle "erratic," with a single count of computer fraud. She appeared in court on Monday and is scheduled for a detention hearing on Thursday.

At least 57 prisoners were killed by fellow inmates during a prison riot in northern Brazil in what authorities have described as a "targeted act" by gang members directed at a rival group.

The riot at Altamira prison began early Monday and lasted throughout the morning, according to authorities. Two prison officials were reportedly taken hostage, but later released after negotiations.

Authorities in Sweden have charged rapper A$AP Rocky with assault in connection with an altercation last month in Stockholm — a case that has rallied celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber and even a personal intervention from President Trump.

The musician and record producer, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, was detained along with two others by police following a street brawl in the Swedish capital, where the rapper was on tour.

North Korea has fired two short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan, the first such test since a high-profile meeting last month between President Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Updated at 5:35 a.m. ET

An Arkansas federal judge has temporarily blocked three new abortion restrictions, including a requirement that physicians providing the procedure be board-certified — a move that would likely have caused the closure of the state's only surgical abortion clinic.