Japan’s defense ministry says North Korea has test-fired a ballistic missile

Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Japan’s defense ministry says North Korea has test-fired a ballistic missile.

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  • Israel-Lebanon latest: Israel to launch assault on Lebanon coast as vigils remember 7 October Hamas attacks

    Today marks a year since Hamas crossed the Gaza border into Israel and killed 1,200 people, taking 251 more hostage . A little less than half of those hostages remain captive in the Gaza Strip

  • Ukraine-Russia war latest: Kyiv faces hypersonic missile attack as Putin’s forces suffer Crimea oil depot blow

    Ukraine hits Russia’s oil depot in Crimea on Putin’s 72nd birthday

  • Israel’s lack of vision in multi-fronted war may be fatally exposed

    After Iranian strikes damage bases and IDF take casualties in Lebanon, experts say Israel’s military doctrine could be found wanting

  • Hypersonic missiles attack by Putin's military on Kyiv at rush hour repelled by Ukraine air defences

    Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine’s capital as many people were heading to work or school

  • Israel bombs Lebanon, Gaza ahead of one-year anniversary of Oct. 7 attacks

    BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel bombed targets in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip on Sunday ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks that sparked its war, as Israel's defence minister declared all options were open for retaliation against arch-enemy Iran. Hezbollah rockets launched late on Sunday got past Israeli air defence systems and landed in Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, causing damage to buildings, police said. Israeli media reported 10 people wounded in rocket strikes in Haifa and the city of Tiberias.

  • Ukraine strikes a Russian oil hub as Zelenskyy says the war is in 'a very important phase'

    Ukraine’s military said it struck a major oil terminal Monday in Crimea that provides fuel for Russia’s war effort as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the war has entered a key phase. Both sides are facing the issue of how to sustain their costly war of attrition — a conflict that started with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and that shows no signs of a resolution. Ukraine’s General Staff said on social media that the oil terminal in Feodosia, on the south coast of the Russia-occupied Crimea Peninsula, has been supplying the Russian army with fuel and that the strike was part of an ongoing effort to “undermine the military and economic potential of the Russian Federation.”

  • Israel tallies a year of Gaza war: 40,000 targets bombed, 4380 soldiers

    JERUSALEM (Reuters) -In the past year in the Gaza Strip, Israel has bombed more than 40,000 targets, found 4,700 tunnel shafts and destroyed 1,000 rocket launcher sites, the military said on Monday's one-year anniversary of the Hamas-led militant attacks that triggered Israel's assault on the enclave. Tallying troops whose names it received permission to publish, Israel's military said 726 Israeli soldiers had been killed since Oct. 7, 2023. Of those, 380 died in the Oct. 7 attacks and 346 in Gaza combat starting Oct. 27, 2023.

  • Ukraine says Russian hypersonic missile hit 'area of' major air base

    KYIV (Reuters) -A Russian hypersonic missile struck the "area" of Ukraine's major Starokostiantyniv airbase on Monday morning, Kyiv said in a rare admission, after a drone and missile attack that also targeted the capital. The latest strike on the Starokostiantyniv airfield in the western Khmelnytskyi region, which is often attacked by Russia, came a day after the Dutch defence minister said the Netherlands would supply Ukraine with more F-16 jets in the coming months. Ukraine, which took receipt of a batch of F-16s this summer after months of lobbying the West, keeps the whereabouts of its warplanes top secret to protect them from long-range strikes that Russia has conducted throughout its war.

  • Israeli military encircles northern Gaza refugee camp after saying it sees signs of Hamas regrouping

    Israel’s military says it has encircled Jabalya, northern Gaza, after seeing signs of Hamas rebuilding, despite nearly a year of fighting and strikes in the territory.

  • Israel launches intense wave of airstrikes on 120 sites in Lebanon

    Military says 100 aircraft used in attack on targets in south of country as Israeli operations expand on multiple fronts

  • Biden orders 500 more active-duty troops to North Carolina to aid in Helene recovery

    President Biden ordered the Department of Defense to move an additional 500 active-duty troops into western North Carolina to aid in the recovery efforts following Hurricane Helene, the White House announced Sunday. The additional troops bring the total number to nearly 1,500, after the president ordered nearly 1,000 soldiers to the area late last week.…

  • OPINION - All-out nuclear war is inching closer — and now it could take place in space

    Once again there is a lot of loose talk about the possibility, and practicality of nuclear war — in northern Europe, the Middle East, and maybe even the United States. Dimitri Medvedev, deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, has warned that if a Nato power, meaning Britain, America or France, permitted the use of its weapons for Ukraine to strike deep into Russia, then Russia would feel entitled to reply with nuclear weaponry. This is a change in Russia’s “nuclear doctrine” against striking first with nukes — a central plank nuclear deterrence back in the Cold War of 1946 to 1989.

  • Ireland is a ‘playground’ for Russian intelligence, says former army chief

    Comment follows claim Kremlin recruited member of parliament to damage UK-Irish relations during Brexit talks

  • Philippines, South Korea deepen security cooperation, elevating ties to a strategic partnership

    South Korea and the Philippines, each faced by increasingly hostile rival nations, elevated their ties to a strategic partnership on Monday, including broader defense and security cooperation between the two U.S. treaty allies. Under the strategic partnership, the two countries agreed to strengthen cooperation between their coast guards.

  • Israel marks first anniversary of Hamas's October 7 attack

    Israel began its commemorations Monday of the one-year anniversary of Hamas's deadly October 7 attack, with an outpouring of emotion at vigils at massacre sites and rallies calling for the return of hostages.Ceremonies and events are planned across Israel and in cities around the world to mark the anniversary of the unprecedented attack by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip, which claimed more than 1,200 lives.President Isaac Herzog began the day with a moment of silence at 6:29 am -- the moment the attack began -- at Kibbutz Reim, the site of the Nova music festival where at least 370 people were killed by heavily armed Hamas fighters in the deadliest attack on October 7.Families of those killed attended the memorial, many of them crying, as Herzog met the crowd, an AFP correspondent reported.On Sunday, tens of thousands of people attended events in cities around the world, both to pay tribute to the victims of Hamas's attack and to voice support for the Palestinian people after a year of war in the Gaza Strip."Coming to this event one year after this terrible massacre that happened on October 7, it's very touching," said organiser Solly Laniado at a ceremony Sunday in Tel Aviv to remember the victims of the Nova attack.The anniversary comes with Israel still fighting in Gaza and engaged in a fresh war to the north in Lebanon against Hamas ally Hezbollah. It is also preparing its retaliation against Tehran over an Iranian missile attack last week, raising fears of an even wider conflict.The Israeli army said Monday that at least four projectiles were fired from Gaza just minutes after the commemorations began, adding it had "struck Hamas launch posts and underground terrorist infrastructure throughout the Gaza Strip".Hamas's armed wing said in a statement that its fighters had fired rockets at "enemy gatherings" at Rafah crossing, Kerem Shalom crossing and Kibbutz Holit near the border with Gaza.The military also said sirens sounded Monday morning in northern Israel, which has seen daily rocket fire from neighbouring Lebanon. - Rally for hostages -The October 7 attack by Hamas militants resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on the latest official Israeli figures. Some 251 people were captured and taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip, of whom 97 are still held captive in the coastal territory, including 37 the Israeli military says are dead.Families of hostages and supporters rallied in Tel Aviv before dawn Monday to call for their return, holding banners and placards with pictures of the captives.During a one-week truce in late November, 105 hostages were released in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.In the western Israel city of Sderot, less than two kilometres (just over a mile) from the Gaza border, President Herzog will later on Monday lead a ceremony to remember victims of the war against Hamas.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday vowed to achieve victory and said the military "completely transformed reality" in the year since Hamas's attack.Netanyahu had pledged to "crush... and destroy" Hamas as fighting began last October, but troops have returned to several areas across Gaza where they had previously conducted operations, only to find militants regrouping.In northern Gaza, the Israeli military said it had encircled the Jabaliya area after indications Hamas was rebuilding there despite a year of air strikes and fighting.Rescuers said 17 people, including nine children, had been killed on Sunday by Israeli air strikes on the area.In late September Israel turned its focus north, intensifying military action against the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, which had been routinely sending rockets over the border from Lebanon in support of Hamas.Israeli air strikes on targets in Lebanon have killed more than 1,110 people and forced more than one million to flee their homes.Israel says it aims to allow tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by almost a year of Hezbollah rocket fire into northern Israel to return home.- 'Terrible blow' -"A year ago, we suffered a terrible blow. Over the past 12 months, we have completely transformed reality," Netanyahu said during a visit to the Lebanon border, according to his office.Hamas on Sunday called the October 7 attack "glorious" and said the Palestinians were "writing a new history with their resistance". The militant group, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, launched its attack by firing thousands of rockets towards Israeli border communities in the early hours of October 7.At the same time Hamas fighters stormed across the border and attacked nearly 50 different sites, including kibbutzim communities, army bases and the Nova music festival.Militants killed festival-goers en masse and went door-to-door in farming communities, shooting residents dead in their homes.Hours after the attack, Israel launched a blistering military offensive on Gaza that has reduced large swaths of the territory to rubble, and displaced nearly all of its 2.4 million residents at least once amid an unrelenting humanitarian crisis.In Gaza, at least 41,870 people have been killed since the start of the Israeli offensive, a majority of them civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.The figures have been deemed to be reliable by the United Nations.- 'The world stopped' -"If I had known that the war would last a whole year, I would never have moved from northern Gaza," Mona Abu Nahl, 51, told AFP in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip."We no longer have the energy to bear all this... I would have put a tent over my destroyed house and sat down, rather than endure this humiliation, hunger and displacement," she said."It feels like the world stopped on October 7," said another displaced person, Israa Abu Matar, 26."I have grown old while watching my children hungry, scared, having nightmares and screaming day and night from the sound of the bombing and shells."The fighting in Gaza and Lebanon has been accompanied by the threat of war with Iran, which last week fired more than 200 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan in a September 27 strike on Beirut.Tehran on Sunday said it had prepared a plan to hit back against any possible Israeli reprisal, before Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned Iran it could end up looking like Gaza or Beirut.bur-mtp/smw

  • Pakistan bans ethnic Pashtun rights movement critical of military

    Pakistan's government has banned an ethnic Pashtun rights movement that has accused the military of a heavy-handed crackdown on civilians in the border regions with Afghanistan. PTM has accused the military of enforced disappearances and targeted killings of Pashtun civilians in its sweeping crackdown on militancy.

  • Johor Regent announces weekend shift to Saturday-Sunday for state starting January 2025

    KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 7 — The Regent of Johor Tunku Mahkota Johor Tunku Ismail Ibrahim said the state will change its weeken...

  • Forget Tom Cruise, Shah Rukh Khan or Dwayne Johnson — the world's richest actor worth RM5.9b only has one hit film series

    KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 6 — Who is the world's richest actor? While many may take a guess with the likes of Tom Cruise, Johnn...

  • 110-year-old man rescued from Indian cave in viral video

    A 110-year-old Indian man has been rescued from a cave near Bengaluru in India's Karnataka. The viral video, posted on X on October 3, alleged that the man was a staggering 188 years old. However, reports have since confirmed the man is 110-year-old Siyaram Baba, a famous Hindu saint from Madhya Pradesh.

  • David Beckham Shows Off Toned Physique as He Poses for Self-Care Sunday Selfies and Shares Words of Wisdom

    "Always important to take a minute to yourself and reset," the retired soccer star wrote on Instagram