North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited arms factories this week, state media KCNA reported on Wednesday, as the United States and its partners condemned the country’s arms transfers to Russia.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday appointed Education Minister Gabriel Attal, 34, as his new prime minister, to breathe new life into his second term ahead of European Parliament elections.
The move may not necessarily lead to primary political change, but it is a testament to Macron’s preference for trying to move beyond last year’s unpopular pension and immigration reforms and his centrist party’s chances in June’s European elections.
Opinion polls show Macron’s side is the party of far-right leader Marine Le Pen by between 8 and 10 percentage points.
Attal, a close best friend of Macron’s who has become a household call as a government spokesperson during the COVID pandemic, will update outgoing Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.
Attal, one of the country’s top politicians according to the latest opinion polls, has established himself as a shrewd minister who feels at home on the radio and in parliament.
“Dear @GabrielAttal, I know that I can count on your power and commitment to implement the mission of revitalization and regeneration that I have announced,” said Macron, who announced, late last year, that he would announce new political initiatives.
Attal will be France’s youngest prime minister.
He and Macron have a combined age slightly younger than Joe Biden, who is serving his second term in this year’s US presidential election.
Macron has struggled to cope with a more turbulent parliament since losing his absolute majority shortly after his re-election in 2022.
“By appointing Gabriel Attal. . . Emmanuel Macron will cling to his popularity in opinion polls to ease the pain of an endless end to his rule,” said Jordan Bardella, 28, leader of Le Pen’s National Rally.
“Instead, it drags the short-lived Minister of Education with it. “
Other opposition leaders were quick to say they expected a lot from the prime minister’s replacement, and Macron himself took over much of the decision-making process.
“Elisabeth Borne, Gabriel Attal or anyone else, I don’t care, it will just be the same policies,” Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure told France Inter radio.
But MP Patrick Vignal, who belongs to Macron’s Renaissance party, said Attal is “a bit like the Macron of 2017”, referring to the point at which the President first took office as the youngest leader in modern French history, at the time a popular figure among voters.
Attal “is clear, he has authority”, Vignal said.
On Tuesday, the Kremlin declined to comment on U. S. and Ukrainian claims that Moscow fired North Korean missiles at Ukrainian targets, but also accused Kyiv of having Western-produced missiles to strike targets in Russia.
Last week, the White House said Russia had used North Korea’s short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) to expose anti-Ukrainian measures, bringing to light newly declassified intelligence. A senior Ukrainian official later corroborated this claim.
Moscow and Pyongyang have grown closer since the start of the Ukraine conflict and deny reaching any arms deals. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with President Vladimir Putin in Russia’s Far East last September and senior Russian officials made several visits to Pyongyang.
Asked by reporters about the U. S. and Ukrainian allegations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded: “No comment. “
Peskov added that Ukraine continuously attacks civilian targets in Russia with missiles manufactured through “Germany, France, Italy, the United States and other countries. “
Ukraine attacked the Russian border town of Belgorod on December 30, killing more than 20 people, adding two children and wounding 111 others, Russian media reported.
The Belgorod region, which borders northern Ukraine, like other Russian border areas, has been subjected throughout the year to shelling and drone attacks that the government has blamed on Ukraine, none of which had been on such a scale before.
Moscow, which sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, with the stated aim of “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” the country, has said Western nations including the United States bear responsibility for the consequences of supplying weapons to Kyiv.
The death toll from the powerful earthquake that devastated parts of central Japan on Jan. 1 topped 200 on Tuesday, and just over 100 people are still missing, the government said.
The magnitude-7. 5 quake destroyed and toppled buildings, sparked fires and destroyed infrastructure on the Noto Peninsula on Japan’s main island of Honshu as families celebrated New Year’s Eve.
Eight days later thousands of rescuers were battling blocked roads and poor weather to clear the wreckage as well as reach almost 3,500 people still stuck in isolated communities.
The Ishikawa regional government on Tuesday released figures showing another 202 people were found dead, up from 180 a day earlier, and 102 are missing, up from 120.
On Monday, the government more than tripled the number of missing people to 323 after central databases were updated, with most of the backlog related to Wajima, the hardest-hit.
But since then, “many families have let us know that they need to check the protection of the other people (on the list),” Hayato Yachi, head of Ishikawa, told AFP.
As heavy snowfall in some places hampered relief efforts, only about 30,000 more people were living in about 400 government shelters on Monday, some of which were overcrowded and could not provide enough food, water and heat.
Almost 60,000 households were without running water and 15,600 had no electricity supply.
Road conditions have been worsened by days of rain that have contributed to an estimated 1,000 landslides.
On Tuesday, at a daily government crisis relief assembly, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called on ministers to “make efforts to overcome the state of isolation (of communities) and continue foolish rescue activities. “
Kishida also requested secondary evacuations to other spaces outside the quake-hit area, government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.
In Suzu, Ishikawa prefecture, an elderly woman in her 90s spent five days under the rubble of a collapsed space before being rescued on Saturday.
“Wait!” The woman’s call for rescue was heard, in police footage of the rainy scene published by local media.
Not everyone was so lucky, Naoyuki Teramoto, 52, was inconsolable on Monday after the bodies of 3 of her 4 children were discovered in the city of Anamizu.
“We were talking about plans to go to Izu,” a famous hot spring resort, after his daughter passed the school’s entrance exam, he told NTV television.
Japan experiences hundreds of earthquakes every year, though most cause no damage because of strict building codes in place for more than four decades.
But many structures are older, especially in aging communities in rural spaces like Noto.
The country is haunted by the monstrous 2011 earthquake that triggered a tsunami, left around 18,500 people dead or missing and sparked a nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
At least 21 other people were injured Monday when a fuel leak exploded at the Sandman Hotel in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, the city’s fire department said.
No one was killed in the blast and the government was investigating the cause.
Video from the scene showed debris on the street between two buildings with first responders on the scene.
Craig Trojacek, a spokesman for the Fort Worth Fire Department, said first responders rescued several people trapped in the hotel’s basement.
Of the other 21 people injured, one user was in critical condition, while four others had serious but non-life-threatening injuries, Trojacek said. The others were wounded.
Trojacek said 26 hotel rooms were occupied by guests. He added that painting work was being done on the structure at the time, but it is still unclear if that played a role in the explosion.
Ukrainian shelling wounded three more people on Monday night in Russia’s Belgorod region and air defenses shot down 10 RM-70 Vampir rockets, Russian officials and the Defense Ministry said.
Belgorod has come under repeated attack from Ukrainian forces in recent weeks. A missile and drone attack late last month killed 25 civilians, including five children.
“The city of Belgorod was shelled last night and other people were wounded,” Gladkov said on the Telegram messaging app.
“There are now 3 other people in intensive care, all of whom have undergone surgeries. The doctors are in a solid and serious condition. “
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Gladkov said the attack blew out the windows of two multi-story buildings and several were damaged.
The Russian Defense Ministry said air defenses shot down 10 rockets fired with the RM-70 Vampire Rocket Launch Formula (MLRS). Since the beginning of the war, the Ukrainian military has allegedly obtained several models of RM-70 Vampir rockets from the Czech Republic.
Gladkov said that he had turned to other regions to welcome the young people from Belgorod and that, if necessary, they would also send teachers out of the region.
Pro-Palestinian protesters blocked several New York City bridges and a tunnel on Monday to demand an immediate ceasefire in the three-month-old Israel-Hamas conflict.
Dozens of protesters sat on the sidewalk and chanted slogans as they blocked traffic on the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges that cross the East River, as well as the Holland Tunnel that connects New York to New Jersey via the Hudson River, local media reported.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the Holland Tunnel, said lanes into New Jersey were closed “due to law enforcement activity. “
A video posted on social media showed protesters chanting, “NYPD, KKK, IDF, they’re all the same,” referring to the NYPD, the Ku Klux Klan and the Israel Defense Forces.
Protesters at the Holland Tunnel carried banners reading “Lift the siege of Gaza, ceasefire now” and “End the occupation. “
The protests were organized through the Jewish Voice for Peace, the Palestinian Youth Movement and the New York bankruptcy Democratic Socialists of America, among groups, they said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“The siege on Gaza needs to end and I’m ready to put my body on the line to end it,” said one protester as she was led away by a police officer with her hands behind her back, video showed.
Israel’s Hamas-led crusade in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, while Israel says Hamas has more than 100 hostages out of the 240 captured in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people.
Israel accuses Hamas of operating among civilians and has released videos and photos it says support the claim. Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction, denies the accusation.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday that most European Union countries were not delivering enough weapons to Ukraine to fight a Russian invasion, and called on allies to step up their efforts.
With US military aid to Ukraine blocked in the US Congress, Scholz has insisted on wanting Europe to step up its efforts, repeating his mantra that the German government will remain in Kiev for as long as necessary.
Germany itself had come under much criticism in the early months of Russia’s invasion for failing to step up and provide the leadership and military backing to Kyiv expected of one of Europe’s major powers.
It is now, however, one of the top providers of both weapons and financial aid. Late last year it agreed to double the country’s military aid for Ukraine in 2024 to 8 billion euros ($8.8 billion).
“No matter how big Germany’s contribution is, it will not be enough to ensure Ukraine’s security in the long term,” Scholz told a press convention in Berlin.
“Therefore, I call on allies in the European Union to strengthen their efforts regarding Ukraine. The planned weapons deliveries to Ukraine of most EU member states are not enough,” he added.
Scholz said Berlin had asked the EU to check with member states what deliveries they were planning, as they would possibly not all be known.
The chancellor said he was confident the bloc would agree its proposed 50 billion-euro aid package for Ukraine at an upcoming emergency summit on Feb. 1. The EU failed to agree on the deal at an EU summit in December due to opposition from Hungary.
U. S. President Joe Biden will not fire Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin because the Pentagon chief failed to disclose a hospitalization for several days, a White House official said Monday.
Austin, who sits just below Biden in the U. S. military’s most sensible chain of command, denied his New Year’s Day hospitalization to the president and the public for several days.
Asked if Austin had been unconscious since Jan. 1 and if the White House had been informed, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he did.
Authorities revealed Sunday that Austin’s hospitalization was kept far more secret than previously thought, adding his deputy to a long list of others, including Biden, who were kept in the dark for days.
Austin’s duties require him to be available at all times to respond to any national security crisis. On Saturday, he said he took “full responsibility” for the secrecy surrounding his hospitalization.
It’s unclear what fitness factor led to Austin’s hospitalization.
Tokyo’s Haneda Airport nearly resumed general operations on Monday by reopening the runway a week after a fatal collision between a Japan Airlines plane and a coast guard plane believed to have been caused by human error.
The collision occurred Tuesday night when JAL Flight 516, carrying 379 passengers and their crew, landed on the same runway alone the Coast Guard plane preparing for takeoff, or on fire. All occupants of the JAL Airbus A350-900 passenger jet were safely evacuated within 18 minutes. The captain of the much smaller Coast Guard Dash-8 bomber escaped with burns, but all five crew members were killed.
At the coast guard base in Haneda, colleagues of the five team members covered themselves and waved to mourn their deaths as black cars with their bodies drove past them. The bodies of the victims were due to be returned to their families on Sunday after police autopsies. , as part of its separate investigation into possible negligence.
Haneda reopened three runways the night of the crash, but the final runway remained closed for investigation, debris clearance and repairs.
The Department of Transportation said the runway reopened early Monday and the airport was in condition to operate at full capacity. Television footage showed domestic flights taking off as usual from the coastal runway.
The collision led to the cancellation of more than 1,200 flights, affecting about 200,000 passengers during the New Year’s holiday period. The airport was packed with passengers on Monday. All scheduled flights have resumed except for 22 JAL flights canceled as of Tuesday.
The investigation focuses on what led to the Coast Guard’s traffic control team getting the green light for takeoff, even though the traffic control transcript showed no clear confirmation between them and traffic control. The traffic control corps of workers assigned to the runway allegedly missed an alert formula when they indicated unplanned access by the Coast Guard.
Haneda Airport’s traffic section added a new runway station on Saturday to tighten security measures.
A team from Japan’s Transport Safety Bureau asked traffic officials on Monday as part of their investigation. So far, the six-member team has interviewed members of the JAL flight team and recovered flight information and voice recorders from both planes, which are critical in determining what caused the collision.
Ukraine came under strong Russian missile attacks early Monday that struck near the front lines of fighting in the east as well as in central and western parts of the country, killing one person and injuring at least 30.
The highest death toll was recorded in the Dnipropetrovsk region, where a woman was killed in a missile strike on the outskirts of the city of Kryvy Rih and 24 others were wounded in an attack on the city of Novomoskovsk. In Kryvy Rih itself, more than 20 houses and a grocery mall were destroyed by a missile strike, regional governor Serhii Lysak said.
At least four missiles hit Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, wounding one person, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov also said two other people were wounded and two others were trapped under the rubble after an attack in the village of Zmiiv.
In Zaporizhzhia, a giant city along the Dnipro River, two more people were wounded in a missile attack on a residential area, regional governor Yurii Malashko said.
In the past 24 hours, Russian troops carried out 131 artillery strikes in the Kherson region, killing two more people and wounding five, according to Governor Oleksandr Prokudin.
The city of Kherson and the surrounding region have been systematically attacked since Russian forces withdrew from the city east of Dnipro in the fall of 2022.
At least six explosions rocked the central Khmelnytskyi region on Monday morning, but details on casualties or damage are not yet known.
Ukraine’s military said on Monday that Russian forces had unsuccessfully tried to advance over the past day in several areas, including around Lyman in the Kharkiv region, as well as in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Authorities in the Khmelnytskyi region said at least six explosions were heard in the morning missile strike, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko, a man wounded in a missile strike on Jan. 2, died Monday in a Kyiv hospital. Another man wounded in the same attack was killed in Kharkiv on Monday, SyniehubovArray