World News
You’ll pay the most horrible price in history, N’Korea warns US, S’Korea, after firing missiles into Ulleungdo
North Korea fired more than 10 missiles Wednesday, including one that landed close to South Korea’s waters in what President Yoon Suk-yeol said was “effectively a territorial invasion”.
It also fired an artillery barrage into a maritime “buffer zone”, in what experts said was part of an “aggressive and threatening” response by Pyongyang to the large-scale joint air drills the United States and South Korea are currently conducting.
One short-range ballistic missile crossed the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border between the two countries, prompting a rare warning for residents on the island of Ulleungdo to seek shelter in bunkers.
The military said it was the “first time since the peninsula was divided” at the end of Korean War hostilities in 1953 that a North Korean missile had landed so close to the South’s territorial waters.
“President Yoon pointed out today that North Korea’s provocation is an effective territorial invasion by a missile that crossed the Northern Limit Line for the first time since the division,” his office said in a statement.
The missile closest to South Korea landed in waters just 57 kilometres (35 miles) east of the mainland, the military said, adding it was a “very rare and intolerable” incident.
Soon after, the South Korean military said it had fired three air-to-ground missiles into the sea towards the north of the two countries’ maritime boundary.
An air raid warning was issued for Ulleungdo after the North Korean missile launch. The alert was flashed on national television and told residents to “evacuate to the nearest underground shelter”.
The South Korean military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff initially said it detected the launch of three short-range ballistic missiles.
But it later announced North Korea had fired more than 10 missiles “of various types today towards the east and west”.
President Yoon called a meeting of the National Security Council, ordering “swift and stern measures so that North Korea’s provocations pay a clear price”.
South Korea closed some air routes over the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, advising local airlines to detour to “ensure passenger safety in the routes to the United States and Japan”.
– Vigilant Storm –
Pyongyang’s latest test-firing came as Seoul and Washington staged their largest-ever joint air drills, dubbed “Vigilant Storm”, which involve hundreds of warplanes from both sides.
Pak Jong Chon, a high-ranking North Korean official, said the drills were aggressive and provocative, according to a report in state media Wednesday.
Pak said the name of the exercises harked back to Operation Desert Storm, the US-led military assault on Iraq in 1990-1991 after it invaded Kuwait.
“If the US and South Korea attempt to use armed forces against the (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) without any fear, the special means of the DPRK’s armed forces will carry out their strategic mission without delay,” he said.
“The US and South Korea will have to … pay the most horrible price in history.”
North Korea’s missile launches on Wednesday appeared to be “the most aggressive and threatening armed demonstration against the South since 2010,” Cheong Seong-chang, a researcher at the Sejong Institute, told AFP.
“It is now a dangerous and unstable situation that could lead to armed conflict,” he added.
In March 2010, a North Korean submarine torpedoed the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan, killing 46 sailors, including 16 who were on their mandatory military service.
In November of the same year, the North shelled a South Korean border island, killing two marines — both of them young conscripts.
Wednesday’s missile tests follow a recent blitz of launches, including what the North said were tactical nuclear drills.
Washington and Seoul have repeatedly warned the launches could culminate in another nuclear test — which would be Pyongyang’s seventh.
“Pyongyang seems to have completed its most powerful deterrent. This is a serious threat,” Park Won-gon, a professor at Ewha University, told AFP.
“The North also seems confident in their nuclear capabilities,” Park added.
The North’s latest launches came with South Korea in a period of national mourning after more than 150 people — mostly young women in their 20s — were killed in a crowd crush in Seoul on Saturday.
It shows “North Korea’s clear priorities,” Yang Moo-jin, professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP.
“Pyongyang probably thinks it has no reason to take the Itaewon tragedy into its consideration, as Seoul and Washington’s largest-ever joint air drills are also happening anyway,” he added.
News
Navalny: Again, Europe moves against Russia, demands explanation over opposition leader’s death
A groundswell of pressure is being mounted from many countries in Europe on Russia over the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, many of them summoning diplomats in their countries to explain the situation.
Apart from the United Kingdom government, other countries seeking full explanations over the death of the 47-year-old strong opposition leader, serving a 19-year sentence, said to have occurred in a Russian prison include Germany, Lithuania, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Navalny, who created an uproar across the world when he nearly died of poisoning in 2020, was said to have died in a remote prison in the Arctic, on Friday, an incident many Western countries, which accused Kremlin of the poisoning incident, blame on Moscow.
The incident, coming a month ahead of presidential elections, which incumbent Vladimir Putin is favoured to win, has further hit a heavy blow on the opposition politics in the country, as Navalny is seen as rallying point against the Russian strongman.
However, Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the Russian opposition leader, was quoted as vowing on Monday to carry on her husband’s work, saying she would continue to fight for the freedom of Russians and the country, calling on the people to stand with her as the struggle moved into the next stage.
“It is terrible that Alexei Navalny has paid the ultimate price for his fight for a free and democratic Russia,” Hanke Bruins Slot, the Netherlands’ foreign affairs minister, posted on X, formerly Twitter.
“This afternoon, I summoned the Russian ambassador to the ministry to demand clarification on his death,” she said late Monday. “We strongly urge Russia to release Navalny’s body to his family and relatives.”
It came with Minister Tobias Billstrom Foreign Minister of Sweden who made the same claim on Monday, saying in a statement he had summoned Russia’s ambassador, and called for the European Union to consider “a new sanctions regime targeting the internal repression in Russia.”
Earlier before then, Jose Manuel Albares, Foreign Minister of Spain, had said on Friday, that his country was demanding that the circumstances of the death be clarified.
A woman has been shot and killed after police responded to her spontaneous shooting as she entered at church in Houston, Texas, injuring a five-year old child, while many worshippers scampered away in different directions.
Reports say the incident occurred at a celebrity non-denominational church, and one of the largest religious venues in the United States, owned by Pastor Joel Osteen, with the said woman with a child and armed with a long gun releasing shots, quoting Houston police chief Troy Finner as telling reporters.
Off-duty police officers working security at the venue quickly, were said to have shot back and killed her at the church, said to be a converted former sports arena which could seat some 16,800 people, Finner was quoted as saying, adding “a five-year-old kid was hit and is in critical condition at our local hospital.”
“Another man in his 50s who didn’t have anything to do with it, I don’t think is being treated for a gunshot wound to the leg,” he said.
One witnessed was quoted as saying: “When I entered the sanctuary I saw people running and saying: they are shooting, they are shooting, and we could hear gunshots. We tried to open some doors in the hallway but they were locked. Some people went out to get to their cars, but others like me did not know where to go.
“A church volunteer hid them in the bathroom, piling furniture up against the doors and warning them not to move. There were children on the third and fourth floors, the parents were worried about the children. We put things in God’s hands.”
Despite immediate apologies she tendered over the matter, the United Kingdom has suspended British-Nigerian minister MP Kate Osamor for including Israel in the list of countries committing genocide following the country’s activities in the Gaza strip.
In the remark she made on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, Osamor, had added Gaza to the list of ‘recent genocides,’ in her statement via a weekly newsletter, where she posted a photo of herself signing the Holocaust Education Trust’s commemoration book in Westminster.
The outing, which was followed with a post on her X, where she wrote: “Tomorrow is Holocaust Memorial Day, an international day to remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, the millions of other people murdered under Nazi persecution of other groups and more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and now Gaza,” had caused outrage.
Osamor, however, quickly beat a retreat, by later posting an apology on social media on Friday night, through the same X, where she wrote ‘Holocaust Memorial Day is a day to remember the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust and the genocides that have occurred since. I apologise for any offence caused by my reference to the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Gaza as part of that period of remembrance.”
The Board of Deputies, the Jewish Labour Movement, and the Holocaust Educational Trust reacted to her controversial remarks, while MailOnline, quoted a Labour source as confirming on Sunday evening that the Chief Whip suspended Osamor from the Parliamentary Labour Party pending an investigation.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism, was also quoted as saying: ‘The International Definition of Antisemitism, adopted by the Labour Party, lists comparing Israel to Nazis as an example of antisemitism. That is what Kate Osamor effectively did.
“The Labour Party has acted correctly in taking swift action against Ms Osamor and we will be following the matter with interest. There are some who wish to drag the Party backwards to darker days when views like those expressed by Ms Osamor were common, and they must fail.’
A Jewish Labour Movement spokesperson added, “This is wholly inappropriate. This week we have been commemorating the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust – and those who perished in subsequent genocides, as listed by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Unilaterally co-opting the war in Gaza, despite the horrific suffering there, on to that list is wrong and offensive.”
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