North Korea this month lifted the veil on one of its most closely guarded nuclear secrets, releasing the first public photos of centrifuges it uses to make bomb-grade uranium. The revelatory images of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un touring a vast centrifuge hall, along with the recent startup of a reactor that may be producing plutonium and tritium for atomic weapons, heighten concerns over the rogue nation’s growing arsenal. They also help bring its nuclear program into sharper focus.

Kim’s nuclear whistle stop, which also included images of a smaller centrifuge hall, follows a speech in which he reiterated a 2023 vow to “exponentially” increase his nuclear stockpile. He has suggested the effort will include large numbers of tactical nuclear weapons, lower yield devices designed for short- or medium-range missiles. “North Korea is deadly serious about deploying large numbers of tactical nuclear weapons,” says Jeffrey Lewis, a North Korea expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Tactical nukes would pose an especially grave threat to neighboring South Korea.

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Photos open rare window into North Korea’s nuclear weapons program | Science | AAAS https://t.co/qnBMibdPIh

— Amb Antonio Garza (@aogarza) September 24, 2024

US military aid packages for Ukraine have been smaller in recent months, as the stockpiles of weapons and equipment that the Pentagon is willing to send Kyiv from its own inventory have dwindled. The shift comes amid concerns about US military readiness being impacted as US arms manufacturers play catchup to the huge demand created by the war against Russia.

The shortage means the Biden administration still has $6 billion in funds available to arm and equip Ukraine, but the Pentagon lacks the inventory it is willing to deliver more than two years into the war, two US officials told CNN.

“It’s about the stockpiles we have on our shelves, what [the Ukrainians] are asking for, and whether we can meet those requests with what we currently have” without impacting readiness, one of the officials said.

The Pentagon has asked Congress for more time to spend that money before it expires at the end of September, according to Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary. It’s a stark reversal from last winter, when the administration was pleading with lawmakers for additional funding to support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

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New: US military aid packages for Ukraine have been smaller as stockpiles of weapons DoD is willing to send from its own inventory have dwindled. It's resulted in a new problem for the admin: Too much money for Ukraine and not enough time to spend it. https://t.co/Fpxse6f4yq

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) September 17, 2024

The FBI said on Wednesday that it had disrupted a Chinese hacking group nicknamed “Flax Typhoon”  that targeted critical infrastructure in the United States.

The Flax Typhoon hackers installed malicious software on thousands of computers and other internet-connected devices including cameras, video recorders and routers.

This created a botnet — a massive network of infected computers.

Universities, government agencies, telecommunications providers, media organizations and NGOs were among the targets, the FBI said.

“Flax Typhoon’s actions caused real harm to its victims, who had to devote precious time to clean up the mess when they discovered the malware,” said FBI director Chris Wray.

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A hacker group known as Flax Typhoon was able to infect hundreds of thousands of devices around the world, authorities said. China has denied any involvement in the malicious botnet.https://t.co/FoeAA9IPMg

— DW News (@dwnews) September 19, 2024

The U.S. is gradually moving aircraft and commandos into coastal West Africa in an urgent effort to try to stop the march of al Qaeda and Islamic State militants across one of the world’s most volatile regions.

American forces were evicted this summer from their regional stronghold in Niger, farther inland, and now the Pentagon is patching together a backup counterinsurgency plan in neighboring countries—refurbishing an airfield in Benin to accommodate American helicopters, stationing Green Berets and surveillance planes in Ivory Coast, and negotiating the return of U.S. commandos to a base they used to occupy in Chad.

“Losing Niger means that we’ve lost our ability to directly influence counterterrorism and counterinsurgency in the Sahel,” said retired Maj. Gen. Mark Hicks, former commander of U.S. special-operations forces in Africa, referring to the vast, semidesert band just south of the Sahara.

Islamist militants are wreaking havoc across the core of the Sahel—Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger—attacking police and military, stirring local grievances, imposing their harsh version of Islam in occupied villages and causing some 38,000 deaths since 2017, according to the Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, which analyzed figures collected by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a U.S.-based, nonprofit monitoring service.

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If only the moderators had asked serious questions about topics like this last night….

U.S. Forces Try to Regroup as al Qaeda, Islamic State Sow Terror in West Africa https://t.co/2olUuGnpKq

— Morgan Ortagus (@MorganOrtagus) September 11, 2024

Seal Team 6, the clandestine US Navy commando unit that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, has been training for missions to help Taiwan if it is invaded by China, according to people familiar with the preparations.

The elite Navy special forces team, which is tasked with some of the military’s most sensitive and difficult missions, has been planning and training for a Taiwan conflict for more than a year at Dam Neck, its headquarters at Virginia Beach about 250km south-east of Washington.

The secret training underlines the increased US focus on deterring China from attacking Taiwan, while stepping up preparations for such an event.

The preparations have only grown since Phil Davidson, the US Indo-Pacific commander at the time, warned in 2021 that China could attack Taiwan within six years.

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This is an amazing scoop by @FT and @Dimi. It is sure to get under Beijing's skin.

US Navy Seal unit that killed bin Laden trains for Chinese invasion of Taiwan https://t.co/6ngSZFvKrA via @ft

— Dennis Wilder偉德寧 (@dennisw5) September 12, 2024

The US has detected increased Russian military activity around key undersea cables, and believes Russia may now be more likely to carry out potential sabotage operations aimed at disabling a critical piece of the world’s communications infrastructure, two US officials told CNN.

Russia has put increasing emphasis on building up a dedicated military unit, which deploys a formidable fleet of surface ships, submarines and naval drones, according to one of the officials. The unit, the “General Staff Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research,” is known by its Russian acronym GUGI.

“We are concerned about heightened Russian naval activity worldwide and that Russia’s decision calculus for damaging US and allied undersea critical infrastructure may be changing,” a US official told CNN. “Russia is continuing to develop naval capabilities for undersea sabotage mainly thru GUGI, a closely guarded unit that operates surface vessels, submarines and naval drones.”

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Exclusive: US sees increasing risk of Russian ‘sabotage’ of key undersea cables by secretive military unit | CNN Politics https://t.co/eVLdMHaZlc

— Jörn Weitzmann (@JoernWeitzmann) September 9, 2024

Ukraine’s Kursk offensive has dented Vladimir Putin’s war narrative and triggered “questions” among the Russian elite about the point of the war, two of the world’s leading spy chiefs have said.

CIA director Bill Burns said Kursk was “a significant tactical achievement” that had boosted Ukrainian morale and exposed Russia’s weaknesses. It has “raised questions . . . across the Russian elite about where is this all headed”, he said.

He was speaking at the Financial Times’ Weekend festival in London on Saturday alongside MI6 chief Richard Moore. Moore said the Kursk offensive was “a typically audacious and bold move by the Ukrainians . . . to try and change the game” — although he cautioned it was “too early” to say how long Kyiv’s forces would be able to control the Russian territory they had seized.

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Ukraine’s Kursk offensive has triggered doubts among Russian elite, spy chiefs say https://t.co/gAzWq9L2qe

— FT Europe (@ftbrussels) September 7, 2024

Iran has sent short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, according to U.S. and European officials, a move that gives Moscow another potent military tool in its war against Ukraine and follows stern Western warnings not to provide those arms to Moscow.

The development comes as Russia has stepped up its missile attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, killing dozens of civilians in recent days. Washington informed allies of Iran’s shipments this week, European officials said, including a briefing for ambassadors in Washington on Thursday.

A U.S. official confirmed the missiles “have finally been delivered.”

“We have been warning of the deepening security partnership between Russia and Iran since the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and are alarmed by these reports,” said National Security Council Spokesman Sean Savett. “We and our partners have made clear both at the G-7 and at the NATO summits this summer that together we are prepared to deliver significant consequences. Any transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia would represent a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been hosted by President Biden at a state dinner and lavished with praise by White House officials, who describe ties with India as “one ofthe most consequential relationships” for the United States.

But this week, Modi reminded the world that he has another close relationship — with “my dear friend Vladimir Putin.”

As Modi makes his first visit to Russia since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the images emerging from Moscow of Modi wrapping the Russian president in a hug send a clear signal that the South Asian giant will maintain deep ties with Russia despite the Biden administration’s efforts to woo its prime minister. It also shows that Putin is not as isolated as the White House has hoped.

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Modi bear hugs Putin in Moscow, marking deep ties between Russia and India. The engagement, which overlaps with three days of NATO meetings in Washington, was met with consternation in Washington and Kyiv. @gerryshih @catherineBelton @maryilyushina https://t.co/jz4mAMsrTs

— Ellen Nakashima (@nakashimae) July 9, 2024

Ukrainian attacks on Russian supply lines have left Russian units scrambling for food, water and ammunition, blunting Moscow’s renewed invasion into Ukraine’s northeast Kharkiv region, according to Ukrainian field commanders who shared radio and phone intercepts and results of their interrogations of Russian prisoners of war.

The intercepts and extensive interviews with 10 Ukrainian commanders and troops operating across the front line in Kharkiv — including several who monitor Russian communications and who question POWs immediately after they are captured — paint a picture of increasingly desperate Russian ground troops who are losing personnel and momentum after reinvading across the border in May.

In the transcript of one radio conversation, intercepted in June and shared with The Washington Post, a Russian soldier orders another to ensure incoming troops responsible for carrying supplies understand that there is a dire shortage of food and water.

“Tell each of them … not to listen to the [expletive] guide who says that ‘Water is not needed, food is not needed, everything is here,’” the soldier says. “There is nothing here.”

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Ukrainian attacks on supply lines slowed Russians in Kharkiv, intercepts show https://t.co/zgf2n0iZE6

— David Vickrey🇺🇦🇺🇸🇩🇪 (@DavidVickrey1) July 8, 2024

The breathtaking events unfolding in France expose all the old deformities of the half-finished euro project. They revive the poisonous internal politics that have long bedeviled monetary union, pitting Teutonic creditors against Latin debtors with conflicting morality tales.

The ECB’s untested Transmission Protection Instrument (TPI) allows the governing council to buy distressed bonds on its own authority, but only for countries that pursue (a) “sound fiscal and macroeconomic policies”; (b) are not “subject to an excessive deficit procedure”; (c) do not have “severe macroeconomic imbalances”; (d) where the “trajectory of public debt is sustainable”; and (e) where stress is “not warranted by country-specific fundamentals”.

France fails on most counts, and is on course to fail on every single one under any of the scenarios likely to emerge on July 7, including the pre-insurrectional chaos of a state with no functioning government at all.

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Macron has killed fiscal union stone dead, and without fiscal union the euro cannot work over the long run. It will lurch from crisis to crisis until Germany finally loses patiencehttps://t.co/PgRl8XRzb0

— Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (@EvansAmbro84839) June 25, 2024

A proud city of gleaming high rises, oil wealth and five-star hotels lies in ruins. Millions have fled. A famine threatens. The gold market is a graveyard of rubble and dog-eaten corpses. The state TV station became a torture chamber. The national film archive was blown open in battle, its treasures now yellowing in the sun. Artillery shells soar over the Nile, smashing into hospitals and houses. Residents bury their dead outside their front doors. Others march in formation, joining civilian militias. In a hushed famine ward, starving babies fight for life. Every few days, one of them dies.

Khartoum, the capital of Sudan and one of the largest cities in Africa, has been reduced to a charred battleground.

A feud between two generals fighting for power has dragged the country into civil war and turned the city into ground zero for one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes.

As many as 150,000 people have died since the conflict erupted last year, by American estimates. Another nine million have been forced from their homes, making Sudan home to the largest displacement crisis on earth, the United Nations says. A famine looms that officials warn could kill hundreds of thousands of children in the coming months and, if unchecked, rival the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.

Fueling the chaos, Sudan has become a playground for foreign players like the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Russia and its Wagner mercenaries, and even a few Ukrainian special forces.

Great reporting and photographs by @declanwalsh and @ivorprickett : A War on the Nile Pushes #Sudan Toward the Abyss
https://t.co/8oyxZrUptC

— Paulo Nunes dos Santos (@pdossantos) June 5, 2024

Israel and Hezbollah are moving closer to a full-scale war after months of escalating hostilities with the Lebanese militant group, adding pressure on Israel’s government to secure its northern border.

Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization closely aligned with Iran, opened a battle front with Israel on Oct. 8, a day after the deadly Hamas-led raid inside Israel sparked the current war in Gaza.

Hezbollah says that its attacks are in support of the Palestinians and that it won’t stop until Israel ceases its war in Gaza. Reluctant to open a second front, Israel initially responded to Hezbollah with tit-for-tat attacks, trying to calibrate its actions to avoid sparking a full-scale war.

But in recent weeks, both sides say there has been a sharp rise in hostilities. Hezbollah has increased its drone and rocket attacks, hitting important Israeli military installations. Israel, too, has stepped up attacks, targeting Hezbollah sites deep into southern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley as well as senior military officials in the group.

BREAKING

Risk of War Between Israel and Hezbollah Builds up as Clashes Escalate. pic.twitter.com/CcXRcPdqQ7

— World Affairs Eye (@WorldAffairsEye) June 5, 2024

Never has it been so cheap to inflict a world of economic pain.

That stark point was underscored last week by Maximilian Hess, a principal at London-based Enmetena Advisory, a political risk consultancy. Speaking to a webinar of supply-chain managers, he showed a slide of a canoe-size naval drone and said such jury-rigged weapons have the ability to redirect world trade.

“Nowhere is this more clear than in the conflict in the Red Sea,” Hess said, referring to attacks launched from Yemen toward commercial ships trying to use the Suez Canal.

Nearly six months into the Houthis’ relentless campaign to protest Israel’s war in Gaza, the economic fallout is widening. As ships sail around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, their unpredictable schedules are clogging major Asian ports, creating shortages of empty containers in some places and pileups in others. Delivery times to the US and Europe are getting longer, and freight rates are surging.

🌎 Ships Diverted From Red Sea Send Ripple Effects Across the Globe – Bloomberghttps://t.co/1A8HVOJVKX pic.twitter.com/6fFCf9asLJ

— Christophe Barraud🛢🐳 (@C_Barraud) June 3, 2024

Sudan’s army said it’s poised to get weapons from Russia in return for letting Moscow establish a military fueling station on the Red Sea coast, a blow for the US as its opponents gain influence in the African country torn apart by civil war.

A military delegation will travel to Russia within a few days to conclude the deal, assistant commander-in-chief Yasser Al-Atta told the Gulf-based Al-Hadath TV channel on Saturday. Authorities will get “vital weapons and munitions,” he said, describing the planned Russian outpost as “not exactly a military base.”

Moscow has long coveted a foothold on Sudan’s 530-mile (853 kilometer) coastline, and a final agreement would stoke Western concerns over the country’s growing influence in Africa.

The announcement comes as Sudan’s army strives to regain swathes of territory lost to the Rapid Support Forces militia in a war that erupted in April 2023 and may have killed as many as 150,000 people.

Sudan’s army said it’s poised to get weapons from Russia in return for letting Moscow establish a military fueling station on the Red Sea coast, a blow for the US as its opponents gain influence in the African country torn apart by civil war. https://t.co/7XhPQwcD5G

— Simon Marks (@MarksSimon) May 26, 2024

Oleksiy Bozhko, a volunteer medic whose team examined the men near the eastern city of Avdiivka, identified the gas as chloropicrin, a banned chemical irritant, based on the men’s symptoms and description of the smell. U.S. and Ukrainian officials, as well as medics, soldiers and international researchers say Russian use of toxic gases on the battlefield is increasing as Moscow ramps up an offensive designed to seize more of Ukraine’s territory than the roughly 20% it already occupies.

“This weapon cripples and kills, it’s indiscriminate,” said Bozhko.

After Ukraine repelled initial Russian attacks in 2022, the war has morphed into a grind where each side is looking for an advantage against hardened defensive lines. Seeing an opportunity in Ukraine’s shortage of weapons and reserve forces, Russia has been pressing forward on several fronts, using guided aerial bombs to smash up Ukrainian positions. Toxic gases can impair Ukrainian troops’ ability to defend entrenched positions, even forcing them to withdraw.

.@wsj: Burning Skin, Teary Eyes: #Ukraine’s Troops Say Russia Is Using a Banned Toxic Gas https://t.co/3oIwPVspkt

— Amb Antonio Garza (@aogarza) May 23, 2024

The new tariffs President Biden announced last week aren’t economically significant. Symbolically, they are huge.

The U.S. buys almost no electric vehicles, steel or semiconductors—all targets of the tariffs—from China. But, by adding to, rather than rescinding, tariffs imposed in 2018 by former President Donald Trump, it signals that the decoupling of the Chinese and U.S. economies is becoming irreversible.

More important, the tariffs are the final piece of an economic strategy for competing with China.

This strategy is a three-legged stool. The first consists of subsidies to build a viable technology manufacturing sector, from clean energy to semiconductors. The second is tariffs on Chinese imports that threaten those efforts. The third is restrictions on access to money, technology and know-how that could help China compete. A fourth leg, a unified economic front with allies, remains unrealized.

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Biden's new tariffs round out a three-legged strategy for competing with China. Leg 1: subsidies to build a viable technology manufacturing sector, from clean energy to semiconductors. 2: tariffs on Chinese imports that threaten those efforts. 3: restrictions on access to money,…

— Greg Ip (@greg_ip) May 20, 2024

The problem of being a poor paymaster is equally evident in the case of Ukraine. For reasons that future historians will struggle to understand, the US suspended its aid to Ukraine in late 2023. Europeans did not fill the gap, with the result that Ukraine’s military capacity was diminished and Russia’s hopes of victory revived. According to the latest Ukraine Support Tracker published by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, between the beginning of the war and this March, the European Union plus its individual members together allocated a total of €89.9 billion in military, humanitarian and financial aid to Ukraine. The US pledged less, €67 billion.

The result is that Kyiv listens much less to Washington than it did in 2022 and 2023 — hence the recent spate of deep drone strikes aimed at Russia’s energy infrastructure, operations that cannot possibly have been approved by Team Biden, which it seems will (to quote John F. Kennedy) “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship … to assure the survival and success of liberty” — except for higher gasoline prices in an election year.

This has been a horrible failure of American policy. Turning off aid to Ukraine has unquestionably encouraged Putin to believe that victory can be achieved in a relatively short time frame. Thanks to Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko, we know now that, when their invasion was going badly in early 2022, the Russians were ready to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine. The compromise would have ruled out North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership for Kyiv but provided it with multilateral security guarantees to protect its neutrality, and paved the way to EU membership.

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The Biden administration wants other countries to do its fighting in Cold War II, but that approach is economically crippling and rarely achieves victory https://t.co/ogeTcnGAkk via @opinion

— Robert Burgess (@BobOnMarkets) May 20, 2024

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei wields ultimate decision-making authority in Iran, but Raisi still holds significant power within the regime. Raisi is the deputy chairman of the Assembly of Experts, a regime entity constitutionally responsible for monitoring the supreme leader and selecting his successor.[8] Iranians re-elected Raisi to serve as a representative of South Khorasan Province in the Assembly of Experts during the recent March 2024 Assembly of Experts elections.[9] Raisi also holds numerous ex officio positions. He is a member of the Expediency Discernment Council and the chairman of the Supreme National Security Council, Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, and Supreme Cyber Space Council.

Raisi’s death would have serious implications for supreme leader succession. Raisi is considered one of the top contenders—along with Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei—to succeed Khamenei as supreme leader. Khamenei appointed Raisi to the position of judiciary chief in 2019 and endorsed Raisi during the August 2021 presidential elections.[10] The next several days have the potential to reshape the immediate and long-term dynamics of the regime, including supreme leader succession. Raisi’s death would ultimately not change the regime’s current trajectory toward more hardline and conservative domestic policies and more aggressive regional policies, however.

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With the death of President Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, becomes acting president.

Here’s what to know about him. https://t.co/mlW89Mh2JD

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 20, 2024

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin pledged to intensify cooperation against US “containment” of their countries, as they warned of growing nuclear tensions between rival powers.

Putin and Xi accused the US of planning to station missile systems around the world that “pose a direct threat to the security of Russia and China,” in a joint declaration after more than two hours of talks in Beijing on Thursday. They agreed to tighten coordination, including between their militaries, against what they called Washington’s “destructive and hostile course.”

Putin’s in China on the first foreign visit since his inauguration last week for a fifth presidential term, indicating the importance of the relationship with Xi in enabling Moscow to resist unprecedented sanctions from the US and its allies over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Chinese leader Xi Jinping signaled to Vladimir Putin that ties between the two nations remain strong, as the Russian leader embarks on a new term with the war in Ukraine dragging into its third year https://t.co/xvrekfJjxl pic.twitter.com/xAGy7MdqkI

— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) May 16, 2024

Seven months into the war, Hamas is far from defeated, stoking fears in Israel that it is walking into a forever war.

The U.S.-designated terrorist group is using its network of tunnels, small cells of fighters and broad social influence to not only survive but to harry Israeli forces. Hamas is attacking more aggressively, firing more antitank weapons at soldiers sheltering in houses and at Israeli military vehicles daily, said an Israeli reservist from the 98th commando division currently fighting in Jabalia.