Author: Elizabeth Jenrola Oso

North Korea has admitted for the first time that its soldiers were sent to Russia’s Kursk region earlier this year to clear mines, a rare acknowledgement of the dangerous tasks assigned to its forces abroad. Leader Kim Jong-un made the disclosure in a speech carried by state media on Saturday, hailing the return of an engineering regiment that had been deployed for 120 days from August. According to South Korean and western intelligence agencies, Pyongyang has dispatched thousands of troops to support Russia’s nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine. Analysts say Moscow has provided North Korea with financial aid, military technology,…

Reddit has lodged a challenge in the High Court against Australia’s ban on social media use by under-16s, filing its case two days after introducing age restrictions on its platform. In a statement posted on Friday, the company said it supported efforts to protect young people but argued the legislation imposed “intrusive and potentially insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors, isolating teens from the ability to engage in age-appropriate community experiences”. Reddit described the law as an “illogical patchwork” of platforms and cited the Australian Human Rights Commission, which has warned that less restrictive alternatives could achieve…

Iranian security forces have arrested 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi at a memorial ceremony for a lawyer and human rights advocate, her supporters said. Mohammadi, who had been granted temporary medical leave from prison in December 2024, was detained alongside several activists at the ceremony for Khosro Alikordi, who was found dead in his office last week, the Narges Foundation said on X. Her husband, Taghi Rahmani, who is based in Paris, wrote on X that Mohammadi was arrested in the eastern city of Mashhad together with Sepideh Gholian, another prominent activist. The foundation said Mohammadi’s brother, Mehdi,…

South Korean entrepreneur, Do Kwon, behind the collapse of two cryptocurrencies that wiped out $40bn (£29.8bn) in value, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud. The 34-year-old pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud and wire fraud charges in the United States. He co-founded Singapore-based Terraform Labs and developed the TerraUSD and Luna tokens, whose implosion in 2022 triggered a wider crash in the sector. At a hearing in New York, US district judge Paul Engelmayer described Kwon’s crimes as “a fraud of epic generational scale”. He imposed a sentence longer than the 12 years sought by prosecutors,…

Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence, creating a federal taskforce with the sole responsibility of challenging state laws. At a ceremony on Thursday, the president said AI companies were eager to invest in the United States but warned that “if they had to get 50 different approvals from 50 different states, you could forget it”. The order, titled Ensuring a national policy framework for artificial intelligence, revives an earlier attempt by Republicans to impose a ten-year moratorium on state regulation of AI. That effort collapsed earlier this year after bipartisan opposition…

Donald Trump has intensified pressure on Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro, expanding sanctions and threatening strikes on land targets, as the Venezuelan leader accused Washington of ushering in a new “era of criminal naval piracy” in the Caribbean. On Thursday, the United States imposed sanctions on three nephews of Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, as well as six crude oil supertankers and their associated shipping companies. The US Treasury alleged the vessels had engaged in “deceptive and unsafe shipping practices” and continued to provide financial resources to what it described as Maduro’s “corrupt narco-terrorist regime”. Documents from Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA…

US forces have seized a crude oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in Washington’s campaign against President Nicolás Maduro. Caracas denounced the move as “an act of international piracy”. President Donald Trump confirmed the operation on Wednesday, describing the vessel as “the largest one ever seized”. He declined to reveal the ownership of the tanker but insisted it had been taken “for a very good reason”. Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, released footage of the seizure on social media. The 45‑second clip showed US forces landing on the tanker from a helicopter. Bondi said…

Elon Musk has admitted that the sweeping federal job-cutting initiative he led during Donald Trump’s second term, known as the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), was only “a little bit successful” and confirmed he would not take on the role again. Speaking on a podcast hosted by Katie Miller, a right-wing commentator and former Doge adviser, Musk said he would have been “better off running his companies” than heading the controversial programme. Miller is married to Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and a prominent figure in the administration’s hardline immigration policies. Asked whether Doge had achieved its aims,…

All visitors to the United States would be required to disclose their social media activity from the past five years under new proposals from the Trump administration. The plans, published on Tuesday in the Federal Register, would also oblige tourists to provide email addresses and telephone numbers used during the same period, along with the names, addresses, birthdates and birthplaces of family members, including children. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through its agency Customs and Border Protection (CBP), described the disclosures as “mandatory” for entry. The rules would apply to travellers from all countries, including those currently permitted to…

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has declared he is prepared to hold elections within the next three months, if Ukraine’s parliament and foreign allies agree, after Donald Trump accused him of clinging to power. Speaking on Tuesday evening, the Ukrainian president appeared irritated by Trump’s remarks. “This is a question for the people of Ukraine, not people from other states, with all due respect to our partners,” he said. Zelenskyy added that he was willing to organise a vote despite wartime restrictions. “Since this question is raised today by the president of the United States of America, our partners, I will answer very…