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SOUTH KOREA's defence ministry has confirmed its military fired warning shots after Russian aircraft violated its airspace on Tuesday. The warning shots were fired after Russian military jets intruded into the Republic of Korea's airspace. (please see full article, at the link)

The South Korean military fired two warning shots at a Russian military aircraft that entered South Korean airspace on Tuesday, the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul said, and Chinese military aircraft had also entered South Korean airspace.

On Monday, The Washington Post reported that, based on sources and documents it had obtained from a former Huawei employee, the company had “secretly helped” Pyongyang build and maintain North Korea’s commercial wireless network. Huawei partnered with Panda International Information Technology, a Chinese state-owned firm, on a number of projects spanning at least eight years, according to The Post’s report. The revelations raise questions about whether Huawei, which has used American technology in its components, violated US export controls to furnish equipment to North Korea, where the isolated regime has faced extensive international sanctions over its nuclear weapons programme and...

This continues my attempt to bring noteworthy books to the attention of Freepers. Vanity? Not really, but it is a way for me to organize in a short review the main points of relevant books to our current economic, military, or political issues. "Armies of Sand" is an analysis by former CIA analyst and AEI scholar Kenneth Pollack. Although this was in part his doctoral dissertation, he has gone on to write many books about the military and especially the Middle East. He begins by looking at the Six-Day War and Arab/Egyptian military ineffectiveness, noting the AE military superiority of...

The Fanatic Trump-haters in the media are once again proven wrong, as the North Korean media are stoking public expectations of a deal that will improve their lives. Far from a photo-op that strengthens Kim and denigrates Trump and the USA, the regime's propaganda is stoking North Korean public expectations of a successful denuclearization deal. It also features President Trump as a wise and courageous leader. A remarkable 16-minute North Korean propaganda video has been subtitled and posted to YouTube, and the tone, narration, music, and cinematography all point to efforts to sell the public on a new era that...

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham started her tenure on the right foot with the White House press corps — the same foot she pivoted off to shove North Korean guards aside so reporters could cover President Trump and Kim Jong Un. Grisham won applause from journalists excited to see her take decisive action Sunday ensuring coverage of the historic meeting in the Korean Demilitarized Zone. A clip of Grisham’s Sunday scuffle played on TVs in White House workspaces on Monday morning as journalists who were there relayed the experience to colleagues, recalling that North Korean guards hadn't screened the...

Following President Trump's controversial meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Fox News senior strategist analyst Gen. Jack Keane argued it's imperative that the government see real evidence of denuclearization from the country before negotiating further.

She’s new on the job as White House Press Secretary but Stephanie Grisham has already created headlines of her own. Reporters on the scene of President Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un claimed that Grisham was bruised up during a confrontation with North Korean guards. Grisham suffered bruises when a scuffle broke out Sunday between North Korean security guards and members of the media trying to get close to President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as they shook hands at the Demilitarized Zone, the Associated Press reported.The new press secretary was reportedly pushing back...

The candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary put aside their squabbles on Sunday - sort of - to focus on a common enemy: President Trump. From former Vice President Joe Biden to former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, the Democratic hopefuls derided Trump’s third meeting with North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un – accusing the president of everything from “coddling” dictators to posing for a photo opportunity. “President Trump’s coddling of dictators at the expense of American national security and interests is one of the most dangerous ways that he’s diminishing us on the world stage...

When President Trump sent a Twitter invitation on Friday to North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to meet at the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone separating the Koreas — “just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!” — both men had much to gain, and more to lose. If Mr. Kim did not attend, even though his side had seemed intrigued, it would have embarrassed Mr. Trump and opened him up to more criticism for his unpredictable diplomacy. It would also have compounded the dramatic failure of their summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, which Mr. Trump abruptly called off in February. . ....

In an unprecedented move last week, India voted in support of Israel at the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to deny observer status to a Palestinian human rights organisation named ‘Shahed’. This is the first time India has taken a step back from its decades-old position on the two-state theory under which New Delhi sees both Israel and Palestine as separate and independent countries, seeking to bring peace in West Asia.The vote, which took place on 6 June at the UN, saw countries such as US, France, Germany, India, Japan, UK, South Korea and Canada polling in favour of...

When Truman took office after Roosevelt's death in April 1945, he knew relatively nothing about the grand strategy of World War II. No one had told him anything about the ongoing atomic bomb project...But for the next seven-plus years, Truman shocked the country. Over the objections of many in his Cabinet, he ordered the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan. Over the objections of most of the State Department, he recognized the new state of Israel. Over the objections of the Roosevelt holdovers, he broke with wartime ally the Soviet Union and crafted the foundations of Cold War communist...

North Korea’s tyrant ordered his death after he was accused of planning a coup. Kim had a giant fish tank built inside Ryongsong Residence, .....The victim’s arms and torso were cut open with knives before he was thrown into the tank. it's unclear whether the general was killed by the fish, died from his wounds or drowned. The researchers are believed to have come up with several execution methods designed to scare potential plotters. It's believed they got the idea from the1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me,.... Kim’s aquarium is filled with several hundred piranhas imported from...

The Islamic Republic of Iran is involved in the illicit procurement of technology for weapons of mass destruction, the German intelligence agency for the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern wrote in its May report. In the 206-page report, that was reviewed by The Jerusalem Post, the intelligence agents wrote: “The fight against the illegal proliferation of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction and the materials needed for their manufacture, as well as the corresponding delivery systems [e.g. rockets], including the necessary knowledge, in cooperation with other authorities, is also the responsibility of counterintelligence.” The intelligence report continued, “From these...

... “From 2006 to 2016 North Korea steadily increased the size of the events, from somewhere around 1 kiloton up to around 20 kilotons. The very early events looked like they didn’t work very well, because they were unusually small. And then in one year they jumped up to 250-ish kilotons,” said Thorne Lay, a seismologist at the University of California Santa Cruz and an author of the AGU study. “The scary thing is that this was such a big device.” ...

America’s enemies are on notice: The president is no longer an eloquent pushover professor-president but a ruthless real estate developer and television network brawler-president whose principle weapons are blunt candor and walking away from the table. Trump is responding to both his domestic political opponents and America’s actual enemies with the same tactics: blunt, repetitive messaging and use of the walk-off. He is sometimes rude, often full of unnecessary slashes, but always direct. (It often seems as if Trump answers more questions from reporters in a walk to the helicopter than President Barack Obama did in formal press conferences.) And...

SEOUL — A South Korean newspaper reported Friday that North Korea executed a senior envoy involved in nuclear negotiations with the U.S. as well as four other high-level officials. But as ever with North Korea, a country that closely guards its secrets, there are reasons to be cautious about the purported purge. NBC News was not immediately able to independently verify the report. Kim Jong Un's regime also hasn't used its propaganda services to comment. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked about the report during a visit to Germany Friday.

“We are now entering into a period of great power rivalry. The outcome is unclear, but it is critical that we stabilize the system.” That was the warning on Thursday from Singapore’s Heng Swee Keat, the man set to be the city-state’s next prime minister. China’s rapid ascent over the past decade, he said, has caused a clear shift in global politics, and those changes need to be addressed. The Singaporean deputy prime minister’s sentiment was echoed by other political figures and experts gathered in Tokyo for a conference on the future of the region. At the event, which was...

North Korea executed Kim Hyok Chol, its special envoy to the United States, and foreign ministry officials who carried out working-level negotiations for the second U.S.-North Korea summit in February, holding them responsible for its collapse, a South Korean newspaper reported on Friday. Kim Yong Chol, a senior official who had been U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s counterpart in the run-up to the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, is also said to have been subjected to forced labor and ideological education, the Chosun Ilbo reported. The North Korean leader...

It was revealed recently that North Korea is sitting on approximately $6 trillion worth of natural resources, which the country lacks the technology or expertise to extract. The impoverished nation is quite literally sitting on a goldmine, a significant portion of which is made up of rare earth metals. Rare earth metals are not - as you would expect - exceptionally rare, but are generally found in small trace quantities underground. What is rare is to find them in high concentrations, which is exactly what experts believe is present beneath the soil of North Korea. Not only are these resources...