The device was described as a “surface-to-surface medium-to-long-range ballistic missile”, the Korean state news agency KCNA reported.

South Korea’s defence ministry called it an armed provocation to test the response of US President Donald Trump.

North Korea’s latest ballistic missile test has been widely condemned.

The US, Japan and South Korea have requested an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the incident.

KCNA reported that the test of the Pukguksong-2 missile, a new type of strategic weapon said to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, was overseen by leader Kim Jong-un.

It added that the missile was fired at a high angle in consideration of neighbouring countries.

The rocket used a solid-fuel engine, the report said, which gives ballistic rockets greater power and range.

South Korea military experts said the rocket had been launched by a “cold-eject” system, which uses compressed gas for its initial thrust, a system employed for submarine-launched missiles.

The report also said that Kim Jong-un “expressed great satisfaction” over the test launch, which it said “adds to the tremendous might of the country”.

South Korea and US officials said the missile flew east towards the Sea of Japan for about 500km (300 miles).

The missile reached an altitude of about 550km (350 miles), the South Korean military said.

Experts suggest the tests are programmed for shorter distances to avoid a missile landing on Japan.

This was the latest in a series of tests in the past year, including North Korea’s fifth of a nuclear device.

The launch took place at 07:55 local time (22:55 GMT Saturday) from the Panghyon air base in North Pyongan province on the west side of the Korean peninsula.

United Nations resolutions forbid North Korea from carrying out ballistic missile tests – part of wider efforts to prevent it becoming a fully nuclear-armed power.

South Korea’s foreign ministry said that “North Korea’s repeated provocations show the Kim Jong-un regime’s nature of irrationality, maniacally obsessed in its nuclear and missile development”.

‘Hostility’

Nato also condemned the missile test, with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urging North Korea “not to raise tensions further and to re-engage in a credible and meaningful dialogue with the international community”.

The European Union joined the criticism, declaring in a statement that North Korea’s “repeated disregard of its international obligations is provocative and unacceptable”.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, standing next to Mr Trump on a visit to the United States, said the test was “absolutely intolerable”.

As for the US, Mr Trump said on Saturday: “America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100%.”

China, North Korea’s closest ally, has yet to comment. Beijing has joined in international efforts to press Kim Jong-un to rein in his nuclear ambitions.

In January, Kim Jong-un warned that his military was close to testing long-range missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads to the United States mainland, but experts doubt the technology has progressed that far.

At the time, Mr Trump derided the claim in a tweet, saying: “It won’t happen.”

On a visit to South Korea last week, US Defence Secretary James Mattis said that any use of nuclear weapons by North Korea would be met with an “effective and overwhelming” response.

He also reconfirmed plans to deploy a US missile defence system in South Korea later this year.

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Source: BBC

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More than 80 fires – including 20 uncontained – were still burning on Monday following record temperatures.

The Rural Fire Service (RFS) said it was remarkable no lives were lost amid “catastrophic” weekend conditions.

But about nine of 12 buildings in Uarbry, a very small community, had been destroyed, one local man said.

RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons could not confirm that number but said “most buildings” in Uarbry had been damaged or destroyed.

The blaze, dubbed Sir Ivan, had an active fire edge of about 200km (124 miles) and had burned through 50,000 hectares near Dunedoo, Mr Fitzsimmons said.

“One of our captains in that local area was a resident of Uarbry,” Mr Fitzsimmons said.

“He was out fighting the fires and he has come back to find that his home is destroyed.”

Local resident Peter Gilmour told Sydney’s Daily Telegraph that only three houses in the town were unaffected.

“Most neighbours have lost everything,” he said.

Conditions to ease

More than 2,500 firefighters, many of them volunteers, were battling the fires. One firefighter had suffered a severe hand laceration, while another suffered serious burns to the hands, arms and face, Mr Fitzsimmons said.

Officials said the weekend conditions were worse than during the 2009 “Black Saturday” fires in the state of Victoria, which killed 173 people.

NSW broke its record for the hottest average statewide temperature on Saturday, with 44C. The towns of Forbes (46.C) and Richmond (47C) had their hottest days on record. Interstate, records were also broken in the Queensland towns of Gatton (45.6C), Oakley (42.6C), Toowoomba (40.8C) and Kingaroy (41.6C).

Australia’s weather bureau forecast a cool change to arrive on Monday.

Emergency Services Minister Troy Grant said the conditions were unprecedented.

“Those in our community who are feeling relieved that we may have dodged a bullet, we must remember that there are many who have been devastated by fires in their regions,” he said.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian thanked firefighters for their efforts.

“We are not out of the woods, however, we are beyond the worst part of those catastrophic conditions that existed over the weekend,” she said.

What causes the fires?

Australia is particularly prone to bushfires as much of the country has both a hot, dry climate, and plenty of vegetation to burn. All it then takes to start a fire is ignition, and there can be as many as a thousand lightning strikes in a storm.

Is there any way to stop them happening?

Their impact can be reduced by preparation: authorities can clear vulnerable land in advance and build more fire-resistant settlements; individuals can prepare their own defences and escape plans.

Once they start, can they be put out?

Less fast-moving fires can be fought by “direct attack” – ground troops with hoses – but more dangerous situations have to be fought with strategic techniques like “back-burning” land ahead of an advancing fire, to starve it of fuel when it arrives.

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Source: BBC

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As part of an investigation carried out by Aksaray Public Prosecutor Ayhan Demir, Ş.A. was detained by police and taken to Aksaray from Şanlıurfa province, despite the fact that she produced hospital reports saying she should not travel as she gave birth a week earlier by C-section.

She also told police officers that her baby was premature and needs to be fed breast milk and also requires special care in the intensive care unit.

When police officers contacted Demir over the phone saying the woman has hospital reports that show she cannot travel, Demir ordered them to bring her to Aksaray and kept her in custody for 10 hours.

Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) İstanbul deputy, Mahmut Tanal, said that this kind of treatment of a mother whose baby is in intensive care and needs its mother’s protection is unacceptable.

Calling on female deputies in Parliament in part of his speech, Tanal said: There are mothers among us. Can a baby in an intensive care unit be separated from its mother? What kind of mentality does that? Which judicial system accepts that? Which ideology embraces that?

Despite Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, whose views inspired the Gülen movement, and the movement having denied the Turkish government’s and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s accusation of masterminding a coup attempt on July 15 that killed over 240 people and wounded more than a thousand others, Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” —launched a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.

Over 115,000 people have been purged from state bodies, in excess of 82,000 detained and more than 41,000 have been arrested since the coup attempt.

Detainees include teachers, journalists, judges, prosecutors, police and military officers, academicians, governors and even a comedian.

Critics argue that the lists of Gülen sympathizers were drawn up prior to the coup attempt.

Below is the video:

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By: turkishminute.com

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Two hours after his arrest, the 37-year-old man was found to have more than three times the legal limit of alcohol in his body.

His plane, part of the Sunwing budget airline, later left Calgary for Cancun, Mexico, with a different pilot. There were more than 100 people on board.

The incident happened at 07:00 local time (14:00 GMT) on Saturday.

Airline staff noticed the pilot behaving strangely, and then he passed out. They alerted the authorities and the man was escorted from the cockpit.

He has now been charged with being in charge of an aircraft while being impaired.

Calgary police have named him as Miroslav Gronych, 37, a Slovak national.

Police spokesman Paul Stacey said: “It had all the potential for a disaster but I’ll tell you this much – the likelihood of a pilot on a major airline like this actually being able to take off when they’re impaired like that is pretty slim, because there’s a lot of checks and balances.

“There’s the other flight crew and there’s gate crew and they’re all about safety.

“So, I’m not surprised that he got caught before (the plane) left the terminal.”

But Mr Stacey said: “He won’t be flying anytime soon.”
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By: BBC

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According to the Japan Times, a new survey of Japanese people ages 18 to 34 found that 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women are not in a relationship. It gets worse: Around 42 percent of men and 44.2 percent of women admitted that they were virgins.

The study is carried out by Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research every five years. The organization has noted a marked trend since its first foray on questions of relationships and sex in 1987, when it found that 48.6 percent of men and 39.5 percent of women surveyed were unmarried. In 2010, 36.2 percent of men and 38.7 percent of women in the 18-34 age bracket said they were virgins. The number of children among couples who have been married for between 15 and 19 years averaged a record low this year.

The Japanese government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said it wants to raise the nation’s fertility rate from 1.4 to 1.8 by 2025. It’s offering better child-care services and tax incentives for married couples, though such programs have yet to bear statistical fruit.

Most people surveyed said they want to get married at some point. It’s just not clear when.

“They want to tie the knot eventually. But they tend to put it off as they have gaps between their ideals and the reality,” Futoshi Ishii, head researcher for the study, told Japan Times. “That’s why people marry later or stay single for life, contributing to the nation’s low birthrate.”

This is not unique to Japan — in various parts of the developed world, economic uncertainty is reshaping the way millennials and other young people conceive of their sex lives and marital choices. But it’s particularly pronounced in the Asian nation, where experts and government officials have spent the better part of a decade fretting over the country’s population decline and, as WorldViews once put it, “sexual apathy.”

A booming industry surrounds Japan’s growing condition of loneliness, a phenomenon at once quite particular to the Japanese, yet also a glimpse into a future where many people live atomized lives mediated exclusively through personal technology.

There was one clearly positive indicator in the survey: For the first time, the proportion of women returning to work after having their first child in Japan’s once notoriously patriarchal society exceeded 50 percent.
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By: independent.co.uk

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