Former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is back in custody over an independent investigation into his declaration of martial law last year.

According to the independent counsel leading the probe, the Seoul Central District Court approved a warrant for Yoon’s re-arrest early Thursday morning, because of concerns over the destruction of evidence.

Yoon’s shocking December declaration plunged South Korea into a constitutional crisis and was widely condemned as striking at the heart of the nation’s democracy. He reversed course within six hours, after lawmakers forced their way into parliament and voted unanimously to block it.

Yoon was detained in January on charges of leading an insurrection, becoming the first president in South Korean history to be arrested while in office. He was released in March after the Seoul court canceled his arrest warrant for technical reasons.

In April, the Constitutional Court unanimously ruled to remove Yoon from office, calling his actions a “grave betrayal of the people’s trust.”

He has since faced multiple criminal investigations. According to the independent counsel, Yoon is now facing charges including abuse of power and obstruction of official duties.

In a leaked warrant request, the counsel alleged that Yoon declared martial law in an attempt to overcome political gridlock caused by the opposition party’s majority in the National Assembly and its impeachment of several senior officials.

He is accused of deploying troops to block lawmakers from entering the national assembly building to overturn the decree and of giving orders to “break down the doors” of parliament and “drag people out, even if it takes firing guns.” Yoon’s lawyers deny he ordered the use of firearms.

The counsel also alleges that Yoon instructed his commander to prioritize the arrest of key political figures, including the then opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, who is now the country’s president. He is further accused of ordering the presidential security service to obscure communication records from secure phones used afte the martial law was lifted.

In addition, Yoon is accused of obstructing warrant executions by the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) in December and January by mobilizing the presidential security detail and authorizing the use of force.

Yoon’s lawyers said the warrant request was “rushed and unjustified” and called the investigation “flawed and politically motivated.” They said the independent counsel’s questions during Yoon’s investigation were only at a basic level regarding the allegations, and that the warrant request did not include any treason charges.

They added that most individuals involved have already been detained and are standing trial, so all relevant evidence has been secured and there is no risk of evidence being destroyed.

Independent counsel teams were established to investigate Yoon following his removal from office, and the election of Lee in a snap presidential election in June.

Russia launched a large-scale aerial assault on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv in the early hours of Thursday, marking a second consecutive night of ferocious attacks on the country, as Russia ramps up its bombardment more than three years into the war.

At least two people were killed and more than a dozen were wounded in Thursday’s attacks, which involved multiple drones and cruise missiles, according to Kyiv authorities.

The offensive comes one night after Russia conducted its largest drone assault since the start of its full-scale invasion, launching 728 drones and 13 missiles in strikes that killed at least one person, according to Ukrainian officials.

The damage on Thursday morning appeared to be substantial. Residential buildings, cars, warehouse facilities, offices and other buildings were on fire across the city, Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said.

Tkachenko urged residents to stay in shelters and avoid windows and balconies, as Ukraine’s air defense systems worked to repel the attack.

“Property can be restored, but human life cannot,” Tkachenko said.

Russia has significantly scaled up its air attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks, launching near-nightly assaults involving hundreds of drones and missiles.

Work towards a peace deal has simultaneously slowed down, triggering frustration in the White House, where US President Trump on Tuesday took aim at Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin.

“We get a lot of bullsh*t thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said in a Cabinet meeting. “He’s very nice all of the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”

Russia’s sustained assault in recent days has injected new urgency into questions surrounding Washington’s commitment to defending Ukraine, as the Trump administration pledged to send additional defensive weaponry to Kyiv in an apparent policy reversion.

Moscow downplayed Trump’s harsh words in a press briefing Wednesday. A Kremlin spokesperson said it is reacting “calmly” to Trump’s criticism of Putin. “Trump in general tends to use a fairly tough style and expressions,” Dmitry Peskov said, adding Moscow hopes to continue dialogue with Washington.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to meet his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Malaysia on Thursday.

Following Wednesday’s record drone attack, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said there had been “so many attempts to achieve peace and cease fire, but Russia rejects everything.”

International law violations

Thursday’s attack on Kyiv follows a landmark ruling by Europe’s top human rights court Wednesday, which found that Russia committed major international law violations in Ukraine.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on four cases concerning Russian military operations in Ukraine since 2022, as well as the conflict in eastern Ukraine which began in 2014 and includes the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

It found that Russia had committed a pattern of human rights violations in Ukraine since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The ECHR also ruled Russia was responsible for the downing of flight MH17 in 2014. Moscow has repeatedly denied responsibility for MH17’s destruction, which killed 298 people.

US President Donald Trump praised Liberian President Joseph Boakai for his strong grasp of the English language on Wednesday. But the African leader was educated in Liberia, where English is the official language.

As he hosted five African leaders at the White House, Trump asked Boakai: “Such good English, it’s beautiful. Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?”

Boakai informed Trump of his place of education, prompting Trump to express his curiosity. “That’s very interesting,” he said, “I have people at this table who can’t speak nearly as well.”

Liberia was founded in 1822 by the American Colonization Society whose goal was to resettle freed slaves in Africa. The country declared independence from the American Colonization Society in 1847, and a variety of languages are spoken in the country today, with English being the official language.

Several Liberians voiced their offense over Trump’s comment to Boakai, given the US president’s past remarks on African countries and the colonial legacy left by the US organization in Liberia.

“For him to ask that question, I don’t see it as a compliment. I feel that the US president and people in the west still see Africans as people in villages who are not educated.”

Veronica Mente, a South African politician, questioned on X: “what stops [Boakai] from standing up and leav[ing]?”

The White House Press Office defended Trump’s statement on Wednesday.

White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said that Trump’s comment was a “heartfelt compliment” and that “reporters should recognize that President Trump has already done more to restore global stability and uplift countries in Africa and around the world than Joe Biden did in four years.”

“What President Trump heard distinctly was the American influence on our English in Liberia, and the Liberian president is not offended by that,” Nyanti said.

“We know that English has different accents and forms, and so him picking up the distinct intonation that has its roots in American English for us was just recognizing a familiar English version,” she continued.

Trump has previously applauded the English language abilities of other leaders during diplomatic meetings. During a press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump complimented his “good English” and asked if it was as good as his German.

Merz laughed and noted that he tries to “understand almost everything” and said he makes an effort “to speak as good as I can.”

The US president has centered the English language as part of this “America First” platform. During a 2015 presidential debate, Trump asserted that the US is “a country where we speak English.” In March, he signed an executive order making English the official language of the US.

Trump has previously landed in hot water for things he has said about the African nations. In 2018, the president referred to migrants from African countries and other nations as coming from “shithole countries.”

In May, he lectured South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on false claims that White South African farmers are the victims of a genocide.

Trump struck a different tone on Wednesday as he met with the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal, praising their countries as “all very vibrant places with very valuable land, great minerals, great oil deposits, and wonderful people.”

In turn, he was met with approval from the African leaders, who heaped praise on the president as they urged him to invest in their countries and develop their plentiful natural resources.

Boakai even remarked that Liberia “(believes) in the policy of making America great again.”

Is there a direct link between what US President Donald Trump says and what Russian President Vladimir Putin does?

Certainly, the harsh words and bitter violence of recent days in Ukraine suggest the answer is maybe.

First, President Trump vented his frustrations at the lack of commitment from his Russian counterpart to engage in a serious peace process.

“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump blustered in a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “He’s very nice all of the time, but it turns out to be meaningless,” he complained.

The very next day, as if infuriated by the remarks, Russia launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine, sending 728 drones and 13 missiles to strike cities around the country in multiple waves.

It was a “telling attack,” observed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who condemned the strikes as timed to rebuff peace efforts.

There are apparent signs of a pattern.

Last week, after Trump publicly bemoaned that he had made “no progress” towards a ceasefire after a lengthy telephone call with the Kremlin leader, Russia unleashed yet another massive barrage on Ukraine. It rained down 539 drones and 11 missiles in what Ukrainian officials described as one of the worst attacks of the conflict.

You might be forgiven for thinking that every time President Trump expresses anger, frustration or even negativity about his Kremlin counterpart, the immediate response from Russia is to step up the ruthless punishment it metes out to its Ukrainian neighbor.

But it’s not as straightforward as that.

The problem is, Russia also carries out devastating strikes on Ukraine during periods when the US president is relatively silent about the conflict he notoriously vowed to end in a single day.

On June 29, for example, Moscow launched 477 drones and 60 missiles against Ukraine – at the time, the biggest Russian aerial assault of the war. Yet President Trump had made few significant public comments about Russia in the days before.

Furthermore, when President Trump told fellow G7 leaders of industrialized democracies that he essentially regretted the absence of Putin at the June summit, and criticized previous leaders for kicking Russia out of what was then the G8. Moscow went on to ratchet up attacks on Kyiv, killing at least 28 people in a single night of drone and missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital days later.

Even positive remarks from the US president, which you might reasonably expect to temper any simmering Russian anger at how it is spoken about in the White House, do not appear to act as a brake on the Kremlin’s excesses.

For its part, the Kremlin has played down any suggestion that President Trump’s recent critical outburst has had much impact.

“We are taking it quite calmly,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on a daily conference call, adding that “Trump, in general, tends to use a fairly tough style and expressions.”

In reality, Russian military tactics are much more likely to be driven by its own unrelenting military objective of seizing as much territory as possible before the grinding conflict in Ukraine, now in its fourth year, ultimately comes to a halt.

Likewise, the terrifying increase in the use of Russian drones in recent weeks is more likely to be a reflection of missile shortages and increased drone production in Russia than any angry Putin retort to one of President Trump’s off-hand comments.

Doctors in Gaza say they were forced to cram multiple babies into one incubator as hospitals warned that fuel shortages are forcing them to shut off vital services, putting patients’ lives at risk.

The UN has warned that the fuel crisis is at a critical point, with the little supplies that are available running short and “virtually no additional accessible stocks left.”

“Hospitals are rationing. Ambulances are stalling. Water systems are on the brink. And the deaths this is likely causing could soon rise sharply unless the Israeli authorities allow new fuel in – urgently, regularly and in sufficient quantities,” the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

An 11-week Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid earlier in the year pushed the enclave’s population of more than 2 million Palestinians towards famine and into a deepening humanitarian crisis. Limited aid deliveries resumed into the besieged enclave in May but aid groups have said it is not nearly enough to meet the scale of the needs.

The director of the Al-Ahli Hospital, south of Gaza City posted a photo on social media Wednesday of multiple newborn babies sharing a single incubator which was taken at another facility, Al-Helou.

“This tragic overcrowding is not just a matter of missing equipment — it’s a direct consequence of the relentless war on Gaza and the suffocating blockade that has crippled the entire healthcare system,” Dr. Fadel Naim wrote in a post on X.

“The siege has turned routine care for premature babies into a life-or-death struggle. No child should be born into a world where bombs and blockades decide whether they live or die.”

The director of Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza said the shortages were forcing them to close kidney dialysis sections so they could focus on intensive care and operating theatres.

Footage from inside the hospital showed doctors using flashlights as they treated patients.

Another facility, the Nasser Medical Complex, said it had 24 hours of fuel left and was concentrating on vital departments such as maternity and intensive care.

Fuel vital for basic services

In addition to fuel shortages, difficulty finding replacement parts for the generators that power Gaza’s hospitals risks is forcing more to shut down.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza issued an urgent statement that the facility’s main generator had broken down due to a lack of spare parts, forcing it to rely on a smaller backup unit.

“Fuel will run out within the coming hours, and the lives of hundreds of patients are at risk inside the hospital wards,” the statement said.

“The hospital’s shutdown threatens to disrupt healthcare services for half a million people in the Central Governorate.”

Beyond hospitals, fuel is essential to keep basic services running in Gaza. The territory relies heavily on imports for cooking, desalination and wastewater plants, and to power the vehicles used in rescue efforts.

Israel has restricted the entry of fuel throughout the conflict, and has previously claimed Hamas could use it to launch weapons.

The aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned of what it called “an unprecedented humanitarian crisis” unfolding in Gaza, in a statement Tuesday and called for a ceasefire and the entry of far greater levels of humanitarian aid.

“Our teams have worked to treat the wounded and supply overwhelmed hospitals as indiscriminate attacks and a state of siege threaten millions of men, women and children,” MSF said.

“We urge Israeli authorities and the complicit governments that enable these atrocities, including the UK Government, to end the siege now and take action to prevent the erasure of Palestinians from Gaza.”

More than 200 kindergarten students in northwestern China were found to have abnormal blood lead levels after kitchen staff used paint as food coloring, authorities said, in a case that’s stoked outrage in a country long plagued by food safety scandals.

Eight people, including the principal of the private kindergarten that the children attended, have been detained “on suspicion of producing toxic and harmful food,” according to a report released Tuesday by Tianshui city government, as cited by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

The principal and a financial backer of the school had allowed kitchen staff at the Heshi Peixin Kindergarten to use paint pigments to color the children’s food, leading to contamination, according to the report, which followed a days-long but ongoing probe into the cases.

Of the 251 students enrolled at the kindergarten, 233 were found to have abnormal levels of lead in their blood, the report found. The children were undergoing medical treatment with 201 of them currently in hospital, authorities said. Medical evaluation on the effects of their exposure, which can cause long-term and developmental harm, were not yet made public.

Local media cited a pediatrics professor as saying aspects of the case suggest there could be chronic lead poisoning, meaning exposure over a period of more than three months.

During the investigation, two food samples from the kindergarten – a red date steamed breakfast cake and a sausage corn roll – were found to have lead levels more than 2,000 times the national food safety standard for contamination, according to figures cited in the investigation report.

Authorities said they launched the probe on July 1 after becoming aware of reports that children at the school had abnormal blood lead levels. Lead exposure in children can lead to severe consequences, including impacting children’s brain development, behavior and IQ.

The government report did not disclose how long the exposure had gone on, with some affected parents interviewed by state media saying they had noticed abnormal signs in their children’s health and behavior for months – and clamoring for more answers about how the exposure happened.

“My mind went blank,” a mother of one affected student told state media after learning from a hospital in a nearby city that her child had a blood lead level of 528 micrograms per liter – a revelation that came after she said a local department in Tianshui told her the blood levels were normal, according to a report published by outlet China National Radio (CNR). China’s National Health Agency classifies “severe lead poisoning” as anything above 450 micrograms per liter.

“Right now, I’m not thinking about compensation – I just want my child to be healthy,” she was quoted as saying.

‘How could they be poisoned so seriously?’

The case has raised all-too-familiar concerns in China about food safety as well as the levels of transparency with which such cases are handled – especially in a system where independent journalism is tightly controlled and officials are under pressure to resolve issues quickly.

Earlier this month, after the school conducted tests on the students but did not issue individual results, many parents took their children to Xi’an – a major city a roughly four-hour drive from Tianshui – for testing, according to a report published by a news outlet affiliated with the official People’s Daily.

Reports from state-affiliated media found that 70 children who were tested in Xi’an had blood lead levels surpassing the threshold of lead poisoning, with six of those cases exceeding 450 micrograms per liter. According to China’s official guidelines, this level is classified as “severe.” A full picture of the results from all the students with abnormal levels was not publicly available.

One mother told the People’s Daily-affiliated outlet that she had been confused by her daughter’s constant stomach aches, loss of appetite and behavioral changes over the past six months, which didn’t improve after treating her with traditional Chinese medicine.

Others expressed skepticism about the results of the official investigation.

“The children only eat three-color jujube steamed cake and corn sausage rolls once or twice a week, how could they be poisoned so seriously?” one mother, who gave her surname Wu, told CNR. “If something like this happened to the children in school, at least give us an explanation. Now there is nothing.”

Earlier this week, Tianshui’s mayor Liu Lijiang said the city would “do everything possible to ensure the children’s treatment, rehabilitation and follow-up protection,” while vowing to close “loopholes” in Tianshui’s public food safety supervision.

‘Serious accountability’

The case has led to widespread expressions of outrage across Chinese social media, the latest among dozens of high-profile scandals have been reported by local media since the early 2000s.

“Serious accountability must be maintained and food safety issues cannot be ignored or slacked off. When it involves the life safety of young children, severe punishment must be imposed,” wrote one commentator on the X-like platform Weibo.

“Children are the hope of a family. I hope they can recover soon and grow up healthily,” said another.

Past scandals have also impacted children. In one of the most egregious examples, six infants died and some 300,000 others were sickened by milk powder formula containing the toxic industrial chemical melamine. Several executives found to be responsible for the 2008 case were ultimately handed death sentences, and the tragedy drove deep mistrust of domestic products and food safety in China.

Lead poisoning used to be a more widespread issue in China. In 2010, the central government for the first time allocated special funds for heavy metal pollution prevention in response to at least 12 high-profile cases the previous year that left more than 4,000 people with elevated blood lead levels, according to state media.

Officials have also moved to tighten food safety regulations in recent years, but pervasive cases have shown more needs to be done in terms of enforcement and to build back public trust, experts say.

Improving the food regulatory system calls for “more transparency, more thorough investigation of food safety cases,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and author of the book “Toxic Politics: China’s Environmental Health Crisis and its Challenge to the Chinese State.”

Huang also said a lack of public confidence in the safety systems could evolve into a “trust crisis.”

Russia launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine since the beginning of its invasion, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday, just hours after US President Donald Trump pledged more military support for Kyiv and accused his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin of throwing “bullsh*t” over peace talks.

The massive aerial assault involved 741 drones, Ukraine’s Air Force said, eclipsing the previous record number of 539 drones, set on July 4, by hundreds – but it was largely repelled, with the damage limited and no immediate reports of deaths.

“This is a demonstrative attack, and it comes at a time when there have been so many attempts to achieve peace and cease fire, but Russia rejects everything,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram.

“Our partners know how to apply pressure so that Russia will be forced to think about ending the war, not new strikes. Everyone who wants peace must act.”

The barrage, which mainly targeted the city of Lutsk, in northwestern Ukraine, was so intense it caused Poland’s military to scramble aircraft in its airspace. It comes after weeks of intensifying aerial strikes on Ukraine by Russia.

“Last night, our region was again subjected to a mass attack,” Ivan Rudnitskyi, the head of the military administration in Volyn region, home to Lutsk, said on Telegram. “Virtually everything was flying towards Lutsk.”

Ukraine’s Air Force said it destroyed 718 of the drones. There were no immediate reports of fatalities. One woman was hospitalized with chest injuries in the city of Brovary, near Kyiv, its mayor said.

Ukraine launched 86 drones towards Russia overnight, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Moscow’s scaled up assault on Kyiv follows a remarkable 48 hours in the White House, where Trump vented his anger about Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s lack of commitment to a peace deal and pledged more support for Ukraine.

“We get a lot of bullsh*t thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said in a Cabinet meeting. “He’s very nice all of the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”

Kyiv urgently needs more US-made Patriot interceptor missiles to repel Russian attacks.

“We’re going to send some more weapons (to Ukraine),” Trump said on Monday evening. “We have to — they have to be able to defend themselves.”

“They’re getting hit very hard. We’re going to have to send more weapons,” Trump added. “Defensive weapons, primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard.”

A Pentagon spokesman later said that “at President Trump’s direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did not inform Trump before authorizing the weapons pause last week, according to five sources familiar with the matter.

More than 80 years ago, the crew of the USS New Orleans, having been hit by a Japanese torpedo and losing scores of sailors, performed hasty repairs with coconut logs, before an 1,800-mile voyage across the Pacific in reverse.

The front of the ship, or the bow, had sunk to the sea floor. But over the weekend, the Nautilus Live expedition from the Ocean Exploration Trust located it in 675 meters (2,214 feet) of water in Iron Bottom Sound in the Solomon Islands.

Using remotely operated underwater vehicles, scientists and historians observed “details in the ship’s structure, painting, and anchor to positively identify the wreckage as New Orleans,” the expedition’s website said.

On November 30, 1942, New Orleans was struck on its portside bow during the Battle of Tassafaronga, off Guadalcanal island, according to an official Navy report of the incident.

The torpedo’s explosion ignited ammunition in the New Orleans’ forward ammunition magazine, severing the first 20% of the 588-foot warship and killing more than 180 of its 900 crew members, records state.

The crew worked to close off bulkheads to prevent flooding in the rest of the ship, and it limped into the harbor on the island of Tulagi, where sailors went into the jungle to get repair supplies.

“Camouflaging their ship from air attack, the crew jury-rigged a bow of coconut logs,” a US Navy account states.

With that makeshift bow, the ship steamed – in reverse – some 1,800 miles across the Pacific to Australia for sturdier repairs, according to an account from the National World War II Museum in Louisiana.

“‘Difficult’ does not adequately describe the challenge,” Schuster said.

While a ship’s bow is designed to cut through waves, the stern is not, meaning wave action lifts and drops the stern with each trough, he said.

When the stern rises, rudders lose bite in the water, making steering more difficult, Schuster said.

And losing the front portion of the ship changes the ship’s center of maneuverability, or its “pivot point,” he said.

“That affects how the ship responds to sea and wind effects and changes the ship’s response to rudder and propellor actions,” he said.

The New Orleans’ officers would have had to learn – on the go – a whole new set of actions and commands to keep it stable and moving in the right direction, he said.

The ingenuity and adaptiveness that saved the New Orleans at the Battle of Tassafaronga enabled it to be a force later in the war.

After making it across the Pacific from Australia to the US naval yard at Puget Sound, Washington state – facing the right way this time – the New Orleans undertook permanent repairs. It later participated in actions across the Pacific, including the decisive battles of Saipan and Okinawa, which led to the US gaining airfields that enabled the final blows to be made on Imperial Japan.

The ship was awarded 17 battle stars for its actions in the Pacific, tying it for the third most such decorations in the Pacific theater, according to the World War II Museum.

The New Orleans’ bow was found during the 21-day Maritime Archaeology of Guadalcanal expedition of Iron Bottom Sound by Nautilus Live, a cooperative effort among NOAA Ocean Exploration, the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute, the University of New Hampshire and the Naval History and Heritage Command.

Iron Bottom Sound was called Savo Sound before World War II, but Allied sailors gave it its current moniker for the huge numbers of warships that sank in battle there.

According to the expedition, five major naval battles were fought there between August and December 1942, resulting in the loss of more than 20,000 lives, 111 naval vessels and 1,450 planes on all sides.

Before the expedition, “fewer than 100 of these US, Japanese, Australian, and New Zealand military ships and planes have been located,” it says on its website.

The expedition began on July 2 and continues until July 23. Its continuing searches are being live streamed at nautiluslive.org.

Germany summoned the Chinese ambassador to the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday after saying China’s military had laser targeted a German aircraft taking part in an European Union operation in the Red Sea.

The flare up in tensions comes as concerns mount in the EU about Chinese influence on critical technologies and security infrastructure in Europe.

“Putting German personnel at risk and disrupting the operation is completely unacceptable,” said Germany’s Foreign Ministry on social media platform X.

There was no immediate response from China’s Foreign Ministry, and the Chinese Embassy in Berlin did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Germany’s Defense Ministry said the aircraft, taking part in the EU’s ASPIDES mission which protects international sea routes in the Red Sea, had been contributing a Multi-Sensor Platform, or “flying eye” for reconnaissance of the area since October.

A Chinese warship, which had been encountered several times in the area, had laser targeted the aircraft with no reason or prior communication during a routine mission flight, said a ministry spokesperson. The incident took place at the beginning of July.

“By using the laser, the warship put at risk the safety of personnel and material,” said the spokesperson, adding the mission flight was aborted as a precaution and the aircraft landed safely at a base in Djibouti.

The deployment of the MSP in ASPIDES has since been resumed, he said.

The MSP is operated by a civilian commercial service provider and German armed forces personnel are involved, said the ministry, adding the data collected significantly contributes to awareness for partners.

China has previously denied accusations of firing or pointing lasers at US planes. Incidents involving a European NATO member and China are more unusual.

In 2020, the US Pacific Fleet said a Chinese warship had fired a laser at a US naval patrol aircraft flying in airspace above international waters west of Guam. China said that did not accord with the facts.

Four men in Quebec, including two active members of the Canadian Armed Forces, were arrested and charged in what Canadian police say is a case of “ideologically motivated violent extremism.”

Three of the men, all in their mid-twenties, “were planning to create an anti-government militia” with the intent to “forcibly take possession of land in the Québec City area,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said in a statement on Tuesday.

“To achieve this, [the three men] took part in military-style training, as well as shooting, ambush, survival and navigation exercises,” the statement continues. “They also conducted a scouting operation. A variety of firearms, some prohibited, as well as high-capacity magazines and tactical equipment were allegedly used in these activities.”

The three were charged with facilitating terrorist activity. A fourth individual, a man in his early thirties, faces numerous firearms and explosives-related charges, police said.

In a January 2024 search near Quebec City, police say they found “16 explosive devices, 83 firearms and accessories, approximately 11,000 rounds of ammunition of various calibres, nearly 130 magazines, four pairs of night vision goggles and military equipment.”

They used the account to advertise military-style training in Quebec and Ontario, Gasse added.

Gasse did not elaborate on what specific ideology allegedly motivated the men, or the location of the land near Quebec City police claim they plotted to seize.

“It’s a good thing we caught them when we did,” Gasse said.

“The Canadian Armed Forces is taking these allegations very seriously and has fully participated in the investigation,” a department spokesperson said in an email.

Extremism within Canada’s armed forces is a longstanding issue, with a 2022 government report noting that the country’s military is “not immune to infiltration” by members of extremist groups.

“The suspected presence of members of extremist groups within [the Department of National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces] is a pressing moral, social and operational issue,” the report concluded.