Election goes against Netanyahu in Israel
The prime minister and his right-wing allies fell short of winning a parliamentary majority, leaving a political deadlock.
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Thursday test-fired its first ballistic missiles since President Joe Biden took office as it expands its military capabilities and increases pressure on Washington while nuclear negotiations remain stalled.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said North Korea’s resumption of ballistic testing threatens “peace and safety in Japan and the region,” and that Tokyo will closely coordinate with Washington and Seoul on the North’s military activities.
South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong, after meeting his Russian counterpart in Seoul, expressed “deep concern” and urged the North to uphold its commitments for peace. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for a swift resumption of dialogue to resolve the standoff with North Korea.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the two shortrange missiles were fired at 19 minutes apart on the North’s eastern coast and flew 279 miles on an apogee of 37 miles before landing in the sea.
A senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military observations, matched the information from Tokyo and Seoul, saying that initial assessments suggest the North fired two short-range ballistic missiles.
“This activity highlights the threat that North Korea’s illicit weapons program poses to its neighbors and the international community,” said U.S. Indo-Pacific Command spokesperson Capt. Mike Kafka.
The launches came a day after U.S. and South Korean officials said the North fired short-range weapons presumed to be cruise missiles into its western sea over the weekend.
North Korea has a history of testing new U.S. administrations with missile launches and other provocations aimed at forcing the Americans back to the negotiating table.
Still, Thursday’s launches were a measured provocation compared with the nuclear and intercontinental missile tests in 2017 that inspired war fears before the North shifted toward diplomacy with the Trump administration in 2018.
Israeli election: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rightwing allies fell short of winning a parliamentary majority in Israel’s latest election, according to a final vote count released Thursday, leaving a political deadlock that put the longtime leader’s future in question.
The fourth election in just two years brought a stinging rebuke for Netanyahu, the most dominant figure in Israeli politics in a generation. Adding to the pain, he lost ground to former partners who vowed never to sit in a government with him again.
Under Israel’s fragmented political system, Netanyahu could still try to reach across the aisle and cobble together a governing coalition. But the makeup of the new parliament will make that extremely difficult, giving his opponents the upper hand in coalition talks.
Cyberattack ‘clarion call’:
The U.S. Cyber Command conducted more than two dozen operations aimed at preventing interference in last November’s presidential election, the general who leads the Pentagon’s cyber force said Thursday.
Gen. Paul Nakasone, in prepared remarks to the Senate Armed Services Committee, did not describe the nature of the operations but said they were designed “to get ahead of foreign threats before they interfered with or influenced our elections in 2020.” He said the operations reflected a “more active approach to our adversaries.”
Nakasone said foreign hackers were conducting attacks of “a scope, a scale a level of sophistication that we haven’t seen previously.”
“It is the clarion call for us to look at this differently,” he said.
Afghan troop withdrawal: Afghanistan’s military forces need U.S. assistance to successfully counter the Taliban, the top general for U.S. Special Operations Command told Congress on Thursday, amid debate over whether American forces should remain in the country beyond May 1.
Gen. Richard Clarke also echoed the sentiments of other military leaders, saying it’s clear that the Taliban has not upheld its commitment to reduce violence in Afghanistan and has instead made a deliberate decision to increase attacks. Those attacks have largely been on the Afghans and haven’t targeted the U.S.
President Joe Biden has said that it will be “tough” for the U.S. to meet a May 1 deadline to withdraw troops from Afghanistan that was laid out in a peace agreement between the Trump administration and the Taliban. But if the deadline is extended, Biden said, it wouldn’t be by a “lot longer.”
UK extends restrictions:
British lawmakers agreed Thursday to prolong coronavirus emergency measures for six months, allowing the Conservative government to keep its unprecedented powers to restrict U.K. citizens’ everyday lives.
The House of Commons voted to extend the powers until September and approved the government’s road map for gradually easing Britain’s strict coronavirus lockdown over the next three months.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s large Conservative majority in Parliament guaranteed the measures passed by a 484-76 margin. But Johnson faced rebellion from some of his own party’s lawmakers, who argued that the economic, democratic and human costs of the restrictions outweigh the benefits.
The Coronavirus Act, passed a year ago as Britain went into lockdown, brought in a wide range of temporary health, economic and social powers to deal with the pandemic. It gives authorities the power to bar protests, shut down businesses, restrict travel and detain people suspected of having the virus.
Myanmar protests: Protesters against last month’s military takeover in Myanmar returned to the streets in large numbers Thursday, a day after staging a “silence strike” in which people were urged to stay home and businesses to close for the day.
Security forces sought to break up some of the protests by force. Social media accounts and local news outlets reported violent attacks on demonstrators in Hpa-an, the capital of the southeastern Karen state, as well as the eastern Shan state’s capital of Taunggyi and Mon state’s capital of Mawlamyine, also in the southeast. It was not clear if soldiers used live ammunition in addition to firing rubber bullets at the demonstrators.
According to Democratic Voice of Burma, a broadcast and online news service, two young men were shot and seriously wounded in Hpa-an.
Other protests proceeded peacefully, including in Mandalay and on a smaller scale in Yangon, the two largest cities.