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Divers have inspected the hull of the tanker that sank off Tunisia’s coast with 750 tons of diesel.

Divers have inspected the hull of a tanker loaded with 750 tons of fuel that sank off southeastern Tunisia, with no leak detected so far, officials said.

The crew of the Xelo had made a distress call on Friday evening and sought shelter in Tunisian waters from bad weather before going down, authorities said.

The Equatorial Guinea-flagged Xelo was traveling from Egypt to Malta when it went down.

Images released by the environment and defense ministries showed divers heading for the site in the Gulf of Gabes, and then getting into the water at the scene that has been sealed off by Tunisia’s military.

“With the improvement in weather conditions, a team of divers accompanied by the ship’s captain and engineer who knows its layout are on site to examine the hull,” Mohamed Karray, spokesman for the court in Gabes city, which is investigating Saturday’s sinking, told the AFP news agency on Sunday.

Defense ministry photos showed the vessel largely submerged.

Environment Minister Leila Chikhaoui, who traveled to the port of Gabes on Saturday to help oversee the response, said the situation was “under control”.

“We think the hull is still watertight and there is no leakage for the moment,” she told AFP.

As a precaution, protective booms to contain any oil slick have been placed around the wreck.

Some countries have offered to help Tunisia prevent damage to the environment, the Tunisian defense ministry said on Sunday.

Local media reports said Italy had offered to help and that it was expected to send a naval vessel specialised in dealing with marine disasters.

The Tunisia branch of the World Wildlife Fund expressed concern over another “environmental catastrophe” in the region, an important fishing zone which has already suffered from pollution.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Christian worshipers gathered in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepluchre, the traditional site of Jesus’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection, on Sunday to observe the Easter holiday.

Thousands of people participated in mass at the church in the historic Old City, home to holy sites to the three monotheistic faiths. Tens of thousands have come to Jerusalem for the holidays now that most coronavirus restrictions have been lifted.

Sunday is Easter in the Western Christian calendar, and is Palm Sunday for Eastern Orthodox Christians. This year the holiday coincides with the Jewish holiday of Passover and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan for the first time in over three decades.

Elsewhere in the Old City, Palestinian protesters clashed with police at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound after officers closed the flashpoint shrine, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, to allow Jewish visitors.

Israel holds some 4,450 Palestinians – including 160 children, 32 women, and 530 administrative detainees – in prisons.

On April 17 every year, Palestinian Prisoner’s Day is commemorated to highlight the plight of those held in Israeli jails and their struggle for freedom against the Israeli occupation.

Over the course of 2021, the Israeli military arrested nearly 8,000 Palestinians, including more than 1,300 minors and 184 women.

Israeli authorities also issued more than 1,500 administrative detention orders – holding Palestinians without charge or trial, according to prisoners’ rights group Addameer.

As of April 10, 2022, there were 4,450 Palestinians held in Israeli jails in Israel and the occupied territory.

For Palestinians, they are political prisoners fighting to end Israel’s illegal occupation. Of those:

• 530 are held without charge or trial
• 160 are children
• 32 are women
• 549 are serving life sentences
• 499 are serving a sentence of more than 20 years

Child prisoners – Ahmad Manasra’s case

Israel is the only country in the world that tries children in military courts, often denying them their basic rights.

The Israeli army has imprisoned more than 12,000 Palestinian children since 2000, according to Addameer.

Most of these children were charged with “throwing stones”, a crime punishable under military law by up to 20 years in prison.

Currently, 160 Palestinian children remain in Israeli prisons, most are in pre-trial detention and have not been convicted of any offence.

One of the most harrowing child prisoner cases is that of Ahmad Manasra who was arrested at the age of 13, brutally interrogated and then transferred.

After six years served on his sentence, and six months of detention prior, he has only just turned 21.

Ahmad was with his cousin Hassan, who allegedly stabbed two Israeli settlers near an Israeli settlement in occupied East Jerusalem in 2015.

Hassan, who was 15 at the time, was shot and killed by an Israeli civilian, while Ahmad was severely beaten by an Israeli mob and run over by a car.

He suffered fractures to his skull and internal bleeding.

At the time, Israeli law stated that children under 14 could not be held criminally responsible.

To circumvent this, Israeli authorities waited until Manasra turned 14 to sentence him. The law was changed in August 2016 to allow the prosecution of younger children.

Ahmad was charged with attempted murder and committed to 12 years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to nine years.

Ahmad has long suffered mental health issues. At the end of 2021, a psychiatrist from Doctors Without Borders was allowed to visit him and diagnosed him with schizophrenia. This was the first time an external doctor was allowed to see him.

In spite of Ahmad’s mental health issues and diagnoses, he has been held in solitary confinement for the past five months.

Israeli forces have shot and killed at least eight Palestinian children since the start of 2022.

Administrative held without charge or trial

There are currently 530 Palestinians in “administrative detention” – held without charge or trial.

The demanding, including women and children, can be held by the military for renewable six-month periods based on “secret evidence” that neither the detainee nor their lawyer is allowed to see.

According to international law, an occupying state is prohibited from transferring and holding prisoners outside the occupied territory, but Israel does this with a number of prisons within its borders.

Over the years, many detainees have gone on hunger strike as a non-violent protest against their detention.

René Herrmann resorted to a radical step to grab the most attention.

As he joined a convoy organized to protest anti-Russian sentiments, he affixed onto the hood of his vehicle a sign emblazoned with the Star of David.

“What used to be the evil Jew [during Germany’s World War II Nazi era] is now the evil Russian,” he said. “Russophobia is everywhere.”

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there have been protests worldwide against Moscow’s actions, and certainly in Germany, where activism abounds in places like Berlin. The rise in voices against Russia has led to some Russian bashing. But it is no secret that many of the more than 2 million migrants from the former Soviet Union who now live in Germany are strong supporters of Vladimir Putin. And they never been shy about publicly expressing their support.

It’s being overtly expressed in the appropriation of the Star of David — widely recognized as a symbol of Judaism and Jewish identity — in much the same way people against COVID-19 and mask mandates have used the symbol and the Holocaust vaccine to express outrage at the mandates they label as fascism that harkens back to Nazi Germany. German Nazis forced Jews to wear the symbol to mark them as enemies and less than, rounded up and taken to concentration camps, where millions were killed during World War II.

While the use of the Star of David — or the Holocaust — in such a manner is viewed as offensive, it is not the only symbol the pro-Russia crowd in Germany has adopted. In addition to huge Russian national flags, the letter Z seen on Russian tanks and trucks in Ukraine — which stands for Za popedu [“For victory”] — and the letter V for Sila v pravde [“Our strength is in truth”] are also ubiquitous at these rallies. Many protesters also carry the black-and-orange ribbon of Saint George, a symbol of the victory in World War II and Russian military glory. In Berlin, anyone who displays these symbols is subject to a fine or prosecution.

Herrmann, who is German — not of Russian ancestry — runs a car dealership in Berlin’s east side. He said he has not personally experienced anti-Russian bashing, but that the internet is filled with such stories.

Since the start of the war, more than 500 criminal acts linked to discrimination against Russians, Ukrainians now living in Germany, and supporters on either side of the divide, have been reported to authorities. They’ve mainly included property damage and insults. These encounters are also reflected in entries on the website of the Russian Embassy in Berlin, where people can report such incidents. However, the anonymous reports are all minor and at times difficult to verify.

“We must be very careful that this war does not spill over into our society,” said Nancy Faeser, Germany’s interior minister.

Just a few days ago, a Soviet war memorial in Berlin was smeared with graffiti. The graffiti read, “Ukrainian blood on Russian hands” and “Putin = Stalin.”

Although the offenses so far remain small in scale, they are fodder for Moscow’s supporters. A Telegram channel called “Putin Fanclub” counts nearly 33,000 subscribers. Other, similar channels such as the “News from Russia,” have more than 127,000.

“The elicit idiots never learn from history, the more pressure is put on Russia, the stronger the cohesion of the people,” one message reads.

Among the Germany-based Putin backers, the war is regularly referred to as the “liberation of Ukraine.” Right-wing platforms such as the far-right Compact Magazine hail German-Russian friendship.

“If there is one lesson from history, it is this: Germans and Russians must never again allow themselves to be set against each other,” said Jürgen Elsässer, editor in chief of the magazine. “There are arsonists in Kyiv who want to drag the whole world into the abyss to save their regime.”

All of these groups play to existing anti-American, anti-NATO and anti-Western sentiments.

“The mindset of the radical right is entirely on the same anti-Western course as Putin,” said Matthias Quent, a researcher at the University of Applied Sciences in Magdeburg and one of the best-known German researchers in the field, who sees a lot of overlap with other groups.

“When Russian flags fly at anti-COVID rallies in Saxony, or when the protesters march in front of the Russian Embassy and then shout slogans like ‘Putin liberate us,’ there’s clearly an intersection of interests.”

Elsässer’s Telegram channel “Compact Magazine” has over 60,000 subscribers. The channel also distributes videos from the blocked Russian television network RT.

“Polarization is definitely augmenting,” Quent said. “By many the ban of RT is seen as evidence that they are in fact telling the truth.”

Reports of Russophobia fall into the same pattern.

“When incidents, real or fake, are reported, they immediately go viral on social media,” he said. “In the end, no one knows what is really going on.”

Whether the incidents are based on fact or fiction, the rifts in society are growing deeper.

With new convoys and protests staged in German cities recently, the question remains: Why is there still a vocal minority adopting a pro-Russia line? Many of them are of German ancestry. They left the former Soviet Union because they felt like strangers there and wanted to return to their homeland.

“But here in Germany they were seen as Russians, not Germans. At some point, they started thinking, ‘All right, if we’re seen as Russians, we’ll act like it,’” said Vladimir Kaminer, one of the best-known contemporary Russian writers, who has lived in Berlin for more than 30 years. “When you lose your social status, you quickly develop an inferiority complex.”

One way to compensate is to take on the role of the victim, says Kaminer, who has long engaged in German-Russian soul-searching.

When the phone rings in the home of a 75-year-old historian in Detmold, North Rhine-Westphalia, Russian radio can be heard in the background. Of German descent — he declined to be identified out of privacy concerns — his family moved from Kazakhstan to West Germany in 1983. Asked about his feelings toward Russia, he quickly takes a stand.

“The West supports the bandits in Kyiv,” he said. “With the eastward expansion, NATO broke its promises to Russia. Russia was in danger and had to defend itself.”

Everything he says seems to come straight from the Kremlin’s playbook. Addressing the hundreds of Ukrainian civilians killed in Bucha, some shot with their hands tied behind their backs, he maintains a firm voice.

“They’re all actors,” he said. “And so is their president. They can’t be trusted.”

A week into the Berlin convoy, Herrmann regretted putting the Star of David on his vehicle.

“The police fined me, and that’s OK,” he said dryly.

When asked if he will organize another protest, without question he will, he said.

“I’ll just wait until after May 9, when Putin’s victory parade in Red Square is over.”

Ziener is a special correspondent.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea has tested-fired a new type of tactical guided weapon designed to boost its nuclear fighting capability, state media reported Sunday, a day before its chief rivals the United States and South Korea begin annual military drills that the North views as an invasion rehearsal.

The test, the 13th round of weapons launches by Pyongyang this year, came amid concerns that North Korea may soon conduct a larger provocation like a nuclear test in an effort to expand the country’s weapons arsenal and increase pressure on Washington and Seoul amid stalled diplomacy.

The official Korean Central News Agency said leader Kim Jong observed what it called the weapon’s successful launch. It released a photo showing a beaming Kim clapping his hands with military officers.

KCNA said the weapon tested has “great significance in drastically improving the firepower of the frontline long-range artillery units, enhancing the efficiency in the operation of (North Korea’s) tactical nukes and diversification of their firepower missions.”

KCNA didn’t elaborate, but the use of the words “tactical nukes” suggested the weapon is likely capable of carrying a battlefield nuclear warhead that could hit strategic targets in South Korea, including US military installations. The KCNA dispatch didn’t say when and where the launch occurred.

“North Korea is trying to deploy not only long-range nuclear missiles aimed at American cities but also tactical nuclear weapons to threaten Seoul and US bases in Asia,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “Pyongyang’s purposes likely exceed deterrence and regime survival. Like Russia employs the fear it could use tactical nukes, North Korea may want such weapons for political coercion, battlefield escalation and limiting the willingness of other countries to intervene in a conflict.”

Some observers said the weapon shown in North Korean photos suggested it might be a smaller, lighter version of its nuclear-capable KN-23 missile that has a highly maneuverable flight aimed at defeating missile defense systems. Others said it could be a new missile that combines the technical characteristics of the KN-23 and another short-range ballistic missile called the KN-24.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement Sunday that it had detected two projectile launches from the North’s eastern coastal town of Hamhung early Saturday evening.

It said the projectiles flew about 110 kilometers (68 miles) at an apogee of 25 kilometers (16 miles) and at a maximum speed of Mach 4. South Korea’s presidential office said officials have met twice this weekend to discuss the North Korean military activities.

South Korea’s military said later Sunday that its nine-day springtime military drills with the United States will start on Monday. It said the allies decided to hold computer-simulated command post exercises that don’t involve field training after reviewing factors like the COVID-19 pandemic and the allies’ combined defense readiness.

The exercises could further intensify animosities on the Korean Peninsula because North Korea had previously responded with its own weapons tests and fiery rhetoric.

North Korea has started this year with a slew of weapons tests, including its first flight test of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the US homeland since 2017. South Korean and US officials said Pyongyang could soon launch additional provocations like another ICBM test, a rocket launch to put a spy satellite into orbit or even a nuclear test explosion that would be the seventh of its kind. South Korea’s military said it has detected signs that North Korea is rebuilding tunnels at a nuclear testing ground it partially dismantled weeks before it entered now-dormant nuclear talks with the United States in 2018.

A possible nuclear test by North Korea would involve a tactical nuclear warhead, said analyst Cheong Seong-Chang at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea. He predicted that North Korea would push to mount a tactical nuclear warhead on the weapon tested this weekend and deploy such nuclear missiles near the border with South Korea.

Sunday’s KCNA dispatch quoted Kim as presenting unspecified tasks to build up North Korea’s nuclear combat forces after praising what he called successive progress in its efforts to reinforce the country’s war deterrence power. The North’s recent testing activity involved the sophisticated weapons systems Kim has vowed to introduce to cope with what he calls American hostility.

“North Korea has a domestic imperative to make and perfect weapons ordered by Kim Jong Un last year regardless of what the US does or doesn’t do. The test also tells his people that their country is strong despite their apparent economic difficulties,” said Duyeon Kim, a senior analyst at Washington’s Center for a New American Security. “One reason for the political timing could be to protest anticipated US-South Korea military drills.”

On Friday, Kim attended a massive civilian parade in Pyongyang that marked the milestone 110th birth anniversary of his state-founding grandfather, Kim Il Sung. It appeared the country passed its most important national holiday without a highly anticipated military parade to showcase its new weapons systems.

Kim may still hold a military parade on the April 25 founding anniversary of North Korea’s army. But if that anniversary goes without a military parade again, some experts say that might mean Kim doesn’t have new powerful missiles to display and that his next provocative step will likely be a nuclear test.

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Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.

A cemetery worker prayers took a rest from digging graves in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha as Ukrainians mourned the mounting death toll of Russia’s assault, flowers and toys left in memory of the dead.

One 75-year-old woman, Tetyana Gramushnyak, was killed by shelling while cooking outside her home in Bucha. Her body was lowered into a grave on Thursday inside a purple coffin topped with a cross.

Elsewhere in Bucha, sunlight cast an eerie red glow over the darkened bedroom and vacant expression of Nadiya Trubchaninova, 70, who cradled a portrait of her sons.

Oleg and Vadym Trubchaninov, aged 46 and 48, were killed by Russian soldiers in Bucha, where officials say more than 400 bodies have been found, and the death toll could rise as minesweepers comb the area.

In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, armed servicemen in combat gear arrested a man, suspected to be a Russian collabator, from a residential building.

A woman opened her door with a look of terror on her face, as she saw the helmeted, armed figures holding shields in the hallway. Inside one apartment, a serviceman took a moment to play with a large tabby cat lounging on a carpet.

At the railway station in Kramatorsk, where more than 50 people were killed and dozens more wounded earlier this month, blossoms and playthings adorned a fence in memory of the dead.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Oded Goldreich was awarded the Israel Prize, the country’s highest honor, a year ago. But the computer science professor only collected the prize this past week after overcoming a repeated public assault by Israeli nationalists over his opposition to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

The year-long saga has shined a light on attempts by nationalist forces in Israel to impose their narrative on mainstream Israeli life and to stifle opposing views.

That narrative, which sees the Bank and its Jewish settlements as part of Israel and largely ignores the occupation, has become increasingly entrenched in Israel, endangering prospects for Palestinian. Anti-occupation actors, meanwhile, are often painted as enemies of the state and have been targeted with legislation that hobbles their activities.

“It’s Made-in-Israel McCarthyism,” said Avner Gvaryahu, a co-director of Breaking the Silence, a whistleblower group for Israeli soldiers. “There is a large number of organizations, and politicians whose main project in recent years is stifling dissent.”

Goldreich, who teaches at Israel’s distinguished Weizmann Institute of Science, was nominated for last year’s Israel Prize in mathematics and computer science by a panel of judges.

But shortly after the nomination was announced, nationalist groups called for his disqualification, claiming he supported boycotts against Israel.

Goldreich, 65, and hundreds of other academics signed a last year petition calling on the European Union to halt funding for Ariel University, located in the West Bank, saying it legitimized Israeli settlements. In a research partnership with the EU launched last year, Israel itself agreed not to include the university, along with other West Bank institutions.

The outcry prompted the country’s then-education minister to refuse to approve the nomination, saying Goldreich may have violated a 2011 anti-boycott law, and sparked a yearlong legal battle that ended last month when the Supreme Court decided the current education minister, who had also denied Goldreich the prize, must grant it.

Story continues

“A person who calls for a boycott on an Israeli academic institution is not worthy of an official prize from the state of Israel, be his achievements what they may,” Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton, from the nationalist New Hope party, tweeted after the ruling.

The prize is granted each year to leaders in the arts, sciences and other fields and is awarded at a lavish celebration on Israel’s Independence Day. After missing last year’s ceremony, Goldreich said he chose to receive his award at a low-key event at the country’s Education Ministry instead, saying he dislikes formal state occasions. Shasha-Biton declined to attend the event, though she ended up contracting the coronavirus and would have missed it in any case.

Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and established Jewish settlements there. While it withdrew settlers and troops from Gaza in 2005, more than 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the other territories, complicating the establishment of a Palestinian state.

More than 2.5 million Palestinians live under Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, which restricts their movement with a series of checkpoints and crossings and controls various aspects of Palestinian life. The Palestinian Authority administers parts of the West Bank. Gaza, ruled by the Islamic militant Hamas, which calls for Israel’s destruction, is under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade.

Gvaryahu, from Breaking the Silence, said nationalist figures and politicians were working to normalize Israel’s West Bank occupation, deepening it and making it harder for people like Goldreich to challenge it.

“The right, which is turning into more fundamentalist and anti-liberal than in the past, has an interest to delegitimize the left and to turn it into a scapegoat and the current saga is just part of a process that has intensified over the last decade ,” Goldreich wrote to The Associated Press in an email.

“What’s amazing is the denial of the facts that residents of the occupied territory are being oppressed,” he said.

Goldreich’s position on the occupation is shared by most of the international community, including the United States, which overwhelmingly opposes the settlements.

But recent Israeli governments, prodded by settlers and nationalist supporters, have sought to squeeze opposition to the narrative that sees the West Bank as part of Israel and ignores the occupation.

They have created legislation that prevents anti-occupation groups such as Breaking the Silence from lecturing in schools and forces those who receive funding from foreign governments to report that income. Many right-wing groups receive funding from private donors overseas, and therefore are spared the reporting.

The current Israeli government, composed of eight ideologically diverse parties, has agreed to set aside the issue of Palestinian statehood, although it is confronting the side effects of the occupation with a current slate of deadly Israeli-Palestinian violence. Still, the government is largely dominated by right-wing parties that support the settlements, including Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s Yamina.

Influential nationalist advocacy groups like Im Tirtzu have targeted liberal artists, professors and other figures, arguing that they shouldn’t receive state funding or recognition.

“We will continue to expose the professors who on the one hand receive state funding and on the other call for a boycott of Israeli institutions,” said Alon Schvartzer, director of policy for Im Tirtzu. His group has a website with a searchable database of liberal professors and says it exposed Goldreich’s political leanings to the former education minister.

He said he wasn’t opposed to Goldreich and others expressing their opinions. But he said Israel couldn’t let its own citizens get away with boycotting Israeli institutions at a time when it faces an international, Palestinian-led movement calling for artists, international corporations and other bodies to boycott Israel. Goldreich says he does not support the boycott movement against Israel.

In what felt like a parting shot, Goldreich announced that he was donating his prize money, about $23,000, to a number of advocacy groups, including some that oppose the occupation, such as Breaking the Silence. Shasha-Biton said the move was more proof that he was unworthy of the prize.

“I regret nothing,” Goldreich wrote in an essay last week in the daily Haaretz. “I will continue to do all I can for the struggle to end the occupation.”

Weapon launch, supervised by Kim Jong Un, comes as US and South Korea warn that North Korea could soon resume nuclear testing.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has observed the test firing of a “new type of tactical guided weapon” aimed at boosting the country’s nuclear capabilities, according to state media.

The report early on Sunday came as South Korea and the United States warned that Pyongyang could soon resume nuclear testing and after Kim broke a self-imposed moratorium on intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) testing with a launch last month.

The Korean Central News Agency said the latest weapons test “is of great significance in drastically improving the firepower of the frontline long-range artillery units and enhancing the efficiency in the operation of tactical nukes”.

It did not say when the test took place and gave no details of the missile involved.

Kim, who guided the test, “gave important instructions on further building up the defense capabilities and nuclear combat forces of the country,” it added.

Photos carried by the Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed a grinning Kim – surrounded by uniformed officials – applauding as he watched what it said was the test firing of the weapon.

South Korea’s military confirmed the weapons launch, saying early on Sunday that it had detected two projectiles launched from the North’s east coast towards the sea late on Saturday.

The projectiles flew about 110 kilometers (68 miles) with an apogee of 25km and a maximum speed of under Mach 4, it said.

Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the weapon was likely a short-range ballistic missile and the North’s first tactical nuclear weapon delivery system.

“This test of a tactical nuclear delivery system comes as indicators grow of significant reconstitutive work at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site,” he said.

The site, in the far northeast of the country, is where North Korea has conducted all six of its nuclear tests.

It was closed in 2018 ahead of a first round of talks between Kim and then-US President Donald Trump.

Those talks collapsed in 2019.

Images captured by a commercial satellite in March showed signs of new activity at a tunnel there, and officials and analysts say North Korea may carry out its seventh nuclear test in the coming weeks.

Duyeon Kim, a North Korea expert at the US-based Center for a New American Security, said North Korea’s weapons tests tell its people that their country is strong.

She added that one reason for the timing of the latest test could be to protest against anticipated joint US-South Korea military drills, which are due to start on Monday.

US Special Representative Sung Kim is also due in Seoul on the same day for a five-day visit to discuss a response to the North’s recent missile launches with its South Korean counterparts.

The US has said it is open to talks with North Korea at any time and without conditions, but Pyongyang has so far rebuffed those overtures, accusing Washington of maintaining hostile policies such as sanctions and military drills.

The KCNA report on a new weapons test also came shortly after North Korea celebrated the 110th anniversary of the birth of late founder Kim Il Sung, one of the biggest annual public holidays in the country, but without a military parade.

South Korean officials have said Pyongyang could still stage a military parade or carry out a weapons test on or around April 25, the anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Army.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Sunday it has successfully tested-fired a developed tactical guided weapon, the latest in a spate of launches that came just after the country passed its biggest state anniversary without an expected military parade, which it typically uses to unveil provocative weapons systems.

The latest testing activity came amid concerns that North Korea may soon conduct a larger provocation like a nuclear explosive test in an effort to expand the country’s nuclear arsenal and increase pressure on its rivals amid stalled diplomacy.

The official Korean Central News Agency said leader Kim Jong Un observed the launch, which it said would bolster the effective operation of the country’s tactical nuclear forces and firepower of its long-range artillery corps.

The dispatch suggested the weapon tested is likely capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, but KCNA didn’t elaborate. It also didn’t say when and where the launch occurred.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement Sunday that it had detected two projectile launches from the North’s eastern coastal town of Hamhung early Saturday evening.

It said the projectiles flew about 110 kilometers (68 miles) at an apogee of 25 kilometers (16 miles) and at a maximum speed of Mach 4. The statement said South Korean and US intelligence authorities are analyzing additional details of the launches. It said South Korean officials separately held an emergency meeting to discuss the launches.

North Korea has started this year with a slew of weapons tests, including its first flight test of an intercontinental ballistic since 2017. South Korean and US missile officials said Pyongyang could soon launch additional provocations like another ICBM test, a rocket launch to put a spy satellite into orbit or even a nuclear test explosion that would be the seventh of its kind. South Korea’s military said it has detected signs that North Korea is rebuilding tunnels at a nuclear testing ground it partially dismantled weeks before it entered now-dormant nuclear talks with the United States in 2018.

Story continues

Sunday’s KCNA dispatch quoted Kim as presenting unspecified tasks to boost North Korea’s nuclear fighting and military capability after praising what he called successive progress in its efforts to reinforce the country’s war deterrence power.

On Friday, Kim attended a massive civilian parade in Pyongyang that marked the milestone 110th birth anniversary of his state-founding grandfather, Kim Il Sung. It appeared the country passed its biggest holiday without an expected military parade to showcase its new weapons systems.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

• Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer was the first EU leader to meet with Putin since the invasion.

• Nehammer told NBC’s “Meet the Press” the conversation was “frank and tough.”

• He also said Putin is “in his own war logic” and thinks Russia is winning the war.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said Russian President Vladimir Putin is fairly confident about his military campaign in Ukraine, even after Russian forces withdrew from part of the country after weeks of stagnation.

Nehammer on Monday became the first European Union leader to meet with Putin since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Saturday, Nehammer said the conversation with Putin was not “friendly” but “frank and tough” .”

“I think he is now in his own war logic. He thinks the war is necessary for security guarantees for the Russian Federation. He doesn’t trust the international community. He blames Ukrainians for genocide in the Donbas region.”

When asked by host Chuck Todd if thought he was winning the war, Nehammer said he thinks “he believes he is winning the war.”

Nehammer said earlier this week he was “not particularly optimist after my talks with Putin.”

“I made it clear to Mr. Putin, his attitude, his view is not shared by anybody,” Nehammer said during a press briefing in Moscow. “He sees it as a kind of self-defense operation of the Russian federation. He calls it special military operations. I call it the war.”

Russian forces withdrew from areas around Kyiv earlier this month after failing to capture Ukraine’s capital city and were dealt another blow this week after the warship Moskva was struck by a Ukrainian missile and sunk.

Russian troops have been regrouping for what is expected to be a new offensive in the eastern Donbas region.

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