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World cholera vaccine stockpile empty: WHO

By - Oct 19,2024 - Last updated at Oct 19,2024

A medic administers a polio vaccine to a Palestinian child in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 19, 2024 (AFP photo)

GENEVA — There are no more oral cholera vaccines left in the global stockpile, the World Health Organization said Friday, with the shortage jeopardising work to stop the disease's spread.
 
Global vaccine production is operating at full capacity, but demand is outpacing supply, the UN health agency said in its monthly situation report.
 
"As of October 14, the global stockpile of oral cholera vaccine is depleted, with no remaining doses available," the WHO said.
 
"Although more doses are expected in the coming weeks, this shortage poses significant challenges to outbreak response efforts and hampers efforts to control the spread of the disease."
 
The WHO said that between September 1 and October 14, the International Coordinating Group on vaccine provision received requests for oral cholera vaccines from Bangladesh, Sudan, Niger, Ethiopia and Myanmar.
 
The requests amounted to a total of 8.4 million doses, but due to limited availability, only 7.6 million doses could be shipped.
 
Deaths spiking 
 
The WHO said there had been 439,724 cholera cases and 3,432 deaths reported this year up to September 29.
 
"Although the number of cases in 2024 is 16 per cent  lower than last year, the 126 per cent  spike in deaths is deeply concerning," it said.
 
The WHO said the mortality increase might be partially down to where the outbreaks are located.
 
Those include conflict-affected areas where healthcare access has been severely compromised and areas hit by flooding.
 
Since last month's report, new cholera outbreaks have been reported in Niger (705 cases and 17 deaths) and Thailand (five cases with no deaths), pushing the total number of affected countries in 2024 to 30, said the WHO.
 
In September, 47,234 new cholera cases were reported from 14 countries.
 
And this month, a cholera case was detected in conflict-hit Lebanon, where the WHO warned the risk of it spreading was "very high" due to the deteriorating sanitation conditions for the large numbers of displaced people.
 
Cholera is an acute intestinal infection that spreads through food and water contaminated with the bacterium vibrio cholerae, often from faeces.
 
It causes severe diarrhoea, vomiting and muscle cramps.
 
Cholera can kill within hours when not treated, though it can be treated with simple oral rehydration, and antibiotics for more severe cases.
 
In April, the Gavi vaccine alliance and the UN children's agency UNICEF said South Korean firm EuBiologics was currently the only oral cholera vaccine supplier to the global stockpile, although other manufacturers were expected to have products available in the coming years.
 

Russia, Ukraine swap 190 POWs: ministry

By - Oct 19,2024 - Last updated at Oct 19,2024

This handout photograph released by the Ukrainian presidential press service on July 17, 2024 shows Ukrainian prisoners of war posing for a photo following a swap at an undisclosed location in Ukraine (AFP photo)

MOSCOW — Russia said Friday that it had swapped 95 Ukrainian soldiers held captive for an equal number of Russian troops in an exchange deal brokered by the United Arab Emirates.
 
"As a result of the negotiation process, 95 Russian servicemen were returned from territory controlled by the Kyiv regime," the Russian defence ministry said. 
 
"In return, 95 Ukrainian army prisoners of war were handed over," it said. 
 
Kyiv has not confirmed the exchange but the human rights centre Zmina said a prominent Ukrainian rights activist, Maksym Butkevych, was freed in the swap, citing his father. 
 
Butkevych, co-founder of the independent Hromadske radio station and also a Ukraine serviceman, was serving a 13-year sentence on charges of wounding two civilians while firing an anti-tank grenade launcher in the eastern city of Severodonetsk.
 
He joined the Ukrainian army in March 2022, was detained in June and convicted of war crimes by a court in Lugansk in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine in March 2023.
 
Despite ongoing hostilities, Russia and Ukraine have swapped hundreds of prisoners since the launch of Moscow's offensive in 2022, often in deals brokered by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia or Turkey.
 
The last reported swap was in September, when 206 POWs were exchanged, in a deal also mediated by the UAE.
 
Earlier Friday, Kyiv said it had received the bodies of 501 soldiers killed fighting Russian forces, mainly in eastern Ukraine, as a result of repatriation measures.
 
Russian lawmaker Shamsail Saraliyev told the RBK media outlet that Russia received 89 bodies of its soldiers in return.
 

Harris targets Trump's age after report of exhaustion

By - Oct 19,2024 - Last updated at Oct 19,2024

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally to get out the early vote at Western International High School in Detroit, Michigan, October 19, 2024 (AFP photo)

DETROIT — Kamala Harris questioned Donald Trump's fitness for office Friday as the oldest major-party White House candidate in history faced speculation that he is "exhausted" after backing out of a spate of interviews.
 
While he has been appearing on friendly TV networks, the 78-year-old Republican has canceled sitdowns with media outlets including NBC, CNBC and CBS. He has also refused a second debate with Harris, after being soundly bested in the first.
 
Politico reported that a Trump aide had told producers at a website negotiating an interview that the ex-president was "exhausted" and refusing some appearances -- a claim described by his campaign as "detached from reality."
 
But Harris, who turns 60 this weekend, hammered Trump over his health and resilience.
 
"If you are exhausted on the campaign trail, it raises real questions about whether you are fit for the toughest job in the world," Harris told supporters during a day of multiple stops across the swing state of Michigan.
 
The former president has hardly been idle, pursuing a busy schedule of appearances with new and traditional media, but most have been on outlets where he is rarely challenged.
 
Trump reacted angrily to Harris's jab, telling reporters that he had canceled nothing and calling his Democratic opponent a "loser" who "doesn't have the energy of a rabbit."
 
Dueling rallies 
 
He also claimed to be "killing" her in the polls and that she did not pass the bar exam.
 
Harris -- a former California attorney general who passed the bar exam in 1990 -- has a narrow lead in national polling averages, while numerous October surveys in Michigan show them neck and neck.
 
Trump has surprised analysts with a program that mixes swing state stops with appearances in regions he has no chance of winning, but where he is guaranteed big crowds.
 
He was in the liberal stronghold of New York for a Catholic charity dinner on Thursday, where he mocked Harris in an occasionally mean-spirited speech that earned gasps for its off-color remarks and profanity.
 
But he was back on home turf Friday morning for a soft Fox News interview, before heading to Michigan for counterprogramming against Harris.
 
Both candidates are spending their final campaign days in pivotal battleground states where early voting is already underway.
 
With less than three weeks to go, Harris has seen encouraging signs in her push for supporters to vote as soon as possible, as a bulwark against the traditional Republican edge among Election Day voters.
 
Almost 12 million votes had been cast by Friday evening -- around a third of them in the seven swing states expected to decide the election -- according to data tracked by the University of Florida Election Lab. 
 
Early voting surge 
 
Georgia has been smashing records, while North Carolina reported a first day of voting Thursday that beat 2020, when there was a pandemic-linked surge of early ballots.
 
Where party breakdowns were available, registered Democrats accounted for roughly half of the total, while Republicans -- who have spent much of the Trump era casting aspersions over drop boxes and mailed ballots -- were responsible for around a third.
 
After her event in Grand Rapids, Harris targeted blue-collar voters with remarks at a union hall in Lansing, giving a more manufacturing-focused speech in which she argued that the future of the labor movement was "on the line" in November's election.
 
She was set to hold an evening rally in Oakland County before returning to Detroit on Saturday.
 
The Democrat has found herself on eggshells as she upholds President Joe Biden's support for key ally Israel, while Muslim and Arab American voters -- particularly in Michigan -- have voiced outrage over the death toll in Gaza.
 
The killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar drew optimism from Harris for a Gaza ceasefire, but Israel quickly said his death is not the end of the campaign launched in response to the militant group's October 7, 2023 attack. 
 
Speaking to journalists ahead of a speech in Detroit, Trump said Sinwar's death had increased the likelihood of a peaceful solution to the war in Gaza -- while warning Biden not to try to restrain Israel.
 

UN expert accuses Israel, Western nations of speech breaches amid Gaza war

By - Oct 19,2024 - Last updated at Oct 19,2024

UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights Situation in the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese speaks at a press conference during a session of the UN Human Rights Council, in Geneva, Switzerland, March 27, 2024 (AFP photo)

UNITED NATIONS, UNITED STATES — Protest crackdowns, banned marches, media workers at risk ,  a UN expert on Friday accused Western nations and Israel of freedom of speech violations in the year since the Gaza war broke out.
 
"No conflict in recent times has threatened freedom of expression so seriously or so far beyond its borders than Gaza," UN special rapporteur Irene Khan told reporters as she presented her report, "Global threats to freedom of expression arising from the conflict in Gaza."
 
The Bangladeshi human rights lawyer, who has been the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression since 2020, notably cited crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests in Western democracies in the early months of the war.
 
On US university campuses, protests were "harshly" repressed, she said, alluding to the use of riot police to dislodge encampments.
 
In Europe, she noted that Germany had imposed a ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations last October, with some restrictions still in place on such protests in various Germans regions, but "never on any pro-Israeli" rallies.
 
"There have been all sorts of other restrictions also made in terms of slogans or scarves and so on," she said.
 
France attempted a similar blanket ban last year but was stymied by courts, and now makes assessments on a case-by-case basis, she said, noting Belgium and Canada have similar approaches.
 
She also pointed to "targeted assassinations of journalists" in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
 
"We all know the deliberate killing of a journalist is a war crime," she said, lamenting the "impunity" with which such deaths have been met in the recent conflict and years prior.
 
The killing of journalists, destruction of press facilities, denying access to international media, banning Al Jazeera, and other actions by Israel, "seem to indicate the strategy of the Israeli authorities to silence critical journalism and obstruct documentation of possible international crimes," she said.
 
Hamas sparked the war in Gaza by staging the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
 
During the attack, militants took 251 hostages back into Gaza. Ninety-seven remain there, including 34 who Israeli officials say are dead.
 
Israel's campaign to crush Hamas and bring back the hostages has killed 42,500 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures which the UN considers reliable.
 

Trump, Harris back on friendly ground after tough interrogations

By - Oct 17,2024 - Last updated at Oct 17,2024

Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at a campaign event at Washington Crossing Historic Park on October 16, 2024 in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania (AFP photo)

WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris headed to the swing state of Wisconsin on Thursday while Donald Trump took to the airwaves, a day after the US presidential election rivals faced unusually hostile television audiences in a bid to break through in a tied race.
 
The candidates are racing toward the Election Day finish line with the Democratic vice president narrowly leading her Republican rival nationally and in several crucial swing states, although most polls are within the margin of error.
 
Both have been desperate to peel off support from their opponent in the final weeks of the race, and Harris planned to woo blue-collar workers in the manufacturing hub of La Crosse and in Green Bay, one of Wisconsin's largest cities.
 
Trump sat for an interview with a supportive podcast, dominated by immigration, the economy and his grievances against the US media -- although he made news by blaming Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky for Russia's invasion of his country.
 
"Zelensky is one of the greatest salesmen I've ever seen. Every time he comes in, we give him $100 billion. Who else got that kind of money in history? There's never been (anyone)," Trump told the two-million-subscriber PBD Podcast.
 
"And that doesn't mean I don't want to help him, because I feel very badly for those people. He should never have let that war start."
 
Although Kyiv is a US ally and Moscow is considered an adversary, Trump touted his good relationship with Russia's Vladimir Putin during a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky in September, sparking outrage. 
 
 'Day of love' 
 
The appearance came after Trump had fielded much less friendly questions during a Univision network town hall on Wednesday from undecided Hispanic voters, a key bloc Trump is desperate to court ahead of November 5.
 
The former president did not mention his plan -- touted at every rally -- to enact the biggest deportations in US history but instead said he wanted to encourage legal immigration.
 
A California farm laborer asked who would do the work if most of the undocumented workforce was deported, and Trump struggled to answer, instead blasting foreign "terrorists" and "murderers" taking the jobs of Black and Hispanic Americans. 
 
Trump was also quizzed about the insurrection at the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters seeking to halt the certification of his 2020 election defeat to Biden.
 
The violence was the culmination of an alleged criminal conspiracy to steal the 2020 election that Trump has been indicted for, but he denied any responsibility, calling January 6, 2021, "a day of love."
 
He was also pressed for pushing a racist conspiracy theory that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, have been eating local people's pets, and responded that was "just saying what was reported."
 
An estimated 36 million Latinos are expected to be eligible to vote in this year's election, and their support is considered particularly important in the closely watched battleground states of Arizona and Nevada. 
 
A Times/Siena College poll of Hispanic voters published on Saturday found 56 percent said they would vote for Harris, while 37 percent said they would vote for Trump. 
 
 'Unstable' 
 
Harris's momentum in the polls has plateaued in recent weeks, however, and both candidates have been on a blitz of new and traditional media as they try to win over the small number of undecided voters.
 
The vice president sat down with right-wing Fox News on Wednesday in Pennsylvania, where she was hit with her toughest questioning so far -- taking several hits on her policy record and dodging some questions.
 
The vice president was pressed hard on when she noticed that Biden was mentally "diminished," how many immigrants had entered the country illegally and whether she would apologize to the parents of a child murdered by undocumented migrants. 
 
But Harris was able to pivot repeatedly to attacking "unstable" Trump, giving Fox News viewers a rare insight into his behavior and rhetoric -- something that could sway disaffected Republicans and swing voters.
 
Her best moment came when she berated host Bret Baier for whitewashing Trump's recent threat to set the military on his political opponents, after Fox played a clip of the Republican cleaning up his remarks instead of the threat itself.
 
Republicans claimed the interview was a disaster while Democrats called it a triumph. 
 

Zelensky's 'victory plan' finds doubters in Kyiv

By - Oct 17,2024 - Last updated at Oct 17,2024

Ukrainian servicemen ride an armoured military vehicle on a road in the Donetsk region, on October 16, 2024 (AFP photo)

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week finally unveiled his much anticipated "victory plan" to end the grinding war with Russia, but the ambitious roadmap has been met with scepticism in Kyiv.
 
Its announcement comes as Ukraine faces mounting pressure to find an exit strategy as its troops suffer battlefield losses and Moscow intensifies its strikes on infrastructure.
 
In central Kyiv, 20-year-old Alyona said she fully believed Ukraine could win the war and that she hoped Ukraine's allies would help implement Zelensky's five-point plan.
 
But she said that she had her doubts.
 
"I think it's not very realistic but it is never too late to hope," she told AFP, adding that "we really need a lot more resources to win".
 
The "victory plan," which Zelensky was presenting to Ukraine's European allies in Brussels on Thursday, calls first and foremost for an immediate invitation for Kyiv to join NATO -- a prospect widely viewed as far fetched. 
 
The Ukrainian leader has also said it would envisage the deployment of a "comprehensive" but non-nuclear force on his country's territory so that Moscow would not attack again.
 
And the plan also calls for allowing Ukraine to hit military targets inside Russia with Western-supplied long-range weapons, a common appeal from Kyiv to its partners abroad.
 
 'Big doubts' 
 
"I have very big doubts," said Anatoliy, a Kyiv resident, asked whether the "victory plan" could serve as a silver bullet to end the war, now lurching through its third year.
 
He was concerned about how corruption -- seen as a systematic political and social problem in Ukraine -- was undermining the war effort. 
 
"It's absolutely horrible. I think it's not inspiring at all, especially for those people who are really defending us," he told AFP.
 
Corruption was also a key concern for Oleksiy Moroz, another Kyiv resident, who said Ukraine needed to work to resolve domestic issues as well as appeal for help from abroad.
 
"It seems that we are either begging or demanding something to make us feel good, but we are not doing anything for it," he told AFP.
 
Georgiy, a 56-year-old war veteran, was also doubtful whether the plan could make a meaningful difference on the ground in Ukraine, where Russian forces and their proxies have been deployed for a decade. 
 
"We have very serious problems. And what Zelensky says is what Zelensky says. We have problems that have not yet been solved," he said.
 
In particular, the veteran criticised Ukrainian men who have fled the country rather than staying to fight.
 
"There are not enough people. The Americans and NATO will not give us people. They can help us with equipment, with money, but not with people. And there are very few people," he added.
 
'Force Russia to peace' 
 
The mood on the street stands in stark contrast to the reaction to the plan from Zelensky's aides and political allies.
 
The governor of the war-battered Donetsk region, which Russia claimed to have annexed in late 2022 despite not having full military control over the industrial territory, voiced his support.
 
"Now it is time to force Russia itself to peace -- a real, just and lasting peace," Vadym Filashkin wrote on social media.
 
"Such a peace is possible only if we win. And that is exactly what the plan announced by the president today leads to," he said shortly after Zelensky addressed lawmakers in Kyiv on Wednesday.
 
A senior aide to Zelensky, Mykhaylo Podolyak, meanwhile told Ukrainian television: "The logic of this plan is for our partners to understand that we need resources in this war."
 
The former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army and now Ukraine's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Valery Zaluzhny, described the "victory plan" as "necessary".
 
"Without a common, global strategy," he said, "it will be difficult for Ukraine to do anything" without foreign help.
 
"And what about the collective West? Is it still afraid of escalation?" he asked in London.
 

Water crisis threatening world food production: report

By - Oct 17,2024 - Last updated at Oct 17,2024

PARIS — Inaction on the water crisis could put more than half of the world's food production at risk by 2050, experts warned in a major report published Thursday.
 
"Nearly 3 billion people and more than half of the world's food production are now in areas where total water storage is projected to decline," said the report by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW).
 
The report also warned the water crisis could lead to an eight per cent drop in GDP on average for high-income countries by 2050 and as much as 15 per cent for lower-income countries.
 
Disruptions of the water cycle "have major global economic impacts," said the report.
 
The economic declines would be a consequence of "the combined effects of changing precipitation patterns and rising temperatures due to climate change, together with declining total water storage and lack of access to clean water and sanitation".
 
Facing this crisis, the report called for the water cycle to be viewed as a "global common good" and for a transformation of water governance at all levels. 
 
"The costs entailed in these actions are very small in comparison to the harm that continued inaction will inflict on economies and humanity," it said.
 
While water is often perceived as "an abundant gift of nature", the report stressed it was scarce and costly to transport. 
 
It called for the elimination of "harmful subsidies in water-intensive sectors or redirecting them towards water-saving solutions and providing targeted support for the poor and vulnerable".
 
"We have to couple the pricing of water with appropriate subsidies," said the World Trade Organisation's Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a co-chair of the GCEW, during an online briefing.
 
Another co-chair, Singaporean President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, insisted on the need to see water as a global problem, to "innovate and invest" to solve the crisis and "stabilise the global hydrological cycle".
 

Climate-hit Pacific Islands plot landmark UN court case

By - Oct 17,2024 - Last updated at Oct 17,2024

SYDNEY — Five Pacific nations on Thursday plotted how to prosecute a pivotal UN court case that aims to hold climate-polluting countries to account and safeguard their islands' survival. 
 
The International Court of Justice will start hearings on December 2 in a case that will test countries' climate obligations and whether they can be sued for failing to act.
 
Vanuatu's Attorney-General Arnold Kiel Loughman told AFP on Thursday that the case was "important" and could give climate-hit small island states more leverage to force change.
 
He met this week with his counterparts from Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu to discuss the case, prepare legal arguments and meet experts.
 
"It concerns our very livelihood because climate change affects weather patterns, it affects our land and sea and basically the environment we live in," Loughman said. 
 
And while there were countless international forums talking about climate change, he said there had been very little "action". 
 
"As far as small island countries are concerned, we haven't seen much."
 
Despite emitting less than 0.02 per cent  of total greenhouse gas emissions, Pacific nations are more exposed to climate change impacts like rising sea levels.
 
In 2020, Vanuatu emitted 121,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, compared to neighbouring Australia's 379 million tonnes, according to data from the World Bank. 
 
"For too long, our region has withstood the brunt of climate impacts while contributing the least to the crisis," Loughman said. 
 
He estimated the nation of roughly 313,000 people needs about US$1.2 billion by 2030 to pay for climate adaptation, mitigation and to cover related losses.
 
'Matter of survival' 
 
In March 2023, UN members asked the Hague-based court to rule on "legal consequences" for states that "have caused significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment", as well as obligations to future generations.
 
A record 100 oral submissions will be heard over two weeks of court proceedings later this year.
 
The court's final opinion will not be binding, but it can carry significant legal, moral and political weight.
 
International Court of Justice opinions are often taken into account by national courts.
 
Climate experts fear Tuvalu and Kiribati will be among the first countries to be swallowed by rising sea levels, while Fiji has been relocating communities to higher grounds since 2014.
 
Fiji's Attorney-General Graham Leung said the court case was "not simply a legal issue , it is a matter of survival".
 
NASA analysis shows many Pacific nations will experience at least 15 centimetres of sea level rise in the next 30 years, which is particularly concerning given 90 per cent  of populations live within five kilometres of the coastline.
 

North Korea says constitution now defines South as 'hostile' state

By - Oct 17,2024 - Last updated at Oct 17,2024

A woman walks past a television screen showing a news broadcast with footage of an explosion on a road connecting North and South Korea on 15 October 2024, at a train station in Seoul on 16 October 2024 (AFP photo)

SEOUL — North Korea said Thursday that its constitution now defines the South as a "hostile" state, the first time Pyongyang has confirmed legal changes called for by leader Kim Jong Un earlier this year.
 
The country blew up roads and railways linking it to the South this week as "an inevitable and legitimate measure taken in keeping with the requirement of the DPRK Constitution which clearly defines the ROK as a hostile state," the official Korean Central News Agency said. 
 
South Korea's military on Tuesday released video footage of North Korean soldiers dynamiting deeply symbolic roads and railways connecting the two Koreas, days after Pyongyang's military had vowed to "permanently" seal the border with the South.
 
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of the lowest points in years, after Kim in January defined Seoul as his country's "principal enemy" and said they were no longer interested in reunification.
 
KCNA said Thursday that the army had taken "a measure to physically cut off the DPRK's roads and railways which lead to the ROK (South Korea)".
 
The move was "part of the phased complete separation of its territory, where its sovereignty is exercised, from the ROK's territory".
 
North Korea said that sections of the key inter-Korean roads and railways had "been completely blocked through blasting."
 
"This is an inevitable and legitimate measure taken in keeping with the requirement of the DPRK Constitution which clearly defines the ROK as a hostile state," it added. 
 
The North held a key meeting of its rubber-stamp parliament last week, and this is the first confirmation that the country's basic law was amended in line with Kim's demands.
 
The report did not provide further details about the constitutional changes. 
 
Previously, under a 1991 inter-Korean accord, relations between the North and South were defined as a "special relationship" as part of a process aimed at eventual reunification, not as state-to-state relations.
 
Kim called for the constitutional change in a speech in January, during which he threatened war if the South were to violate "even 0.001 mm of our territorial land, air and waters."
 
 Drones 
 
Seoul has said the North Korean military had been clearing land and laying fresh mines along the border for months, as part of a drive to reinforce the border, which the South claims is largely to prevent defections by Pyongyang's own citizens.
 
North Korea also recently accused Seoul of using drones to drop anti-regime propaganda leaflets on the capital Pyongyang, with Kim convening a security meeting to direct a plan of "immediate military action" in response, state media reported Tuesday. 
 
Seoul's military initially denied sending drones north but has subsequently declined to comment, even as Pyongyang has warned it would consider it "a declaration of war" if another drone was detected.
 
Activist groups in the South have long sent propaganda northwards, typically carried by balloons, but enthusiasts are also known to have flown small, hard-to-detect drones into the North.
 
Unlike conventional drones made of metal, the devices they used were constructed from expanded polypropylene, similar to Styrofoam, allowing them to go undetected by both South and North Korean authorities, according to enthusiasts who spoke to local media.
 
North Korea has itself sent drones southwards , in 2022, five of Pyongyang's drones crossed the border, prompting the South Korean military to fire warning shots and deploy fighter jets.
 
The jets failed to shoot down any of the drones.
 

German UNIFIL warship intercepts drone off Lebanon

By - Oct 17,2024 - Last updated at Oct 17,2024

The German Madgeburg F261 corvette docked at the port of Beirut on January 30, 2018 (AFP photo)

BERLIN — A German warship deployed as part of the UN's peacekeeping force in Lebanon has shot down a drone off the Lebanese coast, the German army said Thursday.
 
"An unidentifiable unmanned aerial vehicle was detected in the vicinity" of the "Ludwigshafen am Rhein" corvette and was "brought down in a controlled manner", an army spokesman said.
 
The spokesman said he was unable to provide further details for "reasons of operational security".
 
Andrea Tenenti, a UNIFIL spokesman, confirmed that earlier on Thursday "an unmanned aerial vehicle of unknown origin approached one of UNIFIL's Maritime Task Force ships off the southern Lebanese coast". 
 
"In accordance with procedure, electronic countermeasures were used and the UAV fell and exploded on its own," Tenenti said, adding that UNIFIL was "looking into the matter".
 
The UN's peacekeeping force in Lebanon has come under repeated fire in the Israeli-Hezbollah war in recent days. 
 
Five peacekeepers were injured in a series of incidents last week, with the latest seeing the UN force accuse Israeli troops of breaking through a gate and entering one of their positions.
 
The Israeli military has said is not targeting UN peacekeepers, but the incidents have sparked a wave of international criticism.
 
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was set up in 1978 to monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces after they invaded Lebanon to stem Palestinian attacks targeting northern Israel.
 
The peacekeeping mission includes about 10,000 personnel overall, with its Maritime Task Force focused on preventing arms smuggling by sea.
 

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