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POCHEON, South Korea – Fifteen people were injured in South Korea on Thursday after bombs dropped by fighter jets landed in a civilian district, damaging houses and a church during military exercises in Pocheon, the air force and the fire department said. The Gyeonggi-do Bukbu Fire Services said in a statement that 15 people were wounded, out of which two were seriously hurt. Pocheon is about 40 kilometers northeast of Seoul, near the heavily militarized border with North Korea. Source link

U.S. Justice Department prosecutors have charged 10 Chinese citizens and two government agents for computer hacks that targeted dissidents, religious groups, news outlets and American government agencies. The Chinese government paid Anxun Information Technology, a cybersecurity firm also known as i-Soon, to hack and steal information in a manner that obscured its involvement, the U.S. alleges. Eight i-Soon employees and two Chinese Ministry of Public Security officials were accused of various crimes for their alleged hacking of email accounts, mobile phones, servers and websites between 2016 and 2023, according to an indictment unsealed Wednesday. Separate charges were also made public against two other Chinese citizens, who prosecutors said in a statement were linked to a recent breach of the U.S. Treasury Department. Source link

Japan’s government bond yields reached their highest levels in more than a decade, and yields in Australia and New Zealand also surged as the rout in German bunds reverberated through global debt markets. The yield on Japan’s 10-year note climbed 6.5 basis points to 1.5%, the highest since 2009. The 40-year yield jumped to a level unseen since its inception in 2007, and bond futures dropped as much as 81 ticks. Government bonds in Australia and New Zealand followed the selloff, with their benchmark 10-year yields both rising about 10 basis points. The yield on similar-tenor U.S. Treasury notes added 3 basis points to 4.31% in the third day of gains. French debt futures fell to 121.54 from a last traded price of 121.78. Source link

An explosion at an auto parts factory on Thursday in the city of Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, killed one person, local broadcaster CBC reported. A dust collector inside Chuo Spring’s Fujioka plant exploded shortly after 8 a.m., prompting a male employee to call the fire department, CBC quoted local officials as saying. Nineteen fire trucks were dispatched, and firefighting efforts are ongoing. Paramedics found one employee in cardiopulmonary arrest, who was pronounced dead at the scene. The victim’s age and gender were not immediately known. Two other male employees, age 52 and 44, sustained minor injuries, according to the report. The factory produces springs for automobiles. Another explosion occurred at the plant in 2023, but Chuo Spring said Thursday’s blast happened in a different building, the report said. Authorities are investigating the cause of the explosion. Source link

New York – A group of high school students from Japan called for the abolition of nuclear weapons Wednesday in New York, where a meeting of signatories to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is underway. “Let’s take a step forward together toward the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and realizing a peaceful world,” Mayu Kobayashi, one of the “student peace ambassadors,” said at a gathering near the U.N. headquarters. Kobayashi, a 17-year-old second-year student at Nagasaki Nishi High School, said that over 210,000 people were killed instantly by the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. “I believe that peace is not something to be taken for granted, but something we must continuously protect,” she stressed. Among other participants of the gathering was Jiro Hamasumi, 79, who is the assistant secretary-general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, or Nihon Hidankyo, which won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. A Navajo woman gave a speech. Members of the Indigenous group suffer from environmental pollution and health damage caused by the mining of uranium. Source link

BARDALA, West Bank – Just meters from the last houses in Bardala, a Palestinian village at the northern end of the occupied West Bank, Israel’s army has been bulldozing a dirt road and ditch between the community and open grazing land on the hills behind it. Israel’s military said the works were for security and to allow it to patrol the area following the killing of an Israeli civilian in August near the village by a man from another town. It did not detail what it was building there. Farmers from the fertile Jordan Valley village fear the army patrols and Israeli settlers moving in will exclude them from pastures that feed around 10,000 sheep and goats, as has happened in other parts of the West Bank, undercutting their livelihoods and eventually driving them from the village. Source link

Food brings people together. So do fandoms. That’s the premise behind “K-foodie meets J-foodie,” Netflix Korea’s latest reality series. The 30-episode show pairs celebrated South Korean balladeer and food YouTuber Sung Si-kyung with Japanese actor Yutaka Matsushige — star of TV Tokyo’s long-running drama series (and recent box-office hit) “The Solitary Gourmet” — to eat their way through Japan, South Korea and maybe even beyond. The first two episodes dropped last week, with new ones rolling out every Thursday. In its premiere, “K-foodie meets J-foodie” follows Sung and Matsushige as they tackle spicy Chinese food in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro neighborhood and devour decadent cheesecakes in the seaside city of Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture. They swap food takes, trade tidbits on their respective culinary cultures, and even share the word for “crazy” — as in, this soup is crazy good — in both Japanese and Korean. But beyond the meals, the show offers something sweeter: The chance for these two food-obsessed entertainers to actually become friends. Source link

East Japan Railway, or JR East, has said that it will start developing a new bullet train series, E10, for the Tohoku Shinkansen Line, which links Tokyo and the Tohoku region. The first train from the E10 series, which will succeed the E2 and E5 series trains, is slated to be completed in autumn 2027 ahead of the start of mass production, according to the plan announced Tuesday. JR East aims to put the next-generation shinkansen series into commercial service in fiscal 2030, with each E10 train having 10 cars. Source link

An investor group backed by BlackRock has agreed to buy a majority stake in the Hong Kong subsidiary that runs ports along either side of the Panama Canal, giving a U.S. firm control of key docks amid pressure from the White House to take them from China. The $22.8 billion sale by Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison to U.S. and Swiss investors also includes dozens of ports in other countries, the companies announced Tuesday. The move appears to be a win for U.S. President Donald Trump’s aggressive diplomacy just hours before he is due to tout the successes of the first six tumultuous weeks of his second term in an address to the U.S. Congress. He vowed to wrest control of the strategic canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans during his Jan. 20 inauguration speech, falsely claiming China is operating it. The transaction appears to hand command of the vital docks on both entrances of the canal to U.S. interests. Source link

President Donald Trump acknowledged there may be an “adjustment period” as his tariffs take effect, but defended his push to remake the U.S. economy and declared “momentum is back” in a primetime speech to Congress on Tuesday night. “Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again. And it’s happening, and it will happen rather quickly,” Trump said in the longest-ever presidential address to a joint session. “There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that. It won’t be much.” Trump’s address comes at a pivotal moment. Data shows new strains on the economy as factory activity stagnates, inflation simmers, consumer confidence ebbs and stocks lag behind equity markets in other countries. Source link