North Korea Stages ‘Tactical Nuclear Attack’ Drill

This picture taken on September 2, 2023 and released from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on September 3, 2023 shows a firing drill for simulated tactical nuclear attack at an undisclosed location in North Korea. (Photo by KCNA VIA KNS / AFP)

09:53-3 September 2023 AD ـ 18 Safar 1445 AH

North Korea Stages ‘Tactical Nuclear Attack’ Drill

North Korea conducted a simulated "tactical nuclear attack" drill on Saturday that included two long-range cruise missiles, state media reported on Sunday, as leader Kim Jong Un inspected shipbuilding and munitions factories.

The KCNA news agency said the drill was carried out early on Saturday to "warn enemies" that the country would be prepared in case of nuclear war as Pyongyang again vowed to bolster military deterrence against Washington and Seoul.

The two cruise missiles carrying mock nuclear warheads were fired towards the West Sea of the peninsula and flew 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) at a preset altitude of 150 meters.

A separate statement said Kim visited Pukjung Machine Complex, which produces marine engines, and a major munitions factory to stress the importance of strengthening Pyongyang's naval forces.

"He affirmed that a future plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the WPK (Worker's Party of Korea) would set forth an important modernization of the complex and the development direction of the shipbuilding industry," the KCNA statement said.

The statement did not specify the date of his visit.

The latest missile test came just after the joint annual summertime exercises between South Korea and the US, known as Ulchi Freedom Shield, came to a close on Thursday after an 11-day run, featuring air drills with B-1B bombers.

North Korea has been stepping up its military deterrence against Washington and Seoul and has criticized last month's summit agreement between the two on improving military cooperations.

A KCNA statement on Aug. 21 said Kim recently visited a navy fleet stationed on the east coast to oversee a test of strategic cruise missiles aboard a warship, and stressed the ship would maintain striking power for combat situations.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

French Far-Right Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen speaks to journalists during a news conference on the sidelines of the National Front political party summer university in Marseille, France, September 5, 2013. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier/File Photo

Asharq Al Awsat

15:43-7 January 2025 AD ـ 08 Rajab 1446 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

15:43-7 January 2025 AD ـ 08 Rajab 1446 AH

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's far-right National Front party who tapped into blue-collar anger over immigration and globalisation and revelled in minimising the Holocaust, died on Tuesday aged 96.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Marine Le Pen's political party, National Rally (Rassemblement National).
Jean-Marie Le Pen spent his life fighting - as a soldier in France's colonial wars, as a founder in 1972 of the National Front, for which he contested five presidential elections, or in feuds with his daughters and ex-wife, often conducted publicly.

Controversy was Le Pen's constant companion: his multiple convictions for inciting racial hatred and condoning war crimes dogged the National Front, according to Reuters.
His declaration that the Nazi gas chambers were "merely a detail" of World War Two history and that the Nazi occupation of France was "not especially inhumane" were for many people repulsive.
"If you take a book of a thousand pages on World War Two, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that's what one calls a detail," Le Pen said in the late 1990s, doubling down on earlier remarks.
Those comments provoked outrage, including in France, where police had rounded up thousands of Jews who were deported to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
Commenting on Le Pen's death, President Emmanuel Macron said: "A historic figure of the far right, he played a role in the public life of our country for nearly seventy years, which is now a matter for history to judge."
Le Pen helped reset the parameters of French politics in a career spanning 40 years that, harnessing discontent over immigration and job security, in some ways heralded Donald Trump's rise to the White House.
He reached a presidential election run-off in 2002 but lost by a landslide to Jacques Chirac. Voters backed a mainstream conservative rather than bring the far right to power for the first time since Nazi collaborators ruled in the 1940s.
Le Pen was the scourge of the European Union, which he saw as a supranational project usurping the powers of nation states, tapping the kind of resentment felt by many Britons who later voted to leave the EU.
Marine Le Pen learned of her father's death during a layover in Kenya as she returned from the French overseas territory of Mayotte.
Born in Brittany in 1928, Jean-Marie Le Pen studied law in Paris in the early 1950s and had a reputation for rarely spending a night out on the town without a brawl. He joined the Foreign Legion as a paratrooper fighting in Indochina in 1953.
Le Pen campaigned to keep Algeria French, as an elected member of France's parliament and a soldier in the then French-run territory. He publicly justified the use of torture but denied using such practices himself.
After years on the periphery of French politics, his fortunes changed in 1977 when a millionaire backer bequeathed him a mansion outside Paris and 30 million francs, around 5 million euros ($5.2 million) in today's money.
The helped Le Pen further his political ambitions, despite being shunned by traditional parties.
"Lots of enemies, few friends and honor aplenty," he told a website linked to the far-right. He wrote in his memoir: "No regrets."
In 2011, Le Pen was succeeded as party chief by daughter Marine, who campaigned to shed the party's enduring image as antisemitic and rebrand it as a defender of the working class.
She has reached - and lost - two presidential election run-offs. Opinion polls make her the frontrunner in the next presidential election, due in 2027.
The rebranding did not sit well with her father, whose inflammatory statements and sniping forced her to expel him from the party.
Jean-Marie Le Pen described as a "betrayal" his daughter's decision to change the party's name in 2018 to National Rally, and said she should marry to lose her family name.
Their relationship remained difficult but he had warm words for her when Macron defeated her in 2022: "She did all she could, she did very well."

North Korea Stages ‘Tactical Nuclear Attack’ Drill

North Korea Stages ‘Tactical Nuclear Attack’ Drill

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Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

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