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When North Korea fired multiple ballistic missiles from its eastern coast in May, South Korea’s response was swift. Within hours, Seoul joined Washington and Tokyo in condemning the launch as a “serious threat” to regional peace and security.

But just weeks earlier, when a North Korean KN-23 missile – designed to strike South Korean targets – hit a residential building in Kyiv, killing 12 civilians, Seoul said nothing.

That silence fits a broader pattern. There was no response when Russia reportedly deployed a surface-to-air missile system to protect Pyongyang, nor when Ukrainian intelligence revealed that Russian instructors were training North Korean drone pilots on home soil, even as Kim Jong-un voiced “unconditional support” for Moscow’s war.

Relations between the North and South, technically still at war, remain tense and the muted response has raised questions from analysts over whether Seoul fully grasps the consequences of what many see as North Korea’s most significant military transformation in decades – one shaped in real warfare, on the battlefields of Ukraine.

“We definitely should be alarmed,” says Chun In-bum, a former South Korean special forces commander. “But it’s just the nature of people to avoid catastrophe or be indifferent to the terrors of reality.”

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A Venezuelan American murderer and ex-US marine, who killed three people in Spain in 2016, was released to the US during last Friday’s high-profile prisoner swap between the US, El Salvador and Venezuela, according to media and NGO reports.

Dahud Hanid Ortiz, who was convicted last year in Venezuela of a triple homicide in Madrid, is one of the 10 US nationals that arrived in Texas last Friday.

“The United States welcomes home ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela,” Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said in a statement after the exchange.

“It is unacceptablhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/23/ex-marine-released-prisoner-swap-deale that Venezuelan regime representatives arrested and jailed US nationals under highly questionable circumstances and without proper due process. Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland.”

Ortiz had been tried, convicted and sentenced last year in Venezuela of the murders. The White House did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment by time of publication.

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The Trump administration has unveiled plans to speed the development of the highly polluting artificial intelligence sector, sparking outrage from climate advocates.

Rolled out on Wednesday, the 28-page scheme pledges to remove so-called “bureaucratic red tape” and streamline permitting for datacenters, semiconductor manufacturing facilities and fossil fuel infrastructure.

To do so, it will dismantle some environmental and land-use regulations, roll back some Biden-era rules for subsidies for semiconductor plants related to climate requirements, and seek to establish exclusions for datacenters from the National Environmental Policy Act and streamline permits under the Clean Water Act.

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President Donald Trump is getting heat on social media for making a claim on Tuesday about cutting drug prices that’s essentially mathematically impossible.

Trump began promisingly enough with a complaint shared by Democrats and Republicans alike: the high cost of medication, and how much more Americans pay for some medications than patients in other countries.

He promised to reduce those costs ― but to a very unlikely degree.

“We’re gonna get the drug prices down. Not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re gonna get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%,” Trump said at a Republican dinner. “Numbers that are not even thought to be achievable.”

Critics quickly pointed out the reason those numbers are not thought to be achievable: reducing the price by 100% would make the drugs free. Reducing it by “1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%,” as Trump said, would make the cost negative dollars ― with the drug company essentially paying people to take the medication.

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A federal judge in Florida has denied the Justice Department’s request that grand jury transcripts from the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein be made public, hindering President Donald Trump’s efforts to tamp down criticism from his base about not releasing more files from the late financier’s sex-trafficking case.

U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg determined Monday that the request did not fall under any of the exceptions to requirements that grand jury material remain sealed. Grand jury transcripts are highly shielded to protect victims and witnesses, and it’s rare for a judge to make them public.

Despite that unlikelihood, Attorney General Pam Bondi made the request with the court last Friday. In her motion, she defended the Justice Department’s decision earlier this month not to release any more files but acknowledged there remains “extensive public interest” in how the Trump administration reached that conclusion. Releasing grand jury transcripts, the motion argued, could help address that.

Rosenberg rejected that.

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Attorney General Pam Bondi informed President Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a bombshell report The Wall Street Journal published Wednesday.

Bondi and her deputy told the president that Justice Department (DOJ) officials reviewed what she described as a “truckload” of documents on Epstein and discovered the president’s name appeared multiple times, according to the report, which cited senior administration officials.

Bondi also told Trump that many other high-profile individuals were named in the files — which alone is not a sign of wrongdoing. One official familiar with the documents told the Journal the files contain hundreds of names.

Trump was told at the meeting that the DOJ did not intend to release any more files on Epstein because the material included child sexual abuse material and personal information of Epstein’s alleged victims, the Journal reported. DOJ officials also saw the documents as containing unverified hearsay about Trump and others, Bondi told Trump.

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A second court ruled that President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship still cannot go into effect anywhere in the country following the Supreme Court’s recent decision that claws back nationwide injunctions.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 on Wednesday that four Democratic-led states were entitled to a nationwide injunction, because any narrower block would fail to provide them complete relief. 

“States’ residents may give birth in a non-party state, and individuals subject to the Executive Order from non-party states will inevitably move to the States,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Ronald Gould. 

Gould’s decision was joined by U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Hawkins,who like Gould was appointed by former President Clinton.  

U.S. Circuit Judge Patrick Bumatay, a Trump appointee, dissented, saying the states had no legal right to bring the case. 

“Courts must be vigilant in enforcing the limits of our jurisdiction and our power to order relief,” Bumatay wrote. 

“Otherwise, we risk entangling ourselves in contentious issues not properly before us and overstepping our bounds,” he continued. “No matter how significant the question or how high the stakes of the case—at all times, we must adhere to the confines of ‘the judicial Power.’” 

The ruling comes after the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision late last month, curtailed the ability of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions that go beyond the parties suing to block the president’s policies for anyone in the country. 

But the high court preserved pathways for plaintiffs to still receive nationwide relief in certain circumstances. Individuals can file class-action lawsuits, and states may still receive a universal injunction if it is needed to afford them complete relief, the justices noted.

Plaintiffs have since pursued both pathways to block Trump’s order, which would deny citizenship to anyone born in the country if they don’t have at least one parent with permanent legal status. Every court to opine on the legality of it so far has found it to be unconstitutional.

Wednesday’s ruling is the second time Trump’s order has been blocked nationwide following the Supreme Court’s decision. A federal judge in New Hampshire agreed to the American Civil Liberties Union’s request to certify a nationwide class of unborn children and indefinitely block the administration from enforcing Trump’s birthright citizenship order against them.

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