This is no scoffing matter. The accelerating proliferation of advanced nuclear weapons is bringing'end times' closer by the day H umankind has fearfully and sometimes joyfully anticipated the end of the world ever since it began. The Bible's Book of Revelation speaks of "end times", a period of tribulation, war, famine, plague, floods and environmental catastrophe that may seem a less absurd prospect today than perhaps it once did. Christian evangelicals believe that, in the final rapture, a chosen few - the righteous or the "elect" - will be saved while sinners burn. Matthew's gospel predicts most people will defy, ignore or ridicule warnings of imminent Armageddon.

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President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea, citing costs and a hostile signal to North Korea's Kim Jong Un ahead of Ulchi Freedom Shield.

North Korea has denounced major United States-South Korea military drills set to start next week as a provocation that heightens tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The US-Japan-South Korea military cooperation is turning into a nuclear alliance, and North Korea will respond to a new level of threat with a new level of deterrent, a spokesperson for North Korea's Foreign Ministry said on Friday, according to Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The drills - named "Ulchi Freedom Shield" - are due to start on August 17 and will last until August 27. They will incorporate exercises to counter drones, GPS disruption, and cyberattacks as the US and its allies adapt to North Korea's evolving capabilities. "The US announced that the forthcoming exercises are quite different from the ones of the past five years and intended to master the ability of fighting a war on the basis of the new aspects of modern warfare," the North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in the statement.

North Korea's hackers using AI for attacks, cybersecurity firm says North Korean state-backed hackers are using artificial intelligence to bolster cyberattacks against targets in the military, diplomacy and academia, a report has found. Kimsuky, a hacking group linked to North Korea's intelligence services, has used AI-generated documents in a "pattern" of spear-phishing attacks since 2026, the South Korean cybersecurity firm Genians said in the report released on Monday. To avoid detection, Kimsuky has used open-source tools such as Ollama, GPT-4All, and Msty to run large language models without an internet connection, according to the report. "AI can generate highly polished documents on a wide range of topics within a short period of time, making it a highly efficient tool for threat actors," Genians said. "This change is noteworthy because it goes beyond a shift in how decoy documents are created and demonstrates that AI can enable the automation and large-scale production of social engineering attacks."

North Korea will'never' get nuclear recognition, EU and South Korea say European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen shakes hands with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung next to European Council President Antonio Costa on the day of an EU-South Korea summit in Brussels on Wednesday. South Korea and the European Union have said that North Korea will "never" be recognized as a nuclear-weapon state, reaffirming their commitment to denuclearization days after China and North Korea pledged closer ties at a summit that made no public mention of the issue. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung held talks with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa on Wednesday in Brussels, where they agreed to step up defense ties, including efforts to facilitate the exchange of classified information. "The DPRK will never be accepted as a nuclear-weapon state," the EU and South Korea said in a joint statement, referring to North Korea's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

Sakie Yokota (center, back), mother of North Korean abductee Megumi Yokota, and others attend a rally held in Tokyo on Saturday that called for the immediate return of Japanese people abducted by North Korea. A large-scale rally was held in Tokyo on Saturday to seek the immediate return home of all Japanese abductees in North Korea. Relatives of those abducted to North Korea decades ago expressed hopes for the return of abductees immediately and while their parents are still alive. The event, organized by the association of families of abduction victims and other entities, was attended by about 800 people, including Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. "We will never give up," said Takuya Yokota, 57, head of the association and the younger brother of Megumi Yokota, who was abducted in 1977 at the age of 13. He called on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to release all abductees to "chart a bright future for both countries."

One group of hackers used AI for everything from vibe coding their malware to creating fake company websites--and stole as much as $12 million in three months. The advent of AI hacking tools has raised fears of a near future in which anyone can use automated tools to dig up exploitable vulnerabilities in any piece of software, like a kind of digital intrusion superpower. Here in the present, however, AI seems to be playing a more mundane, if still concerning, role in hackers' toolkit: It's helping mediocre hackers level up and carry out broad, effective malware campaigns. That includes one group of relatively unskilled North Korean cybercriminals who've been discovered using AI to carry out virtually every part of an operation that hacked thousands of victims to steal their cryptocurrency. On Wednesday, cybersecurity firm Expel revealed what it describes as a North Korean state-sponsored cybercrime operation that installed credential-stealing malware on more than 2,000 computers, specifically targeting the machines of developers working on small cryptocurrency launches, NFT creation, and Web3 projects.