The first reports appeared on foreign screens, beyond the reach of most Iranians. On 28 February Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there were signs that the tyrant is no more, suggesting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed in a joint US-Israeli strike. Iranians watching state television, however, encountered silence. Government officials would neither confirm nor deny Khamenei's death. On one of the state broadcaster's channels, IRTV3, one news presenter urged viewers to trust him and the latest information the government had.

Gilan, Iran – The Israeli military used hundreds of fighter jets, armed drones and refuelling planes to attack Iran during its 12-day war backed by the United States, but it was also heavily assisted by operations launched from deep within Iranian soil. Just hours after the Israeli army and Mossad spy agency started their attacks before dawn on June 13, they released footage that appeared to have been recorded at night from undisclosed locations inside Iran. One grainy video showed Mossad operatives, camouflaged and wearing tactical gear including night-vision goggles, crouched in what looked like desert terrain, deploying weapons that aimed to destroy Iran's air defence systems to help pave the way for incoming attack aircraft. Others showed projectiles, with mounted cameras, descending to slam into Iranian missile defence batteries, as well as ballistic missile platforms. The projectiles appeared to be Spike missiles – relatively small, precision-guided anti-armour missiles that can be programmed to fly to targets that are out of their line of sight.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for accelerating the mass production of attack drones, according to state media, as international concerns mount over the country's deepening military cooperation with Russia. The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Friday that Kim supervised the latest tests of "various types of suicide attack drones" produced by Pyongyang's Unmanned Aerial Technology Complex. The unmanned drones can hit land and sea targets, effectively acting as guided missiles. Kim "underscored the need to build a serial production system as early as possible and go into full-scale mass production", noting how drones are becoming crucial in modern warfare as he oversaw the tests on Thursday, KCNA said. North Korea first unveiled its suicide drones in August and military experts said the capability could be attributed to the country's growing alliance with Russia, with both sides signing a mutual defence pact.

Why not try a conversation with the leader of China? There's a new chatbot in town and it's based on Xi Jinping. As a matter of fact, it was trained using the'thoughts' of the Chinese leader. I put thoughts in quotes because researchers didn't use some kind of new mind-reading technology. Chinese officials just used a bunch of his books and papers for training purposes, according to a report by The Financial Times.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing on Sunday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of Full Self-Driving software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be seen as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. The US electric vehicle maker rolled out Full Self-Driving, or FSD, the most autonomous version of its Autopilot software, four years ago but has yet to make it available in China, its second-largest market, despite customers urging it to do so. Musk said this month that Tesla may make FSD available to customers in China "very soon", in response to a query on social media platform X. Rival Chinese automakers such as Xpeng have been seeking to gain an advantage over Tesla by rolling out similar software. Musk hopes to obtain approval to transfer data collected in the country abroad to train algorithms for its autonomous driving technologies, the person said.

Fox News contributor Mike Pompeo weighs in on Hungary's parliament approving Sweden's bid to join NATO and a resurfaced clip of Russian President Vladimir Putin's warning about NATO expansion on'The Story.' A drone crashed into an apartment building in St. Petersburg Saturday morning, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. The local state news agency said that Ukrainian forces had damaged the apartment building. Two buildings were damaged in St. Petersburg's Krasnogvardeisky district following the alleged attack. Photos from the dilapidated-looking apartment complex showed large craters on the building's exterior.

In the buildup to and in the weeks following the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine, Russian state media outlets output torrents of misleading and outright false information. In this work, we study this coordinated information campaign in order to understand the most prominent state media narratives touted by the Russian government to English-speaking audiences. To do this, we first perform sentence-level topic analysis using the large-language model MPNet on articles published by ten different pro-Russian propaganda websites including the new Russian "fact-checking" website waronfakes.com. Within this ecosystem, we show that smaller websites like katehon.com were highly effective at publishing topics that were later echoed by other Russian sites. After analyzing this set of Russian information narratives, we then analyze their correspondence with narratives and topics of discussion on the r/Russia and 10 other political subreddits. Using MPNet and a semantic search algorithm, we map these subreddits' comments to the set of topics extracted from our set of Russian websites, finding that 39.6% of r/Russia comments corresponded to narratives from pro-Russian propaganda websites compared to 8.86% on r/politics.

Seoul – North Korea has conducted another test of a nuclear-capable underwater attack drone, its state media reported Saturday, the latest demonstration of its military capabilities as it faces off against the United States and South Korea. North Korea tested a nuclear-capable unmanned underwater attack weapon called the Haeil-2 from Tuesday to Friday, state media reported, more than a week after it disclosed a new underwater drone called Haeil-1, which translates as "tsunami." The North's official Korean Central News Agency said that during the underwater strategic weapon system test the drone cruised 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) for 71 hours and 6 minutes and successfully hit a simulated target. This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software. Please add japantimes.co.jp and piano.io to your list of allowed sites.

North Korea has conducted another test of a nuclear-capable underwater attack drone, according to state media. The country tested the so-called Haeil-2 more than a week after it disclosed a new underwater drone system dubbed Haeil-1, which translates to "tsunami" in Korean, and is designed to undertake sneak attacks in enemy waters. Analysts are sceptical about whether the underwater vehicle is ready for deployment but say North Korea is eager to display its diverse weaponry against the United States and South Korea, which have been conducting large-scale military exercises in recent weeks. The latest test took place from April 4 to April 7, state media KCNA reported on Saturday. "The underwater nuclear attack drone Haeil-2 … cruised 1,000km [621 miles] of simulated underwater distance," the agency said, adding that the test warhead was also detonated.

North Korea has tested a new underwater nuclear-capable attack drone designed to unleash a "radioactive tsunami" that would destroy enemy naval vessels and ports, state media has reported. During a military exercise conducted this week under the guidance of the country's leader Kim Jong Un, North Korea's military deployed and test-fired the new weapons system, the mission of which was to test the ability to set off a "super-scale" destructive blast and wave, the country's state news agency KCNA said on Friday. "This nuclear underwater attack drone can be deployed at any coast and port or towed by a surface ship for operation," KCNA said. The news agency said that during the exercise, the drone was put in the water off South Hamgyong province on Tuesday and cruised underwater for 59 hours and 12 minutes, at a depth of some 80 to 150 metres (260 to 490 feet), before detonating in waters off its east coast on Thursday. KCNA did not elaborate on the drone's nuclear capabilities.