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Trump orders cuts to South Korea joint drills despite warnings of North’s growing battlefield experience

Donald Trump has said he is scaling back joint US military drills with South Korea aimed at deterring North Korea, despite military officials from both countries warning that Kim Jong-un’s regime was learning new battlefield tactics from the Ukraine war. The drills under Ulchi Freedom Shield, one of two major annual exercises held by South Korea and the US, start on Monday and run until 27 August. They were expected to involve about 18,000 South Korean troops, alongside US forces and personnel from 11 of the 18 member states of the United Nations Command (UNC), the multinational body that oversees the 1953 armistice that halted hostilities of the Korean war. However, on Sunday evening, the US president said he was “not happy” with US participation “based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong-un”. He added that they were costly and “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a country that, as long as Donald J Trump has been president, has been unthreatening and respectful”. Trump added that it was too late to cancel the drills so he had ordered the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to “substantially reduce” them. He also said South Korea had refused to help in the “denuclearisation of the Islamic republic of Iran”. On Saturday, Trump also shared an old photo of him posing with the North Korean leader on Truth Social, repeating his claim the two “get along great”, leading to speculation he would renew his attempt to have a summit with Kim. Last week, South Korean and US military officials said they would incorporate into the drills lessons drawn from North Korean troops’ increasing battlefield experience in Ukraine, including new drone tactics. North Korea has deepened military ties with Russia since the two countries signed a comprehensive strategic partnership pact in June 2024, seeing Pyongyang provide troops, artillery ammunition and ballistic missiles to support Moscow’s war in Ukraine. At a joint briefing, Col Ryan Donald, public affairs director for the US-led commands in South Korea, said this year’s scenario would reflect “drones, GPS disruption [and] cyber attacks”, threats he linked directly to North Korean soldiers who have deployed and fought in Ukraine as part of Pyongyang’s military support for Russia. “They’ve taken those lessons they learned there and brought them back to North Korea, that changes the DPRK capability,” Donald said, referring to North Korea’s formal name. “Our training accounts for that threat, that is why the exercise looks different [from previous exercises], and over the last five years it’s continually evolved.” Speaking to the Guardian at a separate briefing, Lt Gen Scott Winter, deputy commander of the UNC, said the threats being countered “reflect the increased use of these technologies and the understanding that North Korea has contemporary battlefield experience”. “We’re very conscious that North Korea has used this as an opportunity to test a number of its ballistic missile systems,” he said, adding that this year’s drills would be “bigger and better than ever”. When asked about Trump’s post, South Korea’s defence ministry said the joint drills would “proceed as previously notified and scheduled”. The Guardian has reached out to South Korea’s defence and foreign ministries for further comment on Trump’s remarks. More than 14,000 North Korean troops have fought alongside Russian forces in the Kursk region, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has warned that Russia is preparing to receive 30,000 more. The two countries are also close to completing the first road bridge ever built between them, over the Tumen river, which one open-source investigation concluded functions more as a military logistics corridor than a trade route. Russian state media says it is expected to open in September. In the days before the exercise were due to begin, North Korea test-fired ballistic missiles, in what analysts read partly as a protest against the drills. On Friday, North Korea’s foreign ministry called the exercise “a rehearsal for an aggressive war”, warning it would “respond to a new level of a threat with a new level of a deterrent”. The warning is typical of the rhetoric Pyongyang deploys ahead of major US-South Korean drills. Officials have repeatedly described the exercise as “defensive” in nature. Chun In-bum, a retired lieutenant general who commanded South Korea’s special forces, highlighted the importance of preparing in a timely manner for capabilities that will be required to prepare for new challenges ahead. “This is a very serious improvement in North Korean capabilities. And we should not take lightly this threat environment.”

Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo now deadliest in country’s history

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is now the deadliest in the country’s history with at least 2,325 people killed, according to government data, surpassing the toll from the 2018-20 outbreak. Congo’s public health institute said on Sunday that confirmed cases had risen to 4,945, including 101 new cases detected in the previous 24 hours. West Africa’s 2014-16 Ebola outbreak resulted in 28,616 cases and 11,310 deaths across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). On Friday the UN warned that “Ebola is winning in the Democratic Republic of the Congo” and said the epidemic was now killing one person every 30 minutes. Six of DRC’s 26 provinces have now been affected, mainly those along the country’s north-eastern border. More than 3,400 of the cases have been recorded in Ituri province, where the outbreak was first reported. The latest numbers of confirmed cases of Ebola in the DRC has made this latest outbreak the fastest growing in the known history of the virus. There are no approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus that is responsible for the current surge in cases. Thomas Parisch, a public health specialist recently deployed to DRC with Médecins Sans Frontières, said: “Normally, as an outbreak progresses, the case fatality ratio should fall as contact tracing improves and patients are identified and treated earlier. “Instead, we’re still seeing many cases detected very late, when treatment is less likely to succeed, with many identified only after they die in the community.” Uganda has reported at least 20 cases, all in the capital, Kampala. In May, the outbreak of the disease in the DRC and Uganda was declared a public health emergency of international concern by the WHO. The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals and then spreads in the human population through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people and with contaminated surfaces and materials such as bedding or clothing. According to WHO, symptoms can include fever, fatigue, malaise, muscle, pain, headache and sore throat. These are followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, rash and symptoms of impaired kidney and liver functions.

After Hormuz, China looks to the promise – and peril – of the Arctic’s ‘ice silk road’

When Marco Rubio suggested that the world should look to new shipping lanes to bypass the logjammed strait of Hormuz, it’s unlikely he had the Arctic’s northern sea route in mind. And yet in recent months the promise of this 5,500km channel – cleaved through frozen seas by nuclear-powered icebreakers and illuminated by a sun that never dips below the Arctic horizon – has grown. Japan, Korea and India have all expressed interest in sending cargoes through the northern sea route (NSR), but it’s China that has established the first scheduled transit, with shipping company Sea Legend launching a regular service in recent days. The NSR, which cuts through the Arctic Circle along Russia’s northern coast, is only navigable during warmer months, but that window has widened due to shrinking summer sea ice. For some vessels, the route can more than halve the time it takes to get from China to Europe, but the benefits come with serious environmental and political risks that have the potential to outweigh the gains. After a single pilot voyage in 2025, Sea Legend has launched a regular container service via the Arctic route. That direct journey from Ningbo-Zhoushan to Felixstowe in the UK takes as little as 18 days – according to Li – compared with more than 40 days via the Suez canal. Experts say the route is ideal for cargo that is sensitive to temperature, including electric vehicles, lithium batteries and solar products – among which China has become a dominant global exporter. As the only regular commercial cargo service on the route, Sea Legend will test whether Beijing’s longstanding Arctic ambitions can translate into a viable regular China-Europe trade route. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, first publicly called for China and Russia to develop Arctic shipping routes and build a “polar Silk Road” in 2017. Russia, which controls much of the northern sea route, was initially wary of China’s growing presence in the Arctic. But after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has been left increasingly dependent on Beijing in the high north, giving China greater leverage and access. Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom issues navigation permits and oversees shipping along the route, while also providing the nuclear-power icebreakers that are needed to accompany most vessels. Sea Legend says the Arctic route will roughly halve emissions because of the shorter sailing time between China and Europe, but according to experts, the environmental risks inherent in the journey could easily erase any emissions savings. Some shipping companies have faced criticism for operating vessels that use heavy fuel oil (HFO), which was banned from the Arctic in 2024. According to a 2025 report from the Bellona Environmental Foundation, fuel spills pose huge dangers in the Arctic because HFO is thicker than other types, making it difficult to clean up. Oil also decomposes more slowly in colder weather and is almost impossible to remove once trapped in ice. Their report argues Russia is completely unprepared to deal with such a disaster should it occur. The distances of the NSR – along with its isolation – mean that specialised recovery teams could take weeks to reach a spill site. “Due to the remoteness of the region and lack of logistical support, the probability of a prolonged machinery breakdown and consequential grounding is much higher. This poses the risk of an environmental oil spill in a fragile ecosystem,” says Capt Nitin Chopra, Allianz principal marine risk consultant for Asia. Bellona also flags the danger of black carbon – one of the emissions from HFO – calling it “one of the most potent absorbers of solar radiation”. Black carbon can reduce the reflectivity of the Arctic region, making it absorb more sunlight while trapping heat, exacerbating global warming. Frozen highway for the shadow fleet Li Xiaobin, chief operating officer of Sea Legend, said this month that the crisis in the Middle East has exposed the vulnerability of the Suez canal and strait of Hormuz to regional turmoil, heightening the need to develop alternative trade routes between China and Europe. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has echoed those comments. Moscow would like to redraw the map of world trade, but its control of the NSR – which is largely in Russia’s exclusive economic zone – is seen as too great a risk for many operators. International sanctions imposed on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine could complicate rescue efforts if a vessel gets into trouble and requires assistance, insurer Allianz Commercial said in its 2026 safety and shipping review. Experts say that for now, much of the traffic along the NSR is taken up by Moscow’s shadow fleet: tankers often operating without insurance or proper regulatory oversight, making ad hoc journeys to evade sanctions on Russia’s oil. “In 2025 there were a hundred such ships under international sanctions – or nearly a third of the cargo ships sailing the route,” Bellona’s Ksenia Vakhrusheva wrote in a report last year. In 2026, reports suggest shadow fleet shipments through the NSR are happening at an even faster rate, thanks to milder summer conditions that are aiding navigation. “With the current climate change, we may be able to see more time of the years that the northern sea route will be open for commercial shipping,” says Vinh Thai, professor of logistics and supply chain management at RMIT University, adding that there is some evidence it is already happening. A Russian transporter of LNG was able to start an early transit through the route in May, thanks to the shrinking summer sea ice. In the past week, ship-watchers spotted an unprecedented convoy of Russian tankers taking an unusually northern path through the NSR. The fleet of vessels, reportedly carrying about 8m barrels of oil, passed within 500 miles of the north pole. Despite Russia’s bold – perhaps reckless – efforts to push the NSR as a viable alternative for international shipping, experts say that for now the economics don’t add up. Safety concerns, high operating costs, a short sailing season and sanctions risks will probably continue to constrain Arctic shipping. Any oil spill could therefore be an “environmental as well as economic disaster”, says Thai. “Not only for Russia, but also the surrounding area as well. “So can the northern sea route be used as a substitute for the strait of Hormuz and the Suez canal? The short answer is no, not for the moment.”

Five teenagers killed after car driven on wrong side of Irish motorway

Five teenagers have died and four other people have been seriously injured in a crash involving a car driving in the wrong direction on a motorway in the Republic of Ireland, police said. Gardaí confirmed the bodies of the youths, all male, had been removed from the scene of the two-vehicle collision, which happened at about 3am on Sunday on the M9 in County Kildare. The force said the occupants of the second vehicle involved, three women, two in their 30s and one in her 20s, and a boy, all remained in hospital with serious injuries. The Garda commissioner, Justin Kelly, described the head-on collision between the two cars as “horrific” and said “in some cases” vehicles were being driven on the wrong side of motorways for social media likes. Last weekend, nine people were injured in a head-on collision on the M50 in Dublin involving a car travelling in the wrong direction. Describing Sunday’s crash, Kelly said: “These family members were travelling innocently when they were struck by a vehicle being driven the wrong way down the motorway. “This horrific incident, after the recent collision on the M50, shows how irresponsible and dangerous driving on the wrong side of the motorway is. “That, of course, should be self-evident, but what makes this reckless behaviour even more appalling is that in some cases it is being done for social media likes, regardless of the potentially devastating impact it might have on innocent people and themselves.” He added: “As this particular incident has been referred to Fiosrú, the police ombudsman, I am constrained in what I can say in detail about this incident, but I know that gardaí do what they can to stop such vehicles while also taking into consideration all other road users. “Gardaí are put in a really challenging situation dealing with such incidents.” Officers are investigating the circumstances of the crash, which happened at junction 3 of the motorway, near Athy, at about 3am on Sunday. Emergency services had been alerted to reports of a vehicle travelling southbound on the M9 northbound carriageway. Earlier, a Garda Síochána spokesperson said the female driver and front-seat passenger of the second car had been taken to Tallaght university hospital, and were in a critical condition. A female rear-seat passenger, in her 20s, was taken to St Luke’s general hospital in a serious condition. The third passenger, a child, was taken to the Children’s Health Ireland at Crumlin in Dublin, also in a serious condition. The bodies of the teenagers who died were taken to Naas general hospital, where postmortem examinations were due to take place. Gardaí appealed for anyone who witnessed the collision or has dashcam footage to come forward.

Wildfires kill two in Greece and torch Belgian nature reserve

An elderly couple died in fires on the Greek island of Salamis on Sunday and Belgium is battling its largest modern-day wildfire at an inaccessible area near Germany, in the latest wave of European wildfires. The couple died outside their home in the Peristeria beach area of Salamis, Greece’s coastguard said. More than 500 people were ordered to evacuate. In Spain, a soldier died on Sunday while helping efforts to extinguish a large wildfire in Aragon, authorities said. French reinforcements were due to help contain the wildfire in the north-eastern region, which has raged for a week and threatened a 1,000-year-old monastery. In Belgium, a wildfire that broke out on Friday in the High Fens, a large nature reserve popular with hikers, had ravaged about 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of land and was encroaching on the border with Germany by early Sunday morning. About 600 people in the municipalities of Waimes and Bütgenbach, in Liège province, were told on Saturday to evacuate from their homes, and tourists were also advised to leave, as winds shifted and smoke spread. Of those who followed the order, about 20 spent the night in a sports hall, while others sought refuge with family and friends. Hervé Jamar, the governor of Liège, said more than 250 firefighters and emergency staff were involved in the operation, including firefighters from Germany. Farmers have also been helping to battle the blaze, using their tractors to pull in water from Lake Robertville. Air support, provided by two water-bombing aircraft from Sweden and four helicopters – two from Belgium and two from the Netherlands – is crucial owing to the nature reserve’s complex and fragile terrain, which is made up of dense forest, peat bogs and raised wooden boardwalks where heavy firefighting vehicles risk sinking. Access to Lake Bütgenbach was prohibited on Sunday to allow the aircraft to refill. Authorities described the conditions as still challenging, although two fire fronts towards Jalhay and Monschau were now under control, said Belgium’s interior minister, Bernard Quintin, after visiting the crisis centre in Vottem on Sunday afternoon. “On this third day of fighting the fires, all resources remain mobilised on the ground,” he wrote on X, and he thanked all those involved. “We can also count on the solidarity of our European partners … thank you to everyone who mobilised to fight the fires. United, we are stronger.” The fire, described by officials as the largest in Belgium’s modern history, began in an area that in 1911 was badly affected by massive wildfires during a drought. In Portugal, hundreds of firefighters were battling a series of blazes. At a wildfire near Dine, a village close to the border with Spain, five firefighters were injured when their vehicle caught fire, local media reported. Other fires were burning near the Spanish border, including at Boticas and Chavez. Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather around the world, driving more frequent and deadlier disasters from heatwaves to floods to wildfires. Much of Europe is experiencing a new period of intense heat, creating conditions conducive to wildfire outbreaks. On Friday a fire engulfed ⁠homes in a Croatian holiday resort, killing one person, injuring 40 and forcing 1,200 to evacuate, officials said, as the EU warned that pockets of “very extreme” wildfire conditions stretched across the continent. Hundreds more people were evacuated from villages in western Germany and south-west France, while stranded holidaymakers were picked up from beaches threatened by flames in Greece and the army rescued historical relics in Spain.

Brazil’s Lula launches historic fourth term bid – but son of jailed Bolsonaro stands in his way

Brazil’s leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has launched his campaign for a historic fourth term and vowed that as long as he lived he would not allow the “shameless” right to return to power. Addressing a sea of supporters in São Bernardo do Campo, the industrial city where his political career began nearly half a century ago, the 80-year-old politician reminded voters of the chaos and violence that unfolded during the 2018-22 presidency of his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, whose son Flávio Bolsonaro will face Lula in October’s presidential election. Lula recalled how hundreds of thousands of citizens died during a Covid outbreak Jair Bolsonaro was accused of bungling with his anti-science policies. Gun ownership soared as laws were relaxed, allowing criminal groups to expand their arsenals. “They handed out … more than a million weapons,” Lula said, promising to dedicate a fourth term to improving education and healthcare as well as developing Brazil’s rare-earth deposits, the world’s second largest after China’s. Lula also said he would improve security by targeting the rich organised crime bosses who lived in luxury apartments. “It’s easy to kill a crook in a favela. But the guy running the show lives in a penthouse … and we need to stop this,” Lula said. He also told his far-right rivals to “show some shame”. Lula was speaking at the Vila Euclides football stadium, where his astonishing rise to the presidency began in 1979 when, as 33-year-old union leader, he spearheaded two historic strikes that helped end the military dictatorship. Those strikes made Lula a household name and in 2002, after three failed attempts, he won a landslide victory to become his country’s first working-class president. During Lula’s first two-terms, from 2002 until 2010, he was credited with fighting hunger, dramatically expanding social welfare programmes and access to higher education, and improving Brazil’s global standing, although his administration was blighted by corruption scandals. His successor, Dilma Rousseff, became Brazil’s first female president but led the country into a severe economic recession before being controversially impeached in 2016. In 2018, Lula was jailed for alleged corruption and he spent 580 days in prison before the supreme court quashed his conviction. Lula’s imprisonment allowed Bolsonaro to win that year’s election, ushering in four years of environmental destruction and international isolation. In 2022 Lula won his third term, defeating Bolsonaro by a razor-thin margin and vowing to rescue the country from “one of the worst periods in Brazilian history”. “This nightmare is over,” Lula declared at his January 2023 inauguration. A week later, far-right radicals rampaged through the capital, Brasília, in a botched attempt to bring Bolsonaro back. Bolsonaro was jailed in 2025 for 27 years for plotting that failed post-election power grab. Flávio Bolsonaro, a 45-year-old senator, launched his campaign on Sunday with an event on Rio’s Copacabana beach, previously the scene of huge rallies in support of his father. “I am going to be Brazil’s next president because I’m going to fight this system,” Bolsonaro, who wore a bullet-proof vest under a yellow Brazil shirt, told a crowd far smaller than those his father used to attract. Polls suggest Lula holds a slender advantage over Bolsonaro, with 43% of intended votes to his rival’s 40% in a run-off which will take place on 25 October if, as expected, no candidate secures 50% of the vote in the 4 October first round. André Pagliarini, the author of a book about Lula called A People’s President and the Fight for Brazil’s Future, said the showdown would be “the single most important electoral contest this year in the world”. Pagliarini said he believed a Bolsonaro victory would be a significant boost for the pro-Trump “reactionary block” that has won elections across Latin America, from Argentina and Chile to Colombia, where the far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella recently took office. Donald Trump’s administration has repeatedly asserted its leadership over the region, launching deadly military operations against alleged “narco-terrorists” in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific, threatening to “take back” the Panama canal and, in January, abducting Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro. Last week, the US state department published an incendiary video declaring that “American dominance in the western hemisphere will never be questioned again”. In recent months Trump has turned up the heat on Brazil, designating its two biggest organised crime groups, the Red Command and the PCC, as terrorist organisations. That has kindled fears of a US military intervention on Brazilian soil or interference in Brazil’s presidential election. During a visit to a jungle training camp in Panama on Friday, Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said Washington planned to use the military to “ruthlessly” pursue Latin American drug traffickers, “just like [they did with] Isis and al-Qaida” during the “war on terror”. The idea, Hegseth said, was to “do bad things to bad people – because for too long, bad people did bad things to good people inside the United States of America and across Central and South America”. There was anger at the US outside Lula’s campaign launch on Sunday, where some activists handed out stickers that read: “Fuck Trump.” Seixas Alves, a 33-year-old Lula supporter, said he worried the decision to classify Brazilian drug factions as terrorist groups could be used as a pretext for a US attack. “Just like they [did with] Saddam Hussein,” Alves added, referring to the Iraqi dictator’s supposed development of weapons of mass destruction. In Rio, Flávio Bolsonaro praised Trump’s decision to target the Brazilian crime groups and said he was the only politician capable of “sitting down with the US”. In Vila Euclides, Simone Tebet, a centrist Lula ally, urged voters to do everything they could to stop Brazil falling back into the hands of far-right politicians who wanted “to kill Brazilian democracy” and create “a country of hate”.

Taliban threaten former Afghan police worker after MoD leak reveals identity

A man has received threats from the Taliban after his work for the Afghan police was revealed by a Ministry of Defence leak and the UK refused his application for resettlement. Hamid* worked for the Afghan national police special unit and received certificates for his work signed by senior British figures praising his “dedication, unparalleled service and leadership”. His details were also included in an accidental 2022 leak by an MoD official that identified 18,700 Afghans who had worked with or for the British government. Hamid said he had received a number of threats from the Taliban, including a video he shared with the Guardian in which a man cradling a rifle and sitting below a Taliban flag threatens to pursue him and cites knowledge of his previous movements. The MoD, however, has rejected his application for resettlement under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap) scheme. His most recent rejection, received on 31 July, stated that Hamid had not provided evidence of “working alongside, in partnership with or closely supporting a UK government department”. It gave him 28 days to appeal. Hamid said: “This is extremely painful because I have already submitted every document available to me proving my service. Furthermore, many of my former colleagues who served in exactly the same department and performed the same duties have already been relocated to the UK through the Arap scheme. “Despite this evidence, my case continues to be refused. I believe my case raises serious questions about how some former Afghan partners of the UK continue to be treated despite years of loyal service.” Hamid’s plea for help comes five years after the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan on 15 August 2021 after the withdrawal of US and Nato forces. The UK government launched the Arap scheme on 1 April 2021 and closed it to new applications on 1 July last year. Pre-existing applications continue to be processed. Under Arap, high risk of death or serious injury are only taken into account if the rest of the criteria are deemed to have been met, which they have not in Hamid’s case. “Must I wait until I am captured, tortured or killed by the Taliban before my service and the danger I face are finally recognised?” he said. “Following the Ministry of Defence data breach, my personal information was exposed, placing me at even greater risk. Since then, my life has changed completely. I cannot safely leave my home to work. I live in constant fear of being recognised or targeted.” After the leak, the then defence secretary, John Healey, said the dataset included people who had made speculative applications under Arap and had not worked with British forces. He said being included in the leak “doesn’t give them a right to claim access to Britain”. “It doesn’t give them a right to claim asylum. It doesn’t make them eligible for the special [Arap] scheme that Britain put in place for those who’d worked alongside or served with our forces,” he said. Hamid said that because he was in hiding he had no reliable income and relied on his wife, who supports the family by doing small jobs from home. “This is our family’s only source of income, and even then we struggle simply to survive,” he said. “The emotional impact has been devastating. My wife and I have become deeply exhausted, depressed and hopeless after years of fear, uncertainty, repeated refusals and financial hardship. “I am not asking for special treatment. I am only asking for a fair review based on the evidence I have already provided.” An MoD spokesperson said: “Each application is considered on a case-by-case basis, assessed against the evidence provided, such as how they supported the UK mission in Afghanistan, and in line with the publicly available eligibility criteria. “Since the Taliban takeover, the UK has resettled almost 39,000 Afghan men, women and children through Afghan resettlement schemes.” Name has been changed