NATO confirms North Korean troops in Russia, Pentagon approves $2 billion arms sale to Taiwan, Egypt proposes Israel-Hamas cease-fire and U.S. Navy apologizes 142 years later.
1. NATO on Monday confirmed that North Korean troops have been sent to Russia to aid in its war against Ukraine and that some have already been deployed in Russia’s Kursk region, where Russia is fighting a Ukrainian incursion. “Today, I can confirm that North Korean troops have been sent to Russia, and that North Korean military units have been deployed to the Kursk region,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told reporters. Rutte said that the move represents “a significant escalation” in North Korea’s involvement in the conflict and marks “a dangerous expansion of Russia’s war.”
2. The United States has approved $2 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, including the first-time delivery to the self-ruled island of an advanced surface-to-air missile defense system, in a move that has drawn China’s criticism. Taiwan’s presidential office on Saturday thanked Washington for greenlighting the potential arms sales. Under the island’s new president, Lai Ching-te, Taiwan has been stepping up defense measures as China increased its military threats against the territory it claims as its own. Beijing last week held war games encircling Taiwan for the second time since Lai took office in May.
3. Egypt’s president announced Sunday his country has proposed a two-day cease-fire between Israel and Hamas during which four hostages held in Gaza would be freed. President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, speaking in Cairo, said the proposal also includes the release of some Palestinian prisoners and the delivery of humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip. Egypt has been a key mediator along with Qatar and the United States. This is the first time Egypt’s president has publicly proposed such a plan. There was no immediate response from Israel or Hamas.
4. Russian forces thwarted an attempt at another cross-border incursion by Ukraine into southwestern Russia, a local official reported Sunday, months after Kyiv staged a bold assault on its nuclear-armed enemy that Moscow is still struggling to halt. An “armed group” sought Sunday to breach the border between Ukraine and Russia’s Bryansk region, its governor, Aleksandr Bogomaz, said but was beaten back. Bogomaz did not clarify whether Ukrainian soldiers carried out the alleged attack, but claimed on Sunday evening that the situation was “stable and under control" by the Russian military.
5. Shells fell on the Alaska Native village as winter approached, and then sailors landed and burned what was left of homes, food caches and canoes. Conditions grew so dire in the following months that elders sacrificed their own lives to spare food for surviving children. It was Oct. 26, 1882, in Angoon, a Tlingit village of about 420 people in the southeastern Alaska panhandle. Now, 142 years later, the perpetrator of the bombardment — the U.S. Navy —has apologized. Rear Adm. Mark Sucato, the commander of the Navy’s northwest region, issued the apology during an at-times emotional ceremony Saturday, the anniversary of the atrocity.
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