While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Oct 14

North Korea says it took “strong military countermeasures” after South Korean artillery fire. PHOTO: AFP

N. Korea launches missile after flying warplanes near border

North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile into the sea off its east coast on Friday, South Korea’s military said, the latest in a series of launches by the nuclear-armed country.

Earlier, South Korea’s military said it scrambled fighter jets when a group of about 10 North Korean military aircraft flew close to the border dividing the two countries, amid heightened tensions over repeated North Korean missiles tests.

A statement on North Korea’s official KCNA news agency quoted the North Korean military as saying it took “strong military countermeasures” after South Korean artillery-fire drills on Thursday.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile was launched at about 1.49am on Friday (10.49pm on Thursday, Singapore time) from the Sunan area near North Korea’s capital Pyongyang. It was at least the 41st ballistic missile launch by North Korea this year.

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US House Jan 6 committee votes to subpoena Trump

The US House of Representatives committee probing the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Donald Trump supporters voted unanimously on Thursday to subpoena the former president, a move that could lead to criminal charges if he does not comply.

The House select committee’s seven Democratic and two Republican members voted 9-0 in favour of issuing a subpoena for Trump to provide documents and testimony under oath in connection with the storming of the Capitol.

The vote came after the committee spent more than two hours making its case – via statements from members, documents, and recorded testimony – that Trump planned to deny his 2020 election defeat in advance, failed to call off the thousands of supporters who stormed the Capitol, and followed through with his false claims that the election was stolen even as close advisers told him he had lost.

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Biden pays extra for tacos at Los Angeles food stop

US President Joe Biden shelled out nearly four times the asking price when he stopped for tacos and quesadillas during a visit to Los Angeles on Thursday.

The 79-year-old grinned widely as he picked up an order, telling the server the extra money should be used to pay for the next customer.

Biden, who entered the restaurant alongside California Representative Karen Bass and LA County supervisor Hilda Solis, snagged two quesadillas and six tacos for the group, including chicken quesadillas for himself.

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Russia begins evacuating civilians from Ukraine's Kherson

The Russian-installed governor of Ukraine's southern Kherson region proposed residents take their children and leave for safety, in one of the starkest signs yet that Moscow is losing its grip on territory it claims to have annexed.

Russia's Tass news agency reported a first group of civilians fleeing from Kherson was expected to arrive in Russia's Rostov region as soon as Friday.

The prompt to go applied foremost to residents on the west bank of the Dnipro River. That includes the regional capital, the only major Ukrainian city Russia has captured intact since invading in February.

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Florida school shooter avoids death penalty, gets life in prison

A US jury on Thursday rejected the death penalty for Nikolas Cruz, who shot and killed 17 people at his former Florida high school, opting instead for life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Cruz, 24, wearing a striped sweater and large glasses, stared down expressionless at the defence table as the verdict was read while several relatives of the victims in the gallery shook their heads in disbelief.

The jury deliberated for a full day on Wednesday and briefly on Thursday before deciding that Cruz should receive life in prison for the February 2018 murders of 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

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