New missiles from North Korea on US election day

Today's news: Prayers are said for Kamala Harris at the Hindu temple in the family's native village; Armenia's religious leaders on the eve of Cop29 in Baku: ‘Justice for Artshak refugees abandoned by the world’; 400 refugees a day flow into Iraq from Lebanon; After 70 years, the Tokyo Stock Exchange extends trading by half an hour to attract foreign investors.

NORTH KOREA

North Korea today launched several short-range ballistic missiles that sank in the Sea of Japan after a distance of about 400 kilometres. This was reported by the South Korean military, which said it detected the launches around 7.30am from the Sariwon area in the western province of North Hwanghae. The barrage of missiles came just hours before the US presidential vote. The launches came five days after the North launched its new Hwasong-19 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

INDIA-UNITED STATES

Residents of Thulasendrapuram - the village in Tamil Nadu where Kamala Harris' maternal family hails from - will hold a special prayer at the Hindu temple today for the distinguished fellow citizen who is up against Donald Trump in the US presidential election. At the temple, Harris' name is engraved on a stone listing public donations, along with that of her grandfather P.V. Gopalan. Outside, a large banner wishes the ‘daughter of the earth’ to win the election.

ARMENIA

A few days before Cop29, the UN Climate Change Conference that will open in Baku on 11 November, the spiritual leaders of the Armenian Apostolic, Catholic and Evangelical Churches - Aram I, Raphaël Bedros XXI and Paul Haidostian - jointly issued an appeal reiterating their protest and concern for the 120,000 Artsakh Armenians forcibly evacuated from Nagorno Karabakh after its conquest by Azerbaijan, ‘the planned destruction of Armenian religious and cultural buildings and monuments, and the illegal detention of Artsakh political leaders’. Stigmatising ‘the indifference of the international community’, they call for ‘uniting and reorganising resources around a pan-Armenian agenda’ in which ‘national values should take precedence over all other external and temporary considerations’.

IRAQ-LIBAN

Iraq is also becoming a flight destination from Lebanon, which has been brought to its knees by Israeli raids against Hezbollah. The UN refugee agency said that an average of between 400 and 600 refugees arrive in the country every day. According to figures released yesterday by the Ministry of Health in Beirut, more than 3,000 Lebanese have been killed in the conflict, including 589 women and at least 185 children.

JAPAN

The Tokyo Stock Exchange extended trading hours by 30 minutes starting today as part of efforts to make its markets more attractive to foreign investors and encourage trading activity. With the first extension of closing hours in 70 years, the Tokyo Stock Exchange will henceforth operate from 9 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. with a one-hour lunch break, according to a statement released by the Japan Exchange Group Inc.

HONG KONG

Hong Kong experienced its hottest October since measurements began in 1884, with the city's Observatory recording an average temperature of 27.3 degrees Celsius for the month, 1.6 degrees above normal. It was also a much drier month than normal, with just 11.3 millimetres of precipitation. This is about 9 per cent of the 120.3 millimetres recorded on average between 1991 and 2020. These figures follow a summer that had already been much warmer than usual.

RUSSIA

The Moscow Patriarchate has warned all bishops of the ‘non-canonicity’ of the icon called the ‘Mother of God Liberator of Donetsk’, circulated among Russian soldiers at the front in Ukraine, warning them to remove it from all churches for the devotion of the faithful, and to refute the rumours spread about its thaumaturgic powers and mystical origin.

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