‘unacceptable’ on Hiroshima date IN BRIEF

to the ceremony for the second-straight year because of the Ukraine crisis.

Participants, many dressed in black, offered a silent prayer at 8:15 am (2315 GMT Thursday) when the first nuclear weapon used in wartime was dropped.

Kishida hosted the G7 summit in the city earlier this year.

Kishida has tried to move nuclear disarmament up the agenda, having taken leaders of the wealthy democracies to Hiroshima’s peace park memorials and museum.

However, there is little appetite to reduce stockpiles with Russia repeatedly issuing thinly veiled warnings that Moscow could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, as well as repeated North Korean missile tests and stalling efforts towards non-proliferation.

Earlier this month, more than 100 medical journals across the world issued a rare joint call for urgent action to eliminate nuclear weapons, warning that the threat of nuclear catastrophe was “great and growing.” AFP

Kim inspects arms factories: KCNA

SEOUL—North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited several major arms factories this week, including facilities producing engines for strategic cruise missiles, and called for increased weapons production, state media reported on Sunday.

The three-day inspection of the factories comes less than two weeks after Kim attended a major military parade with Russian and Chinese officials, showcasing North Korea’s newest weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles and spy drones.

Kim visited a factory producing engines for armed unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as production lines of shells for super-large-caliber multiple rocket launchers and transporter-erector-launchers, the Korean Central News Agency reported.

During the engine factory visit, Kim called for “steadily increasing the performance and reliability of the engine” and “rapidly expanding its production capacity”, KCNA said.

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BEIJING—A shallow 5.4-magnitude earthquake struck eastern China in the early hours of Sunday, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said, with state media reporting at least 21 people injured and dozens of buildings collapsed.

Videos on social media showed shaking light fixtures, trembling ground and people evacuating their buildings, with one clip showing people walking past bricks scattered on the ground.

The quake, which struck at 2:33 am, hit 26 kilometers south of the city of Dezhou in Shandong province, at a depth of 10 kilometers, USGS said.

“The tremor was so strong... during the earthquake my head was shaking on the pillow, I thought I was having a nightmare,” one person posted on social media platform Weibo from Shandong’s neighboring Hebei province. USGS’s PAGER system, which provides preliminary assessments on the impact of earthquakes, issued a red alert -- estimating extensive damage and some casualties were probable based on previous quake data.

Citing Shandong authorities, state broadcaster CCTV said there were at least “21 injured” and 126 houses or buildings had “collapsed” from the earthquake, which was followed by 52 aftershocks.

China’s Ministry of Emergency Management launched a level four emergency response and dispatched a team to Shandong province to lead the rescue work, according to state news agency Xinhua.

Footage from CCTV showed rescue personnel in red uniforms marching past first aid tents that had been set up on a school athletics field surrounded by seemingly undamaged buildings.

“Only specific old dirt buildings that were uninhabited have collapsed,” CCTV said, showing footage of piles of crumbled bricks in between undamaged buildings and pieces of exterior wall stripped from a still-standing house.

“Some yard perimeter walls have collapsed and been damaged,” CCTV said. AFP

Kim also highlighted the modernization of small arms as “the most important and urgent matter in making war preparations... in keeping with the changed aspect of war”, the agency reported. AFP

Russian missile strike hits flight firm: Zelensky

KYIV, Ukraine—A Russian missile strike hit Saturday a facility of the Ukrainian aeronautics group Motor Sich, one of several companies requisitioned by the government since Moscow’s invasion, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

“Today there was another Russian missile attack against our country. Kinzhals, Calibers. They hit Motor Sich” near Khmelnytskyi in western Ukraine, around 300 kilometers southwest of Kyiv, Zelensky said in his evening address.

Motor Sich, which makes plane and helicopter engines and other components, was among the “strategic” firms taken over by Ukraine’s defense ministry last November.

Zelensky said the strike included Russia’s hypersonic Kinzhal weapons, which are designed to elude air-defense systems, though he added that “some of the missiles were shot down.”

The Khmelnytskyi region, hundreds of kilometers from the front lines of the fighting in eastern Ukraine, has been regularly targeted by Russian strikes. The region is home to a major Ukrainian airbase. AFP