SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called South Korea “our principal enemy” and threatened to annihilate it if provoked, as he escalates his inflammatory rhetoric in an election year in South Korea and the U.S. During tours of munitions factories this week, Kim said it’s time to define South Korea “as a state most hostile” toward North Korea because of its long-running attempts to topple the North’s socialist system. He said North Korea must bolster its nuclear war deterrent, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported Wednesday. If South Korea dares to use its military force against North Korea, Kim said, “We will have no hesitation in annihilating (South Korea) by mobilizing all means and forces in our hands,” according to KCNA.

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PARIS (AFP) - Azerbaijan told France Wednesday not to “intervene” in its internal affairs after Baku arrested a Frenchman on espionage charges with tensions running high between the two countries. Baku has accused France of supporting Azerbaijan’s arch-enemy Armenia, both diplomatically and militarily, and of seeking to fuel tensions in the South Caucasus. French national Martin Ryan was arrested on December 4 last year, according to Azerbaijan authorities, suspected of “espionage”. “This baseless statement is another attempt to distort the reality, and intervene into the internal affairs of Azerbaijan,” the Azerbaijan foreign ministry said in a statement.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden did not learn that his defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, had prostate cancer until Tuesday, the White House said, minutes after it was disclosed to the public along with an infection that was also kept under wraps. Austin, who is 70, has been hospitalized since Jan 1 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center - a fact that the Pentagon had kept from the public, the White House and Congress for much of last week, triggering a major political backlash. Austin’s own deputy, Kathleen Hicks, was also kept in the dark for days, even after she was told during a vacation in Puerto Rico to assume some of his duties on Jan 2.

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WARSAW (Reuters) — Former Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said he had started a hunger strike as a “political prisoner” on Wednesday, a day after he was detained by police at the presidential palace and sent to jail on abuse of power charges. The events mark a dramatic gear change in new Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s efforts to undo policies of his predecessors, the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, and punish those accused of wrongdoing during their time in power. PiS faced accusations of subverting rule of law during their eight-year rule. Tusk’s pro-European coalition’s drive to bring Poland back in line with EU democratic rules and unblock tens of billions of euros in funding pits him against PiS ally President Andrzej Duda.

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MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Al Shabaab militants captured a United Nations helicopter carrying two Somali men and several foreigners when it made an emergency landing in an area controlled by the group, a military official said on Wednesday. The aircraft encountered a defect shortly after taking off from Beledweyne city in central Somalia, Major Hassan Ali told Reuters, before it landed near Hindhere village, bordering Galguduud region.

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MAIDUGURI (Reuters) - At least 20 people are feared dead in an accident involving two passenger boats travelling from Andoni to Bonny island in Nigeria’s coastal Rivers State, local officials said on Wednesday. Erastus Awortu, chairman of Andoni local government area, said the incident occurred on Tuesday night along the Andoni waterways. “When we learned of the tragic development, we immediately dispatched our team to join the first responders on a rescue mission at the scene of the incident,” Awortu said in a statement, without providing further details about survivors.