North Korea tested new tactical ballistic missiles using super-large warheads and modified cruise missiles on Wednesday as leader Kim Jong Un called for stronger conventional weapons and nuclear capabilities, state news agency KCNA reported.

The tests to improve weapons capabilities are required because of the grave threat posed by outside forces to the security of the country, Kim, who led the tests, was quoted as saying.

The account followed the firing of multiple short-range ballistic missiles on Wednesday reported by the South Korean military, which was the second time the North test-launched missiles in a week.

Last week, North Korea also unveiled a uranium enrichment facility, in its first such public report, Reuters reported.

Kim stressed "the need to continue to bolster up the nuclear force and have the strongest military technical capability and overwhelming offensive capability in the field of conventional weapons too," KCNA said.

Wednesday's tests involved the new tactical ballistic Hwasongpho-11-Da-4.5 missiles, KCNA said, indicating it was part of a series of short-range ballistic missiles it had been developing.

The missile was mounted with a 4.5-ton super-large conventional warhead, KCNA said.

North Korea's state media reported the tests of missiles with the same name in July, which was considered a partial success. On Thursday, state media released photographs of a projectile striking a target in a hilly area, read the report.

South Korea's military said on Thursday two ballistic missiles landed in a mountainous area in the North's northeast.

Such a missile launch test with an intention to hit an inland target is likely unprecedented, said Shin Seung-ki who is the head of research on North Korea's military at the state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul.

North Korea routinely test-launches missiles to drop in the sea or on an uninhabited island.

The particular missile with the Hwasongpho-11-Da-4.5 designation is still under development but Russia may want it soon if its performance and reliability can be guaranteed through further testing, Shin said.

"North Korea will want to shorten that time as much as possible," he said.

Kyiv officials and independent experts have said there were signs some of the missiles used by Russia in the war against Ukraine were North Korean-made, including some that were produced this year. Moscow and Pyongyang both deny any illicit arms trade or shipments.

The North's military also tested a strategic cruise missile that has been upgraded for combat use, KCNA said.

North Korea has criticized military drills by the South Korean and U.S. militaries, including a large-scale exercise conducted this summer, as preparations for war on the Korean peninsula.

The allies say the drills are defensive in nature and aimed at maintaining readiness against any North Korean aggression.

Sweden, which has been known for years for its welcoming policy toward migrants, plans to increase its cash offer of $978 to about $34,000 to those who voluntarily return home.

Last week, the Swedish government said it would raise the 10,000 krona ($978) per adult to 350,000 krona ($34,000) and simplify the process involved in applying for the grant.

The government said this is in a bid to create incentive for migrants to return home.

This increase is expected to come into effect in 2026.

Sweden is one of a number of European countries taking a harder stance on immigration.

Sweden, with a population of 10.6 million people, had more than 250,000 refugees in mid-2023.

One politician, Ludvig Aspling, said in an interview recently that only 70 people applied for the grant last year, and only one got it.

However, 16,000 migrants from Central Asia, Africa, and the Middle East left Sweden voluntarily last year without the grant.

Addressing a press conference last week, Sweden’s migration Minister Johan Forssell described the new policy as a “paradigm shift” in the Nordic country which in 2015 opened its borders to 162,877 asylum seekers, mostly of Syrian, Afghan, and Iraqi descent as a “humanitarian superpower”.

According to AFP news agency a number of other European countries already have schemes that pay migrants to return to their home countries, with offers of around $2,000 in Germany, $2,800 in France, $1,400 in Norway and more than $15,000 in Denmark.

The move however by Sweden has sparked widespread condemnation in the country from Swedes who took to social media to voice their objections.

One social media user, named only user-cb3l said: “They (migrants) will take the money but never leave. It's too late for band aid solutions.”

Somali78 was quite upfront about what he would do and said:
“I will take it and I will never leave.”

Susann Leinonen said: “Now more people come to my country for the money and I have to work for more years.”

Featherface01 meanwhile said on social media that “they'll take that 34k, leave Sweden and show up in Britain a week later.”

Tehmudjinkhan2207 queried whether this was a good idea. He said: “I’m Swedish, I don’t understand why we need to throw money at every single person in the world. When you hand out free money, every single scammer in the world will come here to take advantage. Criminal gangs will find ways to abuse this easily.”

But Johnmash327 warned: “I'm in Africa, once our brothers hear this, you'll regret this bad idea i'm telling you.”

Israel's Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Lebanese group Hezbollah months before Tuesday's detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.

The operation was an unprecedented Hezbollah security breach that saw thousands of pagers detonate across Lebanon, killing nine people and wounding nearly 3,000 others, including the group's fighters and Iran's envoy to Beirut.

The Lebanese security source said the pagers were from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, but the company said in a statement it did not manufacture the devices. It said they were made by a company called BAC which has a licence to use its brand, but gave no more details.

Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts, Reuters reported.

Hezbollah said in a statement on Wednesday that "the resistance will continue today, like any other day, its operations to support Gaza, its people and its resistance which is a separate path from the harsh punishment that the criminal enemy (Israel) should await in response to Tuesday's massacre".

The plot appears to have been many months in the making, several sources told Reuters.

The senior Lebanese security source said the group had ordered 5,000 beepers from Gold Apollo, which several sources say were brought into the country earlier this year.

Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had the right to use the firm's brand, the name of which he could not immediately confirm. The company in a statement named BAC as the firm, but Hsu declined to comment on its location.

"The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it," Hsu told reporters at the company's offices in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday.

The senior Lebanese security source identified a photograph of the model of the pager, an AP924, which like other pagers wirelessly receive and display text messages but cannot make telephone calls.

Gold Apollo said in a statement that the AR-924 model was produced and sold by BAC.

"We only provide brand trademark authorisation and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product," the statement said.

Hezbollah fighters have been using pagers as a low-tech means of communication in an attempt to evade Israeli location-tracking, two sources familiar with the group's operations told Reuters this year.

But the senior Lebanese source said the devices had been modified by Israel's spy service "at the production level."

"The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It's very hard to detect it through any means. Even with any device or scanner," the source said.

The source said 3,000 of the pagers exploded when a coded message was sent to them, simultaneously activating the explosives.

Another security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives were hidden in the new pagers and had gone "undetected" by Hezbollah for months.

Hsu said he did not know how the pagers could have been rigged to explode.

Israeli officials did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Images of destroyed pagers analysed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo.

Hezbollah was reeling from the attack, which left fighters and others bloodied, hospitalized or dead. One Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detonation was the group's "biggest security breach" since the Gaza conflict between Israel and Hezbollah ally Hamas erupted on Oct. 7.

"This would easily be the biggest counterintelligence failure that Hezbollah has had in decades," said Jonathan Panikoff, the U.S. government's former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East.

Break Your Phones

In February, Hezbollah drew up a war plan that aimed to address gaps in the group's intelligence infrastructure. 

Around 170 fighters had already been killed in targeted Israeli strikes on Lebanon, including one senior commander and a top Hamas official in Beirut.

In a televised speech on Feb. 13, the group's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah sternly warned supporters that their phones were more dangerous than Israeli spies, saying they should break, bury or lock them in an iron box.

Instead, the group opted to distribute pagers to Hezbollah members across the group's various branches - from fighters to medics working in its relief services.

The explosions maimed many Hezbollah members, according to footage from hospitals reviewed by Reuters. Wounded men had injuries of varying degrees to the face, missing fingers and gaping wounds at the hip where the pagers were likely worn.

"We really got hit hard," said the senior Lebanese security source, who has direct knowledge of the group's probe into the explosions.