Five Things to Know, Aug. 5, 2024

1.   North Korea showed off 250 new missile launchers over the weekend as the country’s leader announced delivery of the weapons to frontline units facing the southern border. The launchers, made by the North’s arms industry, are designed to fire tactical ballistic missiles, according to North Korean state media, using a term for low-yield nuclear weapons. A crowd, seemingly thousands strong, was on hand Sunday in Pyongyang to hear North Korean leader Kim Jong Un praise the munitions workers who built them.

2.   A missile attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels struck a Liberian-flagged container ship traveling through the Gulf of Aden, authorities said Sunday, the first assault by the group since Israeli airstrikes targeted them. The Houthis offered no explanation for the two-week pause in their attacks on shipping through the Red Sea corridor, which have seen similar slowdowns since the assaults began in November over Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But the resumption comes after the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, the Houthis’ main benefactor, amid renewed concerns over the war breaking out into a regional conflict. The rebels separately said they shot down another U.S. spy drone Sunday, later publishing imagery of the aircraft’s wreckage on the side of the mountain.

3.   The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it launched a drone attack early Monday on northern Israel that the Israeli military said wounded two Israeli troops and set off a fire. The violence came as fears of an all-out regional war mount following the killings last week of a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and Hamas’ top political leader in Iran. The Iranian-backed Hezbollah said in a statement it targeted a military base in northern Israel in response to “attacks and assassinations” carried out by Israel in several villages in south Lebanon.

4.   A Vietnamese coast guard ship arrived in Manila on Monday for a four-day goodwill visit and joint exercises as the two countries attempt to put aside their own territorial disputes in the face of rising tensions with China over control of key features in the South China Sea. The Philippines and Vietnam are among the most vocal critics of China’s increasingly hostile actions in the disputed waters, a key global trade and security route. The neighboring Southeast Asian countries themselves have overlapping claims in the busy sea passage along with Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan and the disputes are regarded as an Asian flashpoint and a delicate fault line in the U.S.-China regional rivalry.

5.   The head of a group of family members of victims of the Sept. 11 terror attacks said Saturday that she’s hearing nearly unanimous praise of the U.S. defense secretary’s nullification of plea deals for the accused 9/11 mastermind and two others that would have removed the death penalty as a possibility. The American Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, said it plans to challenge the reversal in court, citing it in a statement Saturday as a “rash act” that “violates the law.” Terry Strada, national chair of the group 9/11 Families United, said she was shocked by the announcement late Friday that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was rejecting a plea deal reached just days ago and was restoring the death penalty as an option in the cases.