MISSILE LAUNCH: North Korea launched multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea today, South Korea said.

The missiles fired from the North’s Sinpo area flew about 87 miles each in a direction toward the country’s eastern waters, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

It said that South Korea maintains a readiness to repel any provocations by North Korea.

UNITED STATES: About 1,000 animal welfare activists who tried to gain entry to a beagle breeding and research facility on Saturday in Wisconsin were turned back by police who fired rubber bullets and pepper spray into the crowd and arrested the group’s leader.

It was the second attempt in as many months by protesters to take beagles from the Ridglan Farms facility in Blue Mounds, a small town about 25 miles south-west of the capital, Madison.

AUSTRALIA: Australia’s most decorated soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, today denied allegations that he murdered five unarmed Afghan civilians in Uruzgan province in the country’s south between 2009 and 2012.

Mr Roberts-Smith, who was released on bail last week, is accused of shooting two victims dead and allegedly ordering subordinates to shoot the other three victims.

The former soldier said: “I categorically deny these allegations.”

UKRAINE: Russian air strikes killed at least two people in Ukraine, officials said today, as Ukraine’s military struck a drone factory in south western Russia, according to Dmytro Bryzhynskyi, the head of the city’s military administration.

Meanwhile, Ukraine hit a drone factory in the city of Taganrog, Ukraine’s general staff reported.

The site lies some 35 miles east of Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine in south-western Russia.