CBS News
North Korea launches new, perhaps more agile ICBM designed to reach U.S. mainland in first such test in almost a year
Seoul, South Korea — North Korea launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile Thursday in its first test in almost a year of a weapon designed to threaten the U.S. mainland, days ahead of the U.S. election.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the missile test and was at the launch site, calling the launch “an appropriate military action” to show North Korea’s resolve to respond to its enemies’ moves that have threatened the North’s safety, according to its Defense Ministry.
The United States, South Korea and Japan had also identified the weapon as an ICBM and condemned the launch as raising tensions. The launch came as Washington warned that North Korean troops in Russian uniforms are heading toward Ukraine, likely to augment Russian forces and join the war.
orth Korea confirmed the launch hours after its neighbors detected the firing of what they suspected was a new, more agile weapon targeting the mainland U.S. The statement was unusually quick since North Korea usually describes its weapons tests a day after they occur.
“I affirm that the DPRK will never change its line of bolstering up its nuclear forces,” Kim said, according to a North Korean Defense Ministry statement carried by state media outlet KCNA. DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.
“The test-fire is an appropriate military action that fully meets the purpose of informing the rivals, who have intentionally escalated the regional situation and posed a threat to the security of our Republic recently, of our counteraction will,” Kim was quoted as saying by KCNA, according to the Reuters news agency.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea could have tested a new, solid-fueled long-range ballistic missile. Missiles with built-in solid propellants are easier to move and hide and can be launched more quickly than liquid-propellant weapons.
JCS spokesperson Lee Sung Joon said the launch was possibly timed to the U.S. election in an attempt to strengthen North Korea’s future bargaining power. He said the North Korean missile was launched on a high angle, apparently to avoid neighboring countries.
Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters the missile’s flight duration of 86 minutes was longer and its maximum altitude of more than 4,350 miles was higher than those seen in previous North Korean missile tests.
Lee, the South Korean military spokesperson, said South Korea had a similar assessment on Thursday’s launch.
KCNA said the flight characteristics of this launch exceeded those registered for its previous missile launches but didn’t detail the differences.
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett had called the launch “a flagrant violation” of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions that “needlessly raises tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region.” Savett said the U.S. will take all necessary measures to ensure the security of the American homeland and its South Korean and Japanese allies.
Both South Korea and Japan condemned the North Korean launch for posing a threat to international peace and said they’re closely coordinating with the U.S. over the test. Lee said South Korea and the U.S. plan “sufficient” bilateral military exercises and trilateral ones involving Japan in response to North Korean threats.
Lee said the missile may have been fired from a 12-axle launch vehicle, the North’s largest mobile launch platform that it disclosed in September. The vehicle’s unveiling had prompted speculation North Korea could be developing an ICBM that’s bigger than its existing ones.
North Korea has made strides in its missile technologies in recent years, but many foreign experts believe Pyongyang has yet to acquire a functioning nuclear-armed missile that could strike the U.S. mainland. They say North Korea likely possesses short-range missiles that can deliver nuclear strikes across all of South Korea.
One of the technological hurdles North Korea still faces is for its weapons to be capable of surviving the harsh conditions of atmospheric reentry. South Korean officials and experts earlier said North Korea may test-launch an ICBM on a normal angle to verify that capability.
Lee said a high-angle launch like Thursday’s test can’t examine a missile’s reentry vehicle technology. He said more analysis is required to find why North Korea didn’t conduct a standard-trajectory launch on Thursday.
South Korea’s military intelligence agency told lawmakers Wednesday that North Korea was close to test-firing a long-range missile capable of reaching the United States and has also likely completed preparations for its seventh nuclear test.
North Korea last test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile in December 2023, when it launched the solid-fueled Hwasong-18.
In the past two years, Kim has used Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a window to ramp up weapons tests and threats while also expanding military cooperation with Moscow. South Korea, the U.S. and others have recently accused North Korea of dispatching thousands of troops to support Russia’s warfighting against Ukraine. They’ve said North Korea has already shipped artillery, missiles and other convectional arms to Russia.
North Korea’s possible participation in the Ukraine war would mark a serious escalation. South Korea, the U.S. and their partners also worry about what North Korea could get from Russia in return for joining Russia’s war against Ukraine. Aside from his soldiers’ wages, experts say Kim Jong Un likely hopes to get high-tech Russian technology that can perfect his nuclear-capable missiles and build a reliable space-based surveillance system. Kim could also want Russian fighter jets and help in modernizing North Korea’s conventional weapons.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said North Korean troops wearing Russian uniforms and carrying Russian equipment are moving toward Ukraine, in what he called a dangerous and destabilizing development. Austin said “the likelihood is pretty high” that Russia will use the troops in combat.
Austin spoke at a news conference in Washington with South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol last week raised the possibility of supplying Ukraine with weapons while stressing that his government “won’t sit idle” over North Korea’s reported troop dispatch.
South Korea said Wednesday that North Korea has sent more than 11,000 troops to Russia and that more than 3,000 of them have been moved close to battlefields in western Russia.
CBS News
Which state has the most Halloween spirit? Find out here
The Halloween season is in full swing. Between haunted houses, Spirit Halloween stores and horror movie locations, there are a number of ways to get into the spooky spirit.
The CBS News Data Team looked at five different Halloween-themed metrics to determine which state has the most Halloween spirit: Haunted house locations from Yelp, horror movie filming locations from IMDB, Spirit Halloween stores, haunted sites and Google search interest.
These are the top five states:
- New Hampshire: This New England state has Spirit Halloween stores per capita and the highest number of haunted houses per capita. The state also ranks near the top for haunted sites and Google search interest, but is near the bottom for horror movie locations. All this results in a 8.1 on our jack-o-lantern scale.
- Utah: With a score of 7.9 out of 10 on our jack-o-lantern scale, Utah is ranked highest for Halloween Google search interest and is in the top 10 for most Spirit Halloween stores per capita. The state ranks in the top for haunted houses and in the middle for haunted sites and horror movie locations.
- Kentucky: Top 5 rankings for haunted houses, haunted sites and Google search interest resulted in a 7.4 on our jack-o-lantern scale, putting Kentucky at rank No. 3.
- Pennsylvania: Top 10 rankings for Spirit Halloween stores per capita, Google search interest and horror movie filming locations bring Pennsylvania to a 7.4 out of 10 on our jack-o-lantern scale. The state is also in the top 20 for haunted houses and in the middle for haunted sites.
- Rhode Island: It’s the smallest state in the country, but Rhode Island has the largest number of horror movie locations per capita. That ranking, along with high rankings in haunted houses and haunted sites, brings Rhode Island’s jack-o-lantern score to a 7.1 out of 10.
See the rankings for each state in the table below, and keep reading for a breakdown of each of our spooky measures that go into our jack-o-lantern scale.
Haunted houses
According to a CBS News analysis of haunted house locations from Yelp, there are more than 1,000 haunted houses listed on Yelp across the country.
New Hampshire has the highest rate at more than seven haunted houses per 1 million people, which is about one haunted house for every 140,000 people.
Hawaii is No. 2, with about six haunted houses per 1 million people, followed by Rhode Island, Tennessee and Arkansas.
Yelp also helped us gather data about corn mazes around the country. See that full story here.
Horror movie locations
Maine tops the list of horror movie filming locations per 1 million people at 150 total horror movies, which is about 107 per 1 million people. That’s one horror movie filmed in Maine for every 9,000 people, according to a CBS analysis of data from IMDB.
The next highest, unsurprisingly, is California, with a whopping 3,850 horror movies filmed in the Golden State. This rounds to nearly 99 per 1 million people. Next is New Mexico, followed by Louisiana and Nevada.
Spirit Halloween stores
Spirit Halloween opened in 1983, and this year, opened nearly 1,500 seasonal stores in the U.S., with a total of 1,525 stores in North America.
The state with the most Spirit Halloween stores is California at nearly 200. But New Hampshire has the highest rate of stores: 12 stores total, with a rate of nearly nine per 1 million people. The next highest states are: Oklahoma, Colorado, Idaho and Arizona, with rates of nearly seven Spirit Halloween stores per 1 million people.
Spirit Halloween stores are notorious for taking over locations of other stores that have closed or gone out of business, typically setting up shop in malls or strip malls. Many locations on the Spirit Halloween website label the former location of the store.
Of the locations that had former stores listed, at least 82 were once Bed Bath and Beyond stores. The next highest former location was Rite Aid at 72, followed by Tuesday Morning at 64. Sears and .99 cent and dollar stores rounded out the top five.
Haunted sites
Wyoming tops the list of most haunted sites per capita. With 78 haunted places, that puts the state at about 13 per 100,000 people.
Next is Vermont and Kentucky, both with about eight haunted sites per 100,000 people. Rounding out the top five is South Dakota and North Dakota.
Interested in visiting one of these haunted places? The Haunted Places Index has a list of locations by state.
Google searches
Google trends data from Aug. 1 to Oct. 22, 2024 shows Utah has the highest search interest in “Halloween” as a general celebration.
That’s followed by West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
For more on Google trends around Halloween, costumes and movies, see our full trends story here.
How we got these rankings
The CBS News Data Team obtained haunted house locations from Yelp, Spirit Halloween locations from the Spirit Halloween website, haunted sites from the Haunted Places Index, horror movie locations from IMDB, and Google trends data about Halloween search interest from Aug. 1 to Oct. 22, 2024.
For the location data (all the metrics except for the Google trends data), we grouped the locations to get a total count for each state. Then, using the most recent state population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, we found the rate per one million people for each of these locations.
From there, our team ranked each state by the rate of each location per capita and ranked the google trends data, which is already normalized for population.
For each metric, the highest ranked state received a score of 50, and the lowest ranked state received a score of one. We averaged each state’s scores, divided them by 50, then multiplied by 10 to get a score out of 10 points. That score was used to find the “jack-o-lantern” score out of 10 points.
Note: Many of these metrics rely on crowdsourcing. The haunted house data, for example, only have locations reported on and by Yelp, so it may not include every haunted house that is not in Yelp’s data. The haunted sites data only has locations reported by the Haunted Places Index, which may not include every site considered “haunted” in the country.
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The Climate Election: Transportation, explained
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Sound shirts help deaf soccer fans feel the excitement
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