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North Korea and Russia send political shockwaves with Ukraine war moves

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North Korea and Russia send political shockwaves with Ukraine war moves

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MOSCOW/SEOUL Oct 29 (Reuters) - North Korea's foreign minister arrived in Russia on Tuesday for talks as the Russia-Ukraine war appeared to take a dangerous new turn, with NATO and South Korea expressing alarm that North Korean troops could soon be joining in on Moscow's side.

NATO said on Monday thousands of North Korean troops were moving toward the front line, a development which has prompted Kyiv to call for more weapons and an international plan to keep those troops at bay.

U.S. officials have said any North Korean troops fighting in the war would be "fair game" for Ukrainian attacks and that Washington would not impose any fresh limits on Ukraine's use of U.S. weapons if North Korean entered the fight.

South Korea, which remains technically at war with the nuclear-armed North decades after the 1950-1953 Korean War, also condemned the deployments, with officials in Seoul worried about what Russia may be providing to Pyongyang in return.

North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui arrived in Russia's far east on Tuesday on her way to Moscow, Russian state media said. Russian state news agencies said it was not clear who Choe, making her second visit in six weeks, would meet.

The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had no plans to meet her.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said after talks with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday that the North Korean moves were sending the war into a new phase.

"This war is becoming internationalized, extending beyond two countries," Zelenskiy said on X.

"We agreed to strengthen intelligence and expertise exchange, intensify contacts at all levels, especially the highest, in order to develop an action strategy and countermeasures to address this escalation," Zelenskiy said.

Yoon told Zelenskiy that if North Korea receives aid from Russia and is able to glean military experience and knowledge from its involvement in the war it would pose a "great threat" to South Korea's security, his office said.

South Korea has said it may start supplying weapons to Ukraine if North Korean troops joined Russia's war. Putin has not denied the presence of North Korean troops in the country.

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Founder of TikTok owner ByteDance jumps to top of China's rich list

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Founder of TikTok owner ByteDance jumps to top of China's rich list

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SHANGHAI, Oct 29 (Reuters) - ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming is China's richest person, with personal wealth of $49.3 billion, an annual rich list showed on Tuesday, although counterparts in real estate and renewables have fared less well.

Zhang, 41, who stepped down as chief executive of ByteDance in 2021, becomes the 18th individual to be crowned China's richest person in the 26 years since the Hurun China Rich List was first published.

He overtook bottled water magnate Zhong Shanshan, who slipped to second place as his fortune dropped 24% to $47.9 billion.

Despite a legal battle over its U.S. assets, ByteDance's global revenue grew 30% last year to $110 billion, Hurun said, helping to propel Zhang's personal fortune.

Third on the list was Tencent's (0700.HK), opens new tab low-profile founder, Pony Ma, while Colin Huang, founder of PDD Holdings, (PDD.O), opens new tab slipped to fourth place from third last year, even as his firm's discount-focused e-commerce platforms, Pinduoduo and Temu, continue to show healthy revenue growth.

The number of billionaires on the list dropped by 142 to 753, shrinking more than a third from its 2021 peak.

"China’s economy and stock markets had a difficult year," said Hurun Report Chairman Rupert Hoogewerf.

The most dramatic falls in fortunes have come from China's real estate sector, he added, while consumer electronics is clearly rising fast, with Xiaomi (1810.HK), opens new tab founder Lei Jun adding $5 billion to his wealth this year.

"Solar panel, lithium battery and EV makers have had a challenging year, as competition intensified, leading to a glut, and the threat of tariffs added to uncertainties," said Hoogewerf, who is also the list's chief researcher.

"Solar panel makers saw their wealth down as much as 80% from the 2021 peak, while battery and EV makers were down by half and a quarter respectively."

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Spaniards Rodri and Bonmatí win Ballon d’Or award as Real Madrid snubs ceremony

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Spaniards Rodri and Bonmatí win Ballon d’Or award as Real Madrid snubs ceremony

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PARIS (AP) — Spanish midfielders Rodri and Aitana Bonmatí won the men’s and women’s Ballon d’Or award on Monday as the world’s best soccer players, while Real Madrid snubbed the star-studded ceremony in Paris in apparent protest.

The 28-year-old Rodri won the prestigious award for the first time after helping Manchester City win the Premier League and being a key player in Spain’s European Championship triumph.

He succeeded eight-time winner Lionel Messi of Argentina and beat Real Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior into second place, a result which greatly displeased the Spanish club. Madrid and its players stayed away from the ceremony, then vented their feelings on social media.

Rodri showed his emotion when his name was read out by former winner George Weah, putting his hands over his face.

“Incredible night for me,” said Rodri, who is out for the season after injuring his ACL last month and arrived on crutches to the ceremony. “One of my key things is I always try to improve every game.”

Known as a hard-working and unselfish player despite his abilities, Rodri was quick to deflect praise onto others.

“I just want to say thank you again to the people who recognize my value in the game,” he said. “When I was a kid I never thought of winning the Ballon d’Or, but in the last years I’ve been playing the highest level.”

The 26-year-old Bonmatí retained her award after helping Barcelona win the Spanish league, the Spanish cup and the Champions League. Bonmatí joined Barca teammate Alexia Putellas in winning two titles since the women’s trophy was first awarded in 2018. She beat her teammates Caroline Graham Hansen of Norway and Salma Paralluelo of Spain as Barcelona completed a 1-2-3.

“It’s a pleasure to be here again,” said Bonmatí, who received the award from Oscar winner Natalie Portman. “Thanks to my teammates and the clubs who make me a better football player every year.”

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Tom Hardy’s double act can’t save ‘Venom: The Last Dance’

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Tom Hardy’s double act can’t save ‘Venom: The Last Dance’

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For three films now, Tom Hardy has smushed Jekyll and Hyde into one strange and slimy double act. In a Marvel universe filled with alter egos that cloak stealthy superpowers, his investigative reporter Eddie Brock doesn’t transform. He shares his body with an ink-black alien symbiote (voiced with a baritone growl by Hardy), who sometimes swallows him whole, sometimes shoots a tentacle or two out, and always chipperly punctuates Eddie’s inner monologue.

These have been consistently messy, almost willfully bad movies, but Hardy’s performance has been a strangely compelling one-body buddy comedy. It’s one thing to throw a cape on and jump the sky. It’s another to run manically through the desert with an alien voice inside barking, as Eddie’s inner-alien does in the new “Venom: The Last Dance,” “Engage your core,” “Nice horsey” and “Tequila!”

The biggest dichotomy of these movies, though, isn’t the Eddie-symbiote split. It’s the contrast between Hardy’s funny, sometimes oddly touching performance and all of the CGI mess around him. There were moments of fun in the first two movies, but if “The Last Dance,” which opens in theaters Thursday, is the swan song for this spun-off, half-formed franchise, it confirms that the “Venom” films never quite figured themselves out.

In “The Last Dance,” Kelly Marcel, co-writer of the first two “Venom” films, takes over directing, following Andy Serkis (2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage”) and Ruben Fleischer (2018’s “Venom”). We rejoin Venom (the fusion of Eddie and his alien-entity soulmate) in Mexico where they’re on the run from the law. But a new threat is also emerging.

The movie opens with Knull (Serkis), the symbiote creator who, from some icky distant and dark corner of space, dispatches aliens to retrieve a “codex” found within Venom’s spine that, if obtained, will lead to the annihilation of both humans and symbiotes.

To me, bringing a typical comic book-style doomsday plot is about the last thing a “Venom” movie needs. The best sequences in the first two movies are no more complicated than Venom craving lobster or ordering pizza. Smaller stakes better suit its warped comedy. The touchstone for these movies shouldn’t be the Marvel playbook but old episodes of “The Odd Couple.”

Instead, we’re thrown into a pretty immediately boring Area 51 setting where an elaborate lab headed by Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple) studies the symbiotes it has trapped with the help of a military division led by Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor, lending more gravitas to the movie than it deserves). Once the alien insect things arrive seeking the codex, there’s plenty of running and fighting, with a UFO-enthusiast family in a VW bus (Rhys Ifans plays the dad) thrown into the mix. The ensuing battle ultimately, as the title promises, threatens to divide Venom for good.

But the promise of the “Venom” series, really, is that the mainline Marvel stuff would intrude less here. This is a B-movie realm of the multiverse with little appetite for solemnity, nobility or two-and-half-hour running times. They can feel a little like tossed-off knockoffs, which is both their appeal and their frustration.

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Former Bolivian president claims his car was hit by gunfire in attempted assassination

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Former Bolivian president claims his car was hit by gunfire in attempted assassination

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Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales said his car was fired on in what he claimed was an “assassination attempt” amid simmering political tensions in the South American country.

Morales, who was not injured, blamed the government for the attack, which he called a “failure” that adds to the “political defeat of a government that has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the Bolivian people.” The government denied any involvement and said that an investigation had been opened.

Morales said he was heading to the radio station in the central Bolivian department of Cochabamba, where he hosts a weekend program, when two vehicles intercepted his car and “four hooded officers dressed in black with weapons in their hands, got out and began to shoot.”

Fourteen bullets hit the car, injuring his driver in the head and arm, Morales said during his radio show.

Morales posted a cell-phone video on Facebook which he claimed shows the alleged attack. It shows the driver’s bloodied head and several bullet holes in the car’s windshield. Morales is seen in the passenger seat as they frantically drive away.

Morales posted to his Instagram profile a statement from his party, Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), blaming the attack on current Bolivian President Luis Arce and two of his government ministers. The statement did not provide evidence supporting this claim.

CNN reached out to the presidential office and the respective government ministries for their response to Morales’ accusations. It also reached out to the Bolivian Attorney General on the status of their investigation.

CNN has not received a response from Arce’s office or the government ministries. However, in a statement on X, Arce condemned political violence and said he had ordered an “immediate and thorough investigation” into the alleged attack.

Bolivia’s Deputy Security Minister Roberto Rios said that there had not been a police operation against Morales and that his department would investigate the claims, including the possibility of a “self-attack” staged by Morales, state-run news agency Agencia Boliviana de Información (ABI) reported.

Several Latin American leaders have condemned the alleged assassination attempt, including Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro also warned the attack could represent a threat to democracy. “Fascism is on the rise throughout Latin America. It is no longer just about legal elimination. Now they are moving on to the same old thing: the physical elimination of those who think differently,” he said.