Vietnam will remove the death penalty for eight offenses from next month, including embezzlement and activities aimed at overthrowing the government, parliament said on Wednesday, sparing the life of a tycoon in a $12 billion fraud case.

The National Assembly, the country’s lawmaking body, unanimously ratified the amendment to the Criminal Code earlier on Wednesday to abolish the death penalty for the crimes, it said in a statement.

Other crimes that will no longer lead to the death penalty include vandalizing state property, manufacturing fake medicine, jeopardizing peace, triggering invasive wars, espionage and carrying drugs, the official Vietnam News Agency said.

The maximum sentence for these crimes will now be life imprisonment, the report said.

Those who were sentenced to death for these offenses before July 1 but have not yet been executed will have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, the report added.

These will include real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, the chairwoman of real estate developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, who was sentenced to death last year on embezzlement charges.

Lan’s lawyers didn’t immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

“According to the amendment of the Criminal Code, her sentence will automatically be reduced to life imprisonment,” lawyer Ngo Anh Tuan, who is not part of Lan’s defense team, told Reuters.

Ten offenses will remain subject to capital punishment in Vietnam, including murder, treason, terrorism and the sexual abuse of children, according to the report. Drug trafficking will also remain a capital offense.

Capital punishment data is a state secret in Vietnam and it is not known how many people are currently on death row in the country. Lethal injection is the only method of execution after firing squads were abolished in 2011.

As American B-2 bombers streaked over Iran, targeting facilities tied to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, policymakers and analysts in East Asia were already grappling with a critical question: What signal does this send to North Korea, a country whose nuclear arsenal is far more advanced than Iran’s?

Experts warn Washington’s military actions may harden Pyongyang’s resolve to accelerate its weapons program and deepen cooperation with Russia, as well as reinforcing its leader Kim Jong Un’s belief that nuclear arms are the ultimate deterrent against US-enforced regime change.

Despite yearslong efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, the Kim regime is thought to possess multiple nuclear weapons, as well as missiles that can potentially reach the United States – meaning any potential military strike on the Korean Peninsula would carry vastly higher risks.

“President Trump’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities will undoubtedly further reinforce the legitimacy of North Korea’s longstanding policy of regime survival and nuclear weapons development,” said Lim Eul-chul, a professor of North Korean studies at South Korea’s Kyungnam University.

“North Korea perceives the recent US airstrike as a preemptive military threat and will likely accelerate efforts to enhance its own capability for preemptive nuclear missile attacks,” said Lim.

That acceleration, analysts caution, could come through Russian assistance, thanks to a blossoming military relationship the two neighbors have struck up in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Since its formal establishment in 2024, North Korea’s strategic partnership with Russia has become a vital economic and military lifeline for Pyongyang amid ongoing Western sanctions.

“Based on the strategic alliance between North Korea and Russia, Pyongyang is likely to move toward joint weapons development, combined military exercises, technology transfers, and greater mutual dependence in both economic and military terms,” Lim said.

North Korea has sent more than 14,000 soldiers and millions of munitions, including missiles and rockets, to aid in Russia’s invasion, according to a report by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), an initiative made up of 11 United Nations members.

In return, Russia has provided North Korea with various valuable pieces of weaponry and technology, including air defense equipment, anti-aircraft missiles, electronic warfare systems and refined oil.

These actions “allow North Korea to fund its military programs and further develop its ballistic missiles programs, which are themselves prohibited under multiple (UN Security Council resolutions), and gain first-hand experience in modern warfare,” the report found.

Iraq, Libya, Iran and the lessons of US-led intervention

In Kim’s eyes, recent US military actions in Iran follow a troubling logic: countries without nuclear weapons, from Iraq and Libya to Iran, are vulnerable to US-led intervention, said Victor Cha, Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. North Korea, having already tested six nuclear devices and developed long-range missiles, sees its arsenal as non-negotiable.

According to Cha, Washington’s airstrikes against Tehran’s nuclear assets will likely leave a lasting impression on the Kim regime. “The strikes on Iran will only reaffirm two things for North Korea, neither of which play well for US policy,” he said.

“One: the US does not have a use-of-force option for North Korea’s nuclear program like they had in Israel for Iran. Two: the strike only reaffirms in Kim Jong Un’s mind his conviction to pursue and maintain a nuclear arsenal.”

And the contrast between Iran and North Korea is stark, particularly in terms of nuclear capabilities.

“Pyongyang’s nuclear program is much more advanced, with weapons possibly ready to launch on multiple delivery systems, including ICBMs,” said Leif-Eric Easley, an international security professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, referencing intercontinental ballistic missiles which can travel around the globe, far further than any missiles Iran possesses.

“The Kim regime can threaten the US homeland, and Seoul is within range of many North Korean weapons of various types,” he added.

Iran, by contrast, has not yet developed a deliverable nuclear weapon and its uranium enrichment had remained short of the threshold for weaponization, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest assessment.

It had also pursued years of diplomacy with the US and Western powers over its nuclear program, diplomacy that was supposedly still in play when Trump ordered B-2 stealth aircraft to drop “bunker busting” bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

A matrix of deterrents

North Korea is believed to possess between 40 and 50 warheads, along with the means to deliver them across the region and potentially to the US mainland.

“An attack on North Korea could provoke the risk of full-scale nuclear war,” Lim of Kyungnam University warned.

He added that under the US-South Korea alliance treaty, US military action against North Korea would also require prior consultation with the South Korean government, a step that carries political and legal implications.

There are also external powers to consider. Unlike Iran, North Korea has a formal mutual defense treaty with Russia, “which allows Russia to automatically intervene in the event of an attack,” Lim underscored.

This matrix of deterrents – nuclear capability, US regional alliances, and Russian backing – likely insulates Pyongyang from the kind of unilateral military action Washington exercised in Iran.

In the end, said Lim, the strike on Iran might not serve as a deterrent to proliferation but as a justification.

“This attack will deepen North Korea’s distrust of the US,” he said, “and is expected to act as a catalyst for a shift in North Korea’s foreign policy, particularly by strengthening and deepening military cooperation with Russia.”

India has celebrated another step on its mission to become a space power, after Shubhanshu Shukla became the first astronaut from the country to blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) Wednesday.

Shukla was aboard the private Axiom Space Mission 4, or Ax-4, which lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the latest mission organized by the Texas-based startup in partnership with Elon Musk’s rocket venture SpaceX.

It is expected to dock in the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at 7 a.m. ET on Thursday.

The private mission includes decorated former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, as well as Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary – two other spaceflight novices who will become the first from their countries to visit the ISS.

Shukla, who is the mission’s pilot, and the others are expected to spend about two weeks aboard the ISS, helping to carry out roughly 60 experiments before returning home.

NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are collaborating on the mission, according to a statement from the US space agency.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Shukla “carries with him the wishes, hopes and aspirations of 1.4 billion Indians” in a post on X.

“Wish him and other astronauts all the success!” he wrote.

Shukla is only the second Indian citizen to travel into space after Rakesh Sharma, who flew aboard a Soviet rocket in 1984.

Sharma wished the Ax-4 crew well.

“Wishing you all the very best. To the crew, godspeed,” he said in a video message posted online by the Press Trust of India.

“Spend as much time as possible looking out of the window.”

Shukla’s parents were seen getting emotional as they watched a livestream of the blast-off in the northern city of Lucknow.

“He’s the first person, the first Indian in the ISS. It is really a great moment for us Indians,” student Isma Tarikh told Reuters. “It is an inspiration for me… Even I want to become something great and be a world contributor just like (Shukla).”

Another student, Mohammad Hamughan, called it a “proud moment for Indians.”

He told Reuters: “It inspires me to become a space scientist. I have always loved to read about sci-fi and all of the stuff, but this is inspiring for us as a student.”

Shukla’s flight is seen as a precursor to India’s own Gaganyaan mission, the country’s first human space mission, set to take off in 2027.

Four Indian air force pilots selected for that mission have completed initial training in Russia and are undergoing further training in India, according to a May statement from the Indian government.

India’s space ambitions have accelerated under Modi, who was elected to a third term last June and has tried to assert India’s place on the global stage.

In January, it became only the fourth country to successfully achieve an unmanned docking in space.

In 2023, India joined an elite space club becoming the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon. The historic Chandrayaan-3 mission, the first to make a soft landing close to the moon’s unexplored South Pole, has collected samples that are helping scientists understand how the moon was formed and evolved over time.

The country has also set its sights on building its own space station by 2035, which will be called the Bharatiya Antariksha Station, and launching its first orbital mission to Venus in 2028.

Iran’s defense minister has traveled to diplomatic and economic ally China on his first reported trip abroad since a 12-day clash with Israel that briefly dragged the US into a new regional conflict.

Aziz Nasirzadeh is one of nine defense ministers that Chinese state media say attended a gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a China- and Russia-led regional security grouping that has grown in prominence as Beijing and Moscow look to build alternative international blocs to those backed by the United States.

The two-day gathering began Wednesday in the Chinese coastal city of Qingdao, a day after a ceasefire between Iran and Israel quelled what had been days of aerial assaults between the two, punctuated by a US strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities.

The SCO gathering coincided with a meeting of NATO leaders at The Hague, where US President Donald Trump said the US would meet with Iran “next week” about a potential nuclear agreement.

Beijing’s gathering, part of events for its rotating SCO chairmanship, spotlighted China’s role as a key international player, even as it remained largely on the sidelines of the Israel-Iran conflict – and the importance Tehran places on its relationship with Beijing.

Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun did not directly address the conflict in remarks to gathering nations Wednesday, as reported by Chinese state media, but aimed to position China as a country with an alternative vision for global security.

“Unilateralism and protectionism are surging, while hegemonic, high-handed, and bullying acts severely undermine the international order, making these practices the biggest sources of chaos and harm,” Dong said, employing language typically used by Beijing to criticize the US.

The Chinese defense chief called for SCO countries – which, in addition to China and Russia, include India, Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus – to enhance coordination and “defend international fairness and justice” and “uphold global strategic stability.”

Attending countries “expressed a strong willingness to consolidate and develop military collaboration,” according to China’s official news agency Xinhua.

Iran’s Nasirzadeh “expressed gratitude to China for its understanding and support of Iran’s legitimate stance,” Xinhua also reported.

The minister “hopes that China will continue to uphold justice and play an even greater role in maintaining the current ceasefire and easing regional tensions,” he was quoted as saying.

Chinese officials have condemned Israel’s unprecedented June 13 attack on Iran, which took out top military leaders and sparked the recent conflict, as well as the subsequent US bombing. It’s also backed a ceasefire and criticized Washington’s foray into the conflict as a “heavy blow to the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.”

A key diplomatic and economic backer of Iran, Beijing has moved to further deepen collaboration in recent years, including holding joint naval drills. Chinese officials have long voiced opposition to US sanctions on Iran and criticized the US withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

In recent days, China has appeared unwilling to become further entangled in the conflict past its diplomatic efforts, analysts say, instead using the situation as another opportunity to paint itself as a responsible global player and the US as a force for instability.

Founded in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to combat terrorism and promote border security, the SCO has grown in recent years in line with Beijing and Moscow’s shared ambition to push back against a US alliance system they see as suppressing them.

While not an alliance, the group says it aims to “make joint efforts to maintain and ensure peace, security and stability in the region.”

The SCO has long been seen as limited, however, by overlapping interests and frictions between members, including Pakistan and India, which earlier this year engaged in a violent conflict, as well as China and India, which have longstanding border tensions.

Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh also attended the Qingdao meeting, the first visit from an Indian defense chief to China since a deadly 2020 border clash between the two countries.

Dara Ojo was once afraid of spiders, particularly the biting, venomous kind. How times have changed. Not only is the photographer willing to get up very close and personal with arachnids of all stripes, he’s passionately conserving insects through this work.

Ojo, 34, is a master of macrophotography — extreme close-up shots, in this case of wildlife — showing tiny critters in all their odd, beautiful glory.

For the photographer, who describes himself as a conservation storyteller, it is about “shining the light on these tiny little details that people just walk past because they’re small.”

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, and now living in Canada, Ojo’s first encounter with photography was using his father’s Nikon camera as a child. He photographed birds, snakes, frogs and other creatures. Much later, he was teaching English in China when the Covid-19 pandemic struck and began photographing insects as a remedy to the boredom of lockdown.

But there was another purpose too: amid the deluge of photographs of different animals he saw online, Ojo noticed relatively little high-profile work of nature’s smallest creations. He wanted to fill this gap, “and also create some positive publicity for insects.”

Eyes like speakers, posterior like pagodas

Ojo first learned how to shoot macrophotography from YouTube tutorials and took a course called “Bugs 101: Insect-Human Interactions” at the University of Alberta, Canada. In 2020 he created his first macro image, of a dragonfly. Two years later, his photos of a white-striped longhorn beetle taken in China went viral.

The beetle is typically 20-40 mm long, but Ojo’s image of the insect makes it feel human-size, with an intimidating yet intriguing poise. Its eyes look like speakers, and details invisible to the naked eye, like its microscopic facial hairs, are on full display.

His work has circulated the internet, with some Instagram posts hitting almost a million views. It has also caught the attention of the UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina J. Mohammed who shared some of them on X, to mark the 2025 World Biodiversity Day.

But the recognition brings certain pressures. “Now that eyes are on me, globally, I have to keep the bar higher than the last, each time I shoot. Also, as a black person, I feel like a role model, giving a voice as people of color who are not usually seen in this kind of field. I therefore can’t stay comfortable,” he says.

Some other striking images are of the primrose moth, with distinct vivid pink and yellow coloring; a spiny-backed orb weaver spider with a pagoda-like posterior; a katydid — a type of cricket — with a face akin to a church dome; and a wolf spider eating a frog.

Ojo says, “I’m in awe of them when I am shooting. I see in them how God is a perfect designer, and the need for us to protect them.”

He has photographed more than 40 types of spiders, 50 moths and 30 butterflies species, over 20 dragonflies and at least 70 damselflies. Among all the fauna he’s photographed, the state of bees worries him the most. “Bees are rare and really endangered even though they are essential to our existence because of their pollination.” Ojo says.

Now, his work is being featured in “Insect Apocalypse,” the first episode of the documentary “Bugs that Rule the World,” which is being shown in the US and Canada. The four-part series focuses on the decline of insects and how this is detrimental to the ecosystem and to human existence, and includes photographs Ojo took in Costa Rica.

Ojo is working to release the first coffee table book of his works in 2026, and plans to add three more in the next five years.

Yet photography is not Ojo’s full-time occupation. He works as a data analyst at the University of Alberta, and has an MBA in information technology from Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, United Kingdom.

His tech background, he says, gives him an edge with processing the pictures, which are best taken at night and early morning when insects are asleep or resting, he explains. He captures multiple photographs at different depths of field and combines them using stacking software so the whole insect is in pin-sharp focus. Since the images are shot without alterations, he then digitally edits them, mainly to enhance colors.

Though he occasionally sells prints of his photography, his advocacy for his subjects is his main motive, Ojo says. Insect populations around the world are in peril. Among his once-feared spiders, for example, scores are categorized as critically endangered.

“The primary goal is to use my images to reveal the beauty of insects and other small creatures,” he says. First he draws people in, then shares a conservation message, then, hopefully, people will take action, Ojo explains.

“When people are blown away by the pictures, they are curious and develop empathy to conserve them.”