Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says more than 3000 North Korean soldiers have been killed and wounded in Russia's Kursk region and warned that Pyongyang could send more personnel and equipment for Moscow's army. or signup to continue reading "There are risks of North Korea sending additional troops and military equipment to the Russian army," Zelenskiy said on X after receiving a report from his top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi. "We will have tangible responses to this," he added. The estimate of North Korean losses is higher than that provided by Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff, which said on Monday at least 1100 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded. The assessment was in line with a briefing last week by South Korea's spy agency, which reported some 100 deaths with another 1000 wounded in the region. Zelenskiy said he cited preliminary data. Reuters could not independently verify reports on combat losses. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied the presence of North Koreans on its side. Pyongyang initially dismissed reports about the troop deployment as "fake news", but a North Korean official has said any such deployment would be lawful. According to Ukrainian and allied assessments, North Korea has sent around 12,000 troops to Russia. Some of them have been deployed for combat in Russia's Kursk region, where Ukraine still holds a chunk of land after a major cross-border incursion in August. South Korean officials added that it has detected signs of Pyongyang planning to produce suicide drones to be shipped to Russia, in addition to the already supplied 240mm multiple rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled howitzers. Kyiv continues to press allies for a tougher response as it says Moscow's and Pyongyang's transfer of warfare experience and military technologies constitute a global threat. "For the world, the cost of restoring stability is always much higher than the cost of effectively pressuring those who destabilise the situation and destroy lives," Zelenskiy said. Advertisement Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date. We care about the protection of your data. Read our . Advertisement
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Known across the globe as the stuck astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams hit the six-month mark in space Thursday with two more to go. The pair rocketed into orbit on June 5, the first to ride Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule on what was supposed to be a weeklong test flight. They arrived at the International Space Station the next day, only after overcoming a cascade of thruster failures and helium leaks . NASA deemed the capsule too risky for a return flight, so it will be February before their long and trying mission comes to a close. While NASA managers bristle at calling them stuck or stranded, the two retired Navy captains shrug off the description of their plight. They insist they’re fine and accepting of their fate. Wilmore views it as a detour of sorts: “We’re just on a different path.” “I like everything about being up here,” Williams told students Wednesday from an elementary school named for her in Needham, Massachusetts, her hometown. "Just living in space is super fun.” Both astronauts have lived up there before so they quickly became full-fledged members of the crew, helping with science experiments and chores like fixing a broken toilet, vacuuming the air vents and watering the plants. Williams took over as station commander in September. “Mindset does go a long way,” Wilmore said in response to a question from Nashville first-graders in October. He’s from Mount Juliet, Tennessee. “I don’t look at these situations in life as being downers.” Boeing flew its Starliner capsule home empty in September, and NASA moved Wilmore and Williams to a SpaceX flight not due back until late February. Two other astronauts were bumped to make room and to keep to a six-month schedule for crew rotations. Like other station crews, Wilmore and Williams trained for spacewalks and any unexpected situations that might arise. “When the crews go up, they know they could be there for up to a year,” said NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio found that out the hard way when the Russian Space Agency had to rush up a replacement capsule for him and two cosmonauts in 2023, pushing their six-month mission to just past a year. Boeing said this week that input from Wilmore and Williams has been “invaluable" in the ongoing inquiry of what went wrong. The company said in a statement that it is preparing for Starliner's next flight but declined comment on when it might launch again. NASA also has high praise for the pair. “Whether it was luck or whether it was selection, they were great folks to have for this mission,” NASA's chief health and medical officer, Dr. JD Polk, said during an interview with The Associated Press. On top of everything else, Williams, 59, has had to deal with “rumors,” as she calls them, of serious weight loss. She insists her weight is the same as it was on launch day, which Polk confirms. During Wednesday's student chat, Williams said she didn't have much of an appetite when she first arrived in space. But now she's “super hungry” and eating three meals a day plus snacks, while logging the required two hours of daily exercise. Williams, a distance runner, uses the space station treadmill to support races in her home state. She competed in Cape Cod’s 7-mile Falmouth Road Race in August. She ran the 2007 Boston Marathon up there as well. She has a New England Patriots shirt with her for game days, as well as a Red Sox spring training shirt. “Hopefully I’ll be home before that happens -- but you never know,” she said in November. Husband Michael Williams, a retired federal marshal and former Navy aviator, is caring for their dogs back home in Houston. As for Wilmore, 61, he's missing his younger daughter's senior year in high school and his older daughter's theater productions in college. “We can’t deny that being unexpectedly separated, especially during the holidays when the entire family gets together, brings increased yearnings to share the time and events together,” his wife, Deanna Wilmore, told the AP in a text this week. Her husband “has it worse than us” since he's confined to the space station and can only connect via video for short periods. “We are certainly looking forward to February!!” she wrote. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.None
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On average, General Mills sold more than 1,400 boxes of cereal per minute at U.S. retailers over the past year. That was more than enough to retain the crown as the nation’s top cereal producer ahead of rival Kellogg. With $3.4 billion in sales over the past 12 months, according to Circana data, General Mills now sells 31% of all cereal in stores around the country. Yet that prime position has eroded in recent years as higher prices for cereal and just about everything else turn more consumers toward cheaper knockoffs. All major cereal companies are losing market share to store brands and private labels, which now accounts for 9% of all cereal sold at retailers in the U.S., according to Circana, a Chicago-based market research firm. In 2021 generics had just a 5.6% market share. And upstarts like Purely Elizabeth and Seven Sundays are also growing, capitalizing on strong consumer spending on products with a health and wellness focus. The cereal executives in Golden Valley know they can’t take their hard-won leadership position for granted. “We’re the leader of the category. We have to behave like the leader,” Dana McNabb, president of North American retail at General Mills, said during a call with analysts last week. “What we’re learning is that when we get on our front foot and do what we’re good at, we see growth.” That means partnering with the NFL’s Kelce brothers for advertising and a new mashup cereal , keeping Chex stocked for holiday mixes and developing high-protein Cheerios, which will be released next month. With a focus on value and “remarkability,” McNabb said, “I think we will continue to see progress in our market share.” Cereal remains the single largest category for the company’s U.S. retail business. A Jeffries analysis pegs it at nearly 20% of domestic retail sales. Selling more cereal, then, is essential. But it’s no easy task. As the major sales boost during the pandemic fades and price increases have reached their limit, the industry is back to the pre-pandemic norm of steady decline or tepid growth at best. Piper Sandler analyst Michael Lavery says General Mills is “focused on making the right adjustments to promotion to help hold and grow market share and remain competitive.” The company is already discounting products at its highest rate in five years, and General Mills expects to trade short-term profit growth to keep the deals coming in order to get in more homes and build long-term momentum. ‘Flattish’ growth is here Honey Nut Cheerios remains the best selling brand in the U.S., followed by Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and Honey Bunches of Oats from Lakeville-based Post Consumer Brands. Compared to General Mills, cereal is even more important for Post, as it accounts for nearly half of its domestic retail sales. Post Holdings CEO Rob Vitale told investors last month cereal is returning to “flattish” growth, which is precisely what happened this year. Total retail cereal sales grew 0.2% through the 12 months ending Dec. 1, according to Circana, and that growth was driven by modest price increases. The actual number of boxes and bags of cereal sold declined 1.3%. “We can’t shrink our business to prosperity,” Vitale said. “Our branded portfolio outperformed the category, and private label continued to grow.” Private label cereal grew 9% this year to a $1 billion business, a benefit to Post, which produces many store brand varieties. Kellogg also sees “stable” cereal sales on the horizon. Last year the company split up into the cereal-focused W.K. Kellogg Co. and snack-focused Kellanova, maker of Pop-Tarts and Cheez-it crackers. Compared to its Minnesota competitors, “all we do is think about cereal,” Kellogg CEO Gary Pilnick said at an investor conference earlier this month. Among the 10 top-selling cereal brands this year, most of which saw sales declines, Frosted Flakes grew the most, both in dollars and in units sold. “Cereal is undefeated. We haven’t lost a debate yet about where to invest our money because everything we do is about cereal,” Pilnick said. “We know we’ll drive the business.” Doing well at school Retail store sales aren’t the whole cereal story, however — General Mills and others sell tons of cereal to schools, hotels and other foodservice venues. “Our market share in schools more than twice what it is in retail,” General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening said in an interview last week. That gives Lucky Charms and other brands a dominant position with kids, building brand affinity from a young age. Which pays dividends down the line, as McNabb said nostalgia is a key strategy for connecting with cereal consumers. Harmening said as more schools offer breakfast, they tend to go with General Mills for cereal. “One of the reasons we’ve been able to be so successful is that we keep enhancing the nutritional profiles of our cereals,” he said. “Our kids will be better off and better positioned to learn, and we do better, too, but so are the kids, and so we feel great about that” Harmening said acting like the cereal leader means “delivering for consumers what they’re looking for.” “I feel good about our cereal business, in both what you see at the grocery store every day and what we’re selling through schools.”star-studded new Christmas action movie , its biggest movie in the US this week, has plenty of fans — like legendary video game designer , who tweeted that it was “great fun. While it lacks some realism, it’s a ‘Christmas movie’ with a 90s action-thriller vibe that the whole family can enjoy.” And he’s right, I suppose. If, that is, you overlook the fact that the plot strains credulity, the married main characters have fewer sparks between them than wet kindling, and you ignore the reality that this movie is basically the brain-dead love child of and 2002’s . Other than all that, two thumbs up! In all seriousness, has its moments. I watched it over the weekend, excited mostly by the prospect of Jason Bateman playing a villain. And he certainly gets the vibe right, even though he talks way more than you’d expect from a genuinely scary bad guy. There’s also a tense fight scene in a car on the highway that I thought was pretty exciting and well-executed. The premise of the story is pretty simple: Bateman is a menacing, mysterious antagonist who strong-arms a dopey TSA agent (Taron Egerton) into letting a package loaded with the nerve agent Novichok get cleared and loaded onto a plane. For the first 30 minutes or so, though, not much of anything happens beyond Egerton and his on-screen wife Sofia Carson over-acting every chance they get. Sign up for the most interesting tech & entertainment news out there. By signing up, I agree to the and have reviewed the Once Bateman’s scary suitcase of Novichok is finally rolling through the TSA scanner, however, really starts to fall apart. It felt like every five minutes I was rolling my eyes at the implausibility of one plot development after another, one of the most ludicrous being the Los Angeles cop who — on the basis of a scratchy recording reconstructed from a device that had been burned to a crisp — not only manages to put the villains’ entire plan together, but she races to LAX and everyone just sort of falls in line with whatever this random cop orders them to do. Meanwhile, don’t get me started on all the heroics that Egerton’s TSA agent is able to pull off just in the nick of time, like remembering how to defuse a complex nerve agent bomb after Bateman’s character verbally walked him through it one time. Or, towards the end of , when Egerton needs to sneak onto a plane and rides a baggage van out onto the tarmac and basically unscrews one thing at the bottom of the plane before hopping inside at the last possible second. ? More like, stop putting me on.
