North Korea said it conducted a test of an intermediate-range strategic missile on Oct. 3, prompting a warning that weapons in this category could reach Guam and portions of Alaska. The launch adds pressure on the United States and its allies as President Donald Trump attempts to reopen diplomatic channels with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

North Korean state media reported that Kim personally supervised the exercise. Sydney Seiler, a former U.S. Forces Korea analyst, told News Media that the missile’s potential range gives the test significance well beyond the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, cited by Reuters, described the weapon as part of a “hypersonic strategic weapon system.” The missile reportedly traveled roughly 1,000 kilometers, or 621 miles, before landing in waters off North Korea’s eastern coast.

Guam is a key U.S. military outpost in the western Pacific. The American territory is home to important facilities, including Andersen Air Force Base and Naval Base Guam.

“What is interesting about an IRBM launch — an intermediate-range ballistic missile that flies around 3,000 to 5,000 kilometers — is that it brings Guam, parts of Alaska, and Japan into range of North Korea,” said Seiler, a former National Intelligence Council official who focused on North Korea. He cautioned, however, against interpreting the launch as a direct reaction to Trump.

Seiler said the preparations needed to deploy and test an intermediate-range ballistic missile system make it unlikely that the exercise was organized primarily in response to the president’s statements or actions in recent days.

The missile test came only hours before Trump highlighted his relationship with Kim at a rally in Vandalia, Ohio.

“I get along great with Kim Jong Un. Isn’t it nice to get along with the leaders of massive nuclear nations?” Trump told the crowd.

Trump also said, “When someone has 112 nuclear missiles, it is better to get along with them,” citing North Korea’s nuclear arsenal as a reason to preserve diplomatic communication.

Seiler said North Korea appears uninterested in negotiations at present, leaving Pyongyang with little incentive to halt its weapons testing despite Trump’s latest comments.

“The fact that they’re doing these missile launches amid a diplomatic effort by President Trump to try to re-engage the North, you have to see them only as somewhat related,” Seiler said.

The development followed North Korea’s launch of two short-range ballistic missiles from the Wonsan region on Sept. 20, according to reports.

Officials from the United States, South Korea and Japan said Oct. 3 that North Korea’s ballistic missile activity violates U.N. Security Council resolutions and poses a threat to security across the region and beyond.

Seiler, now a nonresident senior adviser to the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Pyongyang’s actions should be viewed as part of a broader strategy rather than solely through the lens of its dealings with the Trump administration.

The latest test occurred “within the larger context of a current absolute stand down on dialogue with South Korea and repeated rejections of overtures from the United States for dialogue,” Seiler said.

At the same time, he noted that North Korea has avoided some of its most provocative moves during Trump’s current term. “We haven’t seen an ICBM launch for almost two years now,” he said.

Seiler cautioned that this relative restraint should not be read as evidence that Pyongyang is prepared to give up its nuclear weapons or missile development programs.

“For North Korea, their overall diplomatic strategy is to condition the world to accept them for who they are: a non-denuclearizing, missile-launching, occasionally provoking, and rhetorically coercive state,” Seiler said.

“As time goes on, their goal is for us to give up any hope of denuclearization or structural change, which is consistent with them establishing a baseline: whether diplomacy unfolds or not, they will continue to develop and demonstrate missile technology.”

Meanwhile, Trump has continued to emphasize his relationship with Kim while signaling a wish to revive the personal diplomacy of his first term.

Trump and Kim held summits in Singapore in 2018 and Hanoi in 2019 before meeting at Panmunjom in the Korean Demilitarized Zone later that year, when Trump crossed into North Korea.

“The president has shown persistent commitment to engaging North Korea in dialogue — most recently suggesting he is open to a phone call,” Seiler said.

“While a call might not yield immediate progress on denuclearization, it contributes to tension reduction and helps establish a direct relationship necessary for future crisis management on the peninsula.”

Complicating Washington’s strategy, the expert said, is Kim’s alignment with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

North Korea has provided troops and military equipment to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, reducing Kim’s incentive to engage with the U.S., according to Seiler.

“Right now, Kim Jong Un, particularly given his emerging relationship with Vladimir Putin and everything he’s getting out of the relationship with Russia right now, simply doesn’t need to talk to the United States,” Seiler said.

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman’s unusual relationship with Kim also perhaps offers Trump another potential connection to the North Korean leader. Rodman has also made multiple trips to North Korea and met personally with Kim.

Rodman joined Trump at a Peterbilt plant in Denton, Texas, on Oct. 1 before traveling with the president toward a rally in Durant, Oklahoma.

Asked in Texas whether he was using Rodman, who has personally met Kim, to help broker peace with Pyongyang, Trump emphasized his own relationship with the North Korean leader.

“As long as I’m here, you’re not gonna have any problems. Somebody else comes, you’re gonna have some big problems,” Trump said.

Trump also highlighted Rodman’s personal connection to Kim, saying: “When I wanted to get to know Kim Jong Un when we were having a problem—Kim Jong Un and I get along—but the one who knew him best was Dennis Rodman.”

“Dennis Rodman has a very interesting perspective in that he was able to interact with Kim Jong Un over a number of visits and get to know him personally, to develop some rapport without any diplomatic baggage,” Seiler said.

“He may be offering President Trump insights into Kim Jong Un’s personality, values, and potential approaches, but, you know, as I think Dennis Rodman’s representatives have said, he is still a long way off from getting airplane tickets.”

Sylvester Stallone has opened up about the painful emotions that overshadowed his career-defining night at the 1977 Academy Awards.

His film Rocky, which he wrote and headlined, won the Oscar for Best Picture and launched him toward Hollywood superstardom.

But in a recent interview with CBS, Stallone said the achievement was marked by the absence of his parents—a wound that has stayed with him over the decades.

Remembering the tension as the Oscar nominations were read, Stallone said he never expected Rocky to prevail. “I’m sitting there thinking, ‘There’s no way we’re going to win,’” he recalled. Even fellow writers competing against him approached him beforehand and insisted he would lose.

The actor, now 80, told People that the announcement left him feeling anything but triumphant. As the applause erupted, he said he wanted to disappear into his seat. “I didn’t feel elation,” Stallone explained. “I actually felt a little sad. I wanted it to be a celebration with my family—a moment when we could say, ‘We made it.’ But it wasn’t like that.”

“I realized that the only love I was really going to feel at that point in my life was the love of the people sitting in the dark,” he said, referring to the audience watching from the theater.

Rocky defeated Taxi Driver, Network and All the President’s Men to claim the night’s top prize. Stallone was also nominated for Best Actor for playing Rocky Balboa, but the award went to Peter Finch for Network.

During a CBS Mornings interview with Gayle King last year, Stallone acknowledged that he still struggles to accept that his parents chose not to attend the Oscars.

“It was a volcanic moment, and then it became very sad,” he said. After spending years feeling rejected by the people he loved, Stallone explained, reaching the Oscars without them made the pain impossible to ignore. “You realize that you’re never ever going to come to terms with this.”

“I still walk around with it,” he added. “I wish I couldn’t. I pray, I do everything, but it’s always there.”

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Stallone’s latest reflections come as he promotes his new memoir, The Steps.

In an interview with The New York Times ahead of the book’s September 29 release, Stallone also spoke candidly about previously experiencing an eating disorder.

The Hollywood star discussed publicly for the first time how the physical demands of his film career affected his relationship with his body and appearance.

“My physique was my armor,” Stallone said. When he looked at Rocky, he saw an ordinary, smooth-looking man and decided the character should gradually become more self-conscious about his appearance.

“I started thinking: Design your body like a jaguar or a cat,” he explained. “Not big like Arnold [Schwarzenegger], but more feral, aggressive, limber and athletic.”

He continued: ‘Then it got to the point where I became bulimic. You heard it here first. I got down to 2.6% body fat when I was doing Rocky III, and I couldn’t hold anything down.

‘Or I didn’t want to keep it down because I became so obsessed with staying at that point of fitness, literally an obsessive body-worship kind of thing.’

The actor admitted using steroids to bulk up his frame, adding: ‘Nobody does it without additives and drugs, period. 

‘I don’t care what they say. It isn’t as though you’re a junkie, but if you’re going to work out and try to stay in shape for six months straight, and you’re eating yogurt and pudding, it’s not happening.’

Calls are mounting for Gov. Kathy Hochul to bring New York lawmakers back to Albany for an emergency session aimed at closing a legal loophole critics say benefits defendants accused of rape, including the men known as the “Cornell 7.”

The dispute centers on New York’s so-called voluntary intoxication loophole. Under the current law, critics argue, victims who voluntarily consumed alcohol or drugs may not receive adequate protection even when they became too impaired to legally consent to sexual activity.

Legislation designed to change the law has been introduced repeatedly since 2018, but it has yet to clear the Democratic-controlled state Assembly.

Gary Greenberg, chief executive of ProtectNYKids Inc., accused Hochul of failing to act quickly enough and told The Post that she could summon lawmakers immediately if she truly stood with survivors.

“This is a travesty that could’ve been prevented,” Greenberg said, arguing that politicians are now rushing to appear supportive amid public outrage and an election five weeks away. “Shameful.”

Women’s rights organization ULTRAVIOLETACTION is petitioning Hochul and state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, to call an extraordinary session and address the state’s rape laws without delay.

“Let us be clear: there is no valid consent when someone is intoxicated,” the petition states.

It argues that New York’s current law effectively shifts blame and shame onto survivors while allowing alleged perpetrators to avoid accountability.

The petition urges Hochul and Heastie to support Assembly Bill A101, which would remove the voluntary-intoxication exception and, supporters say, move Jane Doe closer to obtaining justice.

Here’s the latest on the ‘Cornell 7’ frat probe:

The campaign comes as outrage continues over seven Cornell University fraternity members named in a civil lawsuit alleging that they gang-raped a female student in 2024 after she had been drugged. Court documents identify the woman only as Jane Doe.

The men have not faced criminal charges. The woman’s attorney and other critics have blamed what they describe as a series of failures involving campus police, the Tompkins County district attorney’s office and Cornell University.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten acknowledged the disputed legal barrier in a lengthy statement last week, explaining his decision not to prosecute the men in 2024. He also announced that his office would reopen its investigation into Jane Doe’s allegations.

Greenberg said Hochul, a Democrat seeking re-election to a second term on Nov. 3, has not exerted enough influence to convince fellow Democrats in the Assembly to revise the law.

The Democratic-led state Senate has approved the legislation multiple times, but the measure has repeatedly stalled in the Assembly.

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Greenberg said Hochul has faced calls to eliminate the loophole since becoming governor but has declined to do so. Hochul assumed the state’s top office after Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned amid sexual-harassment allegations, which he continues to deny.

Greenberg also sharply criticized the Democratic-led Assembly, labeling its members “pro-criminal socialists.”

Hochul’s office declined to provide a detailed response to The Post on Sunday. It pointed to the governor’s remarks Friday, when she urged Albany lawmakers to close the loophole but rejected the idea of convening an emergency session specifically for that purpose.

The state Legislature’s regular Albany session ended in June.

“Here in New York, we’ll work with the legislature. The timing will be resolved, but at minimum, I would say this is something we could easily take up early in the session,” Hochul said Friday, referring to the regular 2027 legislative session.

She said lawmakers could review legislation already approved by one chamber, consult with its sponsors and determine whether recent events have exposed “any other glaring deficiencies in state law.”

Lacking confidence in Van Houten, Hochul also has appointed state Attorney General Letitia James to review the Cornell case for potential prosecution.

Heastie meanwhile last week announced the formation of a special “working group” to consider legislation in reaction to the “truly horrifying” Cornell case.

Unlike New York, 25 states — from conservative Texas to liberal California — as well as Washington, DC, have laws in place that protect the accuser if their ability to consent to sex was compromised even by voluntary intoxication.

Nineteen states, including New York, have rape or sexual-assault laws that consider intoxicated victims to be mentally incapacitated — but only if they became drunk or drugged without their knowledge or consent.

Opposition to closing New York’s loophole has come from criminal defense lawyers who believe the bill under consideration is “simply too vague to be fairly enforced” and “fails to provide” objective guidance as to when a partner is “too intoxicated to legally agree to engage in sexual conduct,” said the NYS Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in a recent statement to the Washington Post.

But state Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz (D-Bronx), who sponsored the proposed legislation in the lower house to close the voluntary intoxication loophole, said he’s been hearing from more lawmakers now willing to support his bill since the wrenching Cornell scandal has gone public.

The state’s legislative leaders have a dual responsibility in the Cornell case.

Aside from their governmental duties, Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) and Heastie are ex-officio members of Cornell’s Board of Trustees.

Cornell is not just an elite Ivy League institution.

It operates four different SUNY, or public, state colleges dealing with agriculture, labor relations, veterinary medicine and ecology and gets about $200 million in state funding per year.

Hochul did call the legislature into an emergency session in June of 2022 to pass gun safety laws responding to a US Supreme Court ruling that concluded New York’s conceal-and-carry restrictions violated the 2nd Amendment.

A Florida TikTok personality who describes himself as a “demonologist” and “Grey Hat Hacker” has been jailed again after allegedly posting women’s private information and claiming he could monitor their movements through their phones.

Mark Stephen Asea, 36, of Port St. Lucie, was booked into the St. Lucie County Jail on Sept. 30 on a felony charge of offense against computer users. Sheriff’s office records list his bond at $35,000.

The arrest reopened a case that had been closed earlier this year. Asea was initially arrested in April on stalking and computer-related allegations, but prosecutors dismissed those charges in May. A computer-access charge was filed in September, according to court records.

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According to a police affidavit, two women told investigators that Asea had revealed their personal information in TikTok content. One of them said she had previously relied on him for help with a computer issue.

A detective reviewed a video in which Asea allegedly recited information about one woman’s devices and said he knew about her recent purchases.

“Let’s talk about your actual password,” he said, according to the affidavit’s transcript.

“How about we talk about the last 10 purchases you made online?”

The woman told police that she had shared the password only in a private TikTok group chat. Asea was not listed as a member, she said, though she believed he could have accessed the conversation using a fake account.

She said no one in the group had permission to distribute the password and told investigators she had no idea how Asea might have obtained her phone identification number or banking details.

The second woman’s concerns began after she sought what she described as ordinary technical assistance.

She told investigators that Asea remotely accessed her computer in October 2025 to help fix an application. Months afterward, she said, he claimed he had secretly installed a virus while she was in the bathroom, giving him the ability to view information on the computer without her consent.

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She told police she had never authorized such access.

A photograph from a private Telegram conversation on her phone later appeared in one of Asea’s TikTok posts, she said.

Asea allegedly claimed in a comment that the photograph had come from a WhatsApp exchange. The woman, however, gave investigators a screenshot showing the image in the Telegram conversation, according to the affidavit.

Police also recorded statements in which Asea appeared to boast that he had determined the woman’s location using her phone.

“Thanks to the GPS within her phone, but what did I do?” he said in the video, according to the affidavit.

The alleged posts piled up. Investigators said Asea uploaded more than 100 TikTok videos mentioning one woman, sometimes posting as many as six in a day. He also allegedly obtained a website where he posted a photograph of her getting a tattoo.

His TikTok biography lists “Demonologist,” “Clairsentient,” “Empath,” “PTSD,” “Grey Hat Hacker” and “Woodsman.”

The April affidavit documented a different account biography that included “former satanist” and “cybersecurity engineer.”

Asea also faced a separate civil stalking protection case over the summer. A woman obtained a temporary injunction in July, but a judge dissolved it and dismissed that case Sept. 8.

Prosecutors reopened the criminal case Sept. 24 and filed the current charge alleging unauthorized access to a computer or electronic device. The records provided do not explain why the earlier charges were dropped or what prompted the renewed prosecution.

Months after the original charges were dropped, Asea is again facing a felony computer-access charge. He is scheduled to be arraigned Nov. 19.

News Media reached out to TikTok for comment.