President Donald Trump, shifting his tone yet again, warned Britain on Wednesday not to "give away" a key Indian Ocean base, saying it would be vital if the United States attacks Iran.

Trump, who is considering strikes on the Islamic republic, lashed out hours after the State Department offered the latest U.S. support to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's deal to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the formal unveiling of a huge multiple rocket launcher that can fire nuclear warheads at the South, state media said Thursday.

At a ceremony Wednesday, Kim gave a speech touting the new 600mm multiple launch rocket system as unique in the world and said it is "appropriate for a special attack, that is, for accomplishing a strategic mission," the KCNA news agency said, using a common euphemism for nuclear use.

U.S. Southern Command chief Francis Donovan met Wednesday with Venezuelan interim president Delcy Rodriguez and her top ministers, according to the Venezuelan government.

The U.S. General met with Rodriguez as well as Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, a government account posted on X, adding that the two countries "agreed to work on forming a bilateral cooperation agenda in order to combat drug trafficking, terrorism, and migration."

President Donald Trump will gather Thursday with representatives from more than two dozen countries that have joined his Board of Peace — and several that have opted not to — for an inaugural meeting that will focus on reconstruction and building an international stabilization force for a war-battered Gaza, where a shaky ceasefire deal persists.

Trump announced ahead of the meeting that board members have pledged $5 billion for reconstruction, a fraction of the estimated $70 billion needed to rebuild the Palestinian territory decimated after two years of war. Members are expected to unveil commitments of thousands of personnel to international stabilization and police forces for the territory.

Russian officials said on Thursday their forces had destroyed 113 Ukrainian drones overnight, some of them having targeted an oil refinery in the northwest that resulted in a fire in a storage tank.

The sides finished two days of U.S.-brokered talks in Geneva on Wednesday, trying to find a settlement to four years of war in Ukraine.

The Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon, U.S. news portal Axios reported on Wednesday.

A U.S. military operation in Iran would likely be a massive, weeks-long campaign that would look more like full-fledged war than last month's pinpoint operation in Venezuela, sources told Axios.

An explosion at a fireworks' shop in China's Hubei province on Wednesday killed 12 people, state media reported, the second such explosion as the country celebrates the Lunar New Year.

Emergency responders put out the blaze at the fireworks shop in the town of Xiangyang, in central Hubei province, on Wednesday afternoon, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Investigators are now looking into the cause of the explosion, the report said without giving further details.

The United States will deter Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons "one way or the other", U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright warned on Wednesday.

"They've been very clear about what they would do with nuclear weapons. It's entirely unacceptable," Wright told reporters in Paris on the sidelines of meetings of the International Energy Agency.

France's hard-left France Unbowed party said Wednesday it had to evacuate its Paris headquarters following a "bomb threat", after it was accused of partial responsibility in the killing of a far-right activist.

"The national headquarters of LFI have just been evacuated following a bomb threat. Police services are on site. All employees and activists are safe," the party's coordinator Manuel Bompard said on X.

Iran and Russia will conduct naval maneuvers in the Sea of Oman on Thursday, following the latest round of talks between Tehran and Washington in Geneva, Iranian media reported.

On Monday, the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological arm of Iran's military, also launched exercises in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a challenge to U.S. naval forces deployed in the region.