There is some alarming news, I didn't want to post every headline and flood Tildes, so I'm making this post. If anyone feels any are important enough to post one separately, do feel free.

• Hegseth orders rare, urgent meeting of hundreds of generals, admirals
• Hungarian drones breach Ukraine's airspace, Zelensky says
• Boat strikes, warships and Venezuela rhetoric raise questions about Trump’s goals
• Chinese drone experts worked with sanctioned Russian arms maker, sources say
• Germany considers offensive space capabilities as Russia tracks its military satellites
• Trump says he will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank
• Palestinians in West Bank stranded as Israel shuts only international crossing
• North Korea is close to having an ICBM that can hit the U.S. with a nuclear weapon, South Korean leader says

I check in on https://www.newsminimalist.com/ sometimes, I might have it bookmarked from here originally, but anyways, most of this news is from there

That's pretty much it, the title ... any chance of seeing the two Koreas rejoined in our lifetime? If so, how might that come to pass? If not, why not?

Also, related questions...

How much of the on-going dispute is actually between "regular" Koreans, and how much of it is explicitly caused by N Korean (and/or S Korean) leadership?

How out-of-touch with the rest of the world are "regular" N Koreans?

Just a passing thought ... open-ended discussion ... not strictly insisting on it, but let's try to keep the discussion serious, and civil.

Over half of Germans would not fight for their country

In a survey carried out for RND, a German broadcaster, 59 per cent of respondents said they were “probably” or “definitely” unwilling to defend the country from an attack.

Only 16 per cent of Germans were “definitely” willing to take up arms to defend Germany, while 22 per cent said they would “probably” do it.

Bundeswehr officials say that the overall size of the army needs to grow from 182,000 soldiers to at least 260,000 by 2035. The Bundeswehr reserve forces also need to be increased from 60,000 to 200,000 people.

The German military has struggled for decades with recruitment, partly due to Germans’ wartime guilt and a widely held view that their country no longer needed an army. Conscription in Germany, which was deeply unpopular, ended in 2011.

But the Russian invasion of Ukraine has prompted a major rethink on security in Berlin, known as the “Zeitenwende”, or turning of the times.

Germany is not the only country having difficulties drumming up recruits: in Italy, a similar survey also found that only 16 per cent of citizens were willing to defend their nation – despite defence spending increasing by 46 per cent over the past decade.

In Britain, the army and navy have missed nearly every annual recruitment target since 2010, according to government statistics. The shortfall has been blamed on stagnant pay, poor military housing, a wider downward trend in young people being interested in fighting for their country.