Good morning, readers!

We hope you indulged in a weekend of well-earned relaxation.

Now that you’re back to reality, let us catch you up on some of the stories that might have slipped your radar while you were away.

Here are some of the stories:

• 🇰🇵 North Korea caught red-handed hacking South Korea.

• 🇷🇺 Russia’s historic lunar lander lands—not in one piece.

• 🇮🇹 Italian PM Meloni pays for 4 dine-and-dashers out of her own pocket.

Today’s geopolitics hotspots:

North Korean hacking fail

A group of hackers linked to North Korea tried to infiltrate a joint US-South Korea military exercise that kicks off this week. The hacking attempt was a flop and no secrets were spilled, according to South Korean authorities on Sunday.

🤔 How?

• The hackers used a technique called “spear-phishing” to send emails to South Korean contractors working at the war simulation center.

• The emails had malicious links or attachments that could infect the computers with malware.

💾 How they flopped.

• The hackers are thought to be part of a North Korean gang called Kimsuky, which has been behind previous cyberattacks against South Korea.

• The police tracked down the IP address of the hackers to one that was used in a 2014 attack on South Korea’s nuclear reactor operator.

• Unless North Koreans wanted their southern neighbor to know that they were behind it, this is a massive oversight. Or maybe they just didn’t care.

✍🏻 Why it matters.

• The cyberattack comes at a time when North Korea and its rivals are at odds over its nuke and missile programs.

• North Korea believes the joint military drills are a warm-up for invasion, while the US-South Korea alliance assures that their aim is to boost their readiness and capability to deal with the threats from North Korea.

Russia’s lunar lander goes kaput

On Saturday, Russia's lunar dreams just got a rude awakening as its Luna-25 spacecraft crashed into the lunar surface after losing control.

🤔 What happened?

• Luna-25 was launched on 11 August.

• It was the first Russian moon mission since 1976, when the Soviet Union sent Luna-24 to collect soil samples.

• Luna-25 was designed to study the lunar environment and test new technologies for future missions.

• Roskosmos, the Russian space agency, said an “abnormal situation” occurred on Saturday and the spacecraft entered an uncontrolled orbit—crashing into the moon at high speed.

🏎️ Race with India.

• Luna-25 was in a race with India's Chandrayaan-3 to land on the moon's south pole.

• Chandrayaan-3 initiated its lunar pursuit on July 14, preceding Luna-25's launch.

• Chandrayaan-3 is set to make a soft landing on the lunar South Pole on August 23.

✍🏻 Why it matters.

Which nation do you set the following records?

• First artificial satellite.

• First human in space.

• First animal in space.

• First woman in space.

• First spacewalk.

• First space station.

It's not the US. It's the Soviet Union.

However, its glory days are long gone, as it is struggling to keep up with the advances of China, India, and the US.

🌚 Lost opportunity.

• Russia's success would have given it the bragging rights to belittle the West's sanctions for being ineffective in stifling Russia's lunar ambitions.

• This is also a lost opportunity to divert attention away from the rampant corruption and technical inefficiencies that exist within Russia’s space agency.

🌟 Today’s gem

While researching today’s stories, we came across a hilarious/cringe-worthy story.

It involves:

• four Italian tourists,

• a restaurant in Albania, and

• two prime ministers.

🏃‍♂️💨 Italian Bolt

You see, these four tourists thought it would be a good idea to enjoy a meal in the Albanian city of Berat and then leave without paying their €80 bill. Little did they know that their escapade would reach the ears of Albania’s PM Edi Rama, who was hosting Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni in his country.

💰 Idiots

Rama was not happy with the Italian guests and brought it up with Meloni, who was visiting Albania with her family last week. Meloni was not happy either—telling her ambassador to “go and pay the bill for these idiots” with her personal funds.

The four tourists are still at large and have not been identified.

Quick updates