North Korea fired a short-range projectile towards the sea off its east coast Monday in the latest of a series of missile and rocket tests, military officials said.

North Korea has joined the ranks of America's foes who have seized on riots in Missouri, saying the nation is the "graveyard of human rights" and should mind its own business rather than criticize others.

The police shooting of an unarmed black teenager and subsequent crackdown on protesters in the Midwestern town of Ferguson has also given China, Iran and Russia ammunition to sound off about America's flaws.

A Japanese wrestler-turned-politician hopes his vision of "sports diplomacy" can repair his country's fraught relationship with North Korea, as he prepares to host an extraordinary sporting event in Pyongyang.

North Korea will be able to test longer-range rockets at its new launch site before the end of this year, a U.S. think-tank has said.

A major construction program has been under way at the North's Sohae Satellite Launching Station since mid-2013, focused on upgrading facilities to handle larger, longer-range rockets with heavier payloads.

South Korea and the United States on Monday launched an annual military drill, Seoul's defense ministry said, despite condemnation by North Korea which has threatened a "merciless" retaliatory strike.

The beginning of the "Ulchi Freedom Guardian" exercise, which will last until August 29, came as Pope Francis led a mass for inter-reconciliation in Seoul at the end of the five-day trip to South Korea.

Pope Francis urged the divided Koreas to unite as "one family, one people" in a spirit of mutual forgiveness at a mass Monday that coincided with a South Korea-U.S. military drill condemned by the North as a prelude to war.

"Forgiveness is the door which leads to reconciliation", although it may seem "impossible, impractical and even at times repugnant", Francis said at a special mass for inter-Korean peace and reconciliation in Seoul.

North Korea warned Sunday of a possible "merciless" preemptive strike as it blasted an upcoming joint U.S.-South Korean military exercise as a rehearsal for nuclear war.

South Korea vowed to go ahead from Monday with the annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian drill, which is aimed at testing readiness to combat any North Korean invasion.

Japan said Friday it had frozen the assets of a North Korean shipping company that operated a freighter seized last year for smuggling weapons through the Panama Canal.

The move comes after the United Nations last month added Ocean Maritime Management to a blacklist of North Korean companies that have violated a U.N. embargo on shipping weapons to the isolated communist state.

North Korea on Friday ridiculed suggestions that it had sought to upstage the visit of the "so-called pope" to South Korea by firing a series of short-range rockets as the pontiff flew into Seoul.

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Friday urged North Korea to accept Seoul's offer for high-level talks, while condemning a recent series of "intolerable" rocket launches by the nuclear-armed neighbor.