SEOUL: Eight journalists from South Korea departed for rival North Korea on Wednesday after the North allowed them to join the small group of foreign media in the country to witness the dismantling of its nuclear test site this week, Seoul officials said.
North Korea had earlier refused to grant entry visas to the South Korean journalists, raising worries about the prospect for recently improving ties. Their exclusion followed Pyongyang cutting off high-level contact with Seoul to protest joint US-South Korean military exercises that it calls an invasion rehearsal.
The dismantling of the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where all of its six nuclear bomb test explosions occurred, is expected to happen Thursday or Friday depending on weather.
On Wednesday morning, North Korea accepted the list of the South Korean journalists to attend via a cross-border communication channel. The journalists from the MBC television network and News1 wire service took a special government flight later Wednesday to go to the North’s northeastern coastal city of Wonsan, according to Seoul’s Foreign Ministry.
The other journalists from the US, the UK, China and Russia, including an Associated Press Television crew, had arrived in Wonsan on Tuesday. The group is to travel by train to the Punggye-ri site at Mount Mantap, also in the northeast, to observe the closing.
When North Korea announced it would dismantle the Punggy-ri site, it said it would invite media from five countries including South Korea to watch, but it didn’t respond to South Korea’s notifications of which journalists would attend until Wednesday morning. The South Korean journalists went to Beijing to travel with the full group but were left behind and eventually returned to Seoul as the North refused to grant them visas.
It was unclear why the North changed course and decided to let South Korean journalists in the country. The development came hours after President Donald Trump met South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Washington seeking to keep the highly anticipated summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on track.
The summit could offer a historic chance for peace on the Korean Peninsula. But there has been increasing pessimism about the meeting after North Korea scrapped the inter-Korean talks and threatened to do the same for the Kim-Trump summit in protest of the South Korea-US military drills and what it calls Washington’s push for “one-sided” disarmament. Trump said during his meetings with Moon the summit may not happen as scheduled.
The North’s decision to close the Punggye-ri nuclear test site has generally been seen as a welcome gesture by Kim to set a positive tone ahead of his summit with Trump.
But it is mainly just a gesture.
If North Korea decides to conduct more nuclear tests, it could build a new site or dismantle the existing tunnels at Mount Mantap in a reversible manner. Details of what will actually happen during the closure are sparse, but observers have expressed concern that Pyongyang is showing the closure of the site to journalists but not to international nuclear inspectors.
Pyongyang allows South Korean journalists to cover nuclear test site closure
Pyongyang allows South Korean journalists to cover nuclear test site closure
- The dismantling of the North’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where all of its six nuclear bomb test explosions occurred, is expected to happen Thursday or Friday depending on weather
- If North Korea decides to conduct more nuclear tests, it could build a new site or dismantle the existing tunnels at Mount Mantap in a reversible manner
UN says ‘deeply troubled’ by Kenya protest killings
The violence erupted on Saba Saba Day (meaning Seven Seven) when demonstrators annually mark the events of July 7, 1990 when Kenyans rose up to demand a return to multi-party democracy after years of autocratic rule by then-president Daniel arap Moi.
“We are deeply troubled by the killings yesterday of at least 10 people, as well as looting and destruction of property in Kenya,” UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.
She said that “lethal ammunition, rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons were used” as police responded to the protests.
She highlighted that Kenyan police had reported that at least 11 people were killed, 52 police officers injured and 567 arrests made.
The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights meanwhile reported at least 10 deaths, 29 injuries, 37 arrests and two abductions, she added.
“We have also received reports of looting and damage to public and private property by unidentified individuals in multiple locations.”
Shamdasani said the violence came “barely two weeks after 15 protesters were reportedly killed and many more injured in Nairobi and other parts of Kenya on 25 June.”
UN rights chief Volker Turk renews “his call for calm and restrain, and full respect for the freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly,” she said.
“It is essential that legitimate grievances at the root of these protests are addressed,” the spokeswoman said.
The UN rights office noted that Kenyan police had announced an investigation into earlier incidents.
Shamdasani stressed that “under international human rights law, intentional lethal force by law enforcement officers, including with firearms, should only be used when strictly necessary to protect life from an imminent threat.”
Turk reiterates “his call for all reported killings and other alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law, including with respect to use of force, to be promptly, thoroughly, independently and transparently investigated,” she said.
“Those responsible must be held to account.”
Acropolis shuts, outdoor work halted as heatwave scorches Greece
The Greek culture ministry said the world-renowned site would be shut till 5:00 p.m. (1400 GMT) “for the safety of workers and visitors, owing to high temperatures.”
The four-day heatwave confirmed by meteorologists began Sunday is the second to grip Greece since late June.
Temperatures are expected to reach 42 Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit) on Tuesday, with a maximum of 38 Celsius in Athens.
Similar temperatures are expected on Wednesday.
To protect outdoor workers, the labor ministry has decreed a work stoppage from 12:00 to 5:00 p.m. in various parts of the country, including several islands.
The stoppage mainly affects construction work and delivery riders.
“Days with a heatwave make my job more difficult,” cycle-riding courier Michalis Keskinidis told AFP.
“We drink a lot of water to protect ourselves from the heat, combined with electrolytes, and take breaks whenever possible,” the 43-year-old said.
The 2,500-year-old Acropolis, built on a rock overlooking the capital that offers little shade, draws tens of thousands of visitors daily.
Last year it recorded some 4.5 million visitors, an increase of over 15 percent compared to 2023.
Officials had been forced to order similar shutdowns in the past two years in heatwave conditions.
The Greek civil protection authority has warned of high fire risk in the greater Athens area, in central Greece and the Peloponnese peninsula.
Greece’s fire department has been dealing with up to 50 fires daily, the head of the Greek fire service officers’ union Constantinos Tsigkas told state TV ERT.
Elsewhere, Serbia’s hydrometeorological service RMHZ warned that weather conditions could fuel more fires, after 620 fires were recorded Monday.
But there are also thunderstorms expected in Serbia’s northern Vojvodina region, as well as in western and central areas.
RHMZ has also warned of the possibility of hail and hurricane-force gusts of wind.
Croatia has already felt the impact of storms since Monday, with several of the country’s regions affected.
Two people were injured and hospitalized in Vinkovci after a storm knocked down a power line on a family house near the eastern town, police said.
The authorities said they had taken dozens of calls over wind-related emergencies including trees blocking roads, damaged roofs and power failures.
On Tuesday, heavy rain and gale-force winds flooded roads, knocked down trees and caused power outages at the Croatian port town of Split, the state-run HRT broadcaster reported.
At the town’s port, a ferry broke its moorings and hit a catamaran and a tourist excursion boat, sinking the latter.
There was similar trouble further north, with storms raging in Hungary and Slovakia.
In Budapest, strong winds damaged roofs, felled trees onto roads and downed power lines on Monday, with the national meteorological service HungaroMet measuring winds up to 137 kilometers (85 miles) per hour locally.
Rail traffic was severely disrupted across Hungary with full restoration of services potentially requiring weeks, according to Construction and Transport Minister Janos Lazar.
In Slovakia, gale-force winds caused power outages and blew off the roof of a block of flats in the eastern town of Gelnica and fallen trees disrupted road and railway transport across the region.
The country’s weather service SHMU has issued a storm warning with heavy rain, wind and hail for Tuesday, mainly for central and eastern Slovakia.
Thousands told to stay home as Spain forest fire rages on
- Forest fire stoked by fierce winds has burned more than 2,300 hectares
- Spain has in recent days sweltered through a heatwave that parched the land and heightened the risk of forest fires
MADRID: Spanish firefighters on Tuesday were battling a forest fire stoked by fierce winds that has burned more than 2,300 hectares (5,680 acres), with authorities urging thousands of residents to stay home.
The Spanish army’s emergency response unit said it had deployed overnight near the northeastern city of Tarragona to assist local authorities.
The blaze has devoured “around 2,377 hectares of land, mostly forest,” countryside rangers in the Catalonia region wrote on X.
The protected Els Ports natural park makes up 30 percent of the affected area, they added.
Firefighters released video footage shot from a helicopter on Monday showing hills enveloped in a cloud of grey and orange smoke stretching into the distance.
Winds of up to 90 kilometers per hour (56 miles per hour) made it harder to extinguish the fire overnight, firefighters said.
The national civil protection authority urged residents in the area to close their doors and windows and stay home, saying that around 18,000 people were affected.
Scientists say human-induced climate change is increasing the intensity, length and frequency of the extreme heat that causes some forest fires.
Spain has in recent days sweltered through a heatwave that parched the land and heightened the risk of forest fires.
National weather agency AEMET said last month was Spain’s hottest June on record and that the frequency of extreme heat had tripled in the past 10 years.
According to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), some 500 fires destroyed 300,000 hectares in Spain in 2022, a record for the continent.
Around 21,000 hectares have burned so far this year.
Kremlin says former minister’s suicide is shocking
MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Tuesday that the suicide of former Transport Minister Roman Starovoit just hours after his dismissal by President Vladimir Putin was shocking.
Starovoit was found dead in his car outside Moscow with a gunshot wound and the principal hypothesis is that he took his own life, state investigators said on Monday, hours after Putin fired him.
A presidential decree published on Monday gave no reason for the dismissal of Starovoit after barely a year in the job.
Philippines summons Chinese envoy over sanctions against former senator
- Francisco Tolentino was banned from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau over ‘egregious conduct’ detrimental to relations between Manila and Beijing
- He lost his bid for a second term in the Philippines’ midterm elections in May
MANILA: The Philippines’ foreign ministry has summoned China’s ambassador to Manila over Beijing’s imposition of sanctions against former senator Francis Tolentino, the president’s office said on Tuesday.
Tolentino, who lost his bid for a second term in the Philippines’ midterm elections in May, was banned from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau over “egregious conduct” detrimental to relations between Manila and Beijing.
Tolentino helped in approving laws last year that defined the country’s sea lanes and maritime zones, which China opposed. He also accused the Chinese embassy of contracting a firm that maintains troll farms to sow disinformation.
“The imposition of punitive measures ... is inconsistent with the norms of mutual respect and dialogue that underpin relations between two equal sovereign states,” presidential press officer Claire Castro told a briefing.
Manila’s foreign ministry said it summoned Chinese ambassador Huang Xilian on Friday. China’s embassy in Manila said in a statement the ambassador notified the Philippines’ foreign ministry of China’s decision to impose sanctions on Tolentino.
“It should be noted that such sanctions fall purely within China’s legal prerogative, and there are consequences for hurting China’s interests,” the embassy said.
The Chinese foreign ministry has previously accused some Filipino politicians of making “malicious remarks and moves” that hurt ties between the two nations.
Relations between China and the Philippines have soured under President Ferdinand Marcos over a longstanding dispute in the South China Sea.
In 2016, an international tribunal ruled Beijing’s sweeping claims to the waterway had no basis in international law. China has rejected the decision. Several other countries in Southeast Asia also claim parts of the South China Sea.
