SEOUL: Leader Kim Jong Un says a Covid outbreak is causing ‘great upheaval’ in North Korea, which announced 21 new “fever” deaths Saturday.
Two days after confirming its first cases of Covid-19, the government said more than half a million people had been sickened nationwide.
Despite activating its “maximum emergency quarantine system” to slow the spread of disease through its unvaccinated population, North Korea is now reporting tens of thousands of new cases daily.
On Friday, “over 174,440 persons had fever, at least 81,430 were fully recovered and 21 died in the country,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported.
North Korea confirmed Thursday that the highly contagious omicron variant had been detected in the capital Pyongyang, with Kim ordering nationwide lockdowns.
It was the government’s first official admission of Covid cases and marked the failure of a two-year coronavirus blockade maintained at great economic cost since the start of the pandemic.
From late April to May 13, more than 524,440 people have fallen sick with fever, KCNA said, with 27 deaths in total.
The report did not specify whether the new cases and deaths had tested positive for Covid-19, but experts say the country will be struggling to test and diagnose on this scale.
North Korea has said only that one of the first six deaths it announced Friday had tested positive for Covid-19.
“It’s not a stretch to consider these ‘fever’ cases to all be Covid-19, given the North’s lack of testing capacity,” said Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute.
“The actual number of Covid cases could be higher than the fever figures due to many asymptomatic cases,” he said, adding that the pace of infection was growing “very fast.”
Kim said Saturday the “crisis” was causing “great upheaval,” as he oversaw a second Politburo meeting in three days to discuss the situation, KCNA reported.
“The spread of malignant disease comes to be a great upheaval in our country since the founding of the DPRK,” he said, referring to North Korea by its official name.
Kim is putting himself “front and center” of the country’s Covid response, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.
“The language he’s used suggests the situation in North Korea is going to get worse before it gets better,” he told AFP.
“Engagers see this rhetoric preparing the way for international assistance, but Kim may be rallying a population on the verge of further sacrifice,” he added.
The meeting of the nation’s top officials discussed medicine distribution and other ways of “minimizing the losses in human lives,” KCNA said.
North Korea has a crumbling health system — one of the worst in the world — and no Covid vaccines, antiviral treatment drugs or mass testing capacity, experts say.
But the country will “actively learn” from China’s pandemic management strategy, Kim said, according to KCNA.
China, the world’s only major economy to still maintain a zero-Covid policy, is battling multiple omicron outbreaks — with some major cities, including financial hub Shanghai, under stay-at-home orders.
North Korea has previously turned down offers of Covid vaccines from China and the World Health Organization’s Covax scheme, but both Beijing and Seoul issued fresh offers of aid and vaccines this week.
Kim’s comments indicate North Korea “will try getting supplies from China,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies.
It also looks likely Pyongyang “will adopt a Chinese-style anti-virus response of regional lockdowns,” Yang added.
So far, Kim said Saturday, North Korea’s outbreak was not “an uncontrollable spread among regions” but transmission within areas that had been locked down, KCNA said.
Despite its Covid outbreak, new satellite imagery indicates that North Korea has resumed construction at a long-dormant nuclear reactor.
“I can’t tell you when the reactor will be ready to go, but it is about 10x larger than the existing reactor at Yongbyon,” Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies wrote in a Twitter thread Saturday.
It would produce 10 times more plutonium for nuclear weapons, he said, adding: “This would make good on Kim’s pledge to increase the number of nuclear weapons.”
The United States and South Korea have warned that Kim is preparing to conduct another nuclear test — which would be the regime’s seventh — and that it could come any day now.
Analysts have warned Kim could speed up his nuclear test plans in a bid to “distract” North Korea’s population from a disastrous Covid-19 outbreak.
Kim says outbreak causing ‘great upheaval’ in North Korea
https://arab.news/cjv37
Kim says outbreak causing ‘great upheaval’ in North Korea
- Two days after confirming its first cases of Covid-19, the government said more than half a million people had been sickened nationwide
- On Friday, "over 174,440 persons had fever, at least 81,430 were fully recovered and 21 died in the country"
Merz says NATO spending boost to counter Russia — not please Trump
- Merz has been racing to build up Germany’s long-neglected armed forces, with the aim of turning them into the ‘strongest conventional army’ in Europe
BERLIN: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz insisted a pledge by NATO allies to boost defense spending at a “historic” summit starting on Tuesday would not just aim to please US President Donald Trump.
“We are not doing this, as some claim, to do the United States and its president a favor,” he told the German parliament before setting off for the gathering in The Hague.
“We are doing this based on our own observations and convictions. Russia, above all, is actively and aggressively threatening security and freedom” across Europe, he added.
“We have to fear that Russia will continue its war beyond Ukraine.”
The summit has been viewed as heavily focused on keeping Trump happy after he made comments that sparked concern about Washington’s commitment to NATO and insisted that other member states spend at least five percent of their GDP on defense.
NATO’s 32 countries have thrashed out a compromise deal to dedicate 3.5 percent to core military spending by 2035, and 1.5 percent to broader security-related areas such as cybersecurity and infrastructure.
On Monday, Europe’s biggest economy revealed plans to reach the 3.5 percent level for core spending six years early — in 2029 — with the vast extra outlays necessary made possible after Germany eased its rules on taking on debt.
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Tuesday that he would head to the NATO summit with the message that “external security and defense capability are once again an absolute priority in (German) government policy.”
“We are bringing about a historic turnaround in defense spending.”
On the summit, he said there were “good signs” about “the broad consensus on how to proceed... I see no reason to assume that we will be given the cold shoulder.”
Since taking office in May, Merz has been racing to build up Germany’s long-neglected armed forces, with the aim of turning them into the “strongest conventional army” in Europe — a radical shift in a country with strong pacifist traditions due to its dark wartime past.
A drive has been launched to boost military personnel, which aims to attract 11,000 fresh recruits this year alone — and Pistorius has suggested conscription, which was halted in Germany in 2011, could be reintroduced if too few people sign up voluntarily.
Germany is also building up a permanent military brigade in Lithuania — the country’s first such overseas deployment since World War II — to bolster NATO’s eastern flank against Russia.
Vietnam aims to sign nuclear power plant deal with Russia in August
- The move follows Vietnam’s restart of plans to develop nuclear power plants
- It is expected to be online between 2030 and 2035
HANOI: Vietnam’s government said on Tuesday it aims to sign an agreement with its Russian counterpart in August to build the Southeast Asian country’s first nuclear power plant.
Site clearance for development of the plant in Ninh Thuan province is to be completed by the end of this year, the government said in a statement.
The move follows Vietnam’s restart of plans to develop nuclear power plants that were suspended nearly a decade ago, as part of its efforts to ramp up its power generation capacity to support its fast-growing economy.
The government has previously said it expected the first nuclear power plants with a combined capacity of up to 6.4 gigawatts to be online between 2030 and 2035.
The government said on Tuesday it has told the finance ministry, central bank, state energy firm Petrovietnam and utility firm EVN to work with related parties on loans for the project.
Indonesian researchers unearth 500,000-year-old elephant fossils in Java
- Researchers say found elephant fossils may be almost complete
- Central Java is also location of archaeological site Sangiran, where ‘Java Man’ was found
Jakarta: Indonesian researchers have discovered fossils of a prehistoric elephant in Central Java, which they estimate are around 500,000 years old.
The fossils were found in Patiayam, an archaeological site and mountainous area situated on the border of the Kudus and Pati regencies in Central Java, where, throughout the years, ancient animal fossils have been found.
In 2024, a collaborative team organized by the Center for Prehistory and Austronesian Studies, the Dharma Bakti Lestari Foundation and the National Research and Innovation Agency, known locally as BRIN, launched a research project at the site to explore fossil possibilities.
Though the initial discovery was made then, researchers postponed the project until this year and expanded the site of excavation, which is still ongoing.
“Based on the geological formation of the site where it was found, we estimate that the fossils are at least 500,000 years old, give or take. We have yet to conduct a direct dating of the fossils, so this is based on a relative dating of the soil layer,” Mohammad Ruly Fauzi, researcher at CPAS and BRIN, told Arab News.
“We have been able to identify that these belong to an elephas type, but not the specific species … What’s clear is that this is a very big elephant, nothing like elephants today …. It’s prehistoric, not early historic period.”
He said the excavation has made about 50 percent progress and that the elements found so far make up the front part of an elephant.
“It’s interesting because this is shaping up to be an almost complete fossil … They are all situated pretty closely.”
Once the excavation is completed, the fossils will be preserved as part of a collection at the Patiayam Archaeological Museum. The discovery might help Patiayam gain recognition as a cultural heritage site, Fauzi added.
“Every site has its own unique qualities, but Patiayam site is particularly interesting and very deserving to gain status as a national cultural heritage site in our opinion … This research can help serve as a foundation for officials to decide,” he said.
Central Java, where Patiayam is located, is also home to the Sangiran Early Man Site, a UNESCO World Heritage site renowned for its significant collection of Homo erectus fossils, dating from 1.1 million to 800,000 years ago, including the “Java Man.”
Ukraine has cleared 20 percent of mined land, PM says
KYIV: Ukraine has intensified efforts to clear land mines and has cut the affected area to around 137,000 square km (53,000 square miles), a 20 percent reduction from the end of 2022, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Tuesday.
Most of the remaining mined areas are farmland, Shmyhal added.
Ukraine is a global major grain grower but it reduced harvests sharply after Russia’s 2022 invasion left large areas occupied and mined.
Shmyhal said about 9,000 people from 112 specialized companies are now involved in mine clearance.
Military analysts say Ukraine needs at least 10 years to demine all territories.
India defense minister heads to China summit
- Rajnath Singh will join fellow regional defense ministers in China’s Qingdao city for SCO summit starting Wednesday
- He will call for joint, consistent efforts to eliminate “terrorism” and extremism in the region, says Indian defense ministry
NEW DELHI: Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh will travel to China this week for talks with his regional counterparts, New Delhi said Tuesday.
Ties between the world’s two most populous nations have improved in recent months, after hitting a low in 2020 over a deadly clash between their troops on the Himalayan border.
Singh will join fellow defense ministers in the eastern city of Qingdao for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit starting Wednesday.
He will “outline India’s vision toward achieving greater international peace & security, call for joint & consistent efforts to eliminate terrorism & extremism in the region,” a defense ministry statement said.
Singh will also hold bilateral meetings with his counterparts from China and Russia, which are alliance members alongside Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus.
Ahead of the two-day SCO meeting, India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval held talks in Beijing with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi.
Doval “underscored the need to promote the overall development of the India-China bilateral relations,” New Delhi said Monday.
Wang said relations have “seen some positive developments” since the two countries’ leaders met last year, China’s foreign ministry said.
Beijing has granted permission to Indian pilgrims wishing to trek to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a site holy to Hindus and Buddhists, for the first time since the deadly 2020 clash.
The rival countries have also agreed to expedite resuming direct flights.
