North Korea says South Korea's overtures 'great miscalculation'
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New Indian Express
5 minutes ago
- New Indian Express
Russia resumes Moscow-Pyongyang commercial flights
SOUTH KOREA: A Russian passenger jetlanded at North Korea's main airport Monday, a flight tracking site showed, completing the first commercial leg in decades between capitals of the allied countries. Russia and North Korea have pulled closer in the last year, with Pyongyang sending weapons and troops to aid Moscow's war in Ukraine -- likely in exchange for technical assistance, experts say. Tracking site Flight Aware showed Russia's Nordwind Airlines' Boeing 777 landing in Pyongyang at 09:15 am (GMT 00:15). "This is a historical event, strengthening the ties between our nations," Oleg, a Nordwind employee on the flight who did not give his full name, told AFP at the airport in Moscow Sunday. A video posted on Russian news agency RIA Novosti's Telegram account showed North Korean officials and flight attendants welcoming the Russian passengers with flowers at Pyongyang's international airport. One North Korean official is seen checking the temperatures of the disembarking Russians with an electronic thermometer.
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Business Standard
35 minutes ago
- Business Standard
Trump to meet UK PM Starmer at Scotland golf course to boost ties
President Donald Trump once suggested his golf course in Scotland furthers" the US-UK relationship. Now he's getting the chance to prove it. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is meeting Monday with Trump at a golf property owned by the president's family near Turnberry in southwestern Scotland then later travelling to Abderdeen, on the country's northeast coast, where there's another Trump golf course and a third is opening soon. During his first term in 2019, Trump posted of his Turnberry property, Very proud of perhaps the greatest golf course anywhere in the world. Also, furthers UK relationship! Starmer is not a golfer, but toggling between Trump's Scottish courses shows the outsized influence the president puts on properties bearing his name and on golf's ability to shape geopolitics. While China initially responded to Trump's tariff threats by retaliating with high import taxes of its own on US goods but has since begun negotiating easing trade tensions, Starmer and his country have taken a far softer approach. He's gone out of his way to work with Trump, flattering the president repeatedly during a February visit to the White House, and teaming up to announce a joint trade framework on tariffs for some key products in May. Starmer and Trump then signed a trade agreement during the G7 summit in Canada that freed the UK's aerospace sector from US tariffs and used quotas to reduce them on auto-related industries from 25 per cent to 10 per cent while increasing the amount of US beef it pledged to import. The prime minister's office says Monday's meeting will also touch on Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza, and that it hopes to welcome the Trump administration working with officials in Qatar and Egypt to bring about a ceasefire. Starmer plans to stress the urgent need to cease the fighting and work to end starvation and other suffering occurring amid increasingly desperate circumstances in Gaza. Also on the agenda, according to Starmer's office, are efforts to promote a possible peace deal to end fighting in Russia's war with Ukraine particularly efforts at forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table in the next 50 days. Protesters, meanwhile, have planned a demonstration in Balmedie, near Trump's existing course, after demonstrators took to the streets on Saturday to decry the president's visit. Discussions with Starmer follow Trump meeting Sunday with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen at his Turnberry course. They announced a trade framework that will put 15 per cent tariffs on most goods from both countries though many major details remain pending. On Tuesday, Trump will be at the site of his new course near Aberdeen for an official ribbon cutting. It opens to the public on August 13 and tee times are already for sale with the course betting that a presidential visit can help boost sales. There are still lingering US-Britain trade issues that need fine-tuning after the previous agreements, including the tariff rates Washington imposes on steel imported from the UK. Even as some trade details linger and both leaders grapple with increasingly difficult choices in Gaza and Ukraine, however, Starmer's attempts to stay on Trump's good side appears to be working. The UK is very well-protected. You know why? Because I like them that's their ultimate protection, Trump said during the G7. Also likely to improve Trump's mood is the fact that the US ran an USD 11.4 billion trade surplus with Britain last year, meaning it exported more to the UK than it imported. Census Bureau figures this year indicate that the surplus could grow. The president has for months railed against yawning US trade deficits with key allies and sees tariffs as a way to try and close them in hurry. Trump is set to return to Britain in September for an unprecedented second state visit. Trump will be hosted then by King Charles III and Queen Camilla at Windsor Castle. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NDTV
37 minutes ago
- NDTV
Kim Jong Un's Sister Rejects South Korean President's Outreach, Slams Relations with US
The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un rebuffed overtures by South Korea's new liberal government, saying Monday that its 'blind trust' in the country's alliance with the US and hostility toward North Korea make it no different from its conservative predecessor. Kim Yo Jong's comments imply that North Korea — now preoccupied with its expanding cooperation with Russia — sees no need to resume diplomacy with South Korea and the US anytime soon. Experts say she likely hopes to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington. 'We clarify once again the official stand that no matter what policy is adopted and whatever proposal is made in Seoul, we have no interest in it and there is neither a reason to meet nor an issue to be discussed,' Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by state media. It's North Korea's first official statement on the government of South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, which took office in early June with a promise to improve badly frayed ties with North Korea. Lee's government has halted anti-Pyongyang frontline loudspeaker broadcasts, taken steps to ban activists from flying balloons with propaganda leaflets across the border and repatriated North Koreans who were drifted south in wooden boats months earlier. North Korea has shunned talks with South Korea and the US since leader Kim Jong Un's high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with President Donald Trump fell apart in 2019 due to wrangling over international sanctions. North Korea has since focused on building more powerful nuclear weapons targeting its rivals and declared a hostile 'two-state' system on the Korean Peninsula to terminate relations with South Korea. Kim Yo Jong called Lee's steps 'sincere efforts' to develop ties, but said the new government still 'stands in confrontation' with North Korea. She mentioned the upcoming summertime South Korea-US military drills, which North Korea views as an invasion rehearsal. South Korea's Unification Ministry responded that it will steadfastly seek reconciliation with North Korea to realize peaceful co-existence. Spokesperson Koo Byoungsam told reporters that the statement shows North Korea closely monitors the Lee government's North Korea policy despite deep mistrust. Moon Seong Mook, an analyst for the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, said Kim Yo Jong's statement shows North Korea is holding out for South Korea to abandon the US alliance. Moon said that Kim likely sees little upside in engaging with the South since it cannot restart economic projects that previously benefited the North as long as international sanctions remain in place. North Korea built cooperation with Russia, sending troops and conventional weapons to support its war in Ukraine, and likely receiving economic and technological assistance in return. Since beginning his second term in January, Trump has repeatedly boasted of his personal ties with Kim Jong Un and expressed intent to resume diplomacy with him. But North Korea hasn't publicly responded to Trump's overture. Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said that Kim Yo Jong's statement had a domestic audience. 'Kim Yo Jong's comments are an effort to advance national pride by portraying North Korea in a superior position, despite its economic struggles and international pariah status,' Easley said. 'She also seeks to justify Pyongyang's weapons programs and divide Seoul and Washington by criticising upcoming military exercises.' Still, there is a limit on what North Korea can get from Russia, and Pyongyang could change course at a major upcoming meeting of the ruling Workers' Party, likely to be held in January, said Kwak Gil Sup, the head of One Korea Center, a website specialising in North Korea affairs. "I think North Korea may formulate a Plan B and Plan C in relations for South Korea and the US,' Kwak said.
