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Russia starts direct commercial flights between Moscow and Pyongyang

Russia starts direct commercial flights between Moscow and Pyongyang
Russia’s Nordwind Airlines Boeing 777-200ER taxies before taking off on the first flight connecting Moscow and Pyongyang at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport on July 27, 2025. (AP)
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Updated 28 July 2025

Russia starts direct commercial flights between Moscow and Pyongyang

Russia starts direct commercial flights between Moscow and Pyongyang
  • Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who visited North Korea’s new Wonsan-Kalma beach resort earlier this month to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, promised to encourage Russian tourists to visit the complex

MOSCOW: Russia on Sunday opened a regular air link between Moscow and Pyogyang, a move reflecting increasingly close ties between the two countries.

The first flight operated by Russian carrier Nordwind took off from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport carrying over 400 passengers. Russia’s Transport Ministry said there will be one flight a month to meet demand.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who visited North Korea’s new Wonsan-Kalma beach resort earlier this month to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, promised to encourage Russian tourists to visit the complex.

The resort, which can accommodate nearly 20,000 people, is at the center of Kim’s push to boost tourism to improve his country’s troubled economy.

North Korea has been slowly easing the curbs imposed during the pandemic and reopening its borders in phases. But the country hasn’t said if it would fully resume international tourism.

Regular flights between Russia’s eastern port city of Vladivostok and Pyongyang reopened in 2023 following a break caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Russia and North Korea have sharply expanded military and other ties in recent years, with Pyongyang supplying weapons and troops to back Russia’s military action in Ukraine.


UK police name victims of Manchester synagogue attack

UK police name victims of Manchester synagogue attack
Updated 59 min 24 sec ago

UK police name victims of Manchester synagogue attack

UK police name victims of Manchester synagogue attack

LONDON: British police on Friday named the two men killed in an attack on a Manchester synagogue as Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66, who were both local residents.
The men were killed on Thursday when a man drove a car into pedestrians and then began stabbing them outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in the city in northern England.
The attacker, since named as Jihad Al-Shamie, a 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent, was shot dead at the scene by armed officers.
“My deepest sympathies are with Mr.Daulby and Mr.Cravitz’s loved ones at this extremely hard time,” said Detective Chief Superintendent Lewis Hughes in a statement.


India, China to resume direct flights after 5-year suspension

India, China to resume direct flights after 5-year suspension
Updated 03 October 2025

India, China to resume direct flights after 5-year suspension

India, China to resume direct flights after 5-year suspension
  • Direct flights between both nations were suspended during Covid pandemic and didn’t resume as they engaged in prolonged border tensions
  • Flights between designated cities will resume by late October subject to commercial carriers’ decisions, the Indian embassy to China said

BEIJING: India and China plan to resume direct flights between some of their cities after a five-year suspension as the relations between the two countries begin to thaw, Indian authorities announced Thursday.

Direct flights between the two countries were suspended during the Covid pandemic in 2020 and did not resume as Beijing and New Delhi engaged in prolonged border tensions.

Flights between designated cities will resume by late October subject to commercial carriers’ decisions, India’s embassy to China said in a post on social media platform WeChat.

The resumption is part of the Indian government’s “approach toward gradual normalization of relations between India and China,” the embassy added.

India’s largest carrier IndiGo announced Thursday it would resume flights from Kolkata, India, to Guangzhou, China, beginning Oct. 26.

The resumption comes after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited China last month for the first time in seven years to attend a regional security forum, which was part of efforts by the two countries to normalize ties.

Relations between China and India plummeted in 2020 after security forces clashed along a disputed border in the Himalayan mountains. Four Chinese soldiers and 20 Indian soldiers were killed in the worst violence in decades, freezing high-level political engagements.


Indonesia free meals program under fire after thousands sickened

Indonesia free meals program under fire after thousands sickened
Updated 03 October 2025

Indonesia free meals program under fire after thousands sickened

Indonesia free meals program under fire after thousands sickened
  • Indonesian families whose children were offered free school meals are joining non-profit groups calling for the flagship government program to be suspended after thousands of students fell ill

JAKARTA: Indonesian families whose children were offered free school meals are joining non-profit groups calling for the flagship government program to be suspended after thousands of students fell ill from the food.
Cases of food poisoning spiked last week in West Bandung, a district of Java island, when more than 1,300 children were rushed to health clinics after suffering from breathing difficulties, nausea and diarrhea, local media reported.
President Prabowo Subianto’s initiative was touted as a way to tackle a child nutrition crisis but the government has instead had to suspend dozens of production kitchens.
“This program should be stopped and replaced with cash,” said 50-year-old grandmother Aminah, who goes by one name and whose seven-year-old grandson got sick after a free meal.
“I’d rather the kids bring their own lunch from home.”
The disastrous rollout comes as Prabowo is working to move on from violent anti-government protests fueled by deep inequality in Indonesia, where stunting spurred by malnutrition affects more than 20 percent of children.
But nine months after the program began, food poisoning cases have affected thousands of people, prompting mounting calls from non-profit groups for a temporary halt to the multi-billion-dollar scheme.
In West Bandung, students wailed in pain as they were hooked up to oxygen tanks in a temporary health clinic set up by local government to handle the surge in food poisonings, an AFP journalist saw.
The National Nutrition Agency (BGN), which is responsible for the initiative, reported 70 food poisoning incidents since the program began in January until late September.
More than 6,400 people are affected, the agency said in an update on Wednesday.
The reported cases were the “tip of the iceberg,” said Diah Satyani Saminarsih, founder of the non-profit Center for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives.
“The actual number of cases could be higher because the government has not yet provided a publicly available reporting dashboard,” Diah said.
Part of the problem was the government’s rapid expansion of the program, she added.
Rapid expansion
The government initially aimed to deliver meals to almost 83 million people by 2029, including students, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers, but now says the target will be reached by the end of 2025.
The nutrition agency expanded the number of production kitchens from around 1,000 in April to more than 9,600 by late September.
The number of beneficiaries grew from three million to 31 million over the same period.
The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dadan Hindayana, chair of the nutrition agency, said in a statement on Sunday that most of the cases occurred in newly operating kitchens where cooks lacked experience.
The food poisoning incidents were also caused by the quality of raw materials, water and violations of operational standards, he said.
Prabowo’s administration has allocated 62 cents per meal and set a budget of 71 trillion rupiah ($4.2 billion) for 2025.
Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa said last week that the government had prepared an additional budget of 28 trillion rupiah requested by the agency, local media reported.
Prabowo defended the program in a televised speech on Monday, saying cases of food poisoning incidents were long a small percentage of the number of meals served.
“We calculated from all the food that went out, the deviation, or shortcoming or error is 0.00017 percent,” he said.
He added that all kitchens involved in the program were ordered to test foods before distribution.
Calls for suspension
It was “very urgent” for the program to be suspended given the number of people who fell ill, said Izzudin Al Farras, a researcher at the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance.
Ubaid Matraji, a researcher at the Network for Education Watch, said the program should be suspended before matters worsen.
“We stress that we will no longer wait until we have thousands more victims — we cannot let death happen,” he said.
The nutrition agency suspended 56 kitchens allegedly responsible for “food safety incidents,” it said in a statement Monday.
Nanik S. Deyang, the agency’s deputy chair, said the suspension was part of a “comprehensive evaluation” to prevent similar incidents from recurring.
“The safety of the people, especially children who receive the free nutritious meals, is our top priority,” she said.


Gaza crisis features in march remembering 1968 Mexican massacre

Gaza crisis features in march remembering 1968 Mexican massacre
Updated 03 October 2025

Gaza crisis features in march remembering 1968 Mexican massacre

Gaza crisis features in march remembering 1968 Mexican massacre
  • The annual march in Mexico City to commemorate the 1968 student massacre has been overshadowed by demands to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza

MEXICO CITY: The annual march to commemorate the 1968 massacre of protesting students in Mexico’s capital was eclipsed Thursday by demands to end a humanitarian crisis halfway around the world in Gaza.
The Oct. 2 march that has regularly been used not only to remember that earlier massacre, but also Mexico’s tens of thousands of other missing and abuses of authority, was this year full of Palestinian flags and signs demanding an end to Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
“We feel empathy not only for ours, for those our grandparents died for, but for all men and women around the world who are suffering what at one time we suffered,” said Edgar López, a 23-year-old economics student, who marched with a Palestinian flag on his back.
Protesters marched from the Tlatelolco plaza where in 1968 Mexican troops attacked students demanding an end to Mexico’s militarization and greater freedoms, leaving a never established death toll believed to be in the hundreds, to the capital’s central plaza.
While much of the march was peaceful some groups vandalized storefronts and threw objects, including Molotov cocktails, at the hundreds of police guarding the National Palace.
Mexico City officials estimated the march drew 10,000 people and authorities said there were about 350 who were masked and acting aggressively.
AP journalists saw at least three other journalists attacked by police and protesters, and a police officer cornered and attacked by protesters.
Local press reported at least six injured police, but authorities did not immediately confirm that number.
A smaller spontaneous protest had broken out in the capital the previous night after Israel detained members of a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid. Among those detained were six Mexicans.
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said earlier Thursday that her administration had demanded their immediate repatriation.


Munich airport halts flights after drone sightings

Munich airport halts flights after drone sightings
Updated 03 October 2025

Munich airport halts flights after drone sightings

Munich airport halts flights after drone sightings

BERLIN: Germany’s Munich airport halted flights after several drone sightings, a police spokesperson told AFP early Friday, the latest in a string of similar aviation disruptions across Europe.
The airport said in a statement that 17 flights departing Munich were canceled on Thursday night, affecting nearly 3,000 passengers, and 15 flights due to land were diverted to other cities, including Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Vienna and Frankfurt.
Affected passengers in Munich were offered camp beds, blankets, drinks and snacks, the statement added.
It did not specify when flights will resume.
Several people spotted drones around the airport at about 1930 GMT Thursday, and again an hour later, leading to the closure of both runways for an hour, the police spokesperson told AFP.
German authorities have launched a search to identify the origin of the drones.
Police helicopters were deployed but “no information is available on the type and number of drones,” the spokesperson said.
The incident comes ahead of the final weekend of Germany’s Oktoberfest, which draws hundreds of thousands of people every day to Munich.
Germany is on high alert over the threat of drones after sightings in other European countries caused airports to shut down including in Copenhagen, Oslo and Warsaw.
Poland and Denmark have suggested that Russia is to blame for the disruptions.
The 27 EU member states met in Copenhagen on Thursday to discuss bolstering the bloc’s defenses with the establishment of a “drone wall.”
German authorities have warned of a growing drone threat, saying a swarm of drones had flown over the country last week, including over military and industrial sites.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said Germany needed to “find new responses to this hybrid threat” — including potentially shooting down the drones.