A team of American officials was in North Korea on Monday to discuss a historic summit between Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump, raising expectations that the meeting called off last week might still happen.

“Our United States team has arrived in North Korea to make arrangements for the summit between Kim Jong Un and myself,” Trump tweeted late on Sunday.

“I truly believe North Korea has brilliant potential and will be a great economic and financial Nation one day. Kim Jong Un agrees with me on this. It will happen!”

What next for North Korea?
Both the US state department and South Korea’s foreign ministry said officials were in discussions at the Korean village of Panmunjom, which straddles the border in the demilitarised zone (DMZ).

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tapped veteran American diplomat Sung Kim, the US ambassador to the Philippines, to lead the US delegation to Pyongyang to handle pre-summit negotiations.

Sung, who is of Korean descent, had served as the US ambassador to Seoul and was part of the US team that negotiated during the six-party talks with North Korea.

On Monday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency also reported that a senior North Korean official had arrived in Beijing, apparently on his way to Singapore for pre-summit talks.

A team of US officials, led by White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, is also reportedly travelling to Singapore to help plan the June 12 meeting.

Trump cancelled the planned summit in Singapore on Thursday, only to change his mind a day later.

Surprise meeting
South Korean President Moon Jae-in gave details about a surprise meeting on Saturday with Kim in Panmunjom, saying North Korea’s leader committed to sitting down with Trump and to “complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula”.

On Monday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that Moon could also make a trip to Singapore for a possible three-way summit with Trump and Kim around June 12.

An unnamed South Korean presidential official said a three-way meeting depends on the outcome of the ongoing discussions between Washington and Pyongyang.

Donald Trump – US-North Korea summit back on for June 12
“The discussions are just getting started, so we are still waiting to see how they come out, but depending on their outcome, the president could join President Trump and Chairman Kim in Singapore,” Yonhap quoted the official as saying.

Moon and Kim reportedly first proposed a three-way summit during their first-ever meeting at the border village of Panmunjom on April 27.

The talks, which Moon said Kim had requested, capped a whirlwind 24 hours of diplomatic back and forth.

While maintaining that Kim is committed to denuclearisation, Moon acknowledged Pyongyang and Washington might have different expectations of what that means, and he urged both sides to hold working-level talks to resolve their differences.

American officials are skeptical that Kim will ever entirely abandon his nuclear weapons, and Moon said North Korea is not yet convinced it can trust security guarantees from the US.

Robert Kelly, a professor of international relations at Pusan National University, said Trump should lay out what the US is specifically looking for, instead of demanding that Pyongyang give up everything.

“They [North Koreans] would not do that,” he told Al Jazeera, adding the Trump administration does not have a grand diplomatic strategy ahead of the talks.

“Assuming that the North Koreans aren’t going to give up all of it, what would be the United States willing to live with, and what would they give the North Koreans in return,” Kelly said.

He said it could take years before the parties would be able to fulfil the concessions and counter-concessions, adding that it would be “extraordinary” if negotiations “would wrap up in the next three weeks”.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said a brain injury sustained by an American official in a “sonic attack” in China was similar to those that affected US and Canadian diplomats in Cuba.

Pompeo’s remarks on Wednesday came hours after the US embassy in China issued a health warning to Americans living in the country an “unusual” auditory or sensory phenomena.

The embassy said a US government employee in the southern city of Guangzhou reported experiencing a “subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure”, which led to a mild brain injury.

Pompeo told the House Foreign Affairs Committee the “sonic attack” in China was similar to the incidents in Cuba last year.

“The medical indications are very similar and entirely consistent with the medical indications that have taken place to Americans working in Cuba,” he said.

The US was moving medical teams to the area to work on the case, he said.

“We are working to figure out what took place both in Havana and now in China as well,” Pompeo said.

In Washington for talks with Pompeo, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the US should avoid politicising the case.

“We don’t want to see that this individual case would be magnified, complicated or even politicised,” Wang told reporters.

“China has been investigating this matter in a very responsible manner. We haven’t found that any organisation or individual has carried out such a sonic influence.”

He suggested the US carry out an “internal” probe into the case.

‘Variety of symptoms’

Washington expels 15 Cuban diplomats over ‘sonic attacks’ (2:50)
Heather Nauert, the state department spokeswoman, said the US embassy learned on Friday that the Guangzhou employee showed concussion symptoms after medical testing.

That is the same clinical finding doctors treating the Cuba patients at the University of Philadelphia found.

The Guangzhou worker started experiencing “a variety of symptoms” starting in late 2017 that lasted through April this year, Nauert said.

The worker was sent to the US for further evaluation, she added.

In Cuba last year, 24 diplomats and their family members were left with mysterious injuries resembling brain trauma, which were suspected of being caused by a “sonic attack”.

Ten Canadian diplomats and their relatives also suffered similar illnesses.

The still-unexplained incidents sparked a rift in US-Cuban relations, while investigators have chased theories including a sonic attack, an electromagnetic weapon, or a flawed spying device.

Symptoms, sounds and sensations reportedly varied dramatically from person to person, according to The Associated Press.

Some have permanent hearing loss or concussions, while others suffered nausea, headaches and ear-ringing. Some struggle with concentration or common word recall.

In Washington for talks with Pompeo, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the US should avoid politicising the case.

“We don’t want to see that this individual case would be magnified, complicated or even politicised,” Wang told reporters.

“China has been investigating this matter in a very responsible manner. We haven’t found that any organisation or individual has carried out such a sonic influence.”

He suggested the US carry out an “internal” probe into the case.

Aljazeera

North Korea will reconsider the planned summit with the US if Washington sticks to “unlawful and outrageous acts,” Pyongyang’s Vice Foreign Minister said on Thursday.

In a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Choe Son-hui said that whether the June 12 summit between its leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump will happen as scheduled entirely rests on the decision and behaviour of Washington, reports Yonhap News Agency.

“Whether the US will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behaviour of the US,” Choe said.

“In case the US offends against our goodwill and clings to unlawful and outrageous acts, I will put forward a suggestion to our supreme leadership for reconsidering the summit,” she added.

The threat came after South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Trump held a summit in Washington on Tuesday where the latter suggested the summit with the North might not take place on June 12.

North Korea has ramped up criticism of the US for forcing “unilateral” denuclearisation.

The Trump administration maintains that it seeks the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear programme, with no promise of concessions until that process is in motion.

The North reportedly wants a phased and synchronous approach.

Choe singled out US Vice President Mike Pence and slammed him for mentioning a Libya-style approach and military option against the North in a recent media interview.

“US Vice-President Pence has made unbridled and impudent remarks that North Korea might end like Libya, military option for North Korea never came off the table, the US needs complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearisation, and so on,” she said.

“As a person involved in the US affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US Vice-President.”

Pyongyang last week suspended its contacts with Seoul and altered the cordial tone used in recent months with South Korea and the US.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi as part of an informal summit between the two countries.

“Russia is India’s old-time friend. We share long-standing historical ties, and Mr. President is my personal friend and a friend of India,” Modi said at the meeting, aimed at underscoring close ties.

“For the past four years, you and I stood side by side in the bilateral format and on the international stage… I am very glad that it was so,” Modi told Putin.

The Russian president reciprocated with similar sentiments, stressing the important role the two countries play in maintaining global stability.

“Last year, our trade saw a significant increase, adding another 17 percent since the beginning of this year,” Putin said.

Major international issues were the focus of the talks between the two leaders.

“The main driver of this meeting is the geopolitical environment prevailing today,” PS Raghavan, chief of India’s national security advisory board,

“The primary purpose of Modi’s Russia trip would be to discuss the evolving geopolitical situation and to understand each other’s perspective – to be able to see how we can both deal with situations in common interest,” said Raghavan, who was also a former Indian envoy to Russia.
New Delhi’s overtures towards Moscow come at a time when India is facing the heat of a US trade war through hefty import tariffs.

The aggressive new approach towards Iran adopted by the administration of US President Donald Trump is also upsetting India’s carefully laid plans in Tehran, including operations at a strategic port in which India has pledged to invest $500m.

Reinvigorating ties
Earlier this month, Modi sent his top emissaries to Russia in what analysts say are moves aimed at reinvigorating ties with a traditional ally after a brief period of coolness.

Top Indian officials were sent to Moscow ahead of Modi’s trip. This included a three-day trip by India’s Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last month.

India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale also held talks with top Russian officials, NSA Nikolai Pathrushev and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on May 10.

“The Moscow-New Delhi ties were never hostage to a third country despite the perception to the contrary,” said Nitin Gokhale, a national security analyst based in New Delhi.

We would like to continue with our partnerships with both Russia and Iran. And we would like to do so by not impacting our partnership with the US
PS RAGHAVAN, CHIEF OF NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISORY BOARD

“What New Delhi is essentially doing is to reaffirm the long-standing robust relationship between the two and continue to support each other on crucial geopolitical matters like Iran and BRICS [an association of five emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa].”

The meetings between Indian and Russian officials are aimed at “reaffirming an old partnership” even as geopolitical realities in the region are changing again.

As the right-wing government of Prime Minister Modi pursued closer ties with Washington since it came to power in 2014, relations between India and Russia had taken a back-seat.

Trump’s America-first policy
A report in Russian business daily, Kommersant, in November last year said Moscow was miffed with India reportedly allowing US forces access to a Russian-built nuclear-powered submarine that is currently on lease to the Indian navy. The report quoted Russian officials considering these as “unfriendly acts towards Russia”.

“The last thing Moscow wants to do is to alienate India now, even though India’s participation in certain military exercises with the US was certainly received without much joy in Moscow,” Dmitry Babich, a Russian political analyst based in Moscow, told Al Jazeera.

“So, even though Moscow may have felt bitter about Modi’s rapprochement with the US, Russian officials never made any remarks that could be interpreted in India as hostile or even critical,” he said.

“Russia is seeking new partners but Russia does not want to lose old ones,” he added.

Moscow has long been the main supplier of military equipment to India, but in recent years, New Delhi has been inching towards the US and Israel for weapons supply.

But with Trump’s America-first policy – as part of which the US has slapped new trade tariffs affecting Indian and Chinese firms, New Delhi is working to improve its relations with Russia and China.

In April, Indian Defence Minister Sitharaman, in an address at a security conference in Moscow said, “Russia has re-established its role and influence in global strategic and defence matters”.

India is friends with and trades extensively with Russia and Iran that are currently facing American sanctions.

New Delhi, one of the biggest buyers of Iranian crude, will have to find measures to nullify the effect of US sanctions on Iran, which would certainly be high on the agenda of talks between Modi and Putin, experts say.

India-Russia ties
India is also battling to avoid a law the US government signed last year imposing sanctions on those who do business with Russia’s military and intelligence sectors.

The law known as the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) threatens to impinge on India’s massive defence trade with Russia.

Russian military hardware accounted for 62 percent of India’s total weapons imports during the past five years, the Stockholm Peace Research Institute said in a report this year.

India is also in talks with Russia to buy five S-400 long-range surface-to-air missile systems, the Interfax news agency reported, a possible deal that could face rough weather under the new US sanctions.

The top adviser to the Indian government said India will defend its trade interests with both Russia and Iran.

“We have a very extensive energy and defence relationship with Russia. It’s not a tap, which you can switch off. Russia still has the lion’s share in our defence imports as compared to the US,” Raghavan told Al Jazeera.

Washington will have to take this into account, he argued.

India’s relations with the US have also been hit by trade frictions. New Delhi is still waiting for an exemption from higher tariffs on steel and aluminum imports announced by the Trump administration.

The US is also imposing tougher visa rules that targets India’s information technology industry.

New Delhi-Beijing thaw
Daniel Chirot, Professor of International Studies at the University of Washington, said the Trump administration “believes it can bully other countries into acceding to its demands, even if those are often mistaken”.

“The Trump administration is oblivious to the harm it is doing to relations with friendly allies,” Chirot told Al Jazeera.

These irritants in the Indo-US relationship could fuel some rethink in Indian foreign policy, according to analysts.

Some signs of this are already visible – the trips to Russia from key Modi aides as well as an olive branch to neighbouring China.

“The New Delhi-Beijing thaw is a bilateral necessity again because of a fluid global order,” national security analyst Gokhale.

The Indian prime minister flew to China to hold informal talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping last month after a border standoff last year. The trip showed that Delhi has “essentially entered the shadow trade war between the US and China on China’s side”, wrote Mihir Sharma, senior fellow at the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation.

Both these informal outreach trips of the Indian prime minister – earlier to China and now to Russia – are part of the “flurry of consultations between world leaders to discuss this geopolitical environment that exists today”, said Indian government adviser Raghavan.

“We are witness to a very acrimonious standoff between the US and Russia which has gone on to levels that didn’t prevail even during the Cold War. These anti-Russia sanctions have an extra-territorial applicability – this draws in everybody,” he said.

“There are decisions that countries take in their national interest. It is your business in protection of your national interest to see whether you can change, amend it, work around it,” he added referring to the US sanctions.

On Monday, Modi tweeted to say he was “confident” talks with Putin would boost the special ties between the two countries.

Deepening Russian and Indian economic ties stretch back to the Soviet era. Last year was witness to the biggest foreign acquisition ever in India – Russian oil major Rosneft closed their $12.9bn purchase of Indian refiner Essar Oil.

Strategically, Russia has facilitated India’s membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and endorsed India’s long-held demand for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. Moscow is also pushing for India’s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a club of countries controlling access to sensitive nuclear technology.

The Chief of India’s National Security Advisory Board, Raghavan, however, said India would continue to walk a tightrope between Moscow and Washington.

“We would like to continue with our partnerships with both Russia and Iran. And we would like to do so by not impacting our partnership with the US,” he said.

Aljazeera

Twenty-four years after he left his home in Pakistan, Siraj Khan, 34, was forcibly returned to Mansehra – in the country’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa region – on March 10.

Khan was detained on December 5, 2017, by Indian authorities because he didn’t have proper immigration documents.

His childhood home had changed. The 2005 earthquake had wiped out the aging structures, making room for new unrecognizable ones.

Khan’s father died after years of waiting to embrace his son after he vanished. His mother, meanwhile, suffered a psychological breakdown. But the family reunion, which should have been joyous, was incomplete. Khan was compelled to leave his wife and children behind in India’s commercial capital, Mumbai.

“After spending three months in illegal detention at a Mumbai police station, the cops packed me off to Pakistan without a notice,” he told Al Jazeera.

“They made me board a train and 16 hours later, when we reached Delhi, I was told I was being deported. In an instant, I went to pieces.”

With Khan’s deportation, his 39-year-old Indian wife Sajida was left alone in Mumbai to fend for her three children. Educated only until class nine, she has taken to bracelet-making and earns $1.50 a day. Most of the money, she said, is spent on food.

‘Bundled off’
Since bus fare is unaffordable, her children – Zara, 12, and twin sons Inayat and Ejaz, 7 – walk 3km to school every day.

“Even as our plea for my husband’s Indian citizenship and for a stay against his deportation is pending, he was bundled off to Pakistan. He has lived in India for 24 years, built a life here as a lawful citizen. Doesn’t that count for anything?” asked Sajida.

Sajida and her two sons
“And what about us?” she continued, seated on the only piece of furniture in her small home as her sons placed their tiny hands on her shoulders to comfort her.

“Abbu [father] has promised he’ll return soon,” Inayat insisted.

Khan, who worked as a waiter with a Mumbai-based caterer before his arrest, accidentally entered India when he was 10. Afraid of a beating from his father over a failed exam, he fled home and boarded the Samjhauta Express – unaware the train would bring him to India’s capital, New Delhi.

A family noticed him sobbing at the railway platform and took him home. After three months of trying to identify his kin, they gave him some money and he went off on his own.

“He lived off Delhi streets thereafter, doing odd jobs for a living – sweeping, washing utensils. Around three years later, he was picked up as a runaway child and lodged in a children’s shelter in the western Indian state of Gujarat.

“He spent two years there till a wall of the shelter collapsed, and he was among 40 teenagers to flee. Thereafter, he came to Mumbai,” Sajida explained.

Starting a family
Doing low-paying work in Mumbai, Khan rented a room in the city’s eastern suburbs – where the family still lives. Through a neighbour, he met Sajida and married her in 2005.

With his monthly earnings of $161, the couple had a “difficult, but peaceful” life until 2009, when Khan tried to take his family to Pakistan for Eid al-Fitr.

After immigration authorities learned he was not an Indian citizen, Khan was charged under The Foreigners Act, 1946 for staying illegally in India.

“He was kept in police custody for two months. At the time, I was six months pregnant with my daughter. When I’d visit my husband at the police station, cops would tell me to let go of him or else I’d be jailed as well, and my child would be born behind bars,” said Sajida.

In 2014, Khan was convicted of illegally staying in India and imprisoned for six months pending deportation.

Sajida then filed a plea with Mumbai’s high court calling for a stay of his removal. The court accepted her appeal, noting Khan’s application seeking Indian citizenship was still before the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. Despite the ruling, Khan was deported last month.

Legal right
According to his supporters, he is legally entitled to remain in the country.

“As per The Citizenship Act, 1955, any foreigner who has married an Indian and lived in India for seven years can avail citizenship. We sent an application under this rule to the central government in 2014. But there has been no response despite follow-ups,” said activist Imran Khan, 36, who has been helping the family.

Sajida filed a new petition with the high court seeking her husband’s return. It stated in Khan’s absence his family in India will be “forced to starve”.

Indian authorities, however, said they’re only following the rules.

“Khan may deserve Indian citizenship on humanitarian grounds, but we’re only following the law,” said Bhagwat Bansod, senior Mumbai police inspector, who oversaw Khan’s return to Pakistan.

“His deportation was facilitated following orders from the central government.”

Khan, meanwhile, said he only wants to be with his family.

“Had I been an influential man, politicians would be at my home, finalizing my Indian citizenship over a cup of tea. But I’m not that privileged. All I want is to live with my family – in India or Pakistan,” he said.

 

Aljazeera

Palestinians rallied in Gaza on Tuesday for the funerals of scores of people killed by Israeli troops a day earlier, while on the Gaza-Israel border, Israeli forces took up positions to deal with the expected final day of a Palestinian protest campaign.

Monday’s violence on the border, which took place as the United States opened its new embassy in Jerusalem, was the bloodiest for Palestinians since the 2014 Gaza conflict.

The death toll rose to 60 overnight after an eight-month-old baby died from tear gas that her family said she inhaled at a protest camp on Monday. More than 2,200 Palestinians were also injured by gunfire or tear gas.

Palestinian leaders have called Monday’s events a massacre, and the Israeli tactic of using live fire against the protesters has drawn worldwide concern and condemnation.

Israel has said it is acting in self-defence to defend its borders and communities. Its main ally the United States has backed that stance, with both saying that Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the coastal enclave, instigated the violence.

There were fears of further bloodshed on Tuesday as Palestinians planned a further protest to mark the “Nakba”, or “Catastrophe”.

That is the day Palestinians lament the creation of Israel in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in violence culminating in war between the newly created Jewish state and its Arab neighbours in 1948.

A six-week campaign of border protests dubbed “The Great March of Return” has revived calls for refugees to have the right of return to their former lands, which now lie inside Israel.

It was unclear whether large crowds would turn up at the border on Tuesday for the climax to the campaign after the heavy fatalities suffered on Monday.

Palestinian medical officials say that 104 Gazans have now died since the start of the protests on March 30. No Israeli casualties have been reported.

Israeli troops deployed along the border again on Tuesday. The area was relatively quiet early in the day, with many Gazans at the funerals. Protesters are expected to go to the border later.

In Geneva, the UN human rights office condemned what it called the “appalling deadly violence” by Israeli forces and said it was extremely worried about what might happen later.

UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said Israel had a right to defend its borders according to international law, but lethal force must only be used a last resort, and was not justified by Palestinians approaching the Gaza fence.

More than 2 million people are crammed into the narrow Gaza Strip, which is blockaded by Egypt and Israel and suffering a humanitarian crisis.
YOUNG VICTIM

At the Gaza hospital where the body of eight-month-old Laila al-Ghandour was being prepared for burial, her grandmother said the child was at one of the tented protest encampments that have been set up a few hundred yards inside the border.

“We were at the tent camp east of Gaza when the Israelis fired lots of tear gas,” Heyam Omar said.

“Suddenly my son cried at me that Lolo was weeping and screaming. I took her further away. When we got back home, the baby stopped crying and I thought she was asleep. I took her to the children’s hospital and the doctor told me she was martyred (dead).”

Most of the protesters stay around the tent camps, but groups of youths have ventured closer to the no-go zone along the fence, risking live fire from Israeli troops to roll burning tyres and throw stones.

Some have flown kites carrying containers of petrol that have spread fires on the Israeli side.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered a general strike across the Palestinian Territories on Tuesday and three days of national mourning.

Monday’s protests were fired by the opening ceremony for the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem following its relocation from Tel Aviv. The move fulfilled a pledge by US President Donald Trump, who in December recognised the contested city as the Israeli capital.

Palestinians envision East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they hope to establish in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel regards all of Jerusalem, including the eastern sector it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move that is not recognised internationally, as its “eternal and indivisible capital”.

Most countries say the status of Jerusalem – a sacred city to Jews, Muslims and Christians – should be determined in a final peace settlement and that moving their embassies now would prejudge any such deal.

Netanyhau praised Trump’s decisions but Palestinians have said the United States can no longer serve as an honest broker in any peace process. Talks aimed a finding a two-state solution to the conflict have been frozen since 2014.

Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the Gaza violence. Hamas denied instigating it but the White House-backed Netanyahu.

“The responsibility for these tragic deaths rests squarely with Hamas. Hamas is intentionally and cynically provoking this response,” White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters.

Trump, in a recorded message on Monday, said he remained committed to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. He was represented at the embassy ceremony by his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, US envoy to the Middle East.

The Trump administration says it has nearly completed a new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan but is undecided on how and when to roll it out.

The United States on Monday blocked a Kuwait-drafted UN Security Council statement that would have expressed “outrage and sorrow at the killing of Palestinian civilians” and called for an independent investigation, UN diplomats said.

North Korea has started to dismantle its nuclear test site, which it had pledged to close down after the inter-Korean summit on April 27, according to media reports on Tuesday.

“Commercial satellite imagery from May 7 provided the first definitive evidence that dismantlement of the test site was already well underway,” Efe news agency reported citing the 38 North website report that published and analysed satellite images of the site.

Pyongyang had announced it would publicly dismantle its Punggye-ri nuclear facility between May 23 and 25 by destroying the tunnels in the complex with explosions, blocking entrances and removing observation areas, research centres, and security structures.

According to the report, many key operational support buildings have been razed since their last analysis.

Some of the rails and mining carts used for excavation of the tunnels in the complex have also been dismantled and other small buildings have been removed.

During the summit, Pyongyang had pledged to work for a complete denuclearisation of the peninsula, having promised to stop its weapons tests earlier.

The commitments came ahead of a summit to be held between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the US President Donald Trump to discuss a possible end to Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

North Korea has carried out six underground nuclear tests–including the last and most powerful one in September 2017–at the Punggye-ri site.

A number of analysts have doubted North Korea’s commitment to the denuclearisation, citing the example of 2008, when Pyongyang publicly dismantled parts of its uranium reprocessing plant but kept developing its nuclear programme.

A petition was submitted in the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday to register a treason case against ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif following his controversial remarks on 2008 Mumbai attacks.

The petition, filed by political party Pakistan Awaami Tehreek’s (PAT) Khurram Nawaz Gandapur, stated that Sharif’s statement was against national security and state institutions. “Nawaz Sharif’s statement is tantamount to treason. Instructions should be given to register a treason case against him,” it said.

Federal Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal was also mentioned as a respondent in the petition apart from Sharif, the Express Tribune reported.

The former Prime Minister during an interview to Dawn on May 12 had admitted that “militant organisations were active in Pakistan” and “such terror strikes (26/11) could have been prevented”. At least 166 Indians and foreigners were killed in the bloodbath.

“Call them non-state actors, should we allow them to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai? Explain it to me,” he had said, in a clear reference to the Mumbai killings blamed on 10 Pakistani terrorists. One of them was caught and hanged.

“We have isolated ourselves. Despite sacrifices, our narrative is not being accepted. Afghanistan’s narrative is being accepted, but ours is not. We must look into it,” he added.

Later, Sharif faced a volley of criticism for his remarks. Opposition parties, including the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), launched a broadside against him, calling him a “security threat”.

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz stalwart Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the former Interior Minister, did not endorse Sharif’s statement. He held India responsible for the delay in the trial of the Mumbai attack suspects.

Following this, a National Security Committee was also held to discuss Sharif’s “misleading” statement.

The top brass of military leadership, including Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Zubair Mahmood Hayat and Director General Inter-Services Intelligence Lt. Gen. Naveed Mukhtar attended the meeting, held at the Prime Minister House.

Over 8,000 people were affected as heavy rains caused flash floods in Sri Lanka’s Galle and Kalutara districts, the Disaster Management Centre said on Monday.

Several people were evacuated from their homes due to the heavy downpour on Sunday but as the rains ceased by Monday morning, the situation was normalising, Disaster Management Centre’s spokesperson Pradeep Kodippilli was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

He said no casualties or damages were reported but those living in low areas were urged to be vigilant. More rains were expected on Monday night.

Sri Lanka’s Meteorological Department said showers or thundershowers would occur over most provinces of the island country by Monday evening.

Heavy falls was also expected at some places, particularly in Central, Sabaragamuwa, Southern, Uva and Western provinces and in Polonnaruwa and Vauniya districts.

The monsoons, which hit Sri Lanka in May 2017, caused heavy flooding and landslides in several districts resulting in over 200 deaths while thousands were displaced.

Seven people were found dead on Friday at a rural property in Western Australia (WA), police said.

The bodies of four children and three adults were discovered in the town of Osmington, 280km south of state capital Perth, reports the BBC.

The cause of death is not ascertained but the police have confirmed that two firearms were found at the scene.

“The bodies of two adults were located outside (and) five bodies were located inside a building on the rural property,” said WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson.

If confirmed to be a mass shooting, it would be Australia’s worst since a massacre in Tasmania claimed the lives of 35 people in 1996.

Dawson said the police would launch a large-scale investigation, and were contacting relatives of the victims.

Osmington is a sparsely populated town about 20km from Margaret River, a popular tourism area.