Barack Obama was grossly incompetent president: Donald Trump

Vienna, Apr 13: Top oil-producing countries agreed on "historic" output cuts to prop up prices hammered by the coronavirus crisis and a Russia-Saudi price war, sending crude prices soaring on Monday.

The US benchmark WTI climbed 7.7 percent to $24.52 a barrel in early Asian trade while Brent was up 5.0 percent at $33.08.

OPEC producers dominated by Saudi Arabia and allies led by Russia thrashed out a compromise deal via videoconference Sunday after Mexico had balked at an earlier agreement struck on Friday.

In the compromise reached Sunday they agreed to a cut of 9.7 million barrels per day from May, according to Mexican Energy Minister Rocio Nahle, down slightly from 10 million barrels a day envisioned earlier.

OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo called the cuts "historic".

"They are largest in volume and the longest in duration, as they are planned to last for two years," he said.

The agreement between the Vienna-based Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and partners foresees deep output cuts in May and June followed by a gradual reduction in cuts until April 2022.

Barkindo added that the deal "paved the way for a global alliance with the participation of the G20".

Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who chaired the meeting together with his Russian and Algerian counterparts, also confirmed that the discussions "ended with consensus".

Naypyitaw, Jul 2: A landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar has killed at least 113 people, officials say, warning the death toll is likely to rise further.

The incident took place early on Thursday in the jade-rich Hpakant area of Kachin state after a bout of heavy rainfall, the Myanmar Fire Services Department said on Facebook.

"The jade miners were smothered by a wave of mud," the statement said. "A total of 113 bodies have been found so far," it added, raising the death toll from at least 50.

Photos posted on the Facebook page showed a search and rescue team wading through a valley apparently flooded by the mudslide.

'No one could help them'

Maung Khaing, a 38-year-old miner from the area, said he saw a towering pile of waste that looked on the verge of collapse and was about to take a picture when people began shouting "run, run!"

"Within a minute, all the people at the bottom [of the hill] just disappeared," he told Reuters news agency by phone.

"I feel empty in my heart. I still have goosebumps ... There were people stuck in the mud shouting for help, but no one could help them."

Tar Lin Maung, a local official with the information ministry, said authorities had recovered more than 100 bodies.

"Other bodies are in the mud. The numbers are going to rise," he told Reuters.

Fatal landslides are common in the poorly regulated mines of Hpakant, the victims often from impoverished communities who risk their lives hunting the translucent green gemstone.

The government of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi pledged to clean up the industry when it took power in 2016, but activists say little has changed.

Official sales of jade in Myanmar were worth $750.4m in 2016-2017, according to data published by the government as part of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.

But experts believe the true value of the industry, which mainly exports to China, is much larger.

Northern Myanmar's abundant natural resources - including jade, timber, gold and amber - have also helped finance both sides of a decades-long conflict between ethnic Kachin and the military.

The fight to control the mines and the revenues they bring frequently traps local civilians in the middle.

Seoul, Jun 24: North Korea on Wednesday said leader Kim Jong Un suspended a planned military retaliation against South Korea, possibly slowing the pressure campaign it has waged against its rival amid stalled nuclear negotiations with the Trump administration.

Last week, the North had declared relations with the South as fully ruptured, destroyed an inter-Korean liaison office in its territory and threatened unspecified military action to censure Seoul for a lack of progress in bilateral cooperation and for activists floating anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.

Analysts say North Korea, after weeks deliberately raising tensions, may be pulling away just enough to make room for South Korean concessions.

Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said Kim presided by video conference over a meeting Tuesday of the ruling Workers' Party's Central Military Commission, which decided to postpone plans for military action against the South brought up by the North's military leaders.

KCNA didn't specify why the decision was made. It said other discussions included bolstering the country's "war deterrent".

Yoh Sang-key, spokesman of South Korea's Unification Ministry, said Seoul was "closely reviewing" the North's report but didn't further elaborate.

Yoh also said it was the first report in state media of Kim holding a video conferencing meeting, but he didn't provide a specific answer when asked whether that would have something to do with the coronavirus.

The North says there hasn't been a single COVID-19 case on its territory, but the claim is questioned by outside experts.

Kim Dong-yub, an analyst from Seoul's Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said it's likely that the North is waiting for further action from the South to salvage ties from what it sees as a position of strength, rather than softening its stance on its rival.

"What's clear is that the North said (the military action) was postponed, not cancelled," said Kim, a former South Korean military official who participated in inter-Korean military negotiations.

Other experts say the North would be seeking something major from the South, possibly a commitment to resume operations at a shuttered joint factory park in Kaesong, which was where the liaison office was located, or restart South Korean tours to the North's Diamond Mountain resort.

Those steps are prohibited by the international sanctions against the North over its nuclear weapons programme.

The public face of the North's recent bashing of the South has been Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, who has been confirmed as his top official on inter-Korean affairs.

Issuing harsh statements through state media, she had said the North's demolishing of the liaison office would be just the first in a series of retaliatory action against the enemy South and that she would leave it to the North's military to come up with the next steps.

The General Staff of the North's military has said it would send troops to the mothballed inter-Korean cooperation sites in Kaesong and Diamond Mountain and restart military drills in frontline areas.

Such steps would nullify a set of deals the Koreas reached during a flurry of diplomacy in 2018 that prohibited them from taking hostile action against each other.

Also condemning the South over North Korean refugees floating anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border, the North said Monday it printed 12 million of its own propaganda leaflets to be dropped over the South in what would be its largest ever anti-Seoul leafleting campaign.

It wasn't immediately clear whether Kim's decision to hold back military action would affect the country's plans for leafleting. The North's military had said it would open border areas on land and sea and provide protection for civilians involved in the leafleting campaigns.

The North has a history of dialling up pressure against the South when it fails to get what it wants from the United States. The North's recent steps came after months of frustration over Seoul's unwillingness to defy US-led sanctions and restart the inter-Korean economic projects that would breathe life into its broken economy.

Nuclear negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington largely stalled after Kim's second summit with President Donald Trump last year in Vietnam, where the Americans rejected North Korea's demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.