Kim Jong-un visits China in his first known overseas trip since taking power in North Korea in 2011: Report

Agencies
March 27, 2018

Beijing, Mar 27: North Korea leader Kim Jong-un has visited China, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing three unnamed sources, in what would be his first known overseas trip since taking power in 2011 and ahead of a potential summit with US president Donald Trump.

Details of his visit including its purpose and itinerary were not yet known, Bloomberg said. Japanese media reported earlier on Monday that a high-ranking Pyongyang official appeared to have arrived by train in Beijing.

Kyodo, citing sources close to the matter, said the visit of the official was intended to improve ties between Beijing and Pyongyang that have been frayed by North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and China’s backing of tough sanctions against North Korea at the United Nations Security Council.

The visit could not immediately be confirmed by news agency.

Footage from Nippon News Network, owned by Nippon TV, showed what an announcer described as a green train carriage with yellow horizontal lines, part of a 21-car train, similar to the kind that Kim’s late father, Kim Jong-il, rode when he visited Beijing in 2011.

Beijing has traditionally been the closest ally of secretive and isolated North Korea. But Kim is due to hold summit meetings separately with China’s rivals, South Korea and the United States.

“Such a visit would reflect China’s effort to get back in the game,” said Scott Snyder, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank. “Xi would not tolerate being third in line to meet Kim.”

Asked earlier at a daily news briefing about reports of an important North Korean visitor arriving at the Chinese border city of Dandong, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she was unaware of the situation.

Nobody answered the telephone at the North Korean embassy in Beijing on Monday evening.

“The government is closely communicating with relevant countries and monitoring the situation,” South Korea’s presidential Blue House said in a statement via a messaging app earlier on Monday.

Asked about the report that Kim was in China, White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters on Monday: “We can’t confirm those reports. We don’t know if they’re necessarily true.”

Kyodo, citing sources, reported that on Sunday, a special train that might have carried the official passed through Dandong. Two sources in northeastern China also told Reuters that a North Korean visitor had crossed into Dandong by train.

The rail journey between Dandong and Beijing covers more than 1,100 km (680 miles). It takes at least 14 hours by ordinary service, according to Chinese railway timetables.

Heavy security

On Chinese social media, some residents of Dandong said there had been high security around the train station there and said there were rumors that Kim was passing through.

Police tightened security along Beijing’s main east-west thoroughfare, Changan Avenue, mid-afternoon Monday, closing off the entrances to some of the buildings which face the road.

Police also cleared out all tourists from Tiananmen Square around the same time, which normally only happens when important meetings are happening in the Great Hall of the People, where top Chinese leaders often meet visiting heads of state.

There was a large security presence outside the Great Hall on Monday evening. Reuters reporters saw a lengthy motorcade, including a limousine with dark tinted windows, heading down Changan Avenue in the direction of the Diaoyutai State Guest House and away from the Great Hall of the People, flanked by a police escort on motor-bikes.

Also on Monday evening, the Beijing railway bureau warned on its microblog, without giving a reason, of multiple train delays of up to two hours in the Beijing region.

A source with ties to the Chinese military told Reuters that it was “not possible to rule out the possibility” that Kim was visiting Beijing, but cautioned this was not confirmed.

A diplomatic source told Reuters that there was heavy security around the Diaoyutai State Guest House, where some high level foreign visitors stay during visits to the city. Other diplomatic sources said they were aware of the speculation that Kim was visiting but were not able to immediately confirm it.

Visits to China by Kim Jong-il were only confirmed by both China and North Korea once he had left the country.

Kim Jong-il traveled by private train during his rare visits to China or Russia under tight security. Diplomats and other sources have said Kim Jong-il avoided flying for overseas trips due to security concerns.

The younger Kim, who was educated in Switzerland, is not known to have any fear of flying and state media have shown pictures of him aboard a plane. However, he is not known to have traveled outside the country since assuming power in late 2011 after his father’s death.

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News Network
June 10,2020

New Delhi, Jun 10: India on Wednesday reported a spike of 9,985 more COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the country's COVID-19 count to 2,76,583, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

279 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours taking the total death toll to 7,745.

The total number of active cases has reached 1,33,632 while 1,35,205 patients have recovered. While one person has migrated.

With 90,787 cases, Maharashtra reported the highest number of coronavirus cases in the country followed by Tamil Nadu with 34,914 cases.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), 1,45,216 samples were tested in the last 24 hours while overall 50,61,332 samples have been tested so far.

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Agencies
June 20,2020

Lucknow, Jun 20: A media body on Saturday described as "an act of intimidation" the filing of an FIR in Uttar Pradesh against a journalist over a report on the impact of the lockdown on a village, saying it was part of an "established pattern" of harassment of independent scribes.

In a statement, the Media Foundation put on record its strong protest over the FIR filed by the Uttar Pradesh government against Supriya Sharma, executive editor of news portal Scroll.in.

The case was filed against Sharma for allegedly misrepresenting facts in a report on the impact of the lockdown in a village adopted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, police sources had said on Thursday.

The FIR against Sharma and the Scroll editor-in-chief is an "an act of intimidation and a case of abuse of process", intended to discourage honest and critical reporting, the Media Foundation said.

The Media Foundation was started in 1979 with the aim of upholding freedom of speech, expression and information.

The FIR against Sharma is only the latest instance of similar coercive actions against professional journalists, part of "an established pattern of harassment and humiliation of independent journalists", it said,

"It is an unacceptable encroachment on press freedom," said the foundation, whose chairperson is veteran journalist Harish Khare.

The Media Foundation called upon the judiciary, and central and state governments to uphold the spirit of freedom of speech and expression as guaranteed in the Constitution.

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True Indian
 - 
Sunday, 21 Jun 2020

people who speak truth will be send to jail and the people who speak lie will get award..we dont understant which religion they following...may be they following devil religion of RSS.....hindu brother must come out from deep sleep to protect the real value of hindusim...today all evil people in BJP will take protection for their evil deed by using hindu gods...

 

God clearely said in the quran, dont worship material bcoz one day some evil people will come and use this to control you and destroy you..

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Agencies
February 23,2020

Wuhan, Feb 23: Ninety-seven more people died in China due to coronavirus, taking the death toll to 2,442, officials said on Sunday, as a team of WHO experts visited the worst-affected Wuhan city in Hubei province.

By the end of Saturday, a total of 2,442 people had died of the disease and 76,936 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection had been reported in 31 provincial-level regions, China's National Health Commission (NHC) said in its daily update on Sunday.

Ninety-six deaths were reported from Hubei province and one from Guangdong province on Saturday besides 648 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, it said.

Hubei province, where the virus first emerged in December last, reported 630 new confirmed cases, taking the total confirmed cases in the hard-hit province to 64,084, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The NHC also said China's daily number of newly cured and discharged novel coronavirus patients has surpassed that of new confirmed infections for the fifth consecutive day, indicating that cases of infections are coming down.

Saturday saw 2,230 people walk out of hospital after recovery, much higher than the number of the same day's new confirmed infections, which was 648, Xinhua reported.

A total of 22,888 patients infected with the novel coronavirus had been discharged from hospital after recovery by the end of Saturday, NHC said.

Meanwhile, a team of public health experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) visited Wuhan on Saturday to conduct a detailed probe about the virus which reportedly originated from a seafood market in the city in December last year.

The NHC said WHO experts along with their Chinese counterparts who formed a joint investigation team have held talks with the local health authority in Wuhan and visited relevant healthcare institutions.

The UN team comprises specialists from the United States, Germany, Japan, Nigeria, Russia, Singapore and South Korea, Hong-Kong based South China Morning Post reported.

The 12-member team, which arrived in China on Monday, was initially designated to visit only Beijing, Guangdong and Sichuan provinces, while the worst-affected Hubei province and its capital Wuhan were missing from the list.

However, the team was finally given permission to visit Wuhan by the Chinese government.

Besides controlling the spread of the virus, a major task for the WHO team along with their Chinese counterparts was to come up with standard medicine to cure the disease.

The NHC said on Saturday that the team had met top Chinese respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan in Guangdong, and visited the centre for disease control and prevention in Guangdong and the city of Shenzhen, and Sichuan.

The specialists also discussed quarantine measures, the wild animal trade and community prevention measures with their Chinese counterparts, it said.

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