Kim directs aid for virus-hit city

Seoul, Aug. 9: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered the distribution of aid to the border city of Kaesong after the area was locked down last month to fight the Coronavirus, state media said on Sunday.

Authorities raised the state of emergency to the maximum level for the city in July, saying they had discovered the country’s first suspected virus case. A train carrying goods arrived in the “totally blocked” city of Kaesong on Friday, the official KCNA news agency reported.

“The Supreme Leader has made sure that emergency measures were taken for supplying food and medicines right after the city was totally blocked and this time he saw to it that lots of rice and subsidy were sent to the city,” it said.

Kim had been concerned “day and night” about people in Kaesong as they continue their “campaign for checking the spread of the malignant virus”, the report added. Last month, Pyongyang said a defector who had left for South Korea three years ago returned on July 19 by “illegally crossing” the heavily fortified border dividing the two countries.

The man showed symptoms of Coronavirus and was put under “strict quarantine”, authorities said, but the North has yet to confirm whether he tested positive. If confirmed, it would be the first officially recognised case of Covid-19 in North Korea, where medical infrastructure is seen as woefully inadequate to deal with any epidemic.

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Aug. 9: Seizing the power of his podium and his pen, President Donald Trump on Saturday bypassed the nation’s lawmakers as he claimed the authority to defer payroll taxes and replace an expired unemployment benefit with a lower amount after negotiations with Congress on a new Coronavirus rescue package collapsed.

At his private country club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump signed executive orders to act where Congress hasn’t. Not only has the pandemic undermined the economy and upended American lives, it has imperiled the president's November reelection.

Perhaps most crucially, Trump moved to continue paying a supplemental federal unemployment benefit for millions of Americans out of work during the outbreak. However, his order called for up to $400 payments each week, one-third less than the $600 people had been receiving. Congress allowed those higher payments to lapse on Aug. 1, and negotiations to extend them have been mired in partisan gridlock, with the White House and Democrats miles apart.

The Democratic congressional leaders Trump criticised and insulted with nicknames in remarks ahead of signing the orders, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, dismissed Trump’s actions as “meager” in the face of economic and health crises facing Americans. Trump’s Democratic opponent in the presidential race, Joe Biden, said the president had issued “a series of half-baked measures” and accused him of putting Social Security at risk.”

The executive orders could face legal challenges questioning the president’s authority to spend taxpayer dollars without the express approval of Congress. Trump largely stayed on the sidelines during the administration’s negotiations with congressional leaders, leaving the talks on his side to chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

Trump’s embrace of executive actions to sidestep Congress runs in sharp contrast to his criticism of former President Barack Obama’s use of executive orders on a more limited basis. And the president’s step-back from talks with Congress breaks with his selfassured negotiating skills.

Now, Trump, who has not spoken with Pelosi since last year, sought to play the role of election-year