Kim hits panic button over 1 suspected Covid case

Seoul: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un convened an emergency meeting of the ruling Workers' Party and adopted a "maximum emergency system" against the COVID-19 pandemic after a defector returned from South Korea with symptoms of the virus, state-media reported on Sunday.

During the meeting held on Saturday, Kim also said he took "the pre-emptive measure of totally blocking Kaesong" after the "runaway" returned to the border city on July 19 after crossing the military demarcation line, three years after fleeing to the South, Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

"To tackle the present situation, he declared a state of emergency in the relevant area and clarified the determination of the Party Central Committee to shift from the state emergency anti-epidemic system to the maximum emergency system and issue a top-class alert," Yonhap News Agency quoted KCNA as saying.

The meeting unanimously adopted the "maximum emergency system" decision, it said. Meanwhile, the South Korean military said it was trying to confirm related facts over the alleged border crossing, while a Unification Ministry official added that along with other government agencies, it was working to verify Pyongyang's claim.

Former Afghan intelligence chief Rahmatullah Nabil has termed agents of Pakistani spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as "termites" who are destroying the Afghanistan system stating they pose serious threats to the country and should be confronted.

Nabil, speaking at press conference on Saturday, said that the employees of intelligence agencies of the regional countries are being employed in the government institutions, which pose serious threats to Afghanistan, Tolo News reported.

During routine survey operations for hazardous asteroids, NASA's asteroid camera has spotted China's Tianwen-1 Mars spacecraft speeding away from the Earth.

The China's Tianwen-1 Mars mission was launched on Thursday to begin a sev

"There are termites which are destroying the system. The ISI (Pakistani military intelligence) agents in the system must be confronted," said Nabil. The former Afghanistan intelligence chief said that people within the country and the region are exploiting the process for their political and economic agendas.

Qaeda active in 12 Afghan provinces: UN

The Al Qaeda terror group is still active in 12 Afghan provinces and its leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is still based in the country, a UN report said. There are about 400-600 Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, said the report. en-month journey to the Red Planet, the space.com reported.

The spacecraft consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover, all packed together into what China hopes will become its first successful Mars mission.

The views were captured by a program run by NASA's

Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which scans huge swaths of the sky for space rocks in order to gather enough observations for astronomers to map each object's path in case one may come a little too close for comfort. China hopes to gather a repository of data with the help of the mission.