Fears as Covid-19 rates rise in North Korea

Pyongyang: North Korea has said that nearly 10 per cent of its 26 million people have fallen ill and 65 people have died amid its first Covid-19 outbreak.

However, outside experts have questioned the validity of its reported fatalities and worry about a possible humanitarian crisis.

After admitting the Omicron outbreak last week following more than two years of claiming to be coronavirus-free,

North Korea has said an unidentified fever has been explosively spreading across the country since late April.

Its anti-epidemic centre has since released fever tallies each morning via state media, but they do not include any Covid-19 figures.

Some observers say North Korea was probably forced to acknowledge the Covid-19 outbreak because it could not hide the highly contagious viral spread among its people and suffer possible public discontent with leader Kim Jong Un.

They believe North Korean authorities are under-reporting deaths to try to show its pandemic response is effective, while the country lacks test kits to confirm a large number of virus cases.

Yesterday, the North’s state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters said 263,370 more people had feverish symptoms and two more people died, bringing the total number of fever cases to 2.24 million and fatalities to 65.

Nore: A person with a knife wounded at least three people – one of them critically – in a random attack in a town near the capital, Oslo.

Police confirmed the alleged perpetrator had been arrested.

The incident took place in Nore, in the Numedal valley.

Norwegian broadcaster TV2 said that there were several ambulances, including air ambulances, at the site, plus numerous police vehicles.

Kashmir: Rescuers have found the body of a worker in India-controlled Kashmir after part of a tunnel collapsed in the Himalayan region.

Emergency workers are clearing the wreckage with diggers in an attempt to rescue nine other workers who are trapped, officials said.

The tunnel is part of a mountainous highway tunnel system that was under construction when it collapsed on Thursday night in the southern Ramban district.

The section that collapsed was an approach tunnel used for ventilation and moving supplies and equipment to the main tunnel which is under construction.

The tunnel is part of a vast network of bridges and tunnels on the strategic highway that connects two key cities of Srinagar and Jammu in the region.

Monterey: A man who started a 2020 wildfire that killed 12 endangered California condors and seriously injured a firefighter has been sentenced to 24 years in state prison, prosecutors said.

Ivan Gomez, 31, was sentenced by a Monterey County judge for setting the Big Sur Dolan fire while illegally growing cannabis in the Los Padres National Forest, the county district attorney’s office announced.

The blaze destroyed 10 homes and an 80-acre sanctuary in Big Sur that since 1997 had been used to release captivebred condors into the wild.