If confirmed by Pyongyang, the offer would mark the first time under the current leadership the North had declared itself willing to discuss conditions under which it might consider giving up its nuclear arsenal — a move it has previously insisted was firmly off the negotiating table.

Following a meeting in Pyongyang with leader Kim Jong Un, Chung Eui-yong, the national security adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, said the North had stated there was “no reason” to hold on to its nuclear weapons “if military threats towards the North are cleared and the security of its regime is guaranteed”.

This handout from the presidential Blue House taken on March 5, 2018 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (3rd L) posing with South Korean delegation, who travelled as envoys of the South’s President Moon Jae-in, during their meeting in Pyongyang. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un discussed ways to ease tensions on the peninsula with visiting South Korean envoys, the state KCNA news agency reported on March 6. // AFP PHOTO

Chung said Kim and Moon would meet in late April at the fortified border village of Panmunjom for what would be only the third inter-Korean summit since the end of the 1950-53 Korean conflict.

He said the two sides would establish a leader-to-leader hotline, offering the highest-level contact between two nations that are technically still at war.

After months of soaring tensions that have seen Kim Jong Un trade insults and threats with US President Donald Trump, temperatures cooled dramatically as South Korea hosted the Winter Olympics.

Despite having few athletes competing at the Games, Pyongyang sent a large and colourful delegation, which included Kim’s sister, who met with Moon to offer a summit meeting.

That visit was returned this week when Moon sent the highest-level delegation in a decade north of the border.

The envoys returned Tuesday with news of apparent breakthroughs in the long-logjammed relationship.

This picture taken on March 5, 2018 and released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on March 6, 2018 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (R) shaking hands with South Korean chief delegator Chung Eui-yong (C), who travelled as envoys of the South’s President Moon Jae-in, during their meeting in Pyongyang. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un discussed ways to ease tensions on the peninsula with visiting South Korean envoys, the state KCNA news agency reported on March 6. // AFP PHOTO

“The South and the North agreed to hold the third summit at… Panmunjom in late April,” said Chung, referring to the truce village at the heavily-fortified border.

If realised, the summit will be the third meeting between the leaders of the two Koreas, which technically remain at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice instead of a peace treaty.

The previous two summits were held in 2000 and 2007, respectively, under South Korean presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun who both advocated dialogue with Pyongyang.

They both met with Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il.

The two Koreas also agreed to open communication hotline between Moon and Kim to “defuse military tension and to have close coordination,” Chung said Tuesday.

The leaders will have their first phone conversation before the planned summit, he added.

North Korea also pledged that it would freeze its nuclear and missile testing programme during the period of dialogue.

Ryoko Azuma, 44, will command four warships making up a division with a total of 1,000 crew members.

“This is the first time a woman was appointed for the job,” a spokesman for the Maritime Self-Defence Force told AFP.

“But she wasn’t chosen because she was a woman.”

The ships include the helicopter carrier Izumo, the navy’s biggest ship.

“I want to do my best to carry out the heavy duty I have been given,” Azuma told reporters after a ceremony at Yokohama near Tokyo to mark her arrival in the post.

About 400 crew members attended the ceremony.

“I don’t think about being a woman but I want to try to become a role model for younger female officers,” she said.

About 14,000 women are currently serving in the Self-Defence Forces as the military is known, accounting for only six percent of the entire personnel.

On most levels, Japan lags behind other developed countries in terms of sexual equality.

In politics women are still under-represented with only 47 of the 465 members of the lower house.

According to statistics compiled by the Swiss-based Inter-Parliamentary Union, this ratio of 10.1 percent places Japan below Myanmar and Gambia.

Some 700,000 Rohingya have fled over the border to Bangladesh since the violence erupted in August, bringing with them consistent testimony of murder, rape and arson by soldiers and vigilante mobs.

“The ethnic cleansing of Rohingya from Myanmar continues. I don’t think we can draw any other conclusion from what I have seen and heard in Cox’s Bazar,” UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Andrew Gilmour said after speaking to newly-arrived Rohingya in Bangladesh’s crowded refugee camps.

“The nature of the violence has changed from the frenzied blood-letting and mass rape of last year to a lower intensity campaign of terror and forced starvation.”

His statement also said it was “inconceivable” that any Rohingya would be able to return to Myanmar in the near future, despite Myanmar’s pledges to start taking back some refugees.

“The Government of Myanmar is busy telling the world that it is ready to receive Rohingya returnees, while at the same time its forces are continuing to drive them into Bangladesh,” Gilmour said.

“Safe, dignified and sustainable returns are of course impossible under current conditions.”

Myanmar’s military insists its crackdown was needed to root out Rohingya militants who attacked border police posts in August, killing about a dozen people.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has estimated that at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in the first month of the crackdown alone.

Hundreds of Rohingya villages were torched, and recent satellite imagery showed at least 55 villages have since been completely bulldozed, removing all traces of buildings, wells and vegetation.

The BBC and other outlets named the victim as 66-year-old Sergei Skripal, who was hospitalised in intensive care on Sunday along with an unidentified woman, in the city of Salisbury.

A former colonel in Russian military intelligence, Skripal was sentenced to 13 years in jail in Russia in 2006 on charges of spying for Britain.

But he was granted refuge in the UK following a high-profile spy exchange between the United States and Russia in 2010.

His apparent targeting echoes the case of Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-Russian spy who died in 2006 after being poisoned with radioactive polonium in London.

A British inquiry into the death ruled in 2016 Russia’s President Vladimir Putin “probably approved” the killing and identified two Russians, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun, as the prime suspects.

– ‘Major incident’ –

British police said Monday they had declared a “major incident” after two people — a man in his 60s, and a woman in her 30s — were found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping centre in Salisbury, 85 miles (140 kms) southwest of London.

They remain in intensive care while a “multi-agency response” has been coordinated, Craig Holden, Temporary Assistant Chief Constable of Wiltshire police, said in a statement.

“Alongside our partner agencies, we are conducting some extensive enquiries to determine exactly what led to these two people falling unconscious and clarify whether or not any criminal activity has happened,” he added.

Parts of the city centre remained sealed off Monday night as emergency responders in hazardous material suits continued to canvas there.

TV footage showed them hosing down public areas and searching bins, while a local restaurant closed “as a precaution” in connection with the incident, police said.

Meanwhile police vehicles were also filmed at the purported home of Skripal in Salisbury.

No visible injuries

Holden said Wiltshire police “received a call from a member of the public who was concerned for the welfare of two people” at around 4:15pm (1615 GMT) on Sunday.

“The pair, who we believe are known to each other, did not have any visible injuries and were taken to Salisbury District Hospital.

“They are currently being treated for suspected exposure to an unknown substance” he said, adding that they were “in a critical condition.”

Police said it had not been declared a counter terrorism incident, and appealed for any witnesses to come forward.

Freya Church, who saw the couple slumped on the bench, told the BBC they “looked so out of it”.

“It looked like they’d been taking something quite strong,” she said.

The trust running Salisbury District Hospital advised people Monday not to attend the emergency department “unless extremely urgent” as they dealt with the situation.

A spokeswoman for Public Health England, the government’s healthcare agency, said there did not “appear to be any immediate risk to public health”.

She added: “in situations like this our scientists and medical colleagues join the multi-agency response and, when appropriate, contribute any necessary public health advice.”

Despite the reassurances Wiltshire police warned local people to call emergency services “if you feel your own or another’s health is significantly deteriorating”.

Spy swap

Skripal was among 14 spies swapped by Moscow and Washington at Austria’s Vienna airport in 2010, in scenes reminiscent of the Cold War.

The exchange included Anna Chapman, a glamorous member of the exposed Russian spy ring on the US east coast who rose to further fame upon her return to Moscow.

Skripal, a retired Russian secret service colonel, was convicted and jailed for 13 years in 2006 for betraying Russian intelligence agents to Britain’s MI6 secret service.

Russia accused him of working with MI6 since the 1990s and that it had paid him $100,000 (81,000 euros) for information.

He was pardoned ahead of the 2010 spy swap and flown on to Britain, where he had reportedly kept a low profile for the last eight years.

Marina Litvinenko, the widow of Alexander Litvinenko, told Britain’s Daily Telegraph: “It looks similar to what happened to my husband but we need more information.

She added if a Russian poisoning plot was proved, it showed “nothing has changed since my husband died.”

The delegation from Seoul is the most senior to travel North for more than a decade, and comes as Moon tries to broker talks between nuclear-armed Pyongyang and Washington, after months of high tensions.

“Hearing the intention of President Moon Jae In for a summit from the special envoy of the south side, he exchanged views and made a satisfactory agreement,” KCNA said of the North’s leader.

However, Seoul said no agreement had yet been reached on a meeting between Kim and Moon, which would be the first such summit since 2007.

The two sides have “discussed” it and “somewhat shared the view” on other points, an official from the South’s presidential Blue House said.

KCNA said Kim “warmly welcomed” the South Korean officials, who handed over a letter from Moon.

“He also made an exchange of in-depth views on the issues for easing the acute military tensions on the Korean Peninsula and activating the versatile dialogue, contact, cooperation and exchange,” it reported.

Kim’s discussions with the South Koreans lasted more than four hours, and included dinner at the North’s ruling Workers Party headquarters in Pyongyang, according to the Blue House.

Details will be made public after the delegation returns late Tuesday, it said.

The delegation from Seoul is pushing for talks between the nuclear-armed regime and the United States, after the North Korean leader sent his sister Kim Yo Jong to the Winter Games in the South and invited Moon to a summit in Pyongyang.

Kim Yo Jong’s trip was the first visit to the South by a member of the North’s ruling dynasty since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, and her appearance at the Games’ opening ceremony — where athletes from the two Koreas marched together — made global headlines.

The Winter Olympics provided “a good atmosphere of reconciliation, unity and dialogue between the north and the south,” KCNA quoted Kim Jong Un as telling the South Korean envoys.

Moon has sought to use the Pyeongchang Games to open dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang in hopes of easing a nuclear standoff that has heightened fears over global security.

Before leaving for Pyongyang, the South’s national security advisor Chung Eui-yong said: “We plan to hold in-depth discussions for ways to continue not only inter-Korean talks but dialogue between North Korea and the international community including the United States.”

It is a challenging task — in defiance of UN sanctions, the isolated and impoverished North last year staged its most powerful nuclear test and test-fired several missiles, some of them capable of reaching the US mainland.

US President Donald Trump dubbed Kim “Little Rocket Man” and boasted about the size of his own nuclear button, while the North Korean leader called Trump a “mentally deranged US dotard”.

They traded threats of war and sent tensions soaring before a thaw in the run-up to the Winter Olympics.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will preside over the signing ceremony to be attended by Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Deputy Prime Minister Agio Pereira of East Timor, Asia’s youngest nation which joined the United Nations in 2002.

The treaty could provide a major boost to East Timor’s struggling economy with an agreement on sharing revenue from the Greater Sunrise oil and gas fields, worth between $40 and $50 billion.

Following a final round of negotiations in Kuala Lumpur last month, Australia and East Timor agreed to the treaty that delimits the maritime boundary between them in the Timor Sea and establishes revenue-sharing arrangements.

East Timor in 2016 dragged Australia before the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the world’s oldest arbitration tribunal, based in The Hague, after contesting a previous deal signed in 2006.

Dili wanted that treaty, which also covered the vast Greater Sunrise fields, torn up after accusing Australia of spying to gain commercial advantage during the negotiations.

As the dispute escalated, a group of energy companies including Australia’s Woodside, ConocoPhillips, Shell and Osaka Gas decided to mothball plans to develop the Greater Sunrise fields.

In January last year, the two neighbors announced that a new pact would be negotiated through the arbitration court.

Details of the revenue-sharing arrangements have not been released, but a statement from the arbitration court last month said the shares “will differ depending on downstream benefits associated with the different development concepts” for the gas fields.

Discovered in 1974, Greater Sunrise is located 150 kilometers (93 miles) southeast of East Timor and 450 kilometers northwest of Darwin.

Named Luciola for its resemblance to the firefly, the featherweight levitating particle weighs 16.2 mg, has a diametre of 3.5 mm (0.14 inch), and emits a red glimmer that can just about illuminate text, Reuters reports.

But its minuscule size belies the power of the 285 microspeakers emitting ultrasonic waves that hold up the light, and have a frequency inaudible to the human ear, allowing Luciola to operate in apparent total silence.

It took two years for Luciola to get this far, said circuit design specialist Makoto Takamiya, a member of the Kawahara Universal Information Network Project, which developed the device.

“Ultimately, my hope is that such tiny objects will have smartphone capabilities and be built to float about helping us in our everyday lives in smarter ways,” said the University of Tokyo professor, who hopes it will be commercially viable in five to 10 years.

The developers expect Luciola to find applications in the so-called internet of things, in which regular objects, such as cars, or domestic appliances such as air-conditioners, are connected to networks to send and receive data.

Equipped with movement or temperature sensors, Luciola could fly to such objects to deliver a message or help to make moving displays with multiple lights that can detect the presence of humans, or participate in futuristic projection mapping events. – The Japan Times