The dead whales were part of a pod of 80-90 whales spotted late Thursday on the shore of remote Chatham Island, about 800 kilometres (500 miles) east of the South Island, the Department of Conservation said.

It is the fifth stranding in New Zealand in less than a week, including 145 pilot whales which all died after they beached last weekend at Stewart Island, off the southern coast of the South Island.

By the time rangers reached the latest group of animals early Friday 50 had died, one remained stranded but alive and the rest had refloated themselves and returned to sea.

Department of Conservation manager Dave Carlton said the surviving whale was in poor condition and was euthanised.

“It was the most humane thing to do. This is always an awful decision to have to make,” he said.

Chatham Island was the scene of New Zealand’s largest recorded stranding in 1918, involving 1,000 whales.

In addition to the strandings at Chatham and Stewart Islands this week, a group of 12 pygmy killer whales also beached in New Zealand’s far north and a sperm whale and a pygmy sperm whale grounded themselves in separate incidents on the North Island.

The reason whales and dolphins strand is not fully understood but theories include sickness, navigational error, geographical features, the presence of predators, and extreme weather.

Karen Stockin, a marine mammal scientist at Massey University, said while whale strandings were relatively common in New Zealand, the cluster of incidents in such a short timeframe was unusual.

‘Only the beginning’

She also pointed out that species such as pygmy killer whales and sperm whales did not normally beach, unlike pilot whales, which regularly wash up on New Zealand beaches in the summer months.

Stockin, who is an expert consultant on strandings for the International Whaling Commission, said it added to a string of strange whale behaviour over the past year.

In addition to a rise in strandings, she said a number of species had appeared that were not normally seen in New Zealand waters, including gargantuan blue whales in the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland.

Stockin said New Zealand was currently experiencing some of the warmest ocean temperatures on record and she believed it was affecting whale behaviour.

“We’ve had an unusual week, which we haven’t got to the bottom of, and it’s fair to say it’s been an entirely unusual year,” she told AFP.

“I suspect a lot of that has been driven by the warmer sea surface temperatures that we’re seeing at the moment.

“We definitely have a spike in temperatures, that’s likely affecting where the prey is moving and as a consequence we’re seeing prey moving and (whale) species following.”

She said one reason for the rising ocean temperature was the naturally occurring El Nino weather pattern, but global warming caused by climate change may also be playing a part.

“We certainly have the El Nino pattern in play, but the reality is I’ve no doubt it’s been further exacerbated by the potential global warming effect,” she said.

“So you’ve got a bit of both going on there… we can’t tease those things apart at this stage.”

New Zealand’s summer, the peak time for whales to beach, begins on Saturday and Stockin said more strandings were likely.

“We’re just going into stranding season now, this is only the beginning of it and we’re very mindful of the fact that this a very busy start,” she said.

Linking up the railway systems was one of the agreements made earlier this year in a key meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the South’s President Moon Jae-in.

It marked the first time in a decade that a train from the South entered North Korea.

TV footage on Friday showed a red, white and blue train — displaying a banner reading “Iron Horse is now running toward the era of peace and prosperity” — pull away from the South’s Dorasan station, the nearest terminal from the western part of the inter-Korean border.

“This signals the start of co-prosperity of the North and the South by reconnecting railways,” Transport Minister Kim Hyun-mee said.

She added the railway reconnection would help expand the country’s “economic territory” to Eurasia by land, as the division of the Korean peninsula has left South Korea geopolitically cut off from the continent for many decades.

The six-carriage train is transporting 28 South Koreans including railway engineers and other personnel, and carrying 55 tonnes of fuel and an electricity generator.

There is a passenger coach, a sleeping coach, an office coach and a wagon loaded with water for showers and laundry.

When it arrives at Panmun Station — the first North Korean terminal across the border — the six carriages will be linked up to a North Korean train, and the South Korean locomotive will return home.

Information gathering

The South Koreans and their counterparts will live in the train, inspecting two railway lines for a total of 18 days — one linking the North’s southernmost Kaesong City to Sinuiju City near the Chinese border, and the other connecting Mount Kumgang near the inter-Korean border to Tumen River bordering Russia in the east.

They will travel some 2,600 kilometres (1,600 miles) on railway tracks together, the transport ministry said.

Before the division of the Korean peninsula in 1948, there were two railway lines linking the North to the South — one in the west and the other in the east.

As a gesture towards reconciliation, the two Koreas reconnected the western line in 2007 and limited numbers of freight trains transported materials and goods to and from the Seoul-invested Kaesong industrial zone in the North for about a year.

But the line has since then been put out of service due to heightened tension over the North’s nuclear development programme.

The current railway project has also faced delays over concerns it could violate UN sanctions imposed on the North over its nuclear and missile programmes.

But the UN Security Council granted an exemption for the joint study last week, although it is unclear whether others will be given as the project progresses.

Seoul said the survey was purely aimed at gathering information on the current state of the North’s rail system and assured that actual restoration works would come only after consents from the UN.

The South’s Unification Ministry has earmarked some 63.4 billion won ($56.6 million) for next year on the assumption that it will take five years to repair and improve the two railway routes in the North.

The North’s leader Kim Jong Un, during a summit with the South’s President Moon Jae-in in April, said the North’s railway infrastructures are “embarrassingly” dilapidated, praising the South’s high-speed railway system.

The North’s railway tracks are in such disrepair that trains reportedly operate between 20-45 km per hour.

The study comes as differences emerge between Seoul and Washington, which stations 28,500 troops in the South as part of their decades-old alliance.

The South’s dovish President Moon has long favoured engagement with the nuclear-armed North and has dangled large investment and joint cross-border projects as incentives for steps towards denuclearisation.

“We will not be proceeding today,” she told AFP.

According to tweets by German journalists on board the Airbus A340, named Konrad Adenauer after Germany’s first post-war chancellor, Merkel will leave for Madrid on Friday and head on a commercial flight for Buenos Aires with a slimmed down delegation.

The Chancellery did not confirm these reports.

A senior journalist with the public national television ZDF said Merkel would spend Thursday night in Bonn.

The plane turned back from the Netherlands and landed in Cologne because it was the only base with a replacement aircraft, the DPA news agency said.

It was met on the tarmac by fire engines, DPA said, adding that the captain told the passengers the plane would have to turn back as a technical problem was disrupting several electrical systems.

Randall Schriver, assistant secretary of Defence for Asia-Pacific Security Affairs, is leading the US delegation to the Thailand-US strategic defence dialogue being held today to enhance bilateral security cooperation in a move to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific Strategy. At the talk today, the US will highlight maritime security, terrorist threats and cyber-security concerns, he said.

“Our priority national security strategy is to promote an open and free Indo-Pacific strategy for countries to protect their national sovereignty, uphold international law, international norms, maintain freedom of navigation and promote free and fair reciprocal trade,” Schriver told reporters in a group interview yesterday.

The US official voiced concerns over the continuous militarisation of the contentious South China Sea, where many Asean members are at loggerheads with their giant neighbour China. Washington is not a claimant, but champions the freedom of navigation and flyover, and also upholds international laws to maintain peace and stability in the region.

The US has taken measures over the past years through cooperation with governments in the region and diplomatic channels to deal with security challenges, he said.

President Donald Trump’s administration initiated the Indo-Pacific Strategy apparently to counter the rising role and influence of China in the region.

However, Schriver said Washington had no problems with regional countries, including Thailand, holding more military engagements and activities with China, such as joint exercises, as well as purchasing military hardware from the country.

The US, which also overtly has military engagement with China, will never object if other countries have similar relations with the Chinese army, he said.

As for military hardware, Schriver said the US can be a better partner.

“We are more reliable. There is evidence out there that the Chinese are less reliable.

“The main point is we want to be a quality partner,” he said.

As for cyber-security concerns, he said major threats are likely to come from state-sponsored cyber threats and from a number of criminal enterprises. He named China, North Korea and Russia as the sources of state-sponsored cyber threats.

“We engage with partners to have best practices on cyber-security, to enable governments to protect financial and economic system,” he said.

The US official also said the Korean peninsula remained a hot spot for security concerns in the Indo-Pacific region and thanked Thailand for the role it played in supporting United Nations sanctions and contributing to international pressure for the denuclearisation of North Korea.

Asked if the strategic talks today would touch on the role of Thai military in politics and suppression of democracy, Schriver simply said that the US wished to see success in the upcoming elections.