Kim also said he would wait until the end of the year “for the US to make a courageous decision” on another meeting, after his most recent summit with Trump in Vietnam broke down and both sides left without agreement.

Washington has blamed the February deadlock on the North’s demands for sanctions relief in return for limited nuclear disarmament, but Pyongyang said it had wanted only some of the measures eased.

In a speech to Pyongyang’s rubber-stamp parliament Friday, Kim said the Hanoi meeting had made him question whether Washington is “genuinely interested” in improving its relations with Pyongyang.

“We are willing to give another try if the US offers to have a third summit with the right attitude and mutually acceptable terms,” he said, according to a report by North Korean state media outlet KCNA.

Kim added that his personal relationship with Trump remained strong, adding they could “write letters to each other” whenever they wanted.

“We will wait with patience until the end of the year for the US to make a courageous decision,” Kim said.

Pyongyang has been careful not to criticise Trump personally while attacking sanctions on North Korea as an attempt to “destroy modern civilisation and turn the society back in a medieval dark age”.

Trump and Kim held their first landmark summit in Singapore last June, where the pair signed a vaguely-worded agreement on the “denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.

But the failure to reach agreement at their second summit in Hanoi has raised questions over the future of the accord.

Trump said Thursday he was mulling a third summit with Kim ahead of a meeting with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in at the Oval Office — a move supported by Seoul.

Moon brokered the US-North Korea talks and has been pushing for the resumption of inter-Korean economic projects, but doing so would fall foul of international sanctions imposed on Pyongyang.

“Our government will do what we can in order to maintain the current momentum for dialogue,” Moon’s office said in a Saturday statement.

The day before Kim accused Seoul of acting as an “overstepping mediator” and said the South should “speak up” for Pyongyang’s interests.

On Friday, KCNA reported Kim was re-elected as chairman of the State Affairs Commission, the North’s most important decision-making body, to cheers and loud applause from the delegates.

The state visit to Bangladesh was a homecoming of sort for Bhutan’s Prime Minister Dr Lotay Tshering, who spent 10 years in two medical colleges there.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina received the Prime Minister at the Hazrat Shahjalal international airport in Dhaka yesterday and presented a guard of honour.

After his visit to National Martyrs’ Memorial, Bangabandhu Memorial Museum and BIMSTEC Secretariat, Lyonchhen headed to Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons (BCPS).

He was speaking at the same hall where he gave his final examination and only four of the 50 fellows completed the course successfully, Dr Lotay Tshering being one. “I have sweated in this hall,” he said. “Ten years in Bangladesh was a very critical part of my life. It taught me how to become a good human being.”

The atmosphere in the hall turned emotional when Lyonchhen shared an incident about receiving a phone call from one of his professors when he was a general surgeon in Mongar. He narrated the incident in fluent Bengali.

The prime minister said that he immediately drove for three days to reach Phuentsholing and got on a bus to Dhaka to meet his professor. “In Buddhism, we believe that we owe respect and gratitude to our teacher not only in this life but the next one too,” he said.

Dr Lotay Tshering said he is aware of the standards of BCPS and looks forward to collaborate with medical colleges and institutions in Bhutan.

Business

That Bhutan is the first country to recognise Bangladesh’s independence and the two countries have tremendous goodwill has become a cliché, said Dr Lotay Tshering.

“I don’t beat around the bush. I like to cut things straight because I am a surgeon,” he said.

If Bhutan and Bangladesh were to benefit each other from the economic progress the two countries are making, the prime minister said that a positive people-to-people collaboration is inevitable.

However, he said that Bangladesh’s export is valued at US$ 36B and with Bhutan it is only US$ 4M. “We are landlocked but our minds are open,” he said. “Trade do not need passports.”

The Federation of Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) and Bhutan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) signed an MoU to institute a joint business council yesterday.

However, Dr Lotay Tshering said that an MoU is not enough if there is no commitment and follow through. “From Bhutan’s side, we will assure to follow through because the new government believes that private sector needs to open up,” he said.

Both countries, the prime minister said are on the verge of graduation from LDC status and conventional aid is declining. He said that it is timely to move from aid to trade.

During the forum for business delegates, private industry and investment advisor to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Salman F Rahman said that trade between the two countries is still small compared to the potential. This, he said could be harnessed if the private sector could work together as there is a great complementarities in interest and trade destination.

On the issues of Bhutanese consignment trucks being delayed at the land customs stations, he said the government is already advised to expand the infrastructure, addressing this issue sooner.

This, he said is in the interest of Bangladesh because there are many mega projects coming up and need of construction materials including boulders is immense.

Cross border trading of electricity is one area of interest for the Bangladeshi business delegates. The secretary of economic affairs ministry said that the new Indian guidelines of cross border power trading allows transmission through India and it could be pursued trilaterally. The trilateral cooperation in developing a hydropower project in Bhutan, he said is also progressing well.

Multimodal connectivity, industry linkages, use of ports and inland waterways, joint venture in hydro and agro processing are some of the areas of cooperation the FBCCI identified.

“We hope to see robust trade between the two countries,” the vice president of FBCCI, Md. Muntakim Ashraf said.

Tan Ming Jia, 30, suffered serious head injuries and went into a coma after a collision with a truck in Mandai on Sunday morning (April 7). He was taken off life support after doctors at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital declared him brain dead on Wednesday.

Explaining the family’s decision, his sister Ming Li, 27, said they wanted to help those in need of an organ transplant.

“It is comforting to know that some part of him lives on even if we don’t know who the recipients will be,” Tan, who works as an accounting administrator, told The Straits Times on Friday.

He would go back to his home town Johor Baru regularly to see his wife and five-year-old son. He had planned to go on Sunday (April 14). His 66-year-old father also lives in Johor.

“He was going to take the family out for a meal on Sunday,” said Li.

Tan, who was the sole breadwinner of his family, had worked at World Farm, a wholesale garden centre, for four years.

The company not only paid for his medical bills but also started a donation drive for his family.

“I believe in doing what I can to help,” said his employer, who wanted to be known only as Chua. “I treat all my employees like my own children.”

She admits feeling limited in her ability to help support Tan’s family.

“I am only one person. But I thought about the customers who often asked to be served by him. I hope they would chip in to help now,” said Chua.

Since World Farm put up a post on its Facebook page appealing for donations, many have responded.

Some, like Alex Eng, 44, turned up in person at World Farm’s nursery in Khatib to make a donation.

As of Friday (April 12), more than $7,500 (RM22,809)has been raised.

Others who wish to help can also do so through online fund-raising platform Give.Asia.

Aftershocks rippled across the east coast of Sulawesi — an island where thousands were killed in a quake-tsunami last year — as officials scrambled to assess whether there are any casualties or major damage.

While one resident of quake-hit Luwuk city reportedly died after falling while trying to flee, the agency has not reported any confirmed deaths or injuries.

An AFP reporter in the city said there were no signs of major property damage.

“The situation is returning to normal,” the disaster agency said early Saturday morning.

Some 1,300 families have returned home, it said, adding that some residents of another small island near the epicentre of Friday’s 6.8 magnitude quake were still refusing to return from higher ground.

It did not say how many residents had refused to leave the high ground.

Luwuk resident Emiliana Rumayer said she and her family slept in the hills overnight “but we’ve now returned home”.

Mohammad Sholeh, police chief of Poso city on Sulawesi, said the quake’s impact there had been minor.

“There’s a little bit of damage, but nothing significant and there are no casualties,” he said.

On Friday, a tsunami warning was issued for coastal communities in Morowali district, where residents were advised to move away from the coast.

The warning was later lifted by the disaster agency, which had estimated the wave at under a half a metre (20 inches).

Video footage from Luwuk showed scared residents — some carrying children — running from their homes and racing to higher ground on motorcycles.

The quake struck at a relatively shallow depth of 17 kilometres (10 miles) off Sulawesi, where a 7.5-magnitude quake-tsunami around the city of Palu killed more than 4,300 people last year.

Residents of Palu, which is hundreds of kilometres away from Friday’s epicentre, still felt the quake.

Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone nations on Earth due to its position straddling the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates collide.

On Boxing Day 2004, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake struck westernmost Aceh province, causing a tsunami and killing more than 170,000 in Indonesia.

Last year Indonesia experienced more than 2,500 disasters ranging from a series of deadly earthquakes to killer landslides and volcanic eruptions.

Following diplomatic pressure from the Vietnamese government, Malaysian prosecutors had dropped the murder charge against Doan Thi Huong on April 1.

Subsequently, the 30-year-old former hair salon worker pleaded guilty to “causing injury” and was handed a three year and four month jail term effective from the date of her arrest in February 2017 and later reduced for good behaviour.

The brazen killing of Kim Jong Nam with a toxic nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur’s international airport in broad day light shocked the world.

Seoul accused Pyongyang of plotting the Cold War-style hit as Malaysia allowed the two women’s suspected North Korean handlers to leave in the days after the murder.

“We have been told by prison authorities that Huong will be freed on May 3,” lawyer Salim Bashir told AFP.

“Huong is in a jovial mood. The young woman is expected to be immediately flown to Hanoi.”

Last month the charge against co-accused 27-year-old Indonesian suspect Siti Aisyah was dropped.

During the women’s long-running trial which began in October 2017, the court was shown CCTV footage of them approaching Kim as he waited for flight, one of them placing their hands on his face, and then both of them running to bathrooms before fleeing the airport.

But the pair always maintained they were innocent pawns in a plan hatched by North Korea and believed they were carrying out pranks for a reality TV show.

The women would have been sentenced to death by hanging if convicted of murder.

The women’s lawyers said the real masterminds were four North Koreans who were seen at the airport on the day of the murder meeting the pair, and who fled after the assassination. The four were charged in absentia along with the women over the killing.

“Obviously Huong deserves this freedom after her long incarceration. She is looking forward to being with her family and friends,” her lawyer Salim said.

The bright white rocket rose with a roar and spewed thick gray smoke on the ground as it made its way up into clear blue skies over Cape Canaveral, Florida, trailing a long plume of orange fire.

About 34 minutes after liftoff, the shiny silver satellite was successfully deployed. Staff in the control room cheered and clapped.

Earlier, boisterous spectators chanted along with the launch announcer who counted down the final 10 seconds before liftoff.

The Falcon Heavy rocket exerts 5.1 million pounds of thrust — that of more than a dozen jetliners, SpaceX said.

The rocket carried a Saudi Arabian satellite operated by Arabsat, a year after sending SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s slick red Tesla roadster into orbit as a test.

The Falcon Heavy had been scheduled to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday but that was delayed because of strong winds in the upper atmosphere.

The job was to place the six-ton Arabsat-6A satellite into geostationary orbit about 22,500 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the Earth. It went off without a hitch.

The satellite is designed to provide television, internet, telephone, and secure communications to customers in the Middle East.

Less than 10 minutes into the flight, the rocket’s three boosters detached from the Falcon Heavy on schedule.

Read also: Indonesia launches first internet-only satellite with SpaceX rocket

Two of them, as planned, landed safely back on pads at Cape Canaveral, to a roar of approval from the crowd. It was quite a spectacle, with the boosters coming down gently, and vertically, fiery end first.

A third landed, also as planned, on a barge out in the Atlantic.

“Three for three boosters today,” a SpaceX webcast commentator said.

SpaceX has two operational rockets: the Falcon 9, which with 21 launches in 2018 dominates the US market, and the Falcon Heavy, which as its name suggests is designed to lift much heavier payloads into more distant orbits.

It consists of the equivalent of three Falcon 9 rockets combined, tripling its thrust.

In Falcon Heavy’s first launch, in February 2018, a dummy dubbed Starman was placed behind the wheel of Musk’s roadster, which is currently orbiting the Sun somewhere between Earth and Mars.

Since then, the US military and private clients have signed contracts for Falcon Heavy launches, and NASA has raised the possibility it may use the rocket for its planned missions to the Moon.

Jan Karbaat, who died in 2017, is the direct father of 49 children born after women visited his Rotterdam clinic where he used his own sperm instead of from a chosen donor to inseminate them, Defence for Children said.

Results of DNA tests conducted Friday morning at a hospital in the southeaster city of Nijmegen “showed that 49 children in the case are direct descendants of the late Karbaat,” the organisation said in a statement.

“The results confirm serious suspicions that Karbaat used his own sperm at his clinic,” Defence for Children added.

The controversial case came became public after a Dutch court ruled in February that the results of Karbaat’s DNA test should be made available to parents and children to conduct their own comparisons.

Before his death, Karbaat reportedly admitted to having fathered about 60 children in his time at the discredited clinic which closed in 2009 amid reports of irregularities.

The group of suspected “Karbaat children” dragged his family to court to force them to release Karbaat’s DNA profile, which was kept behind locked away in a safe.

The plaintiff’s lawyer previously told doctors that children for instance had brown eyes, while a sperm donor was supposedly blue-eyed, or that another male client physically resembled the doctor.

The Karbaat family’s lawyers in turn argued that their clients’ right to privacy had to be respected.

“However, with the judges agreeing to the paternity test, the judge placed the children’s rights above those of Karbaat and his family,” Defence for Children advisor Iara de Witte said.

“Now, after years of uncertainty the plaintiffs can finally close a chapter and start processing the fact that they are one of Karbaat’s many descendants,” De Witte said.

The quake struck at a relatively shallow depth of 17 kilometres (10 miles) off the east coast of Sulawesi island, the USGS said, where a 7.5-magnitude quake-tsunami around the city of Palu killed more than 4,300 people last year.

Indonesia’s disaster agency issued a tsunami warning for coastal communities in Morowali district, where residents were advised to move away from the coast.

The warning was later lifted by the agency, which had estimated the wave at under a half a metre (20 inches).

Video footage from Luwuk city showed scared residents — some carrying children — running from their homes and racing to higher ground on motorcycles.

The USGS warned that considerable damage was possible in poorly built or badly designed structures.

But it was not immediately clear how much damage was caused by the quake or if there were any casualties.

Hapsah Abdul Madjid, who lives in Luwuk city in Banggai district, Central Sulawesi, where the tremor was felt strongly, said people fled to higher ground and the electricity was cut, adding that residents panicked as fears soared over an imminent tsunami.

The tremor off the eastern coast of Sulawesi is on the other side of the island from disaster-hit Palu, where residents still felt the quake despite being hundreds of kilometres away.

“I ran straight outside after the earthquake — everything was swaying,” 29-year-old Palu resident Mahfuzah told AFP.

– Disaster prone –

Thousands in Palu were still living in makeshift shelters six months after the late September disaster with at least 170,000 residents of the city and surrounding districts displaced and entire neighbourhoods still in ruins, despite life returning to normal in other areas of the tsunami-struck city.

The force of last year’s quake saw entire neighbourhoods levelled by liquefaction — a process where the ground starts behaving like a liquid and swallows up the earth like quicksand.

Apart from the damage to tens of thousands of buildings, the disaster destroyed fishing boats, shops and irrigation systems, robbing residents of their income.

Indonesia has said the damage bill in Palu topped $900 million. The World Bank has offered the country up to $1 billion in loans to get the city back on its feet.

Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone nations on Earth due to its position straddling the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates collide.

Last year was a particularly tough one, however, with more than 2,500 disasters ranging from a series of deadly earthquakes to killer landslides and volcanic eruptions.

The sprawling archipelago is dotted with more than 100 volcanoes, including one in the middle of the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra islands that erupted in late 2018 and unleashed a tsunami that killed more than 400 people.