Kim Urges North Koreans to Keep up Virus Fight

FILE PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un poses for photos in Pyongyang in this January 1, 2019 photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
FILE PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un poses for photos in Pyongyang in this January 1, 2019 photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
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Kim Urges North Koreans to Keep up Virus Fight

FILE PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un poses for photos in Pyongyang in this January 1, 2019 photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
FILE PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un poses for photos in Pyongyang in this January 1, 2019 photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un urged officials to maintain alertness against the coronavirus, warning that complacency risked “unimaginable and irretrievable crisis,” state media said Friday.

Despite the warning, Kim reaffirmed North Korea's claim to not have had a single case of COVID-19, telling a ruling party meeting Thursday that the country has “thoroughly prevented the inroad of the malignant virus" despite the worldwide health crisis.

Outsiders widely doubt North Korea escaped the pandemic entirely, given its poor health infrastructure and close trade and travel ties to China, where COVID-19 emerged late last year.

Describing its anti-virus efforts as a “matter of national existence,” North Korea earlier this year shut down nearly all cross-border traffic, banned tourists and mobilized health workers to quarantine anyone with similar symptoms to the disease.

Experts say the country’s self-imposed lockdown is hurting an economy already battered by stringent US-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile program.

The Korean Central News Agency said Kim during the politburo meeting of the Workers’ Party “stressed the need to maintain maximum alert without a slight self-complacence or relaxation” as the virus continues to spread in neighboring countries.

The agency said Kim sharply criticized inattentiveness among officials and violations of emergency anti-virus rules and warned that a “hasty relief of anti-epidemic measures will result in unimaginable and irretrievable crisis.”

The North’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper published several photos of Kim at the meeting, which were the first state media images of him in weeks. Neither Kim nor the ruling party officials who participated were wearing masks.



Turkish Police Seize 825 Kg of Heroin, Says Interior Minister

Turkish riot police stand guard in front of the Justice Palace in Istanbul March 31, 2015. REUTERS/Osman Orsal
Turkish riot police stand guard in front of the Justice Palace in Istanbul March 31, 2015. REUTERS/Osman Orsal
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Turkish Police Seize 825 Kg of Heroin, Says Interior Minister

Turkish riot police stand guard in front of the Justice Palace in Istanbul March 31, 2015. REUTERS/Osman Orsal
Turkish riot police stand guard in front of the Justice Palace in Istanbul March 31, 2015. REUTERS/Osman Orsal

Police have seized 825 kilogrammes of heroin and arrested 30 people in a string of raids largely in southern Türkiye, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on Wednesday.

Straddling Asia and Europe, Türkiye lies on several major smuggling routes and is the main entry point for heroin on the European market, according to AFP.

"In operations across seven provinces, centred in (the southern city of) Adana.. we seized 825 kilogrammes (1,818 pounds) of heroin and arrested 30 suspected drug traffickers," he wrote on X.

In a simultaneous operation, police raided 38 different addresses in Adana, Hakkari, Hatay, Istanbul, Van, Diyarbakir, and Mersin, seizing unlicensed weapons and "a large quantity" of digital material, he said.

Heroin continues to be the most commonly used illicit opioid within the European Union and "increasingly relies on maritime routes and in particular the use of global container traffic and ferries" departing from Türkiye, Europol's 2024 analysis of the EU drug market said.

The report said Turkish criminal networks continue to dominate the wholesale trafficking of heroin to the European market.