United News of Bangladesh

Authorities near Houston say they have caught a man suspected of killing five of his neighbors, including a 9-year-old boy, with an AR-style rifle after the family confronted him late at night about firing rounds in his yard. Francisco Oropeza, 38, was arrested Tuesday, four days after the shooting late Friday in the town of Cleveland, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of Houston, according to Montgomery County Sheriff Rand Henderson. He said Oropeza was was arrested without incident near Conroe, which is roughly 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the home authorities say Oropeza fled after shooting his neighbors and setting off a widening manhunt that had grown to more than 250 people from multiple jurisdictions. The sheriff would not say whether Oropeza was armed or how authorities figured out where he was. Also read: Shooting kills 2 men, injures 3rd victim in Seattle park Police had used drones and scent-tracking dogs during the wide search for Oropeza that included combing a heavily wooded forest a few miles from the scene. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott offered $50,000 in reward money as the search dragged late into the weekend and the FBI acknowledged that they had little indication as to Oropeza’s whereabouts. The alleged shooter is a Mexican national who has been deported four times, according to U.S. immigration officials. The gunman was first deported in March 2009 and last in July 2016. He was also deported in September 2009 and January 2012. San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said that prior to the shooting deputies had been called to the suspect’s house at least one other time previously over shooting rounds in his yard. All of the victims were from Honduras. Wilson Garcia, who survived the shooting, said friends and family in the home tried to hide and shield themselves and children after Oropeza walked up to the home and began firing, killing his wife first at the front door. Garcia said Oropeza came running over to their house loading an AR-15 after he and two other people had asked him to stop firing off rounds late at night because a baby inside was trying to sleep. Garcia said Oropeza told him he could do what he wanted on his property. In offering the reward, Abbot called the victims “illegal immigrants,” a partially false statement that his office walked back and apologized for Monday after drawing wide backlash over drawing attention to the immigration status of the victims. The victims were identified as Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9.

China’s foreign minister called for stability and a crackdown on cross-border criminal activity along the country’s border with Myanmar, during an unusual visit to the volatile region on Tuesday. The 2,129-kilometer (1,323-mile) border runs through densely forested mountains and has long been notorious for drug smuggling into China from the “Golden Triangle” region where the borders of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet. The United Nations says the production of opium in Myanmar has flourished since the military seized power in 2021, with the cultivation of poppies up by a third in the past year as eradication efforts have dropped off and the faltering economy has led more people toward the drug trade. During his visit, Foreign Minister Qin Gang said local Communist Party and government departments, the People’s Liberation Army, police and civilian bodies should join in “strengthening the border defense system.” Qin called for improvements in “maintaining distinct and stable borders, and severely cracking down on cross-border criminal activities.” “It is necessary to coordinate border management, border trade development, and bilateral relations,” he was quoted as saying in a ministry news release. Fighting between Myanmar's military and ethnic armed groups has also occasionally flared along the border, sending refugees and sometimes mortar fire into China. China has sought to maintain contacts with all sides, although it has been criticized for expressing unequivocal support for the junta after it said it would back Myanmar “no matter how the situation changes." Myanmar has been wracked by violence since the army’s overthrow of the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The takeover was met with massive public opposition, which security forces quashed with deadly force, in turn triggering widespread armed resistance. Despite the security challenges, China has sought to encourage legal trade between the sides and recently reopened border crossings after closing them for more than 1,000 days as part of strict COVID-19 control measures. During his visit to the Wanding-Ruili crossing point, Qin promoted the concept of a China-Myanmar economic corridor to aid business and other development on both sides, the Foreign Ministry said.  

A Palestinian prisoner died in Israeli custody early Tuesday after a hunger strike of nearly three months, Israel’s prison service announced. Adnan's death raises the potential for conflict between Israel and Palestinian militant groups during a period of already high tensions. Shortly after his death was announced, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired a volley of rockets into southern Israel. Khader Adnan began his strike shortly after being arrested on Feb. 5. Adnan, a member of the Islamic Jihad militant group, had gone on hunger strikes several times after previous arrests. That included a 55-day strike in 2015 to protest his arrest under so-called administrative detention, in which suspects are held indefinitely without charge or trial. Israel’s prison service said Adnan had been charged this time with “involvement in terrorist activities” but had refused medical treatment while legal proceedings moved forward. It said he was found unconscious in his cell early Tuesday and transferred to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. The Israeli military said the missiles fired from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip fell in open territory, causing no damage. The Islamic Jihad militant group said in a statement that “our fight continues and will not stop.” Israel fought an 11-day war with Palestinian militants, including Islamic Jihad, in May 2021. Israel is currently holding over 1,000 Palestinian detainees without charge or trial, the highest number since 2003, according to the Israeli human rights group HaMoked. That figure has grown in the past year as Israel has carried out almost nightly arrest raids in the occupied West Bank in the wake of a string of deadly Palestinian attacks in Israel in early 2022. Israel says the controversial tactic helps authorities thwart attacks and hold dangerous militants without divulging incriminating material for security reasons. Palestinians and rights groups say the system is widely abused and denies due process, with the secret nature of the evidence making it impossible for administrative detainees or their lawyers to mount a defense.  

Authorities discovered the bodies of seven people Monday while searching a rural Oklahoma property for two missing teenagers, state investigators confirmed. The bodies were found near the town of Henryetta, a town of about 6,000 located about 90 miles (145 kilometers) east of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation spokesman Gerald Davidson said. He said the state medical examiner will have to identify the victims, but authorities were no longer searching for the missing teens or a man they may have been with. “We’ve had our share of troubles and woes, but this one is pretty bad,” Okmulgee County Sheriff Eddy Rice told reporters. Rice declined to confirm the identities of any of the victims, where the bodies were found or any details about weapons that may have been discovered on the property. “We believe there’s no other threat to the community,” he added. A missing endangered person advisory had been issued earlier Monday for 14-year-old Ivy Webster and 16-year-old Brittany Brewer. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol canceled the advisory Monday afternoon. The advisory for Webster and Brewer had said they were reportedly seen traveling with Jesse McFadden, who was on the state's sex offender registry. Oklahoma Department of Corrections prison records show McFadden was convicted of first-degree rape in 2003 and released in October 2020. Court records show McFadden was scheduled to appear in court Monday for the start of a jury trial on charges of soliciting sexual conduct with a minor and possession of child pornography. A message left Monday evening with McFadden's attorney in that case was not immediately returned. Brittany Brewer's father told KOTV in Tulsa that one of the bodies discovered was his daughter. “Brittany was an outgoing person. She was actually selected to be Miss Henryetta ... coming up in July for this Miss National Miss pageant in Tulsa. And now she ain't gonna make it because she's dead. She's gone,” Nathan Brewer said. Henryetta Public Schools posted on Facebook and its website that it is grieving over the loss of several of its students. “Our hearts are hurting, and we have considered what would be best for our students in the coming days,” the note said. Officials said school would be in session, and mental health professionals and clergy would be on hand to help counsel students. But they said they would understand if families want to keep their children home from school. In a separate Okmulgee County case, the bodies of four men were found Oct. 14 in the Deep Fork River in Okmulgee, a town of around 11,000 people that is about 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of Tulsa. Joseph Kennedy, 68, is facing four counts of first-degree murder in that case.    

PARIS (AP) — People squeezed by inflation and demanding economic justice took to streets across Asia, Europe and the Americas on Monday to mark May Day, in an outpouring of worker discontent not seen since before the worldwide COVID-19 lockdowns. French police charged at radical protesters and troublemakers smashing bank and shop windows and setting fires as unions pushed the president to scrap a higher retirement age. South Koreans pleaded for higher wages as did others around Latin America. Spanish lawyers demanded the right to take days off. Migrant domestic workers in Lebanon marched in a country plunged into economic crisis. While May Day is marked worldwide as a celebration of labor rights, this year's rallies tapped into broader frustrations. Climate activists spray-painted a museum in Paris, and protesters in Germany demonstrated against violence targeting women and LGBTQ+ people. Celebrations were forced indoors in Pakistan, tinged with political tensions as in Turkey, as both countries face high-stakes elections. Russia's war in Ukraine overshadowed scaled-back events in Moscow, where Communist-led May Day celebrations were once massive affairs. Across the globe, this year’s May Day events unleashed pent-up frustration after three years of COVID-19 restrictions. Across France, some 800,000 people marched, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. They mobilized against President Emmanuel Macron’s recent move to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. Organizers see pension reform as a threat to hard-fought worker rights, while Macron argues it's economically necessary as the population ages. While marchers were largely peaceful, violence by radicals, an ever-present reality at French marches, marred the message, notably in Paris. A Paris police officer was seriously injured by a Molotov cocktail, among 108 officers injured around France, Darmanin said. It wasn't known how many protesters were potentially injured. Clashes also marked protests in Lyon and Nantes. Read: May Day: Workers trapped between hunger and fear “Violence is increasingly strong in a society that is radicalizing,” the interior minister said on BFM-TV news station, blaming the ultra-left. He said some 2,000 radicals were at the Paris march. Tear gas hung over the end point of the Paris march, Place de la Nation, where a huge black cloud lofted high above the trees after radicals set two fuel cans afire outside a building renovation site, police said. French union members were joined by groups fighting for economic justice, or just expressing anger at what is seen as Macron's out-of-touch, pro-business leadership. Labor activists from abroad were present, among them Hyrwon Chong of the South Korean Metal Workers’ Union. “Today we see rising inequality throughout the world, terrible inflation," she said, adding that Macron's government was trying "to tear down a pillar of the social system which is the pension system.” In Northern Macedonia’s capital Skopje, thousands of trade union members protested a recent government decision granting ministers a 78% raise. The minimum monthly wage in one of Europe’s poorest countries, is 320 euros ($350), while the hike will put ministers' wages at around 2,300 euros ($2,530). “We are here, not only (to mark) Labor Day, but also to warn that if there is no social justice, there will be no social peace either," said union leader Jakim Nedelkovski. In Turkey, police prevented demonstrators from reaching Istanbul’s main square, Taksim, and detained around a dozen of them, independent television station Sozcu reported. The square has symbolic importance for Turkey’s trade unions after unknown gunmen opened fire on a May Day celebration at Taksim in 1977, causing a stampede that killed dozens. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has declared Taksim off-limits to protests, though small groups were allowed to enter to lay wreaths at a monument. In Pakistan, authorities banned rallies in some cities because of a tense security and political atmosphere. In Peshawar, in the restive northwest, labor organizations and trade unions held indoor events to demand better workers’ rights amid high inflation. Read: Bangladesh observes May Day Sri Lanka’s opposition political parties and trade unions held workers’ day rallies protesting austerity measures and economic reforms linked to a bailout agreement with the International Monetary Fund. Protesters demanded the government halt moves to privatize state-owned and semi-government businesses. Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis in history and has suspended foreign debt repayments. In South Korea, tens of thousands of people attended rallies in its biggest May Day gatherings since the pandemic began in early 2020. “The price of everything has increased except for our wages. Increase our minimum wages!” an activist at a Seoul rally shouted at the podium. In Tokyo, thousands of labor union members, opposition lawmakers and academics demanded wage increases to offset the impact of rising costs as they recover from damage from the pandemic. They criticized Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s plan to double the defense budget, saying the money should be spent on welfare, social security and improving people’s daily lives. In Indonesia, demonstrators demanded the government repeal a job creation law they argue would only benefit business. In Taiwan, thousands of workers protested what they call the inadequacies of the self-ruled island’s labor policies, putting pressure on the ruling party before the 2024 presidential election. Protests in Germany kicked off with a “Take Back the Night” rally organized by feminist and queer groups on the eve of May Day to protest against violence directed at women and LGBTQ+ people. On Monday, thousands more turned out in marches organized by Germany labor unions in Berlin, Cologne and other cities, rejecting recent calls by conservative politicians for restrictions on the right to strike. More than 70 marches were held across Spain, and powerful unions warned of “social conflict” if low salaries compared to the EU average don’t rise in line with inflation. The Illustrious College of Lawyers of Madrid urged reforms of historic laws that require them to be on call 365 days of the year, regardless of the death of family members or medical emergencies. In recent years, lawyers have tweeted images of themselves working from hospital beds on IV drips to illustrate their plight. Italy’s far-right premier, Giorgia Meloni, made a point of working on Monday — as her Cabinet passed measures on Labor Day that it contends demonstrates concern for workers. But opposition lawmakers and union leaders said the measures do nothing to increase salaries or combat the widespread practice of hiring workers on temporary contracts. Many young people say they can’t contemplate starting families or even move out of parents’ homes because they only get temporary contracts. In war-ravaged Ukraine, May Day is associated with Soviet-era celebrations when the country was ruled from Moscow — an era that many want forgotten. “It is good that we don’t celebrate this holiday like it was done during the Bolshevik times. It was something truly awful,” said Anatolii Borsiuk, a 77-year-old in Kyiv. Alla Liapkina described the flowers and balloons of Soviet May Day gatherings, but said it’s time to move on. “We live in a new era,'' she said. ‘’We don’t need to go back to such a past.” In Venezuela, which has suffered rampant inflation for years, thousands of workers demonstrated to demand a minimum wage increase at a time when the majority cannot meet basic needs despite their last increase 14 months ago. “Decent wages and pensions now!” protesters chanted in the capital, Caracas. Many also alluded to U.S. sanctions against the socialist-led government of Nicolás Maduro, chanting, “This is not a blockade, this is looting.” In Bolivia, leftist President Luis Arce led a Labor Day march in La Paz with a major union and announced a 5% increase in the minimum wage. Arce said his government “is strong because the unions are strong.” In Brazil, the focus was not only on traditional labor unions but on parttime workers and those in the informal sector, with the government of new leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announcing a work group on proposals to regulate that sector after the president recently described those workers as “almost like slaves.”    

A former U.S. national security adviser called for deeper interaction between his country and Taiwan during a visit Saturday to the self-ruled island, which has seen increasing military threats from China. John Bolton, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2024, said at a pro-Taiwan independence event in Taipei that national security teams from both sides must develop contingency plans on how to respond to actions Beijing might take, warning it would be too late once an attack occurs. “And we have to tell China and Russia what the consequences are if they take actions against Taiwan. Not just in the immediate response, but over the longer term, to basically excommunicate China from the international economic system if it did take military actions against Taiwan or attempt to throw a blockade around it," Bolton said. Bolton, former President Donald Trump's hawkish national security adviser, started his week-long trip to Taiwan on Wednesday. The visit reflects the importance of the island's democracy as an issue in the U.S. presidential election next year amid heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing. Taiwan and China split in 1949 following a civil war that ended with the Communist Party in control of the mainland. The island has never been part of the People’s Republic of China, but Beijing says it must unite with the mainland, by force if necessary. The U.S. remains Taiwan’s closest military and political ally, despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties between them. U.S. law requires Washington to treat all threats to the island as matters of “grave concern,” though it remains ambiguous over whether American forces would be dispatched to help defend the island. Bolton said the backlog of U.S. military sales to Taiwan is estimated to be $19 billion and it needs to be resolved. “Part of that is a U.S. problem. Our defense industrial base is not as strong as it used to be. We need to improve that for global reasons, but particularly for Taiwan,” he said. On Friday, the Taiwanese Defense Ministry said China’s military flew 38 fighter jets and other warplanes near Taiwan. That was the biggest such flight display since the large military exercise in which it simulated sealing off the island after the sensitive April 5 meeting between Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. China opposes any exchanges at the official level between Taiwan and other governments. Later Friday, China’s People’s Liberation Army also issued a protest over the flight of a United States Navy P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine patrol aircraft through the Taiwan Strait, calling it a provocation that the U.S. “openly hyped up." But the U.S. 7th Fleet said Thursday’s flight was in accordance with international law and “demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.” Bolton is scheduled to join a banquet on Monday organized by the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, a pro-independence organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. Tsai will also attend the event.

Ukraine on Saturday welcomed the European Union’s hard-fought deal to keep farm exports flowing into and through the bloc to world markets, saying that the Middle East and Africa would specifically stand to benefit from it. Late Friday, the 27-nation EU ended a damaging internal standoff over a destabilizing glut of Ukraine farm imports by granting five eastern member countries the right to temporarily ban the most problematic produce while allowing all farm products to transit onward. Resolving the issue allows the EU to maintain a unified stance in the face of Russia’s invasion of its neighbor. “We welcome that we resolved this issue,” Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko said at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Stockholm. Under the deal, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania can keep four farm products that make up the overwhelming mass of exports from Ukraine out of their local markets but must guarantee unfettered access to the rest of the bloc. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine hampered Black Sea shipments of Ukrainian agricultural products, using the 27-nation bloc as a transportation route has been essential to getting the nation's prized cereal production on to the world. "We found a wise decision that would help Ukraine to export necessary commodities, food commodities towards African countries, which is so necessary for them,” Marchenko said, adding Middle East nations would equally profit. Under the deal, the bloc would basically accept the national bans on four of the five main products — wheat, maize, rapeseed, and sunflower seeds — that account for most imports. The EU would also assess whether other products, including sunflower oil, should also be included. As an added sweetener, the EU provided 100 million euros ($113 million) more in special aid on top of on an initial support package of 56.3 million euros to help farmers in the affected countries. On Friday, EU nations also tentatively agreed to lift tariffs on Ukraine's grains for another year. The EU lifted duties on Ukrainian grain to facilitate its transport to Africa and the Middle East by other routes after a Russian blockade kept cargo from leaving Ukraine's ports. Overall, there was acceptance that the lifting of import tariffs had seriously skewed the local markets in nations closest to Ukraine. In Poland, wheat imports went from 2,375 tons in 2021 to 500,008 tons last year. Maize went from 5,863 tons to more than 1.8 million over the same period. Similar huge increases were also evident in Hungary, Slovakia and Romania.

A massive fire erupted at an oil reservoir in Crimea after it was hit by a drone, a Russia-appointed official there reported Saturday. Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of the Black Sea peninsula's port city of Sevastopol, posted videos and photos of the blaze on his Telegram channel. Razvozhayev said the fire was assigned the highest ranking in terms of how complicated it will be to extinguish. He did not say whether the drone he cited as causing the fire was Ukrainian. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, a move that most of the world considered illegal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his country is seeking to reclaim the peninsula during Russia's current full-scale invasion. The incident comes a day after Russia fired more than 20 cruise missiles and two drones at Ukraine, killing at least 23 people. Almost all of the victims died when two missiles slammed into an apartment building. Three children were among the dead. Razvozhayev said the oil reservoir fire did not cause any casualties and would not hinder fuel supplies in Sevastopol. The city has been subject to regular attack attempts with drones, especially in recent weeks. Earlier this week, Razvozhayev reported that the Russian military destroyed a Ukrainian sea drone that attempted to attack the harbor and another one blew up, shattering windows in several apartment buildings, but not inflicting any other damage. Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on the oil reservoir fire. After previous attacks on Crimea, Kyiv usually stopped short of openly claiming responsibility but emphasized that the country had the right to strike any target in response to Russian aggression.

Coastguards have recovered the dead of 41 migrants off the coast of Tunisia, as the number of people dying trying to reach Europe from Africa continues to rise. According to a senior official, almost 200 people have drowned in the last ten days, reports BBC.  Tunisian morgues were running out of room, he said, and officials were struggling to keep up with the spike in attempted crossings. "On Tuesday, we had more than 200 bodies, well beyond the capacity of the hospital, which creates a health problem," said Faouzi Masmoudi, justice official in the port city of Sfax where the central morgue for an area of around a million people is sited. Also Read: At least 24 migrants die in waters off Tunisia over 2 days "There is a problem with large numbers of corpses arriving on the shore. We don't know who they are or what shipwreck they came from and the number is increasing." According the UN's migration agency, a total of roughly 300 individuals died during the previous week and a half, and 824 people have died this year, with those leaving from the Libyan coast are included. Houssem Eddine Jebabli of the national guard told Reuters, the decomposed condition of the recovered bodies indicated that they had been submerged for several days. According to him, the total number of fatalities in such a short period was unprecedented. Tunisia has become a transit point for irregular migrants, primarily from Sub-Saharan Africa, attempting to reach Europe by sea. The number of migrant deaths at sea has varied, with the UN's Missing Migrants Project reporting that 300 migrants died in the Central Mediterranean in the last 10 days alone.

The powerful sister of North Korea’s leader says her country would stage more provocative displays of its military might in response to a new U.S.-South Korean agreement to intensify nuclear deterrence to counter the North’s nuclear threat, which she insists shows their “extreme” hostility toward Pyongyang. Kim Yo Jong also lobbed personal insults toward U.S. President Joe Biden, who after a summit with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday stated that any North Korean nuclear attack on the U.S. or its allies would “result in the end of whatever regime” took such action. Biden’s meeting with Yoon in Washington came amid heightened tensions in the Korean Peninsula as the pace of both the North Korean weapons demonstrations and the combined U.S.-South Korean military exercises have increased in a cycle of tit-for-tat. Since the start of 2022, North Korea has test-fired around 100 missiles, including multiple demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the U.S. mainland and a slew of short-range launches the North described as simulated nuclear strikes on South Korea. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is widely expected to up the ante in coming weeks or months as he continues to accelerate a campaign aimed at cementing the North’s status as a nuclear power and eventually negotiating U.S. economic and security concessions from a position of strength. Also read: U.S. envoy for DPRK to visit S. Korea, Japan amid tension During their summit, Biden and Yoon announced new nuclear deterrence efforts that call for periodically docking U.S. nuclear-armed submarines in South Korea for the first time in decades and bolstering training between the two countries. They also committed to plans for bilateral presidential consultations in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack, the establishment of a nuclear consultative group and improved sharing of information on nuclear and strategic weapons operation plans. In her comments published on state media, Kim Yo Jong said the U.S.-South Korean agreement reflected the allies’ “most hostile and aggressive will of action” against the North and will push regional peace and security into “more serious danger.” Kim, who is one of her brother’s top foreign policy officials, said the summit further strengthened the North’s conviction to enhance its nuclear arms capabilities. She said it would be especially important for the North to perfect the “second mission of the nuclear war deterrent,” in an apparent reference to the country’s escalatory nuclear doctrine that calls for preemptive nuclear strikes over a broad range of scenarios where it may perceive its leadership as under threat. She lashed out at Biden over his blunt warning that North Korean nuclear aggression would result in the end of its regime, calling him senile and “too miscalculating and irresponsibly brave.” However, she said the North wouldn’t simply dismiss his words as a “nonsensical remark from the person in his dotage.” “When we consider that this expression was personally used by the president of the U.S., our most hostile adversary, it is threatening rhetoric for which he should be prepared for far too great an after-storm,” she said. “The more the enemies are dead set on staging nuclear war exercises, and the more nuclear assets they deploy in the vicinity of the Korean Peninsula, the stronger the exercise of our right to self-defense will become in direct proportion to them.” She called Yoon a “fool” over his efforts to strengthen South Korea’s defense in conjunction with its alliance with the United States and bolster the South’s own conventional missile capabilities, saying he was putting his absolute trust in the U.S. despite getting only “nominal” promises in return. “The pipe dream of the U.S. and (South) Korea will henceforth be faced with the entity of more powerful strength,” she said. South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, described her comments as “absurd” and insisted that they convey the North’s “nervousness and frustration” over the allies’ efforts to strengthen nuclear deterrence. Kim Yo Jong’s comments toward Biden were reminiscent of when her brother called former U.S. President Donald Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” while they exchanged verbal threats during a North Korean testing spree in 2017 that included flight tests of ICBMs and the North’s sixth nuclear test. Kim Jong Un later shifted toward diplomacy and held his first summit with Trump in Singapore in June 2018, where they issued aspirational goals for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula without describing when and how it would occur. But their diplomacy never recovered from the collapse of their second summit in February 2019 in Vietnam, where the Americans rejected North Korean demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for a limited surrender of their nuclear capabilities. Kim Yo Jong did not specify the actions the North is planning to take in response to the outcome of the U.S.-South Korea summit. Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said the North will likely dial up military exercises involving its purported nuclear-capable missiles to demonstrate pre-emptive strike capabilities. The North may also stage tests of submarine-launched ballistic missile systems in response to the U.S. plans to send nuclear-armed submarines to the South, he said. Kim Jong Un said this month that the country has built its first military spy satellite, which will be launched at an unspecified date. The launch would almost certainly be seen by its rivals as a banned test of long-range missile technology. In March, he called for his nuclear scientists to increase production of weapons-grade material to make bombs to put on his increasing range of nuclear-capable missiles, as the North unveiled what appeared to be a new warhead possibly designed to fit on a variety of delivery systems. That raised questions on whether the North was moving closer to its next nuclear test, which U.S. and South Korean officials have been predicting for months. North Korea has long described the United States’ regular military exercises with South Korea as invasion rehearsals, although the allies described those drills as defensive. Many experts say Kim likely uses his rivals’ military drills as a pretext to advance his weapons programs and solidify his domestic leadership amid economic troubles. Facing growing North Korean threats, Yoon has been seeking stronger reassurances from the United States that it would swiftly and decisively use its nuclear weapons if the South comes under a North Korean nuclear attack. His government has also been expanding military training with the U.S., which included the allies’ biggest field exercises in years last month and separate drills involving a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group and advanced warplanes, including nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and F-35 fighter jets.