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Sydney (AFP) – Deep-sea mining could impact marine life stretching from the tiniest bottom dwellers to apex predators like swordfish and sharks, a major piece of industry-funded research found Thursday.

The Metals Company -- a leading deep-sea mining firm -- paid Australia's government science agency to pore through data collected during test mining in the remote Pacific Ocean.

Huge tracts of Pacific Ocean seabed are carpeted in polymetallic nodules, bulbous lumps of rock that are rich in metals used in battery production -- such as cobalt and nickel.

The Metals Company is pushing to be the first to mine these nodules in international waters, striving to exploit a remote expanse known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.

Australia's government science agency released a series of technical reports on Thursday detailing how mining could be managed.

Bottom-dwellers such as sea cucumbers, marine worms, starfish and crustaceans could see "significant declines in abundance immediately following mining", research found.

Some of these species would partially bounce back within a year, but filter feeders and other tiny organisms that feast on seabed sediments showed "minimal recovery".

"On the seafloor, our research shows that there are substantial local impacts from different mining operations," scientist Piers Dunstan said during a briefing.

Deep-sea mining companies are still figuring out the best way to retrieve nodules that can lie five kilometres (three miles) or more beneath the waves.

Most efforts focus on robotic harvesting machines, or crawlers, which hoover up nodules as they rove the ocean floor.

The Australian scientists looked at how sharks and fish might be harmed by plumes of sediment discharged as mining waste.

In some scenarios, apex predators could see toxic metals start to build up in their blood after prolonged exposure to these plumes.

"Long-lived top predators, such as swordfish and large sharks, accumulated the highest simulated metal concentrations," scientists noted in one report.

Simulations showed blood metal concentrations would not exceed international health guidelines, and impacts were less pronounced if sediment was discharged at a greater depth.

"This project helps ensure that if deep-sea mining were to go ahead, there is a clear approach to understand potential risks and impacts to marine life and ecosystems," Dunstan said.

Canada-based The Metals Company is striving to start industrial deep-sea mining in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone within the next two years.

The International Seabed Authority -- which oversees deep-sea mining in international waters -- has yet to adopt long-awaited rules governing the industry.

The Metals Company has indicated it could forge ahead even without the authority's approval, pointing to an obscure US law that says American citizens can recover seabed minerals in areas beyond the nation's jurisdiction.

The firm paid Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation -- or CSIRO -- around US$1 million to compile the reports.

CSIRO stressed it was not for, or against, deep-sea mining -- but that its work would help to measure and monitor impacts should it go ahead.

Energy transition expert Tina Soliman-Hunter said it was one of the "most comprehensive" pieces of research on deep-sea mining to date.

"Without such research, there is a risk of harm from mining activities that can persist for generations," said Soliman-Hunter, from Australia's Macquarie University.

Found in international waters between Mexico and Hawaii, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is a vast abyssal plain spanning some 4 million square kilometres (1.7 million square miles).

Jakarta (AFP) – When an Indonesian mother dropped off her daughter at school in May, she did not expect her to become violently sick after eating lunch from the government's new billion-dollar free meal programme.

"My daughter had a stomachache, diarrhoea, and a headache," the woman told AFP on condition of anonymity about the incident in the Javan city of Bandung.

"She also couldn't stop vomiting until three in the morning."

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto touted the populist scheme as a solution to the high rates of stunted growth among children, as he carved his way to a landslide election victory last year.

But its rollout since January has stumbled from crisis to crisis, including accusations of nepotism, funding delays, protests and a spate of food poisonings.

It was slated to reach as many as 17.5 million children this year to the tune of $4.3 billion.

But so far it has only served five million students nationwide from January to mid-June, according to the finance ministry.

The poisoning issues were not isolated to that girl's school -- five others reported similar incidents.

But Prabowo has lauded the number of illnesses as a positive.

"Indeed there was a poisoning today, around 200 people out of three million," he said in May.

"Over five were hospitalised, so that means the success rate is 99.99 percent. A 99.99 percent success rate in any field is a good thing."

Large-scale aid programmes in Indonesia have a history of allegations of graft at both the regional and national levels.

Experts say this programme is particularly vulnerable, with little in the way of accountability.

"A big budget means the possibility of corruption is wide open, and with lax monitoring, corruption can happen," said Egi Primayogha, a researcher at Indonesia Corruption Watch.

"Since the beginning, the programme was rushed, without any good planning. There is no transparency."

The programme was rolled out soon after Prabowo took office in October and local investigative magazine Tempo reported that "several partners appointed" were Prabowo supporters in the election.

Agus Pambagio, a Jakarta-based public policy expert, said Prabowo rushed the plan, with critics saying there was little public consultation.

"Japan and India have been doing it for decades. If we want to do it just like them within a few months, it's suicide," he said.

"We can't let fatalities happen."

The plan's stated aim is to combat stunting, which affects more than 20 percent of the country's children, and reduce that rate to five percent by 2045.

Prabowo's administration has allocated $0.62 per meal and initially set a budget of 71 trillion rupiah ($4.3 billion) for this year.

But authorities have been accused of delays and under-funding the programme.

A catering business in capital Jakarta had to temporarily shut down in March because the government had not paid the $60,000 it was owed. The case went viral and it eventually got its money back.

The government announced a $6.2 billion budget boost recently but revised it by half as problems mounted in its ambitious quest to deliver meals to almost 83 million people by 2029.

Widespread cuts to fund the programme's large budget also sparked protests across Indonesian cities in February.

Yet some say the programme has benefited their child.

"It's quite helpful. I still give my son pocket money, but since he got free lunch, he could save that money," Reni Parlina, 46, told AFP.

However a May survey by research institute Populix found more than 83 percent of 4,000 respondents think the policy should be reviewed.

"If necessary, the programme should be suspended until a thorough evaluation is carried out," said Egi.

The National Nutrition Agency, tasked with overseeing free meal distribution, did not respond to an AFP request for comment.

The agency has said it will evaluate the scheme and has trained thousands of kitchen staff.

Kitchen partners say they are taking extra precautions too.

"We keep reminding our members to follow food safety protocols," said Sam Hartoto of the Indonesian Catering Entrepreneurs Association, which has 100 members working with the government.

While they seek to provide assurances, the debacles have spooked parents who doubt Prabowo's government can deliver.

"I don't find this programme useful. It poses more risks than benefits," said the mother of the sick girl.

"I don't think this programme is running well."

Agadir (Morocco) (AFP) – On the drought-stricken plains of Morocco's Chtouka region, cherry tomato farms stretch as far as the eye can see, clinging to life through a single, environmentally contentious lifeline: desalination.

"We wouldn't be here without it," said Abir Lemseffer, who manages production for the tomato giant Azura.

Severe drought driven by climate change has gripped the North African country since 2018, leaving Azura's 800 hectares (2,000 acres) of farms entirely dependent on desalinated water.

But the technology comes at a high cost -- both financially and environmentally.

It is energy-intensive, and in a country where more than half of the electricity still comes from coal, it carries a heavy carbon footprint.

Since 2022, Morocco's largest desalination plant, located nearby, has been producing 125,000 cubic metres (4.4 million cubic feet) of water a day.

The supply irrigates 12,000 hectares of farmland and provides drinking water for 1.6 million people in Agadir and surrounding areas, said Ayoub Ramdi of the regional agricultural development office.

By the end of 2026, officials hope to boost production to 400,000 cubic metres of water, half of which would be designated for agriculture.

Without that water, "a catastrophic scenario would loom over Morocco", said Rqia Bourziza, an agronomist.

Agriculture, which contributes about 12 percent to Morocco's overall economy, has been badly hit by six consecutive years of drought -- prompting the country to go all-in on desalination.

Across Morocco, there are 16 plants capable of producing 270 million cubic metres of water per year, with a target of reaching 1.7 billion cubic metres by 2030.

While around 1,500 farmers in the Agadir region make use of the water provided by the plant, others don't because it's simply too expensive.

Among them is Hassan, who grows courgettes and peppers on half a hectare of land and uses water from a well shared with 60 other farmers.

"I can't afford to use that water," he said, declining to give his full name.

Desalinated water is sold at $0.56 per cubic metre, excluding taxes, compared with $0.11 per cubic metre for conventional water.

That hefty price tag comes despite a 40 percent subsidy from public coffers.

Ali Hatimy, another agronomist, said "the cost of desalinated water significantly reduces the range of potential crops because only very high-value-added crops can offset it".

Bourziza insisted that desalination was "a very good alternative" but only for high-value crops such as tomatoes and orchard fruits.

Beyond the financial cost, desalination also exerts an environmental cost, said Hatimy.

"The production of desalinated water requires tremendous amounts of electrical energy and brine discharges impact marine ecosystems," he said.

Highly concentrated brine is a byproduct of the desalination process.

Ramdi, from the agricultural development office, said that "no impact" had been observed in the waters around Agadir, adding that the brine was diluted before its release.

While Morocco has a growing share of renewable energy, 62 percent of its electricity came from coal in 2023 and 14 percent from oil and gas, according to the International Energy Agency.

The stakes in the wider region of Souss-Massa, which accounts for 85 percent of Morocco's fruit and vegetable exports, are high.

Nearly two million tonnes are produced each year, with a turnover of $1.1 billion.

Ramdi said the desalination plant had thus helped to protect $1 billion of revenue a year and more than a million jobs.

"Desalination has saved agriculture in Chtouka," said Mohamed Boumarg, walking through one of his tomato greenhouses.

"Before, I only cultivated five hectares because I was constrained by the amount of water I had. Groundwater was not sufficient," said the 38-year-old farmer who now grows 20 hectares of tomatoes, with 60 percent of his crop marked for export.

"Our survival depends on it," said Lemseffer of Azura. "Either we accept sacrificing some of our margin by using desalinated water, or we close up shop."

Bangkok (AFP) – Thailand's former defence chief is set to be appointed acting prime minister on Thursday, capping a colourful career for the political heavyweight once nicknamed "Big Comrade".

Phumtham Wechayachai earned his moniker over links in his youth to a 1970s student movement that rallied against the architect of a military coup, before their protests were violently crushed.

He fled to the jungle where communist guerrillas were plotting uprisings against the nation's military, and recently he has been questioned over his associations.

But the 71-year-old has successfully transitioned into the limelight from a business role in the empire of Thaksin Shinawatra, the founding force of a dynasty which has dominated Thai politics for decades.

Phumtham has held the defence and commerce portfolios, and had a previous spell as acting prime minister after a crisis engulfed the top office last year.

On Thursday he is due to be sworn in as deputy prime minister and interior minister -- making him acting premier again, after Thaksin's daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra was suspended from her role.

Born in the suburbs of Bangkok, Phumtham was nicknamed "Auan", meaning "Chubby", by his parents.

He earned a political science degree from a top Thai university and joined the student movement that took to the streets in 1976, opposing the return of military dictator Thanom Kittikachorn.

His childhood nickname belied his slim-faced appearance in a black-and-white photo of the protests, showing him brandishing speech papers with a microphone in hand.

The uprising ended in a bloody crackdown known as the "Thammasat Massacre" that killed at least 40 students and remains today one of the country's most notorious instances of protest bloodshed.

Unofficial estimates suggest the death toll could have been as high as 500, because live ammunition was used to quell the unrest.

Students from Thailand's elite universities fled into the jungle to join guerilla movements.

When Phumtham became defence minister last year he faced a grilling by the conservative and pro-military establishment who accused him of being a card-carrying communist.

"I went to escape the violence," he insisted. "It was not only me, there were other students too."

Despite his protestations, his links to the movement earned him a second alias: "Big Comrade".

Phumtham's reputation has softened since his firebrand formative years, and he is now known as a composed and diplomatic operator.

He will step into the acting prime minister role after the Constitutional Court suspended Paetongtarn pending an ethics probe which could take months.

In the brief interim between the court decision and Phumtham being sworn in as part of a cabinet reshuffle, transport minister Suriya Jungrungreangkit has been acting premier.

Phumtham's rise has mirrored that of Thaksin, whose dynastic parties have been jousting with the country's pro-monarchy, pro-military establishment since the early 2000s.

In the 1990s Phumtham was employed by the Thaksin-founded telecom giant Shin Corp, before entering politics full-time in 2001.

He served as deputy secretary-general of the Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party, founded by Thaksin, and was appointed deputy transport minister in 2005.

After Thaksin was ousted in a coup, the party was dissolved and Phumtham was slapped with a five-year ban from politics.

But the movement remained a potent force, with Thaksin's sister and brother-in-law both having stints as prime minister.

Paetongtarn was appointed in August, with the backing of the family's Pheu Thai party.

Phumtham, considered Thaksin's confidant, appeared by Paetongtarn's side as she gave her first press conference as leader.

Although he will be stepping into her shoes, he has signalled he remains loyal to the Shinawatra dynasty and told journalists he believes she will "survive the probe".

Denpasar (Indonesia) (AFP) – At least four people were dead and dozens unaccounted for Thursday after a ferry sank on its way to the resort island of Bali, according to local authorities who said 23 survivors had been plucked from the water so far.

Rescuers were racing to find 38 missing people in rough seas after the vessel carrying 65 passengers sank before midnight on Wednesday as it sailed to the popular holiday destination from Indonesia's main island Java.

"23 rescued, 4 dead," Rama Samtama Putra, police chief of Banyuwangi in East Java, where the boat departed, told AFP.

President Prabowo Subianto, who was on a trip to Saudi Arabia, ordered an immediate emergency response, cabinet secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya said in a statement Thursday, adding the cause of the accident was "bad weather".

Java-based Surabaya search and rescue agency head Nanang Sigit confirmed the same figures in a statement, and said efforts to reach the boat were initially hampered by adverse weather conditions that have since cleared up.

Waves as high as 2.5 metres (8 feet) with "strong winds and strong currents" had affected the rescue operation, he said.

The agency had earlier said 61 people were missing and four rescued, without giving a cause for the boat's sinking.

"KMP Tunu Pratama Jaya... sank about 25 minutes after weighing anchor," it said.

"The ferry's manifest data totalled 53 passengers and 12 passenger crews."

A rescue team of at least 54 personnel including from the navy and police were dispatched along with inflatable rescue boats, while a bigger vessel was later sent from Surabaya city to assist the search efforts.

The ferry crossing from Ketapang port in Java's Banyuwangi regency to Bali's Gilimanuk port -- one of the busiest in Indonesia -- is around 5 kilometres (3 miles) as the crow flies and takes around one hour.

It is often used by people crossing between the islands by car.

Four of the known survivors saved themselves by using the ferry's lifeboat and were found in the water early Thursday, the rescue agency said.

It said the ferry was also transporting 22 vehicles, including 14 trucks.

It was unclear if any foreigners were onboard when the ferry sank.

Rescuers said they were still assessing if there were more people onboard than the ferry's manifest showed.

It is common in Indonesia for the actual number of passengers on a boat to differ from the manifest.

Marine accidents are a regular occurrence in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago of around 17,000 islands, in part due to lax safety standards and sometimes due to bad weather.

In March, a boat carrying 16 people capsized in rough waters off Bali, killing an Australian woman and injuring at least one other person.

A ferry carrying more than 800 people ran aground in shallow waters off East Nusa Tenggara province in 2022 and remained stuck for two days before being dislodged with no one hurt.

And in 2018, more than 150 people drowned when a ferry sank in one of the world's deepest lakes on Sumatra island.

Kamyanka (Ukraine) (AFP) – There were so many mines on Larisa Sysenko's small farm in Kamyanka in eastern Ukraine after the Russians were pushed out that she and her husband Viktor started demining it themselves -- with rakes.

Further along the front line at Korobchyne near Kharkiv, Mykola Pereverzev began clearing the fields with his farm machinery.

"My tractor was blown up three times. We had to get a new one. It was completely unrepairable. But we ended up clearing 200 hectares of minefields in two months," he said.

"Absolutely everyone demines by themselves," declared Igor Kniazev on his farm half an hour from Larisa's.

Ukraine is one of the great bread baskets of the world, its black earth so rich and fertile you want to scoop it up in your hands and smell it.

But that dark soil is now almost certainly the most mined in the world, experts told AFP.

More than three years of unrelenting artillery barrages -- the biggest since World War II -- have sown it with millions of tons of ordnance, much of it unexploded.

One in 10 shells fail to detonate, experts estimate, with as much as a third of North Korean ordnance fired by Russia failing to go off, the high explosives moulding where they fall.

Yet the drones which have revolutionised the way war is fought in Ukraine may also now become a game-changer in demining the country.

Ukraine itself and some of the more than 80 NGOs and commercial groups working there are already using them to speed the mammoth task of clearing the land, with the international community pledging a massive sum to the unprecedented effort.

But on the ground it is often the farmers themselves -- despite the dangers and official warnings -- who are pushing ahead on their own.

Like the Sysenkos.

They were among the first to return to the devastated village of Kamyanka, which was occupied by the Russian army from March to September 2022.

Two weeks after its recapture by Ukrainian soldiers, Larisa and Viktor went back to check their house and found it uninhabitable, without water or electricity.

So they let the winter pass and returned in March 2023 to clean up, first taking down the gallows Russian soldiers had set up in their yard.

And they began demining. With their rakes.

"There were a lot of mines and our guys (in the Ukrainian army) didn't have time to take care of us. So slowly we demined ourselves with rakes," said Larisa cheerily.

Boxes of Russian artillery shells are still stacked up in front of their house -- 152mm howitzer shells to be precise, said Viktor with a mischievous smile.

"I served in the artillery during Soviet times, so I know a bit," the 56-year-old added.

That summer a demining team from the Swiss FSD foundation arrived and unearthed 54 mines in the Sysenkos's field.

They were probably laid to protect a 2S3 Akatsiya self-propelled gun -- which looks like a big tank -- with which the Russians could hit targets up to 24 kilometres (15 miles) away.

The PFM-1 anti-personnel mines they found are sensitive enough to detonate under the weight of a small child, exploding under only five kilograms of pressure.

Known as the "flower petal" or "butterfly" mine, they blend horrifyingly well into fields and forests, with their petal shape and khaki colour.

They are banned under the 1997 Ottawa International Convention, to which Russia never signed up.

Ukraine said on Sunday it was withdrawing from the treaty.

The deminers told the Sysenkos "to evacuate the house".

"Under their rules, we couldn't stay there. So we obeyed. The demining machine went back and forth and there were tons of explosions under it."

With its gutted homes, Kamyanka still looks like a ghost village but about 40 people have moved back. (Its pre-war population was 1,200.)

Many fear the mines and several people have stepped on them -- "99 percent on the flower petal ones", said Viktor.

Yet farmers cannot afford to wait and are back at work in the vast fields famous for Ukraine's intensely black and fertile "chernozem" soil, which is rich in humus.

"If you look at the villages around here, farmers have adapted tractors themselves to clear their land and they are already planting wheat and sunflowers," Viktor added.

Ukraine's "cereal production fell from 84 million tons before the war to 56 million tons" last year, a drop of one-third, agriculture minister Vitaliy Koval told AFP.

"Ukraine has 42 million hectares (103 million acres) of agricultural land. On paper, we can cultivate 32 million hectares. But usable, uncontaminated land not occupied by Russia -- (we have) only 24 million hectares," he added.

A fifth of Ukraine's total territory (123,000 square kilometres, 48,000 square miles) is "potentially contaminated" by mines or explosives, according to government data.

That's an area roughly the size of England.

So does that make Ukraine the most mined country in the world?

"I think that is probably true in terms of the most unexploded bombs and shells and the most mines in the ground," said Paul Heslop, the United Nations Mine Action Service adviser in Ukraine.

Like all experts AFP talked to, he said it was impossible to make an accurate count in a country at war with a front line stretching 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) and its Russian-controlled areas inaccessible.

"(But) if you have got maybe four to five million unexploded shells or munitions, and three to five million mines, you potentially have 10 million explosive devices in the ground."

Pete Smith, who leads the HALO Trust's 1,500 staff in Ukraine, is a veteran of demining Iraq and Afghanistan.

But "I can say with a large degree of certainty" that no other country has been strewn with so many explosives, he said.

Some semblance of normal life has returned for the Sysenkos.

Their two dogs frolic around a sign marked "Danger Mines".

Birds now nest in the bullet and shell holes in the peach-coloured walls of their farmhouse.

But the demining will be going on for some time around them.

To get some idea of how thankless it can be, the Swiss FSD team found only the remnants of three explosives after two years of searching a nearby 2.6-hectare plot (about the size of three football fields).

"Metal contamination was so intense that our detectors became unusable. They were constantly going off," their site chief told AFP.

But after checking the thousands of metal fragments they had found, almost all turned out not to be dangerous.

The snail's pace of the meticulous process exasperates farmer Kniazev, who rattles off his gripes with the demining groups at machine gun pace.

"Every year they promise: 'Tomorrow, tomorrow, we'll clear all the fields.'" So in the end, he did it himself.

Like the Sysenkos, Kniazev went back to his land as soon as the Russians withdrew and has since demined 10 hectares by himself.

He hopes to finish the final 40 within a year.

How?

"I took a metal detector and cleared the mines," he shot back.

"I was on my tractor when the harrow (being dragged behind) hit a mine and it exploded."

Kniazev managed to repair the tractor but the harrow was a write-off.

"I was lucky," he said with a twinkle in his steel blue eyes.

Others not so much. "Demining will take a long, long time because people keep detonating mines," he said.

"Dozens (of farmers) around here have already hit TM anti-tank mines. Many of our folks also stepped on OZM mines."

These Soviet-era "jumping" anti-personnel mines are particularly dangerous, leaping up a metre (three feet) when triggered and spraying 2,400 bits of shrapnel at everything within 40 metres.

Kniazev has been turning the remnants of Russian shells into pipes.

"I'll make a lamp" with that empty cluster bomb on the floor, he said.

A prosperous farmer before the war, he is slowly getting back on his feet despite losing a large part of his agricultural machinery.

He had just planted wheat after growing potatoes last year. He plans to diversify into mushrooms, which are highly profitable, he said.

Andriy Ilkiv lost his left leg below the knee when an anti-personnel mine exploded under his foot on September 13, 2022.

"I returned to work about four months later," said the head of a Ukrainian Interior Ministry demining team, even though the father-of-five was eligible for an office job because of his disability.

"I'm used to this work, I like it," he told AFP.

"Staying in an office isn't for me," he added, his colleagues gently ribbing him as they begin their day's work, the engine of their huge 12.5-ton German-made excavator already humming.

Kniazev said many Ukrainians work in demining for the good pay and to avoid conscription.

Former hairdresser Viktoria Shynkar has been working for HALO Trust, the world's biggest non-governmental demining group, for a year.

And she happily admitted the pay was one part of what drew her to this field in Tamaryne near Mykolaiv, not far from the Black Sea.

The 1,000 euros ($1,180) monthly wage she gets after the three weeks of training is as much as a young doctor is paid.

And despite the heavy body armour and helmet, it is much less tiring than being a hairdresser, where she hated making small talk with customers and was always on her feet.

"Before I used to cut hair. Now I cut grass (looking for mines). Before I cut to the millimetre. Now it's to the centimetre," the 36-year-old said.

You need to be precise. In a field nearby, Shynkar and her colleagues uncovered 243 TM-62 Russian landmines, each armed with enough high explosive to blast through the armour of a battle tank and kill its crew.

The Ukrainian government wants to clear 80 percent of its territory by 2033, despite some questioning how the work will be funded and coordinated, never mind problems with corruption.

"I've seen contracts worth millions that made no sense," a foreign expert, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP.

"So there are clearly things going on under the table."

But some "of the most significant innovations in mine clearance in 20 to 30 years" are also happening in Ukraine, said Smith of the HALO Trust.

"Drones have been incredibly useful, particularly in areas we can't enter safely but they still allow us to survey the area," said Sam Rowlands, the trust's survey coordinator in Ukraine.

It uses 80 drones with various sensors depending on the ground conditions.

The images are sent to their headquarters near Kyiv to map out the minefield and are used to train AI in detecting different types of mines.

Volodymr Sydoruk, a data analyst there, works on the algorithms from partner company Amazon Web Services.

He enters multicoloured code for each type of mine that appears on his giant screen.

It is still early days for their machine learning but it is "already around 70 percent accurate, which is not bad", said Sydoruk.

And AI is likely to make drones a lot more effective in the future, experts say.

"One day we will see demining robots working 23 hours a day, with no risk to human lives," the UN's Heslop said.

"In five or 10 years, everything will be much more automated, thanks to what is happening today in Ukraine," he added.

Then Viktor and Larisa will finally be able to retire their rakes.

Seoul (AFP) – North Korea opened a massive resort area on its east coast, state media said Wednesday, with the tourism pet project of leader Kim Jong Un reportedly set to welcome Russian guests later this month.

Dubbed "North Korea's Waikiki" by South Korean media, the Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Area can accommodate nearly 20,000 people, according to Pyongyang, which previously described it as "a world-class cultural resort".

Kim showed a keen interest in developing North Korea's tourism industry during his early years in power, analysts have said, and the coastal resort area was a particular focus.

The tourist zone opened to domestic visitors Tuesday, Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency reported, publishing images of tourists in colourful swimsuits enjoying the beach.

North Koreans of all ages from across the country flocked to the site this week "filled with joy at experiencing a new level of civilization", KCNA reported.

The visitors were "astonished by the grandeur and splendor of the tourist city, where more than 400... artistically designed buildings lined the white sandy beach in ideal harmony", it added.

According to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, a group of Russian tourists is set to visit the zone in North Korea for the first time on July 7.

South Korea's unification ministry, which manages relations with the North, said the site's operations are "expected to gradually expand", including to Russian tourists.

Kim said last week the construction of the site would go down as "one of the greatest successes this year" and that the North would build more large-scale tourist zones "in the shortest time possible".

Previously released images showed him sitting in a chair -- alongside his teenage daughter Ju Ae and wife Ri Sol Ju -- watching a man flying off a water slide in the resort.

But given the limited capacity of available flights, international tourism to the new beach resort is "likely to remain small in scale," according to Seoul's unification ministry.

"It is estimated that tourists will travel via Pyongyang, and that the number of visitors may be limited to around 170 people per day," the ministry said.

North Korea sees tourism as a key source of foreign currency, it said, and Pyongyang may have received aid to complete the site from Russia in exchange for joining its war in Ukraine.

The nuclear-armed North reopened its borders in August 2023 after almost four years, having closed them because of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which even its own nationals were prevented from entering.

But foreign tourism was limited even before the pandemic, with tour companies saying around 5,000 Western tourists visited each year. Significantly more Chinese tourists were allowed at the time.

The impoverished country's political, military and cultural ties with Russia have deepened since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The North last year permitted Russian tourists to return for the first time since the pandemic and Western tour operators briefly returned in February this year. No Chinese tourists are known to have returned to the country.

A tourist train between Rason -- home to North Korea's first legal marketplace -- and Russia's Vladivostok resumed in May this year, according to an official from Seoul's unification ministry.

US citizens made up about 20 percent of the market before Washington banned travel following the imprisonment and subsequent death of American student Otto Warmbier.

Hundreds of thousands of South Koreans also used to visit Mount Kumgang near the inter-Korean border every year, travelling to a Seoul-funded tourist resort that was the first major cooperation project between the neighbours.

The trips came to an abrupt end in 2008 when a North Korean soldier shot dead a South Korean tourist who strayed off the approved path and Seoul suspended travel.

Brookes Point (Philippines) (AFP) – A nickel stockpile towers over farmer Moharen Tambiling's rice paddy in the Philippines' Palawan, evidence of a mining boom that locals hope a new moratorium will tame.

"They told us before the start of their operations that it wouldn't affect us, but the effects are undeniable now," Tambiling told AFP.

"Pangolins, warthogs, birds are disappearing. Flowers as well."

A biodiversity hotspot, Palawan also holds vast deposits of nickel, needed for everything from stainless steel to electric vehicles.

Once the world's largest exporter of the commodity, the Philippines is now racing to catch up with Indonesia. In 2021, Manila lifted a nine-year ban on mining licences.

Despite promised jobs and tax revenue, there is growing pushback against the sector in Palawan.

In March, the island's governing council unanimously passed a 50-year moratorium on any new mining permits.

"Flash floods, the siltation of the sea, fisheries, mangrove areas... We are witnesses to the effects of long-term mining," Nieves Rosento, a former local councillor who led the push, told AFP.

Environmental rights lawyer Grizelda Mayo-Anda said the moratorium could stop nearly 70 proposed projects spanning 240,000 hectares.

"You have to protect the old-growth forest, and it's not being done," she said.

In southern Palawan's Brooke's Point, a Chinese ship at a purpose-built pier waits for ore from the stockpile overlooking Tambiling's farm.

Mining company Ipilan says increased production will result in greater royalties for Indigenous people and higher tax revenues, but that means little to Tambiling's sister Alayma.

The single mother-of-six once made 1,000-5,000 pesos ($18-90) a day selling lobster caught where the pier now sits.

"We were surprised when we saw backhoes digging up the shore," she told AFP, calling a one-time compensation offer of 120,000 pesos ($2,150) insulting.

"The livelihood of all the Indigenous peoples depended on that area."

On the farm, Tambiling stirred rice paddy mud to reveal reddish laterite he says is leaking from the ore heap and poisoning his crops.

Above him, swathes of the Mantalingahan mountains have been deforested, producing floods he describes as "fearsome, deep and fast-moving."

Ipilan has faced protests and legal challenges over its logging, but its operations continue.

Calls to parent company Global Ferronickel Holdings were not returned.

For some in Palawan, the demand for nickel to power EVs has a certain irony.

"You may be able to... eliminate pollution using electric vehicles," said Jeminda Bartolome, an anti-mining advocate.

"But you should also study what happens to the area you are mining."

In Bataraza, the country's oldest nickel mine is expanding, having secured permission before the moratorium.

Rio Tuba employees armed with brooms, goggles, hats and scarves are barely visible through reddish dust as they sweep an access road that carries 6,000 tonnes of ore destined for China each day.

Company senior vice president Jose Bayani Baylon said mining turned a barely accessible malarial swamp into a "first-class municipality".

"You have an airport, you have a port, you have a community here. You have a hospital, you have infrastructure which many other communities don't have," he told AFP.

He dismisses environmental concerns as overblown.

With part of its concession tapped out, the company is extending into an area once off-limits to logging but since rezoned.

Thousands of trees have been cleared since January, according to locals, but Baylon said "under the law, for every tree you cut, you have to plant 100".

The company showed AFP a nine-hectare plot it spent 15 years restoring with native plants.

But it is unclear to what degree that will be replicated. Baylon concedes some areas could become solar farms instead.

Nearby, Indigenous resident Kennedy Coria says mining has upset Mount Bulanjao's ecosystem.

"Honeybees disappeared where we used to find them. Fruit trees in the forest stopped bearing fruit," the father-of-seven said.

A fifth of the Philippines' Indigenous land is covered by mining and exploration permits, according to rights group Global Witness.

Legally, they have the right to refuse projects and share profits, but critics say the process is rarely clear.

"There are Indigenous peoples who have not received any royalties for the past 10 years," said Rosento.

Coria, who can neither read nor write, said he must sign a document each year when accepting what he is told is his share of Rio Tuba profits.

"We get about four kilos of rice from the community leader, who tells us it came from the company," he said.

Rio Tuba said funds are distributed in coordination with the National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP), which is meant to represent the communities.

But some say it acts in the interests of miners, attempting to persuade locals to accept concessions and the terms offered by companies.

The NCIP referred questions to multiple regional offices, none of which replied. The government's industry regulator declined interview requests.

While Palawan's moratorium will not stop Rio Tuba's expansion or Ipilan's operations, supporters believe it will slow further mining.

There are looming legal challenges, however.

A recent Supreme Court decision struck down a mining ban in Occidental Mindoro province.

Backers remain confident though, and Rosento said the council would stand firm.

"Responsible mining is just a catchphrase," she said.

Barnabas Tinkasiimire, a Ugandan member of parliament critical of President Yoweri Museveni, was abducted over the weekend and apparently tortured before his release, a member of the law society said on Monday. Uganda has seen increased pressure on opposition figures ahead of presidential elections in January. Museveni announced he will seek to extend his nearly 40 years in power.

The Uganda Law Society raised the alarm over the "enforced disappearance" of Barnabas Tinkasiimire, a lawyer and MP, after his family told them on Sunday that he had been picked up by "heavily armed, drone-operating security operatives" at a petrol station in the capital Kampala.

Tinkasiimire's wife said he had since been found in a suburb of the city.

"They dumped him in Namungoona in the early morning hours," she said, adding that he went missing on Friday.

"He is alive but very weak. We have taken him for medical attention," she said.

Tinkasiimire's wife later told the law society that he had "torture marks on his body", according to its vice-president, Anthony Asiimwe.

"We are concerned that a legislator and an advocate can be tortured," Asiimwe told news agencies.

"It is disturbing and we demand that the government get to the root of what happened to him," he added.

Though Tinkasiimire is a member of Museveni's ruling party, the National Resistance Movement, he has been an outspoken critic of some aspects of the president's rule in Uganda.

In a post on social media, opposition leader Bobi Wine said Tinkasiimire "has been very critical of Museveni's effort to impose his brutal son on our country, which his family believes is the reason he is being persecuted and held incommunicado".

Museveni's son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, is the head of the Ugandan army and widely seen as the likely successor to his father.

Kainerugaba last month boasted on social media that he had kidnapped one of Wine's aides and was torturing him in his basement.

The United Nations and several rights organisations have expressed concern about repression against opposition groups ahead of the election.

"Enforced disappearances are currently a serious problem in many parts of Uganda," the law society said.

Meanwhile, Museveni has confirmed he intends to contest in next year's presidential election, potentially extending his rule in the east African country to nearly half a century.

In a post on social media, late on Saturday, Museveni said he had "expressed my interest in running for... the position of presidential flag bearer," for his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.

The 80-year-old has been ruler of Uganda since 1986 when he seized power after leading a five-year guerrilla war.

The ruling party has changed the constitution twice in the past to allow Museveni to extend his rule, and rights activists have accused him of using security forces and patronage to maintain his grip on power. He denies the accusation.

Museveni said he is seeking reelection to grow the country to a "$500 billion economy in the next five years." Uganda's GDP currently stands at about $66 billion, according to the finance ministry.

The country will hold its presidential election next January, when voters will also elect lawmakers.

(with newswires)

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Israel's military said Tuesday that it had expanded its operations in Gaza, where residents reported fierce gunfire and shelling days ahead of a planned trip to Washington by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The intensified operations came after days of mounting calls for a ceasefire, with US President Donald Trump -- whom Netanyahu is slated to meet with next week -- among those urging Israel to strike a new deal to halt the war and bring home the hostages still held in Gaza.

Israel's campaign to destroy the Palestinian militant group Hamas has continued unabated, however, with Gaza's civil defence agency reporting Israeli forces killed 17 people on Tuesday.

In response to reports of deadly strikes in the north and south of the territory, the Israeli army told AFP it was "operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities".

Separately, it said Tuesday morning that in recent days it had "expanded its operations to additional areas within the Gaza Strip, [...]".

Raafat Halles, 39, from the Shujaiya district of Gaza City district, said "air strikes and shelling have intensified over the past week", and tanks have been advancing.

"I believe that every time negotiations or a potential ceasefire are mentioned, the army escalates crimes and massacres on the ground," he said. "I don't know why."

Amer Daloul, a 44-year-old resident of Gaza City, also reported fiercer clashes between Israeli forces and militants in recent days, telling AFP that he and his family were forced to flee the tent they were living in at dawn on Tuesday "due to heavy and random gunfire and shelling".

In the southern city of Rafah, resident Mohammed Abdel Aal, 41, said "tanks are present" in most parts of town.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that eight people were killed near aid distribution sites in central and southern Gaza Tuesday, in the latest in a long-running spate of deadly attacks on those seeking food.

One person was killed and 50 wounded when tanks and drones opened fire as crowds were waiting to collect aid near the Wadi Gaza Bridge in the middle of the territory, Bassal said.

The civil defence said another six people were killed nearby while trying to reach the same aid centre.

Asked for comment, the Israeli military told AFP its forces "fired warning shots to distance suspects who approached the troops", adding it was not aware of any injuries but would review the incident.

At least one more person was killed near another aid centre in Rafah, the civil defence said.

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by rescuers.

A group of 169 aid organisations called Monday for an end to Gaza's "deadly" new US- and Israeli-backed aid distribution scheme, which they said forced starving civilians to "trek for hours through dangerous terrain and active conflict zones, only to face a violent, chaotic race" for food.

They urged a return to the UN-led aid mechanism that existed until March, when Israel imposed a full blockade on humanitarian assistance entering Gaza during an impasse in truce talks with Hamas.

The new scheme's administrator, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), has distanced itself from reports of aid seekers being killed near its centres.

The Israeli army said it had also opened a review into a strike on a seafront Gaza cafe on Monday that it said had targeted militants.

The civil defence agency reported that the attack killed 24 people.

Maher Al-Baqa, 40, the brother of the owner of the cafe, told AFP that several of his relatives including two nephews were killed in the strike.

"It's one of the most well-known cafes on the Gaza coast, frequented by educated youth, journalists, artists, doctors, engineers and hardworking people," he said.

"They used to feel free and safe there -- it was like a second home to them."

Israel's declaration of victory in the recent 12-day war has raised pressure on it to put a similar end to more than 20 months of devastating fighting in Gaza.

"Taking advantage of the success is no less important than achieving the success," Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

Hamas official Taher al-Nunu told AFP the group is "ready to agree to any proposal if it will lead to an end to the war and a permanent ceasefire and a complete withdrawal of occupation forces".

"So far, there has been no breakthrough."

London (AFP) – British police on Tuesday said they had arrested three senior staff at the hospital where nurse Lucy Letby was found to have murdered seven babies, on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.

Police launched a probe at the Countess of Chester Hospital (CoCH) in northwest England in 2023 after Letby was convicted and jailed for life for murders said to have taken place between 2015 and 2016.

The probe aimed to find out whether the failure of hospital staff to act in the face of increasing deaths amounted to criminality.

Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes said three people "who were part of the senior leadership team at the CoCH in 2015-2016" were arrested on Monday on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.

Hughes said the arrests, which were the first under the wider probe, had no impact on Letby's convictions.

The three were not named and were released on bail.

The Letby case shocked the nation during lengthy trials in 2023 and 2024, after which she was convicted for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more.

Letby, from Hereford, western England, was charged in 2020 following a string of deaths at the hospital's neo-natal unit, but has always maintained her innocence.

The prosecution said she attacked her vulnerable prematurely born victims, often during night shifts, by either injecting them with air, overfeeding them with milk or poisoning them with insulin.

But a panel of international experts said in February that the evidence used to convict her was wrong, and it was more likely that the babies had died from natural causes or bad medical care.

Her defence team has applied to the independent Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to probe whether there had been a possible miscarriage of justice in her two trials.

New Delhi (AFP) – India's capital banned fuel sales to ageing vehicles on Tuesday as authorities try to tackle the sprawling megacity's hazardous air pollution.

The city is regularly ranked one of the most polluted capitals globally with acrid smog blanketing its skyline every winter.

At the peak of the smog, levels of PM2.5 pollutants -- dangerous cancer-causing microparticles small enough to enter the bloodstream through the lungs -- surge to more than 60 times the World Health Organization's recommended daily maximum.

Petrol cars older than 15 years, and diesel vehicles older than 10, were already banned from operating on New Delhi's roads by a 2018 Supreme Court ruling.

But millions flout the rules.

According to official figures, over six million such vehicles are plying the city's streets.

The ban that came into force on Tuesday seeks to keep them off the roads by barring them from refuelling.

Police and municipal workers were deployed at fuel stations across Delhi, where number plate-recognising cameras and loudspeakers were installed.

"We have been instructed to call in scrap car dealers if such vehicles come in," said a traffic policeman posted at a fuelling station in the city.

From November, the ban will be extended to satellite cities around the capital, an area home to more than 32 million people.

A study in the Lancet medical journal attributed 1.67 million premature deaths in India to air pollution in 2019.

Each winter, vehicle and factory emissions couple with farm fires from surrounding states to wrap the city in a dystopian haze.

Cooler temperatures and slow-moving winds worsen the situation by trapping deadly pollutants.

Piecemeal government initiatives, such as partial restrictions on fossil fuel-powered transport and water trucks spraying mist to clear particulate matter from the air, have failed to make a noticeable impact.