East Asia

A senior U.S. diplomat said on Dec. 16 that Washington won't accept a year-end deadline set by North Korea to make concessions in stalled nuclear talks and urged Pyongyang to return to a negotiating table immediately.

The Chinese government has allocated part of the 2020 funding for poverty alleviation to local authorities, the Treasury said on Monday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised a parachuting drill of military sharpshooters and vowed to build an "invincible army,'' displaying more defiance even as the United States and South Korea called off their own exercises to create space for nuclear diplomacy.

Trump did not attend the ASEAN leaders' summit and the East Asian Summit in Thailand's capital on November 2-4 and did not send either the Vice President or the US Secretary of State to Bangkok. Robert O 'Brian, US National Security Advisor, arrived in Bangkok as chairman of the Washington delegation.

Let me start with a bit of wonderful news: Next Tuesday, Nov. 6, the Chang'an Cargo Train (a.k.a. China Railway Express) is to make a short stop in Ankara. It is then going to pass under the Bosphorus, using the Marmaray tunnel. This is going to be the first direct cargo train traveling from Xian, China, to Europe, arriving at Prague passing through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia.

North Korea hailed the latest weapons tests as successful and said the launch proved the "perfection" of a system designed to "completely destroy" super-enemy targets, the DPA reported, citing North Korean state media.

North Korea fired two projectiles, which Japanese authorities said appeared to be ballistic missiles, into the sea between the Korean peninsula and Japan on Oct. 31, according to the Japanese coast guard and South Korea's military.

Turkey will open a consulate in Japan's Nagoya city, the fourth largest city of the Asian country, under a presidential decree.

Search teams have found four bodies and are searching for two more missing fishing vessels that were at the scene at the time of yesterday's collapse of a bridge in Taiwan, the Associated Press reported.

Today, the National Fire Service identified two of the victims as Indonesians and one as Filipino. The identity of the fourth victim is still unknown.

South Korea is interested in participating in the construction of the RDF-fuel plant of Sofia. This was made clear after the bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and his South Korean counterpart Lee Nak-yeon. The installation will cost EUR 157 million.