The Tumen River, which serves as the Allied nations’ natural border, has been the site of Russia’s and North Korea’s first-ever road bridge, and they cite it as a sign of their deepening partnership.
Mikhail Mishustin, the country’s prime minister, announced the project on Wednesday, claiming it would lower transportation costs, promote trade, and encourage tourism.
During a video conference with North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly chairman Pak Thae-song, Mishustin stated, “This is truly a milestone for Russian-Korean relations.”
The significance transcends just an engineering task, he continued, “because it represents our shared desire to strengthen friendly, good-neighbourly relationships and increase interregional cooperation.”
A railroad bridge across the Tumen River already rusting from the Soviet Union.
“Another road will allow entrepreneurs to significantly increase the volume of transportation goods] and lower transportation costs, and, of course, provide favorable opportunities for tourism,” Mishustin said.
By mid-2026, according to Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, the bridge will be operational.
The phrase “Eternal historical monument”
North Koreans were seen standing in line during a ceremony to mark the start of construction, according to Russian state TV’s broadcast of the site.
According to a Russian translation, North Korean artist Pak Thae-song said, “It will become an unbreakable historical memorial structure symbolising the unbreakable Korean-Russian friendly relations.”
Oleg Kozhemyako, the governor of Russia’s Primorye region, said he hoped the meeting would increase bilateral ties.
Without going into further detail, he said, “There are many sportspeople and kids there.”
During a news conference at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea on April 30 [Ahn Young-joon/AP]
During Russia’s conflict with Russia in Ukraine, North Korea and Russia, two of the most overt nations in the world, have benefited from their cooperation.
Pyongyang has repeatedly backed Russia’s invasion, and it has even sent its own troops to battle alongside them.
According to South Korean lawmakers on Wednesday, about 600 North Korean soldiers have died in the conflict, according to intelligence officials.
Kyiv also accuses North Korea of providing Russia with heavy weapons, including a missile that left a dozen people dead in Kyiv last week.
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, and Pyongyang signed a strategic partnership last year that called for both nations to immediately offer each other military assistance using “all means” if either is experiencing “aggression.”
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague holds its third day of hearings on Israel’s humanitarian obligations to Palestinians. It is 60 years old.
Before Israel resumed its ground assaults and bombardments on March 18, which have resulted in the deaths of more than 52, 000 Palestinians in the enclave since October 7, 2023, no food, water, or medical supplies have been allowed into the war-torn Gaza Strip since March 2.
The UN has called for “concerted” action to put an end to the “humanitarian catastrophe” in the Strip and issued a warning about “full-scale famine conditions” across the Strip.
According to the UN’s World Food Programme, all of its bakeries have been completely depleted, and all of its stock inside Gaza have been completely depleted.
Numerous people have been forced to leave food supplies and emergency stocks that were secured during the January ceasefire, according to a report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Additionally, according to the report, the majority of people are unable to bake for themselves because wheat flour is so expensive and there is a severe shortage of cooking fuel.
Because 70% of the enclave has been designated as a “no-go” area or has been given orders by the Israeli military, the report continued, people are also forced to rely on aid supplies because farmers and breeders cannot access their land.
If aid is not provided, the remaining soup kitchens in Gaza say they may have to close them in days.
Famine’s precipice
According to the UN agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, some families are resorting to eating “whatever they can find” even when it is not safe to eat.
Meanwhile, a WFP spokesperson stated to our colleagues in Arabic that “aid trucks are] stuck at the border waiting to enter Gaza.”
NGO Mercy Corps warns that Gaza’s food systems could completely collapse unless borders open immediately, not to mention that prices inside the enclave have increased by more than 500 percent.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system, the world’s largest hunger monitor, has begun an investigation into the Gaza Strip’s lack of food and malnutrition.
OCHA estimates the assessment will take one week and begin on April 28. The exercise is being led by more than 50 trained analysts from international and local UN agencies, including those from the Gaza Strip.
Since Israel began its genocidal actions in Gaza, the IPC had issued at least four warnings, warning that the region may be on the verge of famine.
According to Hani Mahmoud, a journalist from Gaza City for Al Jazeera, medical staff warn that many patients and injuries are dying as a result of the shortage of medical supplies.
Due to a shortage of medical supplies, medical staff warn that there are many more patients quietly dying inside the remaining health facilities. He claimed that there are no such things as painkillers.
Younis al-Khatib, the president of the Palestine Red Crescent, demanded that Israel be subject to sanctions because it “left no place for humanity in Gaza.”
According to al-Khatib, “I can’t see my colleagues, my friends, and my staff being killed by a state that disrespects our flag and international law,” he said.
“It would have been sanctioned if any other state had done it.”
At the ICJ, the US defends Israel.
In addition, the UN’s top court was holding hearings on what Israel should do to aid Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank for the third day in The Hague following last year’s request for an advisory opinion from the UN General Assembly.
Israel is required to aid Gaza, but the United States defended it on Wednesday, saying UNRWA is not required to cooperate with UNRWA. After Israel claimed 19 of the agency’s roughly 13, 000 employees were involved in Hamas’ attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, it was prohibited from operating on its territory in January.
There is no legal requirement that an occupying power authorizes a particular third state or international organization to engage in activities that would compromise its security interests, according to Josh Simmons, a lawyer from the US State Department.
Simmons suggested that other organizations could carry out UNRWA’s mission despite the UN agency’s repeated assertions that its current role as an aid provider could not be replaced.
Hungary made similar points when it spoke out in support of Israel.
The Russian Federation stated in a statement following the US that the majority of the world’s leaders backed UNRWA’s efforts because it was crucial to the Palestinian people.
“This matter cannot be overstated because it is urgent.” Gaza is on the verge of famine. In the ruin, there are hospitals. Existential despair is a reality for many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem, according to Maksim Musikhin of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Other nations, including Turkey, France, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, and Kuwait, were expected to voice opposition to Israel’s aid embargo before the end of the day, according to Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, who is a journalist from The Hague.
Challands claimed that all of the nations that made statements to the court in the opening days of the hearings had been hostile toward Israel. He claimed that a nation only showed up in support of Israel at the beginning of the third day, and that was the US.
Dearborn, Michigan – Traveling is a regular occurrence for Michigan attorney Amir Makled. As recently as December, he went overseas and returned home to the United States without any issues.
“I’ve left the country at least 20 times. I’ve visited every continent. I go to Lebanon every year”, he said.
However, the Detroit Metro Airport’s return this month was completely different.
When they reached a customs checkpoint, he and his family had just returned from a spring break trip to the Dominican Republic.
“The agent looked over at me and then looked to another agent and asked him if the TTRT agents are here. I had no idea what this meant.
He looked up the acronym on Google. It stands for Tactical Terrorist Response Teams.
When I travel, even if I’m driving in from Canada, I feel some sort of anxiety that I’ll be randomly selected to be stopped or profiled, he explained.
I sat there and said, “OK, I’m going to be profiled here.”
Sure enough, Makled and his family were asked to go to another room.
Makled was aware that he couldn’t be denied entry because he was a citizen of the US and was born in Detroit, Michigan. He urged his wife and children to pass the checkpoint without him.
“I knew my rights at the border in that regard. And I was also aware of how frequently border searches are conducted, he said. For the first time in my life, I was stopped.
But what happened next would put the lawyer in a precarious position.
Border control officers have a lot of legal authority to search a person’s belongings. The goal is to stop people from entering the country with security threats, contraband, or environmental threats.
Those searches, however, extend to the contents of electronic devices. And that raises questions about what should be protected from the government’s prying eyes and what needs to be regulated.
A threat to the attorney-client privilege
Makled knew the border agents could take his phone. He was faced with a complex ethical dilemma, though, as an attorney. His phone contained privileged client information.
In the US, a basic tenet of the legal system is that a client can have frank discussions with their lawyer, with the safety of knowing anything they say will be kept confidential.
Makled’s phone contained a sizable portion of his writing. He claimed he couldn’t give the device to the border officers when asked to do so.
“All my emails, my text messages, my files, the cloud-based software I use for my office”, he said, “it’s all through my phone”.
Makled, a lawyer for people he described as particularly vulnerable, represents those who are in need of civil rights and criminal defense.
A protester was detained last year at a University of Michigan pro-Palestine encampment, according to one of his clients. She was later charged with resisting and obstructing police, a felony that carries up to a two-year prison sentence.
Makled thinks that because the border patrol officers had this information in mind, he was targeted. He claimed that one of the agents even called him a “famous lawyer,” which he thought was a statement made in response to the protester’s case.
In the end, he gave the agents written permission to see his contacts but no other permissions. He was permitted to leave with his phone after about 90 minutes at the airport.
Rasha Alawieh, a deported Brown University kidney specialist, is the subject of a protest march 17 outside the Rhode Island State House. [Charles Krupa/AP Photo]
A growing trend
Border control officers have the authority to search any person entering the country, their luggage, or other items in their possession at the time of the inspection since Title 19 of the US code began almost a century ago.
However, today’s digital devices contain far more information than is necessary for a trip.
The most recent fiscal year saw 47, 047 electronic devices searched by border control officers, the vast majority of which belonged to non-US citizens.
That is an almost 13% increase over the previous fiscal year, which US Customs and Border Protection recorded with 41, 767 electronic searches.
The process has long been hampered by the uncertainty of whether these searches can be used for political gain or to retaliate.
In November 2018, for instance, an employee of the tech company Apple, Andreas Gal, said he was detained while returning to San Francisco from an international trip.
Gal was flagged for the TTRT, just like Makled. Customs officers pushed to search his electronic devices, just like the lawyer. He refused. Gal later stated that he thought his online political views had caused him to be targeted.
However, experts have increased their concern about such searches in recent weeks.
Since taking office for a second term in January, President Donald Trump has sought to deport noncitizens he sees as critical of the US or its ally Israel. Among the allegedly used evidence to expel people from the country was material from electronic devices.
Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist, was denied re-entry after returning from Lebanon to the US. She held a valid H-1B visa that allowed her to work in the US.
According to reports, the Trump administration cited photos recovered from her phone, including those of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, as justification for her expulsion.
Following Alawieh’s expulsion, the Department of Homeland Security stated in a statement that “supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied.”
Also in March, the French government said one of its citizens, a scientist, was prevented from entering the US on account of the political messages on his phone.
However, that accusation has been refuted by the Trump administration.
Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin wrote on social media that the French researcher in question had access to sensitive information from Los Alamos National Laboratory, in violation of a non-disclosure agreement.
“Any claim that his removal was based on political beliefs is blatantly false”.
[Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo] Agents at airport border checkpoints and border crossings have broad authority to search travelers’ luggage.
a lack of legal consensus
There are two types of screenings a device may undergo while in border control custody.
When an officer uses a hand-held electronic device to conduct a “light” search, it occurs. The device is connected to external equipment during an advanced search, which legally calls for “reasonable suspicion” of a crime. The device may not be returned to its owner for weeks or months.
Although US citizens are not required to unlock their electronics in order to re-enter their country, border agents do not require a warrant to search an electronic device.
However, refusing to provide these details may result in a ban on entry for travelers who are not US citizens or permanent residents.
But experts say these practices raise serious concerns about the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which grants protection from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
The American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project’s deputy director, Esha Bhandari, shared examples of the government bridging Fourth Amendment protections with these border checks.
According to Bhandari, “the government is increasingly viewed this as a constitutional flaw.”
“They have someone under investigation, and rather than waiting on whether they can establish probable cause, which requires a judge to give a warrant, they wait until someone crosses the international border and treat that as a convenient opportunity to search their devices”.
However, it is up for debate how far that loophole can extend.
The US courts have yet to come to an agreement regarding the extent and limits of searches of digital devices, according to Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“At this moment, whether you fly into San Francisco vs Boston vs Atlanta, there are three different rulings on exactly which part of your phone can be searched, for what purposes]or] what level of suspicion is needed”, Hussain said. There hasn’t been uniformity, according to the statement from several lower courts regarding the issue.
Makled, for his part, claimed that he has never been turned down for traveling or supporting controversial causes.
“I feel that this is an intimidation tactic. He defended the protester who was detained at the University of Michigan, saying that it’s an attempt to dissuade me from taking on these kinds of cases.
After fighting broke out near Damascus, Syrian security forces have been dispatched to restore order. Gunfights broke out in Jaramana, a town with a majority of Druze residents, killing more than 20 people. After rumors that an audio recording of the Prophet Muhammad had been made available, the fighting broke out.
