After Kim Jong Un’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, North Korean staff were seen meticulously wiping down everything the leader had touched — a move analysts say is part of strict security protocols designed to thwart foreign espionage.

Even with the appearance of a budding friendship between Kim and Putin, footage showed the reclusive state’s extraordinary measures to conceal any clues about Kim’s health.

In a post on Telegram, Kremlin reporter Alexander Yunashev shared video of Kim’s two staff members carefully cleaning the room in the Chinese capital where Kim and Putin had met for more than two hours.

The chair’s backrest and armrests were scrubbed and a coffee table next to Kim’s chair was also cleaned. Kim’s drinking glass was also removed.

“After the negotiations were over, the staff accompanying the head of the DPRK carefully destroyed all traces of Kim’s presence,” the reporter said, referring to North Korea.

After talks in the room, Kim and Putin left for a tea meeting and bid a warm farewell to each other.

Such measures are standard protocol since the era of Kim’s predecessor, his father Kim Jong Il, said Michael Madden, a North Korea leadership expert with the US-based Stimson Centre.

“The special toilet and the requisite garbage bags of detritus, waste and cigarette butts are so that a foreign intelligence agency, even a friendly one, does not acquire a sample and test it,” Madden said.

“It would provide insight into any medical conditions affecting Kim Jong Un. This can include hair and skin tags,” he said.

In 2019, after a Hanoi summit with US President Donald Trump, Kim’s guards were spotted blocking the floor of his hotel room to clean the room for hours, and taking out items, including a bed mattress.

Kim’s team has been spotted cleaning items before he uses them as well.

During his 2018 meeting with then South Korean President Moon Jae-in, North Korean security guards sprayed a chair and a desk with sanitiser and wiped them down before Kim came to sit.

Before he sat at another summit with Putin in 2023, his security team wiped his chair down with disinfectant and vigorously checked to make sure the chair was safe, with one of the guards using a metal detector to scan the seat, video footage showed.

Rescue teams struggled to reach survivors days after a powerful earthquake in eastern Afghanistan left more than 1,400 people dead, as access to remote areas remained obstructed.

A magnitude-6.0 shallow earthquake hit the mountainous region bordering Pakistan late Sunday, collapsing mud-brick homes on families as they slept.

Fearful of the near-constant aftershocks, people huddled in the open or struggled to unearth those trapped under the heaps of flattened buildings.

The earthquake killed at least 1,469 people and injured more than 3,700, according to the latest toll from Taliban authorities, making it one of the deadliest in decades to hit the impoverished country.

UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said on X that the quake had “affected more than 500,000 people” in eastern Afghanistan.

The vast majority of the casualties were in Kunar province, with a dozen dead and hundreds hurt in nearby Nangarhar and Laghman provinces.

Access remained difficult, as aftershocks caused rockfall, stymying access to already isolated villages and keeping families outdoors for fear of the remains of damaged homes collapsing on them.

‘Everyone is afraid’

“Everyone is afraid and there are many aftershocks,” Awrangzeeb Noori, 35, told AFP from the village of Dara-i-Nur in Nangarhar province. “We spend all day and night in the field without shelter.”

The non-governmental group Save the Children said one of its aid teams “had to walk for 20 kilometres (12 miles) to reach villages cut off by rock falls, carrying medical equipment on their backs with the help of community members”.

The World Health Organisation said Wednesday it was scaling up its emergency response to address the “immense” needs and that it required more resources in order to “prevent further losses”.

WHO has appealed for $4 million to deliver lifesaving health interventions and expand mobile health services and supply distribution.

“Every hour counts,” WHO emergency team lead in Afghanistan Jamshed Tanoli said in a statement. “Hospitals are struggling, families are grieving and survivors have lost everything.”

The Taliban government’s deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat told AFP that areas which had taken days to reach had been finally accessed.

“We cannot determine the date for finishing the operation in all areas as the area is very mountainous and it is very difficult to reach every area.”

ActionAid noted that women and girls were particularly vulnerable in emergencies as they face steep restrictions under the Taliban authorities.

Residents of Jalalabad, the nearest city to the epicentre, donated money and goods including blankets.

“I am a simple labourer and I came here to help the earthquake victims because I felt very sad for them,” said resident Mohammad Rahman.

Deepening crisis

Around 85% of the Afghan population lives on less than one dollar per day, according to the United Nations.

After decades of conflict, Afghanistan faces endemic poverty, severe drought and the influx of millions of Afghans sent back to the country by neighbouring countries in the years since the Taliban takeover.

The Norwegian Refugee Council cautioned that “forcing Afghans to return will only deepen the crisis”.

It is the third major earthquake since the Taliban authorities took power in 2021, but there are even fewer resources for the cash-strapped government’s response after the United States slashed assistance to the country when President Donald Trump took office in January.

Even before the earthquake, the United Nations estimated it had obtained less than a third of the funding required for operations countrywide.

In two days, the Taliban government’s defence ministry said it organised 155 helicopter flights to evacuate around 2,000 injured and their relatives to regional hospitals.

Fitrat said a camp had been set up in Khas Kunar district to coordinate emergency aid, while two other sites were opened near the epicentre “to oversee the transfer of the injured, the burial of the dead, and the rescue of survivors”.

Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, with the country still recovering from previous disasters.

Western Herat province was devastated in October 2023 by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, which killed more than 1,500 people and damaged or destroyed more than 63,000 homes.

Senior US national security officials said on Wednesday that military operations against cartels would continue, setting the stage for a sustained military campaign in Latin America even as basic questions about a deadly strike against a vessel from Venezuela remained unanswered.

The US military killed 11 people on Tuesday in a strike on a vessel from Venezuela allegedly carrying illegal narcotics, in the first known operation since President Donald Trump’s recent deployment of warships to the southern Caribbean.

Little is known about the strike, including what legal justification was used or what drugs were on board, but US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said operations would continue.

“We’ve got assets in the air, assets in the water, assets on ships, because this is a deadly serious mission for us, and it won’t stop with just this strike,” Hegseth said on FOX & Friends.

“Anyone else trafficking in those waters who we know is a designated narco terrorist will face the same fate,” Hegseth said.

He declined to provide details on how the operation was carried out, saying they were classified. It is unknown whether the vessel was destroyed using a drone, torpedo, or by some other means.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking in Mexico City, said similar strikes will happen again.

“Maybe it’s happening right now, I don’t know, but the point is the president of the United States is going to wage war on narco terrorist organisations,” Rubio said.

Trump said on Tuesday, without providing evidence, that the US military had identified the crew of the vessel as members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which Washington designated a terrorist group in February.

On Wednesday, he told reporters in the Oval Office that “massive amounts of drugs” were found on the boat.

“We have tapes of them speaking,” said Trump. “It was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people. And everybody fully understands that. In fact, you see it, you see the bags of drugs all over the boat,” Trump said.

The Pentagon has not released specifics about the crew nor why it chose to kill those on board.

Presidents of both major US parties have in the past asserted the authority to use the military for limited strikes when there is a threat to the United States, as Trump did in June when he ordered an attack on Iran.

Rubio said that “a boat full of cocaine or fentanyl” was an immediate threat to the United States, adding that Trump had the right to “eliminate (it) under exigent circumstances.”

Mary Ellen O’Connell, an expert on international law and the use of force at the University of Notre Dame, said Tuesday’s operation “violated fundamental principles of international law.”

“The alleged fact that the attack was on the high seas is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the US had no right to intentionally kill these suspects,” she said.

Maduro “should be worried”

The decision to blow up a suspected drug vessel passing through the Caribbean, instead of seizing the vessel and apprehending its crew, is highly unusual and evokes memories of the US fight against militant groups such as al Qaeda.

The United States has deployed warships in the southern Caribbean in recent weeks, to follow through on a pledge by Trump to crack down on drug cartels.

Seven US warships and one nuclear-powered fast attack submarine are either in the region or expected to be there soon, carrying more than 4,500 sailors and Marines. US Marines and sailors from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit have been carrying out amphibious training and flight operations in southern Puerto Rico.

Asked about Venezuela’s close relationship with China, Hegseth aimed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

“The only person that should be worried is Nicolas Maduro, who is … effectively a kingpin of a drug narco state,” Hegseth said.

The Trump administration last month doubled the reward for information leading to the arrest of Maduro to $50 million, accusing him of links to drug trafficking and criminal groups.

Venezuelan officials have said the Caribbean buildup is meant to justify an intervention against them, with Maduro accusing Trump of seeking “regime change.”

In an interview with Fox Noticias on Wednesday, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado supported the US strike, saying the operation was “aimed at saving lives” in Venezuela and the United States.

“We have to be grateful that the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and his administration recognise and act toward Maduro as what he is: the head of a narco-terrorist regime that has been responsible for destroying our country, destabilising the region, and becoming a real threat to the security of the United States,” Machado said. She was barred from running in the 2024 presidential election but is the country’s most popular opposition figure.

Authorities in the South American country, who say Tren de Aragua is no longer active there after being dismantled during a prison raid in 2023, suggested on Tuesday that footage shared by Trump of a speedboat at sea exploding and then burning was created with artificial intelligence.

Reuters conducted initial checks on the video, including a review of its visual elements using a manipulation detection tool that did not show evidence of manipulation. However, thorough verification is an ongoing process, and Reuters will continue to review the footage as more information becomes available.

The strike drew scepticism from some within the Venezuelan opposition.

“How did they know there were 11 people? Did they count them? How did they know they were Venezuelan? Were their ID cards floating on the sea afterwards?” former opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles said to Reuters.