DOZENS of North and South Korean soldiers have crossed over the world’s most heavily armed border as they inspected the sites of rival frontline guard posts to verify they had been removed.
The checks were part of Korean engagement efforts that come amid stalled US-North Korea nuclear disarmament talks.
Soldiers from the two Koreas exchanged cigarettes and chatted as they inspected the dismantlement or disarmament of 22 guard posts – 11 from each country – inside the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ)
that forms their 155-mile long border.
The inspections were mostly symbolic, as the removals will leave South Korea with about 50 other DMZ posts and North Korea with 150, according to defence experts in South Korea.
But they mark an extraordinary change in ties from last year, when North Korea tested a series of increasingly powerful weapons and threatened Seoul and Washington with war.
A small group of journalists was allowed to enter the zone to watch a South Korean team leave for a North Korean guard post and a North Korean team come to a South Korean guard post later in the day.
READ MORE: UN reveals one million Syrian babies born as refugees
MEANWHILE, Turkey will launch a new military operation against US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria “within a few days”, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.
Turkey has shelled Kurdish positions across the border in Syria, east of the Euphrates River, over recent months and has threatened to drive out the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG.
The YPG is the main component of a Kurdish-led militia that rolled back Daesh with the help of the US-led coalition. Ankara views the YPG as terrorists because of their links to the Kurdish insurgency.
US troops are deployed with the Kurdish fighters in north-eastern Syria, in part to prevent clashes with Turkey, and news of a new military operation is likely to further strain ties between the Nato allies.
“We will begin our operation to rescue the east of the Euphrates from the separatist organisation within a few days,” Erdogan said.
FINALLY, a street in a town in western Germany got a repaving worthy of fictional sweet maker Willy Wonka when a ton of chocolate flowed out of a factory and solidified.
It was reported that a “small technical defect” involving a storage tank caused the sweet and sticky spill from the DreiMeister chocolate factory in Westoennen.
After hitting the chilly pavement, the milk chocolate quickly hardened.
About 25 firefighters landed the job of prying the coating off with shovels and using hot water and torches to remove remaining bits from cracks and holes.
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