North Korea has discovered "faults" in its anti-coronavirus measures, state media said on Wednesday, after an outcry over the killing of a South Korean.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un convened a meeting of the ruling Worker's Party's powerful politburo to review anti-coronavirus measures and improve them, the official KCNA news agency said, adding that participants found "some faults" in their implementation.
"The meeting stressed the need to strictly guard against self-complacency, carelessness, irresponsibility and slackness in the anti-epidemic field," the news agency said.
"It also called for successfully maintaining a steel-strong anti-epidemic system and order."
KCNA did not elaborate on the faults nor did it mention the killing of the South Korean man, for which the leader had offered a rare apology.
North Korea has not confirmed any coronavirus infections and has imposed strict virus control measures including closing its borders, although South Korea and the United States doubt that it has managed to avoid the pandemic completely.
North Korea's UN ambassador said in a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday his country's anti-epidemic efforts were "under safe and stable control" and it would now focus on developing its economy based on its "reliable and effective war deterrent".
Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, won the New York City mayoral race on Tuesday, capping a meteoric rise from a little-known state lawmaker to one of the country's most visible Democratic figures, and the first Muslim mayor of the largest US city.
The death toll in a fire at a retirement home in Tuzla in northern Bosnia rose to 11 on Wednesday and about 30 people were injured, police and prosecutors said.
A driver rammed into pedestrians and cyclists on France's Oleron island off its Atlantic coast on Wednesday, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said, and at least nine people were injured before he was arrested, according to local officials.
Residents of the central Philippines on Wednesday began scraping mud from streets and homes that survived after Typhoon Kalmaegi killed at least 85 and left dozens missing as it tore through the region.
China's Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country's human spaceflight agency said on Wednesday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country's space station Tiangong.