SEOUL — North Korea has no intention of meeting US officials during the Winter Olympics that start in South Korea on Friday, state media reported, dampening hopes the Games will help resolve a tense standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons program.

US Vice-President Mike Pence, who described North Korea as the world’s most tyrannical regime on Wednesday, flies in to South Korea on Thursday ahead of the opening ceremony in the mountain resort of PyeongChang, just 80 km (50 miles) from the heavily armed border with North Korea.

The ceremony will also be attended by a senior delegation of North Korean officials, including the younger sister of leader Kim Jong Un and the North’s nominal head of state, Kim Yong Nam.

The sister, Kim Yo Jong, and other members of her entourage will travel by private jet to Seoul’s Incheon International Airport on Friday afternoon, North Korea informed the South on Thursday.

However the prospect of talks, which Mr. Pence downplayed but left open, appeared slim.

“We have never begged for dialogue with the US nor in the future, too,” the North’s KCNA news agency reported on Thursday, citing Jo Yong Sam, director-general of the North American department of North Korea’s foreign ministry.

“Explicitly speaking, we have no intention to meet with the US side during the stay in South Korea … Our delegation’s visit to South Korea is only to take part in the Olympics and hail its successful holding,” Mr. Jo said.

South Korea wants to use the event to re-engage with North Korea and open the way for talks to resolve one of the world’s most dangerous crises, in which US President Donald J. Trump and Pyongyang have swapped nuclear threats.

Mr. Pence had said after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on Wednesday that Washington would soon unveil “the toughest and most aggressive round of economic sanctions on North Korea ever.”

He said before departing for Seoul the United States wanted to peacefully dismantle North Korea’s nuclear program but warned Pyongyang not to underestimate US military strength or resolve.

In Beijing, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi told reporters that China saw the Olympics as a first step towards “everyday, uninterrupted” dialogue.

All sides, not just the two Koreas, needed to work hard and dialogue between the United States and North Korea should be expanded for this to happen, Mr. Wang said.

“You can’t have it that one person opens the door and another closes it,” he said.

MILITARY PARADE
North Korea marked the founding anniversary of its army with a large military parade in Pyongyang on Thursday, a government official told Reuters, having last month changed the date of the celebration to the eve of the Olympics. The official asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Domestic media reports said the parade was smaller than those of previous years.

Mr. Pence will meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Seoul later on Thursday. On Friday, before he attends the Olympic opening ceremony, he will visit a memorial for 46 South Korean sailors killed in 2010 in the sinking of a warship that Seoul blamed on a North Korean torpedo attack.

Mr. Pence is taking the father of Otto Warmbier, an American student who died last year after being imprisoned in North Korea for 17 months.

Kim Yo Jong, the 28-year-old sister of the North Korean leader, will be sitting in the same stadium as VIP guests along with ceremonial head of state Kim Yong Nam.

She will be the first member of the Kim family to cross the border into the South. Kim Yo Jong is a propaganda official and was blacklisted last year by the US Treasury department over alleged human rights abuses and censorship.

Japan’s Mr. Abe, whose nation has been within range of North Korean missiles for decades, will also attend the ceremony, adding to seating complications for the hosts.

South Korea asked the United Nations (UN) on Wednesday for an exemption to allow a UN-sanctioned North Korean official, Choe Hwi, to attend the opening ceremony with Kim Yo Jong.

The Unification Ministry in Seoul said no decision had been made yet on Choe Hwi and Pyongyang had not mentioned any change in their plans to send him.

A group of 280 North Koreans arrived in South Korea on Wednesday to support athletes from the two sides at the Games. The group included a 229-member cheer squad, taekwondo performers, journalists and the sports minister.

Preliminary competition at the Games began on Thursday, with events including curling and ski jumping. — Reuters

WASHINGTON — US Senate leaders said Wednesday they had reached a bipartisan budget deal for 2018 and 2019 — a move which, if approved by Congress, would avert a second government shutdown in just three weeks.

The deal, months in the making, was seen as a major achievement for both the ruling Republicans and opposition Democrats in a deeply divided Washington.

The breakthrough came on the eve of a midnight Thursday deadline for Congress to pass a stopgap spending measure — its fifth since October — or once again turn the lights out on the federal government.

The proposal would lift caps on federal spending that were mandated under a 2011 law, boosting military and nonmilitary funding by some $300 billion in total, aides said.

“The compromise we’ve reached will ensure that, for the first time in years, our armed forces will have more of the resources they need to keep America safe,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a defense hawk, said it was the “best news for the military… since 2011.”

The agreement would also ensure funding for domestic priorities pushed by Democrats including disaster relief, health centers and fighting a surging opioid epidemic.

“The budget deal doesn’t have everything Democrats want, it doesn’t have everything the Republicans want, but it has a great deal of what the American people want,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer told his colleagues.

The deal raises the debt ceiling until March 2019, postponing a potential fiery clash within President Donald J. Trump’s own Republican Party, and essentially clears the decks for Congress to address other thorny issues such as immigration and infrastructure.

Before the deal was announced, the House passed a partisan bill that would fund government for six weeks and the military through the remainder of fiscal year 2018.

The Senate is now expected to rewrite that measure, pass it and send it back for House approval before Thursday’s funding deadline — provided there are no efforts to slow the process in the Senate.

‘HAPPY’ WHITE HOUSE
Messrs. McConnell and Schumer said the deal was the product of extensive negotiations between both parties and the White House, which reacted positively to developments on Capitol Hill.

“We’re certainly happy with the direction that it’s moving,” press secretary Sarah Sanders said, adding that the White House would need to see the final components.

That was a turnaround from Tuesday, when Mr. Trump had said he would “love” a shutdown if he did not get his way on immigration.

Several Senate Democrats, including John Tester of Montana, said they were buoyed by the deal but wanted to study the details before signing on.

House Speaker Paul Ryan urged all House members to support the deal, saying it breaks the “logjam” on public priorities and “will ensure that America’s armed forces have more of the resources they need to keep America safe.”

But the compromise could face stiff blowback in the lower chamber of Congress, where fiscal conservatives may balk at adding $300 billion to the national debt just months after passing a $1.5-trillion tax cut package.

But liberal stalwarts might also revolt over the sensitive issue of immigration and the fate of millions of undocumented migrants.

Immigration is not part of the compromise. Instead, Mr. McConnell will allow an open debate on possible immigration solutions on the Senate floor, beginning as early as next week — a promise he made to end a three-day shutdown last month. — AFP

HUALIEN — Taiwanese rescuers continued the terrifying task Thursday of searching for survivors in a dangerously leaning apartment block that was partially toppled by a quake, despite regular aftershocks coursing through the building’s tottering structure.

At least ten people were killed and dozens remained missing after a 6.4 magnitude quake hit the popular eastern tourist city of Hualien late Tuesday.

The powerful tremor left a handful of buildings badly damaged — some of them leaning at precarious angles — as well as roads torn up and hundreds forced to shelter in local schools and a stadium.

The major focus for emergency responders remained the Yun Tsui apartment block where six of the deaths occurred and dozens are still missing.

The lower floors of the 12-storey tower — which also housed a hotel — pancaked, leaving the structure leaning at a fifty-degree angle and sparking fears of an imminent collapse.

Despite those risks rescuers kept going into the building throughout Wednesday night and Thursday morning in a desperate search for survivors.

Strong aftershocks continued to strike Thursday sending rescue teams scurrying from the building, only for them to return a little while later and resume their grim task.

Chu Che-min, the Hualien fire department’s rescue team leader at the scene, told AFP they located two more bodies overnight.

“We discovered the body of a Chinese woman at the hotel in Yun Tsui (building) earlier this morning and located another person who’s a hotel staffer,” he said.

A Red Cross worker at the scene estimated that the building had tilted another 5% overnight, adding he had little hope of finding survivors on its lowest floors.

“Floors one to three are all compressed so it’s hard to tell whether there are people,” he told AFP, requesting anonymity.

He said that there was no risk of a gas explosion in the building but the aftershocks and further slippage remained a persistent danger.

In a updated toll, the national fire agency said ten people had now been confirmed killed in the quake including three Chinese mainland nationals.

At least 66 people remain unaccounted for across the city, the national fire agency said. In the apartment block, 37 people are missing from flats alongside 10 hotel guests. More than 250 people were injured in the tremor, the strongest to hit Hualien in decades. — AFP