Russia on Sunday began direct commercial flights to North Korea, in a further sign of closer ties with its Asian ally helping its offensive in Ukraine.

The first Moscow-Pyongyang flight, operated by Russia’s Nordwind Airlines, took off at 1625 GMT, according to the Sheremetyevo airport’s website.

It is scheduled to land in the North Korean capital some eight hours later.

But initially, the route will only be serviced once a month, Russia’s transport ministry said.

Nordwind Airlines — which used to carry Russians to holiday destinations in Europe before the EU imposed a ban on Russian flights — had tickets priced at 45,000 rubles ($570).

“This is a historical event, strengthening the ties between our nations,” Oleg, a Nordwind employee managing the flight who did not want to give his full name, told AFP at the airport.

He also declined to say how many passengers were on board.

“For the first time in more than 70 years of diplomatic relations, we are launching direct flights between the capitals of our countries,” Russia’s deputy transport minister Vladimir Poteshkin was quoted as saying by the ministry’s Telegram account.

Russia’s state news agency TASS reported that the first return flight from Pyongyang to Moscow would take place on Tuesday.

Russia and North Korea restored train links on June 17 after suspending them in 2020 during the Covid pandemic.

The two countries have been forging closer military bonds in recent years, with Pyongyang supplying troops and weapons for Russia’s military operations in Ukraine.

They signed a mutual defence pact last year, when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea.

North Korea confirmed for the first time in April that it had deployed a contingent of its soldiers to the frontline in Ukraine, alongside Russian troops.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Thailand launched air strikes on Cambodian military targets on Thursday as Cambodia fired rockets and artillery, killing at least 11 civilians, in a dramatic escalation of a long-running border row between the two neighbours.

The neighbours are locked in a bitter spat over an area known as the Emerald Triangle, where the borders of both countries and Laos meet, and which is home to several ancient temples.

The squabble has dragged on for decades, flaring into bloody military clashes more than 15 years ago and again in May, when a Cambodian soldier was killed in a firefight.

The conflict blazed up on Thursday, with Cambodia firing rockets and artillery shells into Thailand and the Thai military scrambling F-16 jets to carry out air strikes.

The Thai ministry of public health said at least 11 civilians had been killed, most of them in a rocket strike near a petrol station in Sisaket province.

Footage from the scene showed smoke pouring from the roof of a convenience store attached to the petrol station. Provincial officials said most of the dead were students inside the shop when the attack happened.

Six Thai air force jets were deployed from Ubon Ratchathani province, hitting two “Cambodian military targets on the ground”, according to Thai military deputy spokesperson Ritcha Suksuwanon.

Both sides blamed the other for starting the fighting, which erupted near two temples on the border between the Thai province of Surin and Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey.

Cambodian defence ministry spokeswoman Maly Socheata said in a statement that Thai troops launched an “armed assault on Cambodian forces”.

“In response, the Cambodian armed forces exercised their legitimate right to self-defence, in full accordance with international law, to repel the Thai incursion and protect Cambodia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” she said.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet requested an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council to address what his foreign ministry labelled “unprovoked military aggression”.

Thailand’s government spokesman, meanwhile, accused Cambodia of being “inhumane, brutal and war-hungry”, and Bangkok’s foreign ministry said all border crossings had been shut and nearby residents evacuated.

The Thai military blamed Cambodian soldiers for firing first, and later accused them of a “targeted attack on civilians”, saying two BM-21 rockets had hit a community in Surin’s Kap Choeng district, wounding three people.

According to the Thai military, the clashes began around 7:35 am (0035 GMT) when a unit guarding Ta Muen temple heard a Cambodian drone overhead.

Later, six armed Cambodian soldiers, including one carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, approached a barbed-wired fence in front of the Thai post, the army said.

Around 8:20 am, Cambodian forces opened fire toward the eastern side of the temple, about 200 metres from the Thai base.

Thailand’s acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai said “the situation requires careful handling, and we must act in accordance with international law”.

“We will do our best to protect our sovereignty,” he said.

In a Facebook post, Thailand’s embassy in Phnom Penh urged its nationals to leave Cambodia “as soon as possible” unless they had urgent reasons to remain.

China, a close ally of Cambodia, said it was “deeply concerned” about the clashes, calling for dialogue — while also urging its citizens in Cambodia to avoid the country’s frontier with Thailand.

Long-running row

The violence came hours after Thailand expelled the Cambodian ambassador and recalled its own envoy in protest after five members of a Thai military patrol were wounded by a landmine.

On Thursday morning, Cambodia announced it was downgrading ties to “the lowest level”, pulling out all but one of its diplomats and expelling their Thai equivalents from Phnom Penh.

Recent weeks have seen a series of tit-for-tat swipes by both sides, with Thailand restricting border crossings and Cambodia halting certain imports.

The border row also kicked off a domestic political crisis in Thailand, where prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has been suspended from office pending an ethics probe over her conduct.

A diplomatic call between Paetongtarn and Hun Sen, Cambodia’s former longtime ruler and father of Hun Manet, was leaked from the Cambodian side, sparking a judicial investigation.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim called on both sides to “stand down” and start talks.

Malaysia currently chairs the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which both Thailand and Cambodia are members.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Epcot's Behind the Seeds Tour starts at $39 a person, making it the cheapest tour at Disney World.
• This one-hour tour takes guests on a tour of Epcot's greenhouses with a knowledgeable guide.
• We learned about innovative food-growing techniques at Disney and got to sample fresh produce.

If you go to Disney World a lot, it's easy to feel like you've seen and done it all. However, you can see a whole different side of the parks by taking one of its special tours.

On a recent trip, my husband and I booked Disney World's cheapest tour, the Behind the Seeds Tour, for a chance to explore Epcot's greenhouses with an expert guide.

The Behind the Seeds Tour is fairly affordable.

The Behind the Seeds Tour at Epcot's Land Pavilion costs $39 to $45 per person (depending on the day), plus tax.

That makes it the cheapest tour at Disney World, tied with Caring for Giants (which lets you see elephants at Animal Kingdom up close-ish).

That price point is a steal at Disney. Other tours cost considerably more:

• The Segway tour of Fort Wilderness costs $90 to $99 per person.
• Keys to the Kingdom, which takes you backstage at Magic Kingdom, starts at $149 a person.
• The SCUBA diving tour of Epcot's Seas Pavilion costs $229 or more.

And don't get me started on VIP Disney Tours, which cost between $450 and $900 per hour, with a minimum of seven hours required.

For those without a calculator, that's over $3,000 for seven hours — and that doesn't include park tickets or guide tip. (And yes, the 20% tipping rule is fairly standard for tours.)

It's cool to see so many plants and the growing process up close.

Living With the Land is one of Disney World's most underrated attractions. The slow-moving boat ride takes you through a tour of Epcot's innovative greenhouses, which use unique growing methods as a test case for how we can more efficiently grow food to feed the world.

The Behind the Seeds Tour builds on that experience: You actually get to walk through those greenhouses with an expert tour guide, who lets you look at the plants, fruit, vegetables, and fish up close.

There's a lot to see in the greenhouses.

We got to peek into the aquaponic tanks, come face-to-face with massive gourds, and walk through the Living With the Land ride's famous "salad spinners" and conveyor belt-esque hydroponics system that grows plants without any soil.

The guide can share so much more information than what you learn on the ride.

Our guide was full of fun facts and able to answer all our wildest questions about why they grow tomatoes vertically or how they use parasitoid wasps to manage pests like leaf miners.

They shared some incredible facts with us, like how saffron is harvested (and why it's so dang expensive) and how we can reduce water usage when growing produce with specific techniques.

But by far the most impactful thing I learned is that it can take 1 pound of feed to yield 1 pound of fish, while it takes up to 8 pounds of feed to yield 1 pound of beef.

That can make fish significantly more environmentally friendly to farm than cattle. Although we still eat beef, my husband and I have specifically made sure we eat fish at least twice a week now, when we'd otherwise eat red meat.

Meeting Stanley the plant and sampling a fresh cucumber were among the highlights.

The Behind the Seeds Tour wasn't all facts and figures. We also got to sample produce harvested that morning — and it was the freshest, tastiest cucumber I've ever had.

Though we weren't allowed to physically touch any of the plants and trees growing in the greenhouses (for their safety), our guide made one exception: Stanley, the most sensitive plant at Epcot.

Stanley is a Mimosa pudica, a plant that can close its leaves when you touch it, as a defense mechanism.

Each member in the group got to "pet" Stanley and watch his leaves close up quickly in response — it was a cool experience that made me feel more connected to the living world around me.

The tour isn't a huge time commitment, but it may be the highlight of your day.

The Behind the Seeds Tour only lasts an hour, which means there's plenty of time to enjoy Epcot for the rest of your day, whether you want to ride the Guardians of the Galaxy coaster or down a couple of margaritas in the Mexico pavilion.

But in my experience, it will be the best hour you spend in the park. It may even be the highlight of your whole trip. And at $39, I also found it to be well worth the cost.

Although I may not be ready (or able) to fork over thousands for a VIP Tour, this positive experience motivated me to try others, like the Wild Africa Trek, during my next trip.

Last week, Nintendo made waves across the game industry by announcing that Mario Kart World would sell for a suggested price of $80 in the US. That nominal price represents a new high-water mark both for Nintendo and for the game industry at large, which has generally reserved prices above $70 for fancy, trinket-laden collectors' editions or Digital Deluxe Editions that include all variety of downloadable bonuses.

When you adjust historical game prices for inflation, though, you find that asking $80 for a baseline game in 2025 is broadly in line with the prices big games were commanding 10 to 15 years ago. And given the faster-than-normal inflation rates of the last five years, even the $70 nominal game prices that set a new standard in 2020 don't have the same purchasing oomph they once did.

The data

To judge Mario Kart World's $80 price against historical trends, we first needed to figure out how much games cost in the past. To do that, we built off of our similar 2020 analysis, which relied on scanned catalogs and retail advertising fliers for real examples of nominal console game pricing going back to the Atari era. For more recent years, we relied more on press reports and archived digital storefronts to show what prices new games were actually selling for at the time.

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The Nintendo Switch 2 could be considered the most direct "sequel" to a Nintendo console that the company has ever made. The lineage is right there in the name, with Nintendo simply appending the number "2" onto the name of its incredibly successful previous console for the first time in its history.

Nintendo's previous consoles have all differed from their predecessors in novel ways that were reflected in somewhat new naming conventions. The Switch 2's name, on the other hand, suggests that it is content to primarily be "more Switch." And after spending the better part of the day playing around with the Switch 2 hardware and checking out some short game demos on Wednesday, I indeed came away with the impression that this console is "more Switch" in pretty much every way that matters, for better or worse.

Bigger is better

We've deduced from previous trailers just how much bigger the Switch 2 would be than the original Switch. Even with that preparation, though, the expanded Switch 2 makes a very good first impression in person.

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