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.
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.
Smoke rises from PTT gas station area at Ban Phue, Nong Ya Lat sub-district as at least five people were killed after Cambodian artillery struck a convenience store located at a petrol station in Thailand's Sisaket border province, Thailand's public broadcaster reported on Thursday, in Sisaket, Thailand on July 24, 2025.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s future was unclear Monday after his coalition appeared to have disastrously lost its upper house majority in elections that saw strong gains by a right-wing populist party.
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has governed almost continuously since 1955, and its partner Komeito had to win 50 seats in Sunday’s vote but they secured only around 41, according to local media projections.
Voters angry at inflation turned to other parties, notably the “Japanese first” Sanseito, which made strong gains with its “anti-globalist” drive reminiscent of US President Donald Trump’s agenda.
The debacle comes only months after Ishiba’s coalition also lost its majority in the lower house, suffering the LDP’s worst result in 15 years.
Ishiba, 68, a self-avowed policy “geek” seen as a safe pair of hands when he won the LDP leadership in September — on his fifth attempt — was tight-lipped late Sunday about his future.
“It’s a difficult situation, and we have to take it very humbly and seriously,” Ishiba told broadcaster NHK. Asked about his future, he said only that he “cannot speak lightly of it”.
“We can’t do anything until we see the final results, but we want to be very aware of our responsibility,” Ishiba added.
If he goes, it was unclear who might step up as the LDP’s 11th premier since 2000 now that the government needs opposition support in both chambers.
“Ishiba may be replaced by someone else, but it’s not clear who will be the successor,” Hidehiro Yamamoto, politics and sociology professor at the University of Tsukuba, told AFP.
Rice price
After years of stagnant or falling prices, consumers in the world’s fourth-largest economy have been squeezed by inflation since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
In particular, the price of rice has doubled, squeezing many household budgets despite government handouts.
Voter Hisayo Kojima — one of legions of older people in Japan’s falling and ageing population — said outside a voting station on Sunday that her pension “is being cut shorter and shorter”.
“We have paid a lot to support the pension system. This is the most pressing issue for me,” the 65-year-old told AFP in Tokyo.
Not helping is lingering resentment about an LDP funding scandal, and US tariffs of 25 percent due to bite from August 1 if there is no trade deal with the United States.
Japanese imports are already subject to a 10 percent tariff, while the auto industry, which accounts for eight percent of jobs, is reeling from a 25 percent levy.
Weak export data last week, which showed plummeting US-bound auto deliveries, stoked fears that Japan could tip into a technical recession.
Despite Ishiba securing an early meeting with Trump in February, and sending his trade envoy to Washington seven times, there has been no accord.
‘Japanese first’
The last time the LDP and Komeito failed to win a majority in the upper house was in 2010, having already fallen below the threshold in 2007.
That was followed by a rare change of government in 2009, when the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan governed for a rocky three years.
Today, the opposition is fragmented, and chances are slim that the parties can form an alternative government.
Populist opposition party Sanseito wants “stricter rules and limits” on immigration, opposes “globalism” and “radical” gender policies, and wants a rethink on decarbonisation and vaccines.
Last week, it was forced to deny any links to Moscow — which has backed populist parties elsewhere — after a candidate was interviewed by Russian state media.
“They put into words what I had been thinking about but couldn’t put into words for many years,” one voter told AFP at a Sanseito rally.
Shigeru Ishiba, Japan's prime minister and president of the Liberal Democratic Party, looks at TV news as he leaves the party's headquarters following the upper house election.
“Portugal’s Travel & Tourism Sector Enters Golden Era.” “Travel & Tourism in Poland Set to Surpass Economic Records.” “France Set to Maintain Unmatched 2024 Growth in Travel & Tourism.” The World Travel and Tourism Council’s news and press release page is chock full of articles highlighting one fact: the world’s most visited destinations are overwhelmed with tourists, and the postpandemic tourism boom doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
Global travel was already swelling in 2024, when international travel reached 99% of its prepandemic levels, according to UN Tourism’s World Tourism Barometer. In the first quarter of 2025, international tourist arrivals increased by 5% compared to the first quarter of 2024 and 3% compared to the first quarter of 2019.
This surge of vacationers is in part due to “revenge travel”: people are going on the long-awaited trips they weren’t able to take during the pandemic. Partly as a result, popular sites and vacationing spots are facing an influx of tourists.
Tourists enjoy the beach along the “Promenade des Anglais” on the French riviera city of Nice, on July 14, 2025. In 2024, the travel and tourism sector’s contribution to France’s national GDP was 10.1% above 2019 levels, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.
VALERY HACHE—AFP/Getty Images
Tourists stroll through Park Guell in Barcelona on July 6, 2025. Barcelona received 15.5 million domestic and international tourists in 2024, resulting in a ratio of 10 tourists per every resident according to Wellness Retreats Magazine.
Marc Asensio—NurPhoto/Getty Images
Tourists crowd onto a passenger boat in Venice on June 9, 2025. In April, Venice enacted a five-euro fee for tourists entering the city for a day trip during the summer.
Andrea Merola—Bloomberg/Getty Images
People and tourists photograph the Olympic flame cauldron near the Arc de Triomphe before the Olympic Games in Paris on Aug. 7, 2024. Last year, France saw 100 million foreign tourists, outnumbering the country’s 66 million-person population, according to the Associated Press.
MAGALI COHEN—Hans Lucas/AFP/Getty Images
One of the countries most challenged by the flood of tourist traffic is Spain, which welcomed about 94 million foreign visitors in 2024—about double the country’s entire population of 49 million. The barrage of foreign tourists is making destinations busier and prices more expensive, and locals as well as domestic tourists are getting pushed out of their own regions.
For Spain’s 25 most popular coastal destinations, where hotel prices have risen 23% in the past three years, foreign tourism rose last year by 1.94 million people while local tourism dropped by 800,000. In contrast, about 1.7 million more Spaniards vacationed inland to more affordable areas last year compared to the year before.
But locals aren’t relinquishing their hometowns and regional vacation destinations easily. In Barcelona, which has a population of 1.7 million and saw 15.5 million domestic and foreign visitors last year, protesters took to the streets this year and last to splash tourists with water guns.
In Paris, staff at the Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum, went on strike in June, protesting the crowds, the lack of staffing, and the working conditions. The museum currently caps daily visitors at 30,000, which brings the maximum yearly attendance to 9.3 million—about 5 million more than the Louvre was designed to receive.
People photograph a passenger train passing through the Mae Klong Railway Market in Samut Songkhram, a little over 50 miles from Bangkok. International arrivals to Thailand are expected to grow 5% from last year, breaking previous records, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.
SEBASTIEN BERGER—AFP/Getty Images
Tourists crowd the streets near the Ponte di Rialto on March 1, 2025 in Venice. Venice’s population has dropped from about 175,000 in the 1970s to below 50,000 last year, while the number of tourists passing through the city has continued to increase.
Stefano Mazzola—Getty Images
Tourists sit on a public bench at Plaza Mayor in downtown Madrid on April 29, 2024. The World Travel and Tourism Council predicts that the travel and tourism sector will account for 3.2 million jobs in Spain.
Bernat Armangue—AP Photo
A tourist takes a picture of a wild deer on March 10, 2025, in Nara, Japan. Public trash cans have been installed in Nara Park, a popular tourist destination, to protect deer from the effects of overtourism. In 1985, trash cans were removed from the park because deer were accidentally eating out of them, but in recent years, littering—and the number of foreign tourists—has risen, according to The Japan Times.
Buddhika Weerasinghe—Getty Images
While locals are protesting overtourism, governments are trying to satiate their constituents without losing the economic boost that tourism provides. On a global scale, travel and tourism represented 10% of the global economy in 2024. Travel and tourism in Spain is expected to make up 16%, or $303.3 billion, of the country’s national economy, and the same sector in France is expected to make up 9.3%, or $319.2 billion, of its output.
In trying to appease both sides, the government of Italy imposed a five-euro (almost $6) tax last year to tourists traveling into the city in an attempt to mitigate tourism at the UNESCO World Heritage Site. The fee, implemented in April, is applicable only to day trips, not longer visits, and is in effect for only 54 days of this year’s peak tourism season. Residents of Venice, whose population has shrunk from about 175,000 in the 1970s to below 50,000 last year, said that the entrance fee turned their city into an amusement park and will not do much to discourage tourists.
Governments are also tightening regulations on short-term vacation rentals, specifically Airbnb, which limit the housing supply and therefore increase residential housing prices. The vacation rental company, which denies it has a role in hiking housing prices, is currently appealing a decision to take down around 66,000 properties in Spain that violate local rules. London and Paris, too, have capped the number of nights a property can be rented a year to 90 days.
Tourists take photos of the French impressionist painter Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, France, on July 16, 2025, where he painted his iconic “Water Lilies.” The World Travel and Tourism Council predicts that international spending will rise to $87.3 billion in 2025.
Tourists crowd in front of the barriers of the Trevi Fountain on Oct. 10, 2024, in Rome. A new walkway was being installed at the time, which will offer the opportunity to acquire new data on attendance, useful for solving the overcrowding problems of the monument.
Simona Granati—Corbis/Corbis/Getty Images
People wait in line in front of the Louvre in Paris on June 16, 2025. The museum’s employees went on a spontaneous strike that day in protest of the crowds, the lack of staffing, and the working conditions, leaving tourists out in the sun.
Carine Schmitt—Hans Lucas/Redux
A group of tourists wearing portable tour guide systems walk through Athens, Greece, on July 16, 2025. Athens saw about 7.9 million domestic and foreign tourists in 2024, according to Wellness Retreats Magazine.
Tourists pose for photos at the Leaning Tower of Pisa on Oct. 10, 2024. Italy is expecting almost 19 million international airport arrivals this summer, according to Ente Nazionale Italiano per il Turismo - Società per azioni.
The Behind the Seeds Tour at Epcot's Land Pavilion is a cheap way to have fun at Disney World.
Timothy Moore
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 costs under $50.
Timothy Moore
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.
Plants are grown in many different ways throughout the greenhouses.
Timothy Moore
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 ask a lot of questions, too.
Timothy Moore
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.
We made sure to ask our guide lots of questions.
Timothy Moore
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 cucumber I had on the tour tasted delicious.
Timothy Moore
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.
We only spent an hour on the Behind the Seeds Tour.
Timothy Moore
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.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is arguing that the digital identification approach being promoted by Sam Altman’s World project has real privacy risks.
In an interview with Digital Trends, Carl Lumbly talks about Captain America: Brave New World and his decades-long career in both Marvel and DC projects.
Console gaming's nominal price ceiling has gone up pretty consistently in the last 40+ years.
Credit:
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica
After adjusting for inflation, an $80 price level doesn't seem all that out of the ordinary.
Credit:
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica
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
$34.99 for Centipede on the Atari 2600 might sound cheap, but that 1983 price is the equivalent of roughly $90 today.
Credit:
Retro Waste
Check out the premium pricing for Zelda titles above other NES games in the 1988 Sears catalog.
Credit:
Hughes Johnson
If you wanted Streets of Rage 2 from Electronics Boutique in 1993, you'd better have been ready to pay extra.
Credit:
Hughes Johnson
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.
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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