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BEIJING — China's foreign minister Wang Yi said Saturday the South Pacific region should not become an arena for major power rivalries and that its assistance to countries there is free of political conditions. The Pacific has become a source of intense competition for influence between Washington, which has traditionally viewed it as its backyard, and Beijing, which has targeted Taiwanese diplomatic allies there. Wang made the comments at a joint news conference with his Papua New Guinea counterpart during a visit to the country. "The South Pacific region should not become an arena for great powers to play games, and no country should treat the island countries as its own 'backyard' or engage in zero-sum games and exclusionary arrangements," Wang said. He said any attempt to provoke confrontation in the South Pacific region does not serve the needs of its people. "China's engagement and cooperation with the South Pacific island countries is dedicated to mutual support and assistance to achieve common development, without any geopolitical self-interest," Wang said. He added that China is willing to maintain high-level exchanges with Papua New Guinea and open negotiations for free trade agreements as soon as possible. State media Xinhua reported Wang saying that all parties should respect the choice of the people of the Solomon Islands and refrain from interfering in their internal affairs. The Solomon Islands' pro-China Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has retained his seat in a national election, local media reported late Friday. Wednesday's election was the first since Sogavare struck a security pact with China in 2022 and drew the Pacific Islands nation closer to Beijing, in moves that concerned the U.S. and Australia because of the potential impact on regional security.

BEIJING — Russia remained China's top oil supplier in March, data showed Saturday, as refiners snapped up stranded Sokol crude shipments.   China's imports from Russia, including supplies via pipelines and sea-borne shipments, jumped 12.5% on the year to 10.81 million metric tons, or 2.55 million barrels per day (bpd) last month, according to data from the General Administration of Customs.   That was quite close to the previous monthly record of 2.56 million bpd in June 2023.   Seven Russian tankers under sanctions offloaded Sokol cargoes in Chinese ports in March, as Russia worked to clear a glut of stranded supply in the wake of tightened U.S. sanctions.   More than 10 million barrels of the oil supplied by Sakhalin-1, a unit of Rosneft, had been floating in storage over the past three months amid payment difficulties and sanctions on shipping firms and vessels carrying the crude. Stockpiling of Russian crude for storage in strategic reserves by state-owned CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Corporation) also boosted imports from Russia.   Data from consultancy Kpler, forecast sea-borne shipments from Russia hitting a record high of 1.82 million bpd, including 440,000 bpd of Sokol and 967,000 of ESPO (Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean) oil pipeline. Russia was China's top supplier throughout 2023, shipping 2.14 million bpd despite Western sanctions and a price cap following the Kremlin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.   In coordination with other OPEC+ members, Russia opted to roll forward a voluntary reduction in crude oil output of 300,000 bpd into the first quarter of the year to support energy prices. Imports from Saudi Arabia, previously China's largest supplier, totaled 6.3 million tons in March, or 1.48 million bpd, down 29.3% on the same period last year.   Riyadh has said it would extend its voluntary cut of 1 million bpd through the end of June, leaving its output at around 9 million bpd.   The world's top exporter kept the March official selling price of its flagship Arab Light to Asia at $1.50 over the Oman/Dubai average as the Kingdom sought to secure market share.   January-March imports from Malaysia, a trans-shipment point for sanctioned cargoes from Iran and Venezuela, soared 39.2% on the year to 13.7 million tons, or 3.23 million bpd. The data showed 375,296 tons of imports from Venezuela, following a rare shipment of 352,455 tons of Venezuelan crude in February amid a temporary relaxation of U.S. sanctions on Caracas. Sanctions were re-imposed from Thursday after the U.S. said President Nicolas Maduro had failed to meet his election commitments. Customs recorded no imports from Iran. 

SEATTLE — Saturday marks marijuana culture’s high holiday, 4/20, when college students gather — at 4:20 p.m. — in clouds of smoke on campus quads and pot shops in legal-weed states thank their customers with discounts. This year’s edition provides an occasion for activists to reflect on how far their movement has come, with recreational pot now allowed in nearly half the states and the nation’s capital. Many states have instituted “social equity” measures to help communities of color, harmed the most by the drug war, reap financial benefits from legalization. And the White House has shown an openness to marijuana reform. Here’s a look at 4/20's history: WHY 4/20?   The origins of the date, and the term “420” generally, were long murky. Some claimed it referred to a police code for marijuana possession or that it derived from Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35,” with its refrain of “Everybody must get stoned” — 420 being the product of 12 times 35. But the prevailing explanation is that it started in the 1970s with a group of bell-bottomed buddies from San Rafael High School, in California's Marin County north of San Francisco, who called themselves “the Waldos.” A friend’s brother was afraid of getting busted for a patch of cannabis he was growing in the woods at nearby Point Reyes, so he drew a map and gave the teens permission to harvest the crop, the story goes. During fall 1971, at 4:20 p.m., just after classes and football practice, the group would meet up at the school’s statue of chemist Louis Pasteur, smoke a joint and head out to search for the weed patch. They never did find it, but their private lexicon — “420 Louie” and later just “420” — would take on a life of its own. The Waldos saved postmarked letters and other artifacts from the 1970s referencing “420,” which they now keep in a bank vault, and when the Oxford English Dictionary added the term in 2017, it cited some of those documents as the earliest recorded uses. HOW DID 420 SPREAD? A brother of one of the Waldos was a close friend of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, as Lesh once confirmed in an interview with the Huffington Post, now HuffPost. The Waldos began hanging out in the band’s circle and the slang spread. Fast-forward to the early 1990s: Steve Bloom, a reporter for the cannabis magazine High Times, was at a Dead show when he was handed a flyer urging people to “meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais.” High Times published it. “It’s a phenomenon,” one of the Waldos, Steve Capper, now 69, once told The Associated Press. “Most things die within a couple years, but this just goes on and on. It’s not like someday somebody’s going to say, ‘OK, cannabis New Year’s is on June 23rd now.’” While the Waldos came up with the term, the people who made the flier distributed at the Dead show — and effectively turned 4/20 into a holiday — remain unknown. HOW IS IT CELEBRATED? With weed, naturally. Some celebrations are bigger than others: The Mile High 420 Festival in Denver, for example, typically draws thousands and describes itself as the largest free 4/20 event in the world. Hippie Hill in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park has also attracted massive crowds, but the gathering was canceled this year, with organizers citing a lack of financial sponsorship and city budget cuts. College quads and statehouse lawns are also known for drawing 4/20 celebrations, with the University of Colorado Boulder historically among the largest, though not so much since administrators banned the annual smokeout over a decade ago. Some breweries make beers that are 420-themed, but not laced, including SweetWater Brewing in Atlanta, which is throwing a 420 music festival this weekend and whose founders went to the University of Colorado. Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma, California, releases its “Waldos’ Special Ale” every year on 4/20 in partnership with the term’s coiners. That's where the Waldos will be this Saturday to sample the beer, for which they picked out “hops that smell and taste like the dankest marijuana,” one Waldo, Dave Reddix, said via email. 4/20 has also become a big industry event, with vendors gathering to try each other's wares. THE POLITICS The number of states allowing recreational marijuana has grown to 24 after recent legalization campaigns succeeded in Ohio, Minnesota and Delaware. Fourteen more states allow it for medical purposes, including Kentucky, where medical marijuana legislation that passed last year will take effect in 2025. Additional states permit only products with low THC, marijuana's main psychoactive ingredient, for certain medical conditions. But marijuana is still illegal under federal law. It is listed with drugs such as heroin under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has no federally accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. The Biden administration, however, has taken some steps toward marijuana reform. The president has pardoned thousands of people who were convicted of “simple possession” on federal land and in the District of Columbia. The Department of Health and Human Services last year recommended to the Drug Enforcement Administration that marijuana be reclassified as Schedule III, which would affirm its medical use under federal law. According to a Gallup poll last fall, 70% of adults support legalization, the highest level yet recorded by the polling firm and more than double the roughly 30% who backed it in 2000. Vivian McPeak, who helped found Seattle's Hempfest more than three decades ago, reflected on the extent to which the marijuana industry has evolved during his lifetime. “It's surreal to drive by stores that are selling cannabis,” he said. “A lot of people laughed at us, saying, ‘This will never happen.’” WHAT DOES IT MEAN? McPeak described 4/20 these days as a “mixed bag.” Despite the legalization movement's progress, many smaller growers are struggling to compete against large producers, he said, and many Americans are still behind bars for weed convictions. “We can celebrate the victories that we've had, and we can also strategize and organize to further the cause,” he said. “Despite the kind of complacency that some people might feel, we still got work to do. We've got to keep burning that shoe leather until we get everybody out of jails and prisons.” For the Waldos, 4/20 signifies above all else a good time. “We’re not political. We’re jokesters,” Capper has said. “But there was a time that we can’t forget, when it was secret, furtive. ... The energy of the time was more charged, more exciting in a certain way. “I’m not saying that’s all good — it’s not good they were putting people in jail,” he continued. “You wouldn’t want to go back there.”

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The U.S. economy is always a major factor in the presidential campaign because the president plays a key role in setting and shaping trade and economic policies. VOA’s Senior Washington Correspondent Carolyn Presutti reports on how the economy is doing and the difference between how the two presidential contenders would handle it. Camera: Mike Burke

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

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BANGKOK — About 1,300 people have fled from eastern Myanmar into Thailand, officials said Saturday, as fresh fighting erupted at a border town that has recently been captured by ethnic guerillas. Fighters from the Karen ethnic minority last week captured the last of the Myanmar army’s outposts in and around Myawaddy, which is connected to Thailand by two bridges across the Moei River. The latest clashes were triggered in the morning when the Karen guerillas launched an attack against Myanmar troops who were hiding near the 2nd Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge, a major crossing point for trade with Thailand, said police chief Pittayakorn Phetcharat in Thailand's Mae Sot district. He estimated about 1,300 people fled into Thailand. Thai officials reported people had started crossing since Friday following clashes in several areas of Myawaddy. The fall of Myawaddy is a major setback for the military that seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021. Myanmar’s once-mighty armed forces have suffered a series of unprecedented defeats since last October, losing swathes of territory including border posts to both ethnic fighters, who have been fighting for greater autonomy for decades, and pro-democracy guerrilla units that took up arms after the military takeover. The clashes, involving drone attacks from the Karen forces and airstrikes by the Myanmar military, had subsided by noon Saturday compared to the morning, but Mae Sot police chief Pittayakorn Phetcharat said he could still hear sporadic gunshots. He said Thai authorities would move people fleeing into a safer area. Footage from the Thai border showed Thai soldiers maintaining guard near the bridge with sounds of explosions and gunshots in the background. People with children waded across the river with their belongings and were received by Thai officials on the riverbank. Several are seen taking shelter in buildings along the riverbank on the Myanmar side. Thailand’s Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin wrote on the social media platform X on Saturday that he was closely monitoring the situation at the border. “I do not desire to see any such clashes have any impact on the territorial integrity of Thailand and we are ready to protect our borders and the safety of our people. At the same time, we are also ready to provide humanitarian assistance, if necessary,” he wrote. In March, Thailand delivered its first batch of humanitarian assistance to Myanmar for about 20,000 displaced people. Nikorndej Balangura, a spokesman of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, told reporters on Friday that Thailand is currently working to expand its aid initiative.

WASHINGTON — After its midnight deadline, the Senate voted early Saturday to reauthorize a key U.S. surveillance law after divisions over whether the FBI should be restricted from using the program to search for Americans’ data nearly forced the statute to lapse. The legislation approved 60-34 with bipartisan support would extend for two years the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden "will swiftly sign the bill." “In the nick of time, we are reauthorizing FISA right before it expires at midnight,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said when voting on final passage began 15 minutes before the deadline. “All day long, we persisted, and we persisted in trying to reach a breakthrough and in the end, we have succeeded.” U.S. officials have said the surveillance tool, first authorized in 2008 and renewed several times since then, is crucial in disrupting terror attacks, cyber intrusions, and foreign espionage and has also produced intelligence that the U.S. has relied on for specific operations, such as the 2022 killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri. “If you miss a key piece of intelligence, you may miss some event overseas or put troops in harm’s way," Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said. "You may miss a plot to harm the country here, domestically, or somewhere else. So, in this particular case, there’s real-life implications.” The proposal would renew the program, which permits the U.S. government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country to gather foreign intelligence. The reauthorization faced a long and bumpy road to final passage Friday after months of clashes between privacy advocates and national security hawks pushed consideration of the legislation to the brink of expiration. Though the spy program was technically set to expire at midnight, the Biden administration had said it expected its authority to collect intelligence to remain operational for at least another year, thanks to an opinion earlier this month from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which receives surveillance applications. Still, officials had said that court approval shouldn’t be a substitute for congressional authorization, especially since communications companies could cease cooperation with the government if the program is allowed to lapse. House before the law was set to expire, U.S. officials were already scrambling after two major U.S. communication providers said they would stop complying with orders through the surveillance program, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations. Attorney General Merrick Garland praised the reauthorization and reiterated how “indispensable” the tool is to the Justice Department. “This reauthorization of Section 702 gives the United States the authority to continue to collect foreign intelligence information about non-U.S. persons located outside the United States, while at the same time codifying important reforms the Justice Department has adopted to ensure the protection of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties," Garland said in a statement Saturday. But despite the Biden administration's urging and classified briefings to senators this week on the crucial role they say the spy program plays in protecting national security, a group of progressive and conservative lawmakers who were agitating for further changes had refused to accept the version of the bill the House sent over last week. The lawmakers had demanded that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer allow votes on amendments to the legislation that would seek to address what they see as civil liberty loopholes in the bill. In the end, Schumer was able to cut a deal that would allow critics to receive floor votes on their amendments in exchange for speeding up the process for passage. The six amendments ultimately failed to garner the necessary support on the floor to be included in the final passage. One of the major changes detractors had proposed centered on restricting the FBI’s access to information about Americans through the program. Though the surveillance tool only targets non-Americans in other countries, it also collects communications of Americans when they are in contact with those targeted foreigners. Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, had been pushing a proposal that would require U.S. officials to get a warrant before accessing American communications. “If the government wants to spy on my private communications or the private communications of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, just as our Founding Fathers intended in writing the Constitution,” Durbin said. In the past year, U.S. officials have revealed a series of abuses and mistakes by FBI analysts in improperly querying the intelligence repository for information about Americans or others in the U.S., including a member of Congress and participants in the racial justice protests of 2020 and the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. But members on both the House and Senate intelligence committees as well as the Justice Department warned requiring a warrant would severely handicap officials from quickly responding to imminent national security threats. “I think that is a risk that we cannot afford to take with the vast array of challenges our nation faces around the world,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Friday.  

BANGKOK — As rebel forces across Myanmar continue making major gains against the country’s military regime on the battlefield, resistance groups are working behind the scenes to plan for the government they want to take the junta’s place. It is not clear that the effort will succeed, and if it does not, some analysts fear a political vacuum if the junta-led government should fall. At a so-called People’s Assembly in January 2022, nearly a year after the military seized power, upwards of two dozen resistance groups endorsed a two-part charter laying out their vision for a new order that would loosely bind Myanmar’s states together as a democratic and federal — or “union” — government.   Since then, though, they have been struggling to agree on just what a federal union should look like and how to build it, analysts following the talks tell VOA.  “What has propelled them thus far is this least common denominator that everyone buys into: a federal democratic system,” Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington told VOA in recent days.  “But once you actually get down to brass tacks and try to define what that is, everyone all of a sudden gets cold feet and doesn’t want to attach their names. I think everyone is still kind of waiting this out, seeing what else they can get,” he said. Some of Myanmar’s states are home to large ethnic minority populations, which together account for roughly a third of the country’s 54 million people. Rebel armies among the minorities, dubbed ethnic armed organizations, or EAOs, have been fighting Myanmar’s ethnic Burman-dominated military for control of parts of those states for decades. They have been demanding a federal union that gives their states more autonomy for just as long. The new charter is a bid to answer their call, but it remains vague on how the federal and state governments would share power in a new Myanmar. The charter calls the states “the original owners of sovereignty” and says the union “shall consist of member states which have full rights to democracy, equality and self-determination.” It adds that the specific powers of the union and of the states “shall be determined,” without elaborating.  Where the power lies Among the EAOs, debate over the charter has mostly focused on how much power each state may want to grant the union or keep for itself, said Ying Lao of the Salween Institute for Public Policy, a Myanmar think tank. Another key player in the talks is the so-called National Unity Government, an alliance of civilian resistance groups including some of the mostly Burman lawmakers ousted by the 2021 coup. Disputes over the charter between the EAOs and NUG are deeper and “ideological,” Ying Lao said, about where political power in Myanmar actually lies. As the EAOs see it, she said, that power rests with the states, and the union “has only the powers that they are willing to share with the union. That’s the kind of federalism they are looking for. But for the Bamar [Burman] political elite, they claim that sovereignty rests with the country, which is the union of Burma, and that the states have the powers that the union is willing to share with them.” That dispute is echoed in the concerns some groups have with the charter’s second half, or Part 2, which lays out a rough roadmap for shifting to the full-fledged federal union envisioned in Part 1. It says the lawmakers ousted by the coup would serve as an interim legislature and sets no time limit.  Analysts tell VOA that minority groups say that hews too closely to the centralized, Burman-dominated government they have been struggling for decades to replace. When it came time to endorse that part of the charter at the 2022 People’s Congress, they said, some of the groups that endorsed Part 1 abstained. In the final days of a second People’s Congress held earlier this month for resistance groups to keep planning for a future government, the NUG and ousted lawmakers pulled out. They claimed the event had gotten out of hand and that the issues some of the groups were raising were out of bounds. The NUG includes ethnic minority officers and takes pains to stress its inclusive credentials. Ying Lao said its actions, however, are reinforcing the impression among some that Burman elites still dominate. Many minority groups feel a faction of the NUG “still has this Burma-centric, or what they call a chauvinistic mindset,” Kim Jolliffe, an independent Myanmar analyst and researcher, told VOA. “They support the [charter], but they don’t fully have trust in the process, that it’s really going to be implemented,” he said. Less talk, more action Many of Myanmar’s EAOs, including a few of the most powerful, are not even taking part in the charter talks, or are doing so only at arm’s length. Some are not waiting for the details to be worked out either, and they have started building whole new governments on their own in their home states. Armed and civilian ethnic Karenni groups in Kayah state were the first to declare an interim government replacing the military regime across their state in June. The Arakan Army EAO has been building its own government as well across the parts of Rakhine state it has battled to reclaim from the junta. Resistance groups elsewhere are following suit. “A lot of the [EAOs], they’re saying now, we’re not going to get bound up in any more debates about the [charter], we’re just going to build our states, and we’re going to come together and then we’ll decide what needs to be shared as a union of equals,” Jolliffe said. Working out the details “is going to be very messy,” Abuza said. He noted he also worries that both the EAOs and NUG, which has its own network of militias fighting the Myanmar military across the country, will want to concede less politically as they gain ground against the junta on the battlefield. The junta may still be far from defeat. It continues to hold Naypyitaw, the capital, and main cities, and has the edge in funds and firepower. But the military is widely loathed and overstretched and has now lost control of most of Myanmar’s borders. Should the junta lose or collapse before the EAOs and NUG work out their political differences, analysts like Abuza and Jolliffe say they worry about a federal power vacuum and the problems that could cause. Ying Lao is more sanguine. She says Myanmar has “never really existed” as a functioning union with a central government that meets the needs of its states, and it could continue to muddle along without one. “Not getting that functioning federal union anytime soon, for the people on the ground, the situation will only get worse and worse. But whether this country will remain intact, I’m sure it will,” she said. “But no one will have any real power in the country. … It’s going to be chaotic, for sure.” Ingyin Naing in Washington contributed to this report.

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NEW YORK — A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former President Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said.  The New York City Police Department told The Associated Press early Saturday that the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park around 1:30 p.m. Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed to the aid of the man, who was hospitalized in critical condition. The man, who police said had traveled from Florida to New York in the last few days, hadn't breached any security checkpoints to get into the park.  The park outside the courthouse has been a gathering spot for protesters, journalists and gawkers throughout Trump’s trial, which began with jury selection Monday.  Through Friday, the streets and sidewalks in the area around the courthouse were generally wide open and crowds have been small and largely orderly.  Authorities said they were also reviewing the security protocols, including whether to restrict access to the park. The side street where Trump enters and leaves the building is off limits. “We may have to shut this area down,” New York City Police Department Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry said at a news conference outside the courthouse, adding that officials would discuss the security plan soon.

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BAGHDAD — A huge blast at a military base in Iraq early on Saturday killed a member of an Iraqi security force that includes Iran-backed groups. The force commander said it was an attack while the army said it was investigating and there were no warplanes in the sky at the time. Two security sources had said earlier that an airstrike caused the blast, which killed a member of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and wounded eight others at Kalso military base about 50 km (30 miles) south of Baghdad. In a statement, the PMF said its chief of staff Abdul Aziz al-Mohammedawi had visited the location and "reviewed the details of the investigative committees present in the place that was attacked". The Iraqi military said a technical committee was looking into the cause of an explosion and fire at the base, which it said happened at 1 a.m. on Saturday (2200 GMT Friday). "The air defence command report confirmed, through technical efforts and radar detection, that there was no drone or fighter jet in the air space of Babil before and during the explosion," the military said in a statement. The incident in Iraq's Babil province occurred with tensions running even higher than usual across the Middle East, following what sources said was an Israeli attack in the Iranian city of Isfahan on Friday. Tehran has played it down and indicated it had no plans for retaliation. That incident came six days after Iran fired a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel in response to a presumed Israeli airstrike that destroyed part of Iran's embassy in Damascus, killing seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers on April 1. The PMF includes Iran-backed groups which, operating under the banner of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, have attacked U.S. troops in the region and targeted Israel since the eruption of the Gaza war, declaring support for the Palestinians. Their attacks on U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq stopped in early February after a drone strike killed three U.S. soldiers in Jordan, prompting heavy U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. But they claimed responsibility for an attack on the Israeli city of Eilat on April 1. The U.S. military's Central Command, in a post on X early on Saturday, denied what it said were reports that the United States had carried out airstrikes in Iraq. "The United States has not conducted air strikes in Iraq today," it said. The PMF started out as a grouping of armed factions, many close to Iran, that was later recognized as a formal security force by Iraqi authorities.

Israel's war on Gaza has led to a dramatic escalation of tensions in an already volatile Middle East

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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Saturday it tested a "super-large" cruise missile warhead and a new anti-aircraft missile in a western coastal area as it expands military capabilities in the face of deepening tensions with the United States and South Korea. North Korean state media said the country’s missile administration on Friday conducted a "power test" for the warhead designed for the Hwasal-1 Ra-3 strategic cruise missile and a test-launch of the Pyoljji-1-2 anti-aircraft missile. It said the tests attained an unspecified "certain goal." Photos released by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency showed at least two missiles being fired off launcher trucks at a runway. North Korea conducted a similar set of tests February 2, but at the time did not specify the names of the cruise missile or the anti-aircraft missile, indicating it was possibly seeing technological progress after testing the same system over weeks. KCNA insisted Friday’s tests were part of the North’s regular military development activities and had nothing to do with the "surrounding situation." Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest in years, with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un dialing up his weapons demonstrations, which have included more powerful missiles aimed at the U.S. mainland and U.S. targets in the Pacific. The United States, South Korea and Japan have responded by expanding their combined military training and sharpening their deterrence strategies built around strategic U.S. assets. Cruise missiles are among a growing collection of North Korean weapons designed to overwhelm regional missile defenses. They supplement the North’s vast lineup of ballistic missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at the continental United States. Analysts say anti-aircraft missile technology is an area where North Korea could benefit from its deepening military cooperation with Russia, as the two countries align in the face of their separate, intensifying confrontations with the U.S. The United States and South Korea have accused North Korea of providing artillery shells and other equipment to Russia to help extend its war in Ukraine.