Vice foreign ministers of South Korea, the United States and Japan will hold trilateral talks this week to discuss ways of further enhancing cooperation on North Korean issues and economic security, Seoul's foreign ministry said Wednesday.

First South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Takehiro Funakoshi are scheduled to meet in Japan on Friday, according to South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The upcoming talks come about nine months after their last meeting held in Seoul in October. It also marks the first since the inauguration of President Lee Jae Myung and US President Donald Trump's new administration.

No survivors were reported in the July 14 Mi-8 chopper crash in Russia's far eastern region, Khabarovsk, the country's emergencies ministry said on Wednesday.

"According to Rosaviatsiya (Russia's air transport regulator), no one survived the crash. Russian Emergencies Ministry rescuers, jointly with investigators, are analysing fragments of the aircraft and looking for flight recorders at the site of the crash to establish the cause behind it," the Russian Emergencies Ministry told state-run news agency.

According to the initial information provided by the Eastern Interregional Transport Investigative Directorate of the Russian Investigative Committee, five bodies were reported at the scene.

The Mi-8 helicopter went off the radar, disappearing while heading towards Magadan, from Okhotsk, on July 14.

The helicopter, two days later, was discovered in the Cape Gadikan region after it had crashed.

Officials from Laos and Cambodia gathered in Vientiane for the first Laos-Cambodia Prosecutors' Office Meeting on Cooperation in Combating Transnational Crime, with a particular focus on drug trafficking.

The meeting took place on Tuesday and brought together senior prosecutors from both countries to deepen cooperation, reports, quoting Lao News Agency.

In his speech, President of the Supreme People's Prosecutor's Office of Laos, Xaysana Khotphouthone, said that the meeting marked a significant milestone in strengthening bilateral judicial cooperation, noting that it reflects the deepening strategic partnership between the two nations and aims to reinforce collaboration in criminal prosecution, particularly in the fight against transnational and drug-related crimes.

Xaysana highlighted that the drug crisis has severely impacted all sectors of Lao society, from students and youth to rural communities, and warned that if left unaddressed, it could become a root cause of various crimes and a serious threat to national stability.

South Korea added more than 180,000 jobs in June, marking the sixth consecutive month of employment growth, but employment in the manufacturing and construction sectors continued to decline, data showed on Wednesday.

The number of employed people reached 29.09 million last month, up 183,000 from a year earlier, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea.

June's data highlight a continued upward trend in employment following a brief contraction in December, when the country saw a net loss of 52,000 positions, reports news agency.

Since then, the trend has reversed by posting a net increase of 135,000 jobs in January, 136,000 in February, 193,000 in March, 194,000 in April and 245,000 in May.

The employment rate for people aged 15 to 64 increased 0.4 percentage point from a year earlier to 70.3 percent in June, while the jobless rate edged down 0.1 percentage point to 2.8 percent, the data showed.

South Korean former President Yoon Suk Yeol has filed for a review of the legality of his arrest, his lawyers said Wednesday, beginning a process to regain his freedom a week after being placed in custody over his failed attempt to impose martial law.

The petition was filed with the Seoul Central District Court to point out the arrest was "illegal" and "unjust," both substantively and procedurally, the lawyers said in a statement to the press.

By law, the court is required to question the suspect and study evidence within 48 hours after the request is filed before deciding on whether the arrest was legal and should remain in place, news agncy reported.

Depending on the outcome, Yoon could be released from the Seoul Detention Center, where he has been held since last Thursday after a court issued a warrant for his arrest over five key charges related to his martial law bid.

US President Donald Trump has said his administration might start imposing tariffs on pharmaceutical imports at the end of the month, while noting the timeline for duties on semiconductors was "similar" to that of those on pharmaceuticals.

Trump made the remarks, suggesting that his administration will phase in the tariffs on pharmaceuticals to allow time for companies to construct their production facilities in the United States, reports news agency.

"Probably at the end of the month and we are going to start off with a low tariff and give pharmaceutical companies a year or so to build, and then we're going to make it a very high tariff," he said during a press availability after returning from a public event in Pittsburgh.

Several Middle Eastern countries, including Jordan, Qatar, Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, have strongly condemned the recent Israeli airstrikes on Syrian military convoys near the southern city of Sweida.

In a joint statement on Tuesday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz said they ordered the military to “immediately strike” Syrian forces and weapons in the area to “prevent the Syrian regime from harming” the Druze community, due to “the deep fraternal alliance with the Druze citizens of Israel and their familial and historical ties to the Druze in Syria.”

Condemning the Israeli strike on Syria, the Jordan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates described it as a “flagrant violation of international law and a dangerous escalation targeting Syria’s stability, sovereignty, and security.”

A series of Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday targetted convoys of Syrian forces in and around the southern Syrian city of Sweida, killing and wounding several personnel, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and state media outlets.

Russian Security Council's Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday dismissed US President Donald Trump's threats to impose massive economic sanctions on the country, calling it a "theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin" and asserting that Moscow does not care.

The search for 17 missing victims from a passenger ship that sank in Indonesia's Bali Strait on July 2 has been extended, according to Ribut Eko Suyanto, Deputy for search and rescue operations at the National Search and Rescue Agency.

In a statement issued Tuesday, Suyanto announced that the operation would be extended for an additional seven days.

"The wreckage of the ship, identified by Indonesian Navy cameras, serves as the basis for extending the search and rescue efforts," he said in a statement.