SEOUL — South Korea began clearing mines from two sites inside the heavily fortified border with North Korea on Monday under tension-reducing agreements reached this year. Seoul says North Korea is expected to do the same.

The development comes amid renewed international diplomacy on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program after weeks of stalemated negotiations. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is to visit Pyongyang this month to try to set up a second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

South Korean troops entered the Demilitarized Zone on Monday morning to remove mines around the border village of Panmunjom and another frontline area where the rivals plan their first joint searches with North Korea for soldiers during the 1950-53 Korean War, according to Seoul’s Defense Ministry.

The South Korean troops will try to focus on taking out mines on the southern parts of Panmunjom’s Joint Security Area and the so-called “Arrow Head Hill,” where one of the fiercest battles during the Korean War happened. Seoul officials believe the remains of about 300 South Korean and U.N. forces are in the Arrow Head Hill and likely many Chinese and North Korean remains too.

South Korean Defense Ministry officials said they couldn’t immediately confirm whether North Korea also began demining on the northern parts of the two sites. But they said they expected the North to abide by the tension-easing deals their defense chiefs struck on the sidelines of their leaders’ summit last month in Pyongyang.

Aiming to reduce conventional military threats, the Koreas’ defense chiefs also agreed to withdraw 11 frontline guard posts by December and set up buffer zones along their land and sea boundaries and a no-fly zone above the borderline to prevent accidental armed clashes.

About 2 million mines are believed to be peppered inside the Koreas’ 248-kilometer (155-mile)-long Demilitarized Zone that was originally created as a buffer zone at the end of the Korean War. The DMZ is the world’s most heavily fortified border that is also guarded by hundreds of thousands of combat troops, barbed wire fences and tank traps on both sides.

Many experts say the fate of inter-Korean deals can be affected by how nuclear negotiations would go between the United States and North Korea. Past rapprochement efforts were often stalled after an international standoff over the North’s nuclear ambitions intensified.

After provocative tests of three intercontinental ballistic missiles and a powerful nuclear weapon last year, North Korea entered talks with the United States and South Korea earlier this year, saying it’s willing to deal away its expanding nuclear arsenal. Kim Jong Un has subsequently held a series of summits with U.S., South Korean and Chinese leaders and taken some steps like dismantling his nuclear-testing site.

Nuclear diplomacy later came to a standstill amid disputes over how genuine North Korea is about its disarmament pledge. But Trump, Pompeo and other U.S. officials have recently reported progress in the denuclearization discussions with the North. Pompeo is to make his third trip to North Korea soon for talks.

JAKARTA — An Indonesian official says the earthquake and tsunami that hit central Sulawesi left many victims, as rescuers raced to the region.

Disaster officials haven’t released an official death toll but reports from three hospitals seen Saturday by The Associated Press listed 18 dead.

Dawn revealed a devastated coastline in central Sulawesi where the tsunami triggered by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake Friday smashed into two cities and several settlements.

Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said in a television interview there are “many victims.”

In Palu, the capital of Central Sulawesi province, a large bridge spanning a coastal river had collapsed and the city was strewn with debris.

DHAKA — Journalists and human rights groups are demanding major amendments to a bill recently passed in Bangladesh’s Parliament, saying it will further choke constitutionally protected freedom of speech.

A powerful body of editors of leading newspapers and TV stations has officially protested the bill, called the Digital Security Act, and plans to form a human chain to protest Saturday in front of the national press club in Dhaka.

“We are moving toward a bad time. This law will hurt the media, democracy and freedom of expression,” said Khandakar Muniruzzaman, acting editor of the Bengali-language daily Sangbad and among those planning to participate in the protest Saturday.

Senior editors, journalist groups and human rights groups in and outside Bangladesh are echoing these concerns, demanding that lawmakers clarify sections of the bill they say could be wielded arbitrarily against government critics before the president signs it.

In Bangladesh, the president customarily signs anything passed by Parliament. He can send it back to Parliament, but if members think no changes are needed, it will go back to him for a signature. If the president does not sign it in six months, it automatically becomes law.

The bill would replace a previous information communication technology law, which was also criticized by journalists and human rights groups for its alleged use to crack down on dissent. Many editors and reporters have been sued for defamation under the law.

Observers say the bill is part of a broader campaign to silence critics in Bangladesh, and reflects a worrying trend in fledgling Asian democracies.

Journalists in Nepal are combating a similar law, part of an expansive rewriting of that country’s civil and criminal codes meant to define the parameters of Nepal’s new constitution.

Laws like the one recently passed in Nepal and the one pending in Bangladesh, where democracy was restored in 1990 after the military dictator was ousted, could make it more difficult for journalists to expose corruption.

Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who political opponents decry as an autocrat, defended the bill in Parliament last week, saying that it was meant to protect the country from propaganda.

“Journalism is surely not for increasing conflict, or for tarnishing the image of the country,” she said.

Bangladeshi journalists are taking particular umbrage with a section of the bill that authorizes up to 14 years in prison for gathering, sending or preserving classified information of any government using a computer or other digital device. The journalists say publishing such information is a way to hold officials accountable. The section evokes the sentiment of a British colonial-era law about protecting official secrets.

The bill would also authorize prison sentences of up to three years for publishing information that is “aggressive or frightening” and up to 10 years for posting information that “ruins communal harmony or creates instability or disorder or disturbs or is about to disturb the law and order situation.”

Government officials have listed incidents in recent years in which false social media posts about people disrespecting the Quran have incited violence.

Critics of the bill say existing criminal laws adequately address these concerns.

Fears of the broad reach of the bill extend beyond journalists.

Human Rights Watch said the law would be ripe for abuse, in part because it would empower police to search or arrest suspects without a court order.

“Bangladesh authorities have failed to address serious human rights violations, and when criticized, chosen to target the messenger,” spokeswoman Meenakshi Ganguly told The Associated Press.

“Bangladeshi journalists, already under pressure, will now worry about doing their job in exposing government failures,” she said.

Some critics say introducing such a law a few months before general elections, which are expected in December, could also target opposition activists and candidates.

Bangladesh’s main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP, has said the bill is intended to silence its members. Party leader former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, an archrival of Hasina, is currently in jail for corruption. Her supporters say her jailing is politically motivated, an allegation authorities have denied.

An election-time government is expected to be formed in mid-October that Hasina is supposed to head in line with the constitution, but the opposition says an election under Hasina could be rigged. The opposition wants a non-partisan caretaker government to oversee the elections.

The opposition says their activists are facing thousands of politically-motivated criminal charges, but police say they are following the law, without regard to suspects’ political affiliations.