Bird flu outbreaks have spread to six of South Korea’s nine provinces despite a massive cull that saw the slaughter of more than 5 million chickens and ducks last month, officials said yesterday.
An outbreak reported on Wednesday at a farm around 300km southeast of Seoul was confirmed after blood tests as the virulent H5N1 strain of the disease, the agriculture ministry said.
It raised to 23 the total number of outbreaks reported across six provinces of South Korea.
Only the northeastern province of Gangweon, North Chungcheong in the center and the southern island of Jeju have been unaffected so far, the ministry said.
Meanwhile, quarantine authorities denied allegations they had covered up an outbreak of avian influenza in the province of North Gyeongsang last month.
Responding to a television report, they said they had been cautious of the results of preliminary tests on poultry at Yeongcheon City, but final results confirmed the outbreak.
South Korea reported seven cases of H5N1 infection cases between November 2006 and March last year, resulting in temporary suspension of poultry exports to Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere.
Last June, however, the World Organization for Animal Health classified the country as free from the disease.
The H5N1 strain has killed more than 240 people worldwide since late 2003. No South Koreans are known to have contracted the disease.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home