SOUTH KOREA
Australia envoy resigns
Ambassador to Australia Lee Jong-sup has resigned, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, after his appointment while under investigation by corruption authorities triggered a public outcry. Before being named to the post, Lee had been banned from traveling while South Korea’s Corruption Investigation Office probed allegations he interfered with an inquiry into the death of a marine last year, while he was minister of defense. The foreign ministry said that it had “decided to accept his resignation,” without giving further details. The 20-year-old marine died after being swept away while doing relief work during flooding, with some reports saying he was never given a life jacket by authorities. The office is looking into whether Lee interfered with the probe into the marine’s death. Lee has denied any wrongdoing and vowed to cooperate.
HUNGARY
Study shows dogs’ skills
Dogs are able to understand that some words refer to objects in a way that is similar to humans, a small study of canine brain waves has found. That our four-legged companions are able to recognize words that prompt actions will come as no surprise to dog owners who tell their pets to “sit” or “fetch.” However, the study, which analyzed brain activity in 18 dogs, provided evidence that they can activate a memory of an object when they hear its name. The study was carried out at the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest and published in the journal Current Biology. “There has been a long debate on a non-human animal’s ability to understand words referentially,” said Marianna Boros who coauthored the study. “While there have been behavioral reports, these were always exceptional cases. Our study is the first where we claim that this is a species-wide capacity.” During the study, dog owners said words for objects their pets knew. In some cases they would present the dog with an object that matched the word, while in other cases the object did not match. The results found that the patterns in the dogs’ brains when the words matched the objects were different compared with when they did not. “Dogs can understand that words stand for things ... so they activate mental representations and they link the meaning of the word to a mental representation and not just the context,” Boros said.
SPAIN
Four killed in falls
Four people have died after falling into the sea in three incidents on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, emergency services said on Thursday. The deaths came amid warnings of strong winds and widespread rain across many parts of the country and warnings of high waves on Portugal’s coast to the southwest. Spanish police said that an underage male of Moroccan nationality and a German adult died on the Mediterranean coast near Tarragona. The German man went into the water trying to save the Moroccan youth and both perished, the Civil Guard said. A man and a woman died after falling into the Atlantic Ocean on Spain’s northern coast, emergency services for the region of Asturias said. Spain’s EFE news agency quoted local authorities as saying the man was of British nationality. The body of the woman, presumably Spanish, was recovered after she fell into the sea and was thrown against the rocks by the waves, authorities said. The national weather service on Thursday issued warnings for heavy winds in several areas of the peninsula, including the Asturias’ coast, where 7m waves were forecast.
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