September 2021

While no longer as common as before, dog meat is eaten mainly by older people and is served in some restaurants and can be bought at specific markets. Moon made the remarks after being briefed by Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum on efforts to improve the handling of abandoned animals and a mandatory registration system for dogs. “After the briefing, he said time has come to carefully consider imposing a dog meat ban,” Moon’s spokeswoman Park Kyung-mee said in a statement. It was the first time that Moon raised a ban, which is likely to give fresh momentum to debate over…

The presumed missile was fired around 6:40 a.m. local time Tuesday, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement, adding the South Korean military is “maintaining a readiness posture” for potential “additional launches.” South Korean intelligence authorities and the United States are analyzing the situation, the statement said. The US military’s Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii said it was consulting with allies and partners about the presumed North Korean test. “While we have assessed that this event does not pose an immediate threat to US personnel or territory, or to our allies, the missile launch highlights the destabilizing…

The results of Sunday’s election are hard to predict, and the formation of a government could take weeks or months to play out. But when the dust settles, polls indicate that the new chancellor could be the left-leaning Social Democratic Party’s Olaf Scholz, who steered Germany’s economy through the pandemic as finance minister in a coalition with Merkel. Meanwhile, the Greens could more than double their number of seats in parliament. Scholz’s SPD and the Greens could partner with the pro-business Free Democratic Party, gaining enough power to shift the country’s economic agenda to the left. Taxation and spending could…

Angela Merkel, one of the world’s highest profile political leaders during her 16 years in office, will stay in the top job until a deal is done. But the haggling could take days, weeks, or even longer — it took months for a government to be formed after Merkel’s 2017 election win. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) had its worst ever showing, posting record losses. Together with its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) it notched up 24.1% of the vote, compared to the SPD’s 25.7%, and lost 49 seats in total; the CSU lost one other seat…

(CNN) — Whether you’re a vaccine queen, a PCR prince or a quarantine king, there sure are a lot of requirements when it comes to getting around these days. Luckily CNN Travel is here to keep you updated on the latest developments. Here’s what we learned in pandemic travel this week. 1. The US is opening its air borders The Washington Monument in Washington, DC, reopened to visitors in July 2021. Soon vaccinated foreign nationals will be able to visit too. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images By far the biggest travel news this week is that, after an 18-month ban, the US…

According to government’s statement, 5,000 heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers and 5,500 poultry workers have been added to the existing visa scheme until Christmas 2021 “to ease supply chain pressures in food and haulage industries during exceptional circumstances this year.” Up to 4,000 people will be trained as new HGV drivers “to help tackle skills shortages and support more people to launch careers within the logistics sector,” and nearly 1 million letters will be sent to all drivers who hold an HGV license, “encouraging them back into the industry,” the government said. Worker shortages are a growing problem in Britain,…

The European economy rebounded more strongly than expected after lockdown restrictions were eased earlier this year. And it has avoided some of the big risks now clouding the outlook for the United States and China. S&P Global Ratings upgraded its 2021 European growth forecast last week to 5.1% from 4.4%, citing rapid improvements in economic output, the labor market and high levels of corporate investment.  The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has a similar view. It said last week that it expects the eurozone economy to expand 5.3% this year, an upgrade of 1 percentage point from its May…

Around 77.30% of voters approved the measure which would make abortion legal in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The vote will also make it legal for woman to get an abortion beyond 12 weeks if the pregnancy is life threatening for the woman, or anomalies and malformations of the fetus arise that pose a serious health risk to the woman. The microstate’s Secretary of the Interior, Elena Tonnini, hopes to draft up a law based on the vote as soon as possible, according to public broadcaster San Marino RTV. The vote in the northern Italian enclave of 33,000 people…

The earthquake, which hit at 9.17 a.m. local time, had a magnitude of 5.8, according to the Athens Geodynamic Institute. It said the quake’s epicenter was 14 miles northwest of the seaside village of Arvi in southeastern Crete, at a depth of six miles. The man who has been confirmed dead was removed unconscious from a chapel in the town of Arkalochori, south of the island’s capital, Heraklion. He had been working on renovations to the chapel. Civil protection authorities confirmed to CNN that there has been extensive damage to some buildings, mostly old ones, and that schools have been…

Afghanistan’s UN representative Ghulam Isaczai — an appointee of the country’s former democratic government, which crumbled under the Taliban’s advance last month — had been expected to address world leaders on Monday. His staff informed the global body over the weekend that he would no longer be speaking, according to UN Secretary-General spokesman Stéphane Dujarric. “This does not change the fact that the representative of Afghanistan remains the same,” Dujarric said. A battle over credentials began last week, when the Taliban sent the UN a request to replace Isaczai with their own representative. According to the Taliban’s letter, Isaczai no…