South

If you have a fireplace in Southern California, experts are asking you not to use it. A no-burn alert has been extended at least through Wednesday as much of the region sits beneath an atmospheric soup of haze and pollutants.The alert was issued Monday by the South Coast Air Quality Management District for the non-desert parts of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The alert bans any burning of wood or manufactured fire logs made of wax or paper due to poor air quality in the region.Current…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The South Korean dog meat trade will officially end in 2027 after a bill was passed making the slaughter of dogs and the sale of dog meat for human consumption illegal in the country (though the consumption of dog meat will still be legal). People who violate this new law could be fined up to 30 million won (about £18,000) and be jailed for three years. …

Known global impacts of climate change in the SCSSA. Credit: Yang et al. (2023) As the threat of global warming looms, researchers are racing to understand how complex, interconnected weather systems affect one another. Unprecedented changes to weather patterns, sometimes in defiance of models and predictions, point to the need for a global perspective. …

In January 2023, the government unveiled a plan to offer large tax breaks to semiconductor companies investing at home, which are set to end this year.South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Monday that he would extend tax credits on investments in the domestic semiconductor industry to boost employment and attract more talent.The country, home to the world's top memory chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, aims to expand tax breaks and support to raise the…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain South African justice minister Ronald Lamola led a top legal team to argue the country's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 11 January. South Africa argues that Israel's indiscriminate retaliatory bombing and siege of Gaza contravenes the Genocide Convention. More than 23,000…

More than two dozen prominent names from the acting world — including Susan Sarandon, Cynthia Nixon, The Crown actors Khalid Abdalla and Tobias Menzies, and Game of Thrones stars Charles Dance, Carice van Houten and Lena Headey — have contributed to a series of videos supporting South Africa’s historic case charging Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. The video series is published by the Palestine Festival of Literature, a British-based cultural association…

A group of South Korean filmmakers, artists, and entertainment companies have banded in the aftermath of actor Lee Sun-Kyun’s death, calling for an investigation into the circumstances that drove the Parasite star to suicide in late December. The Association of Solidarity Among Cultural Artists — which includes Parasite director Bong Joon-ho, filmmaker Lee Won-tae, actor Choi Deok-moon, singer Yoon Jong-shin, and dozens more — issued a statement prior to a planned Friday press conference in Seoul, where they would…

Credit: The Conversation South Korea's bachelor time bomb is about to really go off. Following a historic 30-year-long imbalance in the male-to-female sex ratio at birth, young men far outnumber young women in the country. As a result, some 700,000 to 800,000 "extra" South Korean boys born since the mid-1980s may not be able to find South Korean girls to marry. …

Comparison of the forecasting schemes of monthly mean number of clusters for Tropical America in January 2019 and their errors. Top left is the observed number of clusters from WWLLN, top center is the result of the mean scheme, top right is the result of the random selector scheme. Bottom left is the error of the mean scheme, bottom right is the error of the random selector scheme (Error = forecast – observations). Credit: Quarterly Journal of the…

South Korea has banned dog meat production by 2027 following a vote on Tuesday (January 9), eliciting mixed reactions ranging from animal rights support to cultural concerns and debates on hygiene and international comparisons.The National Assembly passed the bill by a 208-0 vote in a move hailed as “history in the making” by activists, the DailyMail reported. Dog meat has fallen out of favor with diners over the past few decades in the East Asian nation, with the younger generation especially looking down upon it.South…