Briefly

SOUTH KOREA

Cases on the move from Seoul amid surge

South Korea added the most new cases in months to its coronavirus tally on Friday, driven by a surge around the capital that appears to be spreading nationwide. The 324 new infections amounted to the highest single day total since early March and the eighth consecutive day of triple-digit increases. Most of the people recently infected live in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan region, where health workers are scrambling to track transmissions from sources including churches, restaurants, schools and workplaces. But the new infections reported on Friday were from practically all of South Korea's major cities, including Busan, Gwangju, Daejeon, Sejong and Daegu, the southeastern city that was the epicenter of a massive outbreak in late February and March.

DENMARK

Greenland's record ice loss sparks alarm

Greenland lost a record amount of ice during an extra warm 2019, with the melt massive enough to cover California in more than 1.25 meters of water, a study said. After two years when the summer ice melt had been minimal, last summer shattered all records with 586 billion tons of ice melting, according to satellite measurements reported in a study on Thursday. That's more than 532 trillion liters of water. "Not only is the Greenland ice sheet melting, but it's melting at a faster and faster pace," said study lead author Ingo Sasgen, a geoscientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. Last year, the Greenland melt added 1.5 millimeters to the global sea level rise. That sounds like a tiny amount but "in our world it's huge, that's astounding", said study co-author Alex Gardner, a NASA ice scientist.

BELARUS

Minister gives order for large military drills

Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin has ordered large-scale tactical military drills to be held in the western Grodno region, the ministry's press service said on Thursday. "We see that today there is interference in the internal affairs of our state," Khrenin said. "From various sources we are receiving information that cannot but worry us. We are making projections concerning the development of various scenarios." The exercise will focus on defense and special actions involving mechanized infantry units, special operations forces, air defense units, reconnaissance units, electronic warfare units, missile and artillery units, according to the ministry. Belarus is engulfed in mass protests after incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko won a sixth term in the Aug 9 elections, with the opposition refusing to recognize the results.

Agencies - Xinhua