Briefly

AUSTRALIA

Rain brings joy for firefighters, farmers

Drought-breaking storms dumped desperately needed rain on some bushfire-ravaged parts of eastern Australia on Friday, while giving joy to many farmers who have faced losing precious livestock and crops. The rains gave exhausted firefighters a boost in battling some of the blazes, with more relief expected over the weekend as the wet weather is forecast to hit other hotspots. The unprecedented fires, fueled by climate change and a yearslong drought, have claimed 28 lives over the past five months. They have scorched massive tracts of pristine forests in eastern and southern Australia, decimated livestock on already barren farms and destroyed 2,000 homes.

REPUBLIC OF KOREA

Sovereignty asserted in policy on DPRK

The Unification Ministry said on Friday that the country's policy on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a matter of sovereignty. The comment came after US Ambassador to the ROK Harry Harris reportedly told reporters that it would be "better" for Seoul to pursue inter-Korean cooperation through the "working group" between the ROK and the US in a bid to avoid "misunderstanding". Harris' remark was seen by local media as a US demand for the ROK to have prior consultations with the US before launching any inter-Korean cooperation. ROK President Moon Jae-in said in his New Year news conference this week that an enhanced inter-Korean cooperation can help win international support for the "exemption of a part of sanctions" against the DPRK.

UKRAINE

PM resigns after recording comes out

Ukraine's prime minister says he has submitted his resignation, days after he was caught on a recording saying the country's president knows nothing about the economy. In a Facebook post on Friday, Oleksiy Honcharuk said he has given his resignation to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. "To remove any doubts in our respect for and trust in the president, I have written a resignation letter and submitted it to the president," he said. This week an audio recording surfaced in which Honcharuk appeared to make disparaging comments about Zelensky's understanding of economics.

JAPAN

Number of suicides hits record low

The number of suicides in Japan fell to a record low in 2019, the government said on Friday, as the country tackles one of the world's highest suicide rates. Preliminary data released by the Health Ministry showed 19,959 people died by suicide in 2019, a 4.2 percent drop for the country of 127 million people. Seventy percent of those were men. Final data will be released in March. The number of suicides in Japan peaked in 2003 at 34,427 and the figure remained above 30,000 between 2004 and 2011, but has since been falling steadily.

UNITED STATES

12-year term for jail phone is 'failure'

The Mississippi Supreme Court's confirmation of a 12-year prison sentence for an African-American man who carried his mobile phone into a county jail cell is being slammed as a brutal example of racial injustice. Even one of the justices who joined in the unanimous ruling said that while the sentence is legal, the prosecutor and trial judge could have avoided punishing the man entirely. Justice Leslie King is the only African-American justice on the nine-member court. He wrote that Willie Nash's case "seems to demonstrate a failure of our criminal justice system on multiple levels" because it's not clear whether Nash was properly searched or told not to take his phone into his cell when he was booked on a misdemeanor charge.

Agencies - Xinhua