Briefly

TURKEY

Pact brings closer ties with Azerbaijan

Turkey and Azerbaijan signed a declaration of alliance on Tuesday, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Shusha, a city in Karabakh, after the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Erdogan, the first foreign leader to visit Shusha after Azerbaijan regained control of the city last November, was accompanied by his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev. Seated in the same car, Aliyev and Erdogan traveled to Shusha from Fuzuli. Speaking at a joint news conference, Aliyev described the signing of the declaration as a historic event that "guarantees our future cooperation".

UNITED STATES

4 dead in latest Chicago shooting

An argument in a house on Chicago's South Side erupted into gunfire on Tuesday, leaving four people dead and four more injured, police said. The shooting happened in the Englewood neighborhood, police said. No one has been arrested and police provided few details about the shooting. The shooting came days after a woman was killed and nine other people injured when two men opened fire on a group standing on a sidewalk in Chatham, also on the city's South Side. Several mass shootings over the weekend have stoked concerns about a spike in US gun violence heading into the summer, as coronavirus restrictions ease and more people are free to socialize.

Crawfish take more risks while on meds

Crawfish exposed to antidepressants via contaminated water behave more "boldly", emerging from hiding quicker and spending longer looking for food, a study said on Tuesday. The paper, published in the journal Ecosphere, highlights the unintended impacts human medicines can have in aquatic environments, as they alter food web dynamics and ecosystem processes. Previous research on the subject involved injecting the animals with antidepressants－but the dose would have likely been higher than what they would have encountered naturally. US agencies advise against flushing unused medication down the toilet or sink due to the environmental impact, with the Drug Enforcement Agency coordinating periodic National Drug Take Back days to aid in proper disposal.

QATAR

UN role sought to resolve dam dispute

Arab foreign ministers on Tuesday backed calls for the United Nations Security Council to intervene in a lingering dispute between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over a massive dam that Addis Ababa is building on the Nile River's main tributary. The move, announced at a meeting in Qatar, was the latest push by Cairo and Khartoum to reach an agreement on the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said the Arab countries will press for the Security Council to hold an urgent session on the decadelong dispute.

DPRK

Kim leads ruling party session on state tasks

Kim Jong-un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, presided over a party plenary meeting on Tuesday to review the execution of major state policies for the first half of this year under the current international situation, the official Korean Central News Agency reported on Wednesday. Kim, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, said at the Third Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the WPK that the food situation is getting tense as the agricultural sector failed to fulfill its grain production plan due to the damage caused by a typhoon last year. He urged the meeting to take positive measures for settling the food problem.

Agencies - Xinhua