North Korean leader gobbles live fish with gusto

August 23rd, 2009 SEOUL - South Korean President Lee Myung-bak held talks with a visiting North Korean delegation here Sunday amid Pyongyang's latest conciliatory moves that show signs of easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, media reports said. A high-level North Korean delegation arrived here Friday to pay their last respect to late former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung who died recently.

August 23rd, 2009 SEOUL - South Korean President Lee Myung-bak met a six-member North Korean delegation here on Sunday. A meeting of this nature is taking place for the first time since the former assumed office in February 2008.

August 21st, 2009 SEOUL - A delegation sent by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il arrived Friday in Seoul to pay respects to the late South Korean president Kim Dae Jung, who won the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to reconcile the two Koreas. The visit was the first to South Korea by high-ranking North Korean functionaries since the inauguration of conservative South Korean President Lee Myung Bak in February last year.

August 17th, 2009 SEOUL - North Korea Monday put its troops on alert as an annual joint South Korean-US war game commenced and accused its neighbour of planning an attack. North Korea would react to any provocation with a "merciless and prompt annihilating strike at the aggressors with all offensive and defensive means, including nuclear deterrent", state media quoted the high command of the Korean People's Army as saying.

August 17th, 2009 SEOUL - North Korea Monday said it was reopening its borders for inter-Korean tourism projects with South Korea and to remove obstacles from the operation of a jointly-run business park, the South Korean Yonhap news agency reported. In a joint press release, Hyundai and North's Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, which runs inter-Korean business affairs, announced to "restore" passage for South Korean personnel to the Kaesong industrial park.

August 14th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The Coordinator for Implementation of UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1874, Ambassador Philip Goldberg said on Friday that New Delhi might have acted under international and domestic law in detaining the North Korean ship MV Mu San. Goldberg was speaking with reporters at a special State Department briefing.

August 5th, 2009 PYONGYANG - The two American journalists pardoned by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il left the country Wednesday aboard a chartered plane carrying the homebound former US president Bill Clinton. Clinton arrived unexpectedly in Pyongyang Tuesday and met the North Korean leader to secure the release of two journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were arrested in March for sneaking into the communist country illegally.

August 4th, 2009 SEOUL - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has granted a special pardon to two American journalists held for illegally entering North Korea on a reporting tour, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported early Wednesday. The agency quoted North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency as the source.

July 22nd, 2009 NEW DELHI - A 60-year-old Chinese man fought with a 17 kg fish for two hours to catch it, while he was fishing in a river in Changchun, Jilin province, on Wednesday. He kept on fighting the 1.17-m long fish until it finally gave up.

July 10th, 2009 TOKYO - Kim Jong-il is seriously ill and is likely to be dead before the end of the year, The Telegraph quotes a source within the North Korean leader's own family, as saying. The latest speculation over the health of the reclusive Kim has been triggered by his appearance on state television on Wednesday to mark the 15th anniversary of the death of Kim Il Sung, his father and the man revered as the founder of North Korea.

June 16th, 2009 SEOUL - Two US journalists jailed in North Korea have admitted their part in a "smear campaign" against the country, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Tuesday. They entered the country illegally with the aim of making films to misrepresent North Korea's human rights policy, the report said.

June 2nd, 2009 SEOUL - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has designated his youngest son Kim Jong Un as his successor, South Korean lawmakers were told Tuesday. Members of South Korea's National Assembly and intelligence community were informed by the government of "such ongoings (of succession), and that they (the North Koreans) make loyalty pledges to Kim Jong Un", opposition lawmaker Park Jie Won was quoted as saying by the Yonhap news agency.

May 27th, 2009 SEOUL/TOKYO - The North Korean military fired another short-range missile across the Sea of Japan, its third such launch since conducting an internationally condemned nuclear test Monday, South Korean media reported early Wednesday. The missile was launched after 9 p.m.

May 14th, 2009 LONDON - An exotic fish, which can trigger LSD-like hallucinations when eaten, has been discovered in UK waters. The mind-bending species of bream, sarpa salpa, was found many hundreds of miles away from its normal habitat in the English Channel.

April 1st, 2009 LONDON - Fish have the limited ability to count directly up to four, say scientists. Christian Agrillo, an experimental psychologist at the university of Padua in Italy, said that it was during a study on North American mosquito fish that their limited mathematical ability was observed.