Wed, Nov 26, 2025 page5

• World News Quick Take

  • Agencies
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  NEW ZEALAND

  Two mountain climbers die

  Two mountain climbers have died on Aoraki, the nation’s tallest peak, and two others from the same group were rescued, authorities said yesterday. The dead climbers’ bodies have been found and specialist searchers were working to recover them “in a challenging alpine environment,” Police Area Commander Inspector Vicki Walker said. None of the climbers has been publicly identified, but the New Zealand Mountain Guides Association in a statement said that one of those who died was a member of the organization and the other was that guide’s client. Sergeant Kevin McErlain told the Timaru Herald that the pair had been connected by a rope when they fell near the summit of Aoraki, also known as Mount Cook. Authorities learned late on Monday night that four climbers needed help on the mountain, which is on New Zealand’s South Island. Two of the climbers were rescued by helicopter in the early hours of yesterday morning, Walker said.

  CHINA

  Spacecraft launched

  The China Manned Space Agency yesterday conducted an urgent unmanned spacecraft launch, after damage to a previous mission’s return capsule left the crew on its space station without a means of getting back to Earth. The Long March-2F rocket carrying Shenzhou-22 lifted off shortly after midday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, footage from China Central Television showed. Shenzhou missions have been used to crew the Tiangong space station, exchanging teams of three astronauts every six months. Shenzhou-22 was originally slated for a crewed launch next year, but it was launched early after a suspected space debris strike to the Shenzhou-20 return capsule made it unsafe for re-entry to Earth, leaving its crew briefly stranded. The Shenzhou-20 team returned aboard Shenzhou-21 on Nov. 14 — nine days later than planned — leaving their relief crew without a reliable return vehicle. The accelerated launch ensures Shenzhou-21 astronauts Zhang Lu (張陸), Wu Fei (武飛) and Zhang Hongzhang (張洪章) have a safe return option.

  FRANCE

  Dogs surprise scientists

  Those tiny, fluffy dogs walking down the street might look cute, but beware — they probably have some wolf in them. That is the discovery announced on Monday by US scientists, who were surprised to find that nearly two-thirds of all dog breeds have a detectable amount of wolf DNA, and it is not genetic leftovers from when dogs originally evolved from wolves about 20,000 years ago, but instead suggests that domesticated dogs and wild wolves have interbred within the past few thousand years. This does not mean that “wolves are coming into your house and mixing it up with your pet dog,” said Logan Kistler, a curator at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and coauthor of the study. It also seems to have influenced the size, smelling power and even personality of modern dog breeds, the scientists said. Dogs and wolves can produce offspring together, but interbreeding is thought to be rare. “Prior to this study, the leading science seemed to suggest that in order for a dog to be a dog, there can’t be very much wolf DNA present, if any,” lead study author Audrey Lin of the American Museum of Natural History said in a statement. To find out more, the team analyzed thousands of dog and wolf genomes in publicly available databases. They found that more than 64 percent of modern breeds have wolf ancestry, with even tiny chihuahuas carrying about 0.2 percent.
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