■China
City cracks down on spitting
The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou has dispatched 1,000 sanitary workers to patrol the streets for people spitting in an effort to curb the spread of SARS, state media said yesterday. Individuals found spitting will be slapped with a fine of up to 50 yuan (US$6) and ordered to clean up their mess, the Xinhua news agency said. The move by Guangzhou, one of the areas worst-hit by SARS in China, is designed to help local residents cultivate good habits and prevent the transmission of SARS, a local government official said.
■ China
Prison visits banned
China has banned family visits to prisoners as part of a series of stringent measures to keep SARS out of the country's jails, state media said yesterday. Inmates will be allowed more phone calls home to compensate for the Ministry of Justice order, the Xinhua news agency said. Not a single SARS case has been found in China's prisons so far, the report said, but authorities are not taking any chances. They are aware the disease could spread quickly in prisons as inmates are kept in close quarters.
■ Japan
Doctors sent on mission
Two Japanese doctors left for Beijing yesterday on a six-day mission to help China's battle against SARS. The two infectious disease experts from the International Medical Center of Japan will focus on curbing infections inside hospitals, said Hiroshi Ohara, the doctor heading the mission. They will be joined by a Foreign Ministry official and another from the Japan International Cooperation Agency. Tokyo sent a medical team to SARS-hit Vietnam from mid-March to April, but this is the first Japanese mission to China since the outbreak started.
■ Macau
SARS plan launched
Macau has launched an emergency anti-SARS plan after the former Portuguese colony reported its first confirmed SARS case eight weeks after the deadly respiratory disease struck Hong Kong. The first SARS infection was confirmed on Saturday by Macau's Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Fernando Chui Sai-on. Macau's first confirmed SARS patient was admitted to hospital last Thursday when he was diagnosed with bronchitis. Follow up tests showed the man was suffering from a form of pneumonia. Samples of the patient's respiratory secretions and faeces were sent to Hong Kong on Friday for tests and were returned Saturday showing he had tested positive for the atypical pneumonia, the Sunday Morning Post reported.
■ Thailand
Expert urges restrictions
A leading Thai doctor fears the worst is yet to come regarding a possible SARS outbreak in Thailand and warned against promoting tourist arrivals from affected areas like China and Hong Kong, a report said yesterday. Somsak Lolekha, the president of the Medical Council of Thailand, said the government should bar visitors from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan until the outbreak of SARS is under better control, and particularly during the approaching wet season when spread of disease intensifies. "If we continue to allow passengers from all destinations to enter the country freely, it will become more difficult to control the disease," Somsak told the Nation newspaper.
■South Korea
Roh leaves for US
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun departed yester-day for a high-stakes visit to the US aimed at patching up strained relations and forging common policies to halt North Korea's nuclear programs. On Wednesday, Roh is scheduled to meet President George W. Bush, whose hawkish stance on North Korea has clashed with Seoul's efforts to embrace Pyongyang after decades of Cold War enmity. The trip is Roh's first visit to the US as well as his first official overseas trip since taking power in February and it comes amid growing friction in the 50-year-old security alliance with Washington.
■ Serbia-Montenegro
Vote held, limit abandoned
Montenegro held its third presidential election in six months yesterday, with a pro-independence candidate a clear favorite to win the vote in the republic that is a part of a union with much-bigger Serbia. Filip Vujan-ovic, speaker of the small republic's parliament, is the front-runner. He won most of the votes in two failed elections, held in December and February. The earlier votes failed because less then half of the 458,000-strong electorate showed
up at the polls. The parliament has since abolished the 50 percent turnout requirement.
■ United States
Klingon speaker wanted
The language created for the Star Trek TV series and movies is one of about 55 needed by the office that treats mental health patients in Oregon's metropolitan Multnomah County, where Portland is located. "We have to provide information in all the languages our clients speak," said Jerry Jelusich, a procurement specialist for the county Department of Human Services. The Klingon language has a consistent grammar, syntax and vocabulary. "There are some cases where we've had mental health patients where this was all they would speak," said the county's purchasing administrator, Franna Hathaway.
■ United Kingdom
Mole ratted out?
A man said to be the top British spy inside Northern Ireland's main nationalist paramilitary group, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), has been pulled out of Ireland amid fears that he was about to be identified on the Internet, The Sunday Times said yesterday. The alleged mole, codenamed "Stake-knife," is understood to have been taken to a safehouse. As Britain's most powerful weapon in its war against the IRA, "Stakeknife" is associated with up to 40 murders, the newspaper said. With British police chief John Stevens now examining the agent as part of his inquiry into alleged collusion between Britain and loyalist killers in Northern Ireland, there has been growing speculation about his identity.
■ United States
Both lose in stink fight
A Stuart, Florida woman was arrested for dousing herself with perfume, spraying the house with bug killer and disinfectant, and burning scented candles in an attempt to seriously injure her chemically sensitive husband, prosecutors said. Police charged Lynda Taylor, 36, with aggravated battery on Thursday. David Taylor, 46, is disabled due to allergies that resulted from exposure to toxic mold and hazardous chemicals as a construction worker, his doctors say. That exposure netted him US$150,000 in a recent workers-compensa-tion settlement.
■Lithuania
EU poll on knife edge
Lithuania's referendum on EU membership entered its second and final day yesterday with the outcome on a knife edge after voters stayed away from the polls on the first day. Polling booths in the Baltic country reopened at 6am, with the 2.6 million voters having 16 hours to 10pm to cross the 50 percent turnout mark needed to make the poll valid. Late on Saturday the head of Lithuania's election commission Zenonas Vaigauskas rang the alarm bells, saying the referendum could fail unless voter turnout picks up. Lithuania is one of 10 mainly ex-communist countries on course to join the EU on May 1 next year. The result in Europhile Lithuania is expected to be a litmus test for a forthcoming June 7 to 8 referendum in the biggest EU member-to-be Poland, which also faces deep concerns over voter turnout. Malta, Slovenia and Hungary have already decided in favour of EU membership.
■ France
Countrywide strike looms
Much of France will grind to a halt tomorrow as trade unions stage a show of strength against the center-right government's program of reforms for the country's creaking pensions system. Air travel and bus and train services are expected to be severely disrupted, strikes are planned by postal, telecommunications, gas and electricity workers and teachers, and more than a hundred demonstrations will take place across the country. In what is shaping into the first major test for Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, all the main unions have vociferously rejected a bill to be presented shortly to parliament under which the country's "pay-as-you-go" pensions system will be adapted to face the new challenge of a rapidly aging population.
Agencies
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