An Indonesian woman has died of bird flu, raising the country's death toll to 62, while South Korea was set to slaughter 273,000 poultry after an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain at a chicken farm, officials said.
The 19-year-old woman died on Friday after being hospitalized for three days in the West Java town of Garut, some 200km southeast of the capital, Jakarta, said health ministry official Nyoman Kandun.
"She had contact with dead poultry six days before hospitalized," Kandun said.
PHOTO: AP
The woman's death is the fifth human bird flu fatality in the country since Jan. 9. Before that, Indonesia had not recorded any cases for six weeks -- a lull that led some Indonesian officials to say they were succeeding in beating the disease.
The spike in cases has prompted the government to plunge into an all-out campaign to clear several provinces -- with the highest number of bird flu cases -- of fowl, starting on Friday with the capital, where four people had died in the past week.
"Quick and concrete actions are needed to prevent more victims," Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso, who goes only with one name, told el-Shinta radio station yesterday.
He gave Jakarta residents two weeks to surrender or sell their birds before officials would go door-to-door confiscating fowls to rid its teeming streets of backyard chickens.
The governor also said Jakarta had plans to relocate its traditional bird markets from downtown areas, but gave no details.
There are estimated to be around 350 million backyard chickens throughout Indonesia, many of which are kept outside houses in the capital and surrounding towns.
The health minister said last week that nine other provinces hard-hit by bird flu would also soon ban chickens from residential areas.
According to the WHO, the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus has killed 161 people world wide since late 2003, and although it remains hard for humans to catch, international experts fear it may mutate into a form that could spread easily between humans.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not