■ PHILIPPINES
WHO tests bird flu scenario
The WHO and Asian partners have conducted their first test of how rapidly they can contain the first signs of a pandemic, using a mock scenario of a human bird flu outbreak in Cambodia, WHO said yesterday. The exercise "Panstop 2007," slated for Monday and yesterday, involved a simulated scenario in which the influenza drug Tamiflu and personal protective equipment, like goggles and masks, were to be dispatched to Cambodia from a Japan-donated stockpile in Singapore. The secretariat of ASEAN, the governments of Japan and Cambodia and the Japan International Cooperation System were to take part in the drills scheduled to be held in Manila.
■ JAPAN
Arrest warrent issued
Police issued an arrest warrant for Tatsuya Ichihashi, yesterday -- one day after the body of a young British woman was found buried in sand at a bathtub in his suburban Tokyo apartment. The 22-year-old woman, identified by police as Lindsay Ann Hawker, worked as an English-language teacher. She failed to report to work on Sunday, leading her school to call a search. Police said an autopsy would be conducted to determine the cause of Hawker's death. They later issued an arrest warrant for Ichihashi, 28, on charges of abandoning a body.
■ JAPAN
Murakami wins Kiriyama
Haruki Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, a sometimes surreal collection of short stories, and Greg Mortenson's and David Oliver Relin's Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time, are this year's winners of the 11th annual Kiriyama Prize. The US$30,000 award, to be divided between the three, was announced yesterday in New York by Pacific Rim Voices, a nonprofit group "dedicated to celebrating literature that contributes to greater understanding of and among the peoples and nations of the Pacific Rim and South Asia." Three Cups of Tea tells of Mortenson's founding of the Central Asia Institute, which has built dozens of schools around Pakistan and Afghanistan.
■ INDIA
No smoking while driving
Smoking while driving was banned in New Delhi on Monday in an attempt to reduce the thousands of road accidents in the city annually. The Delhi High Court ruled that those caught smoking behind the wheel would be fined 500 rupees (US$10). Almost 2,000 people are killed on the city's roads with over 8,000 accidents every year, the Delhi Traffic Police said. The court also ruled that public transport drivers -- including state-run buses and taxis -- must have completed a minimum of 12 years of education, rather than just 10 years.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Girls shake up drug firm
Global drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline faces charges in Wellington today for misleading advertising after two high school girls found its blackcurrant drink Ribena contained almost no vitamin C. Back in 2004, 14-year olds Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo tested the drink for a class experiment against the firm's advertising claim that "the blackcurrants in Ribena have four times the vitamin C of oranges." They found the drink contained almost no trace of vitamin C, and one commercial orange juice brand contained almost four times more than Ribena. "We thought we were doing it wrong, we thought we must have made a mistake," Devathasan, now aged 17, told local newspapers.
■ UNITED KINGDOM`CSI' inspires students
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