■ PHILIPPINES
Dengue cases hit 40,000
The nation has recorded nearly 40,000 cases of dengue fever in the first 11 months of the year, the Department of Health said on Thursday. The number of cases for the 11 months rose 11.7 percent over the same period last year to 37,538, the department's dengue program coordinator Lyndon Lee Suy said. "Despite the increase, we have not touched the epidemic threshold," Suy said. The department said about 290 people had died from dengue fever in the first 10 months of the year.
■ INDIA
Female bartenders allowed
Women will be allowed to work as bartenders in New Delhi, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, upholding a lower court's decision that an earlier ban was unconstitutional, local TV channels reported. City authorities had wanted the ban reinstated, arguing that women needed to be protected from the bad behaviour of drunken Delhi men. The Delhi High Court had scrapped the ban last year, saying it went against the constitution's principles of equality, the reports said. Women enjoy equal rights in most professions in India, but women's groups complain of gender discrimination.
■ FIJI
Cyclone warning raised
A tropical cyclone bearing down on Fiji has intensified into a Category 4 storm, the second most powerful cyclone, with destructive winds up to 200kph. Cyclone Daman is expected to hit the nation's second largest island Vanua Levu early today, officials said, as people began moving to higher ground and securing their homes and animals. Fiji's Director of Meteorology Rajendra Prasad told local media that Daman had increased in intensity and was "just one category short of being a super hurricane." Fiji media broadcyesterday to prepare for destructive winds, widespread flooding of rivers and high seas along low-lying coastal areas.
■ JAPAN
US embassy to pay back rent
The US has agreed to pay ?70 million (US$630,000) in back rent for land occupied by its embassy in Tokyo and pay a sharply higher rent in future, media said yesterday, ending a decade-long row. The agreement would increase the embassy's rent sixfold, but it would still mean the US embassy pays less than 1 percent of commercial rents in Tokyo. "Japan compromised at a rent that is still cheap compared with rents in the neighborhood, while the United States agreed to pay the rent it has not paid and to a phased rent hike," the Daily Yomiuri quoted a diplomatic source as saying.
■ AUSTRIA
Former captive to host show
A young woman who was kidnapped and kept in a cell for more than eight years will soon get her own television show, local media reported. Natascha Kampusch, who fled to freedom on Aug. 23 last year, will host a talk show to be broadcast on a new private channel that is expected to be launched in February, the Austria Press Agency reported on Wednesday. Kampusch, now 19, was 10 years old when she was kidnapped in Vienna on her way to school in March 1998. She was held for eight years, mostly in a tiny underground dungeon. The kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, threw himself in front of a train just hours after Kampusch escaped.
■ GREECE
Illegal immigrants rescued
The coastguard rescued about 200 illegal immigrants on Thursday from a ship wallowing in heavy seas south of the island of Crete, authorities said. One man was found dead, possibly from an illness, and more than 190 others, including many children, were taken off the cargo vessel and transferred to Crete. "At this moment, they have disembarked. In total there are 193 people plus seven crew members. One person was found dead," said a Merchant Marine Ministry official. The 120m ship sent an emergency signal and floundered in rough seas for hours before it was spotted by helicopters and towed to land. The immigrants were mostly from Egypt.
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