The Philippine health secretary said yesterday that firecracker injuries dropped considerably during New Year celebrations, thanks to a scare campaign that included bloody images of revelry gone wrong.
The number of Filipinos injured by firecrackers and celebratory gunfire from Dec. 21 to Jan. 1 dropped by nearly half to 439 compared with the previous year, and there were no immediate reports of deaths, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said yesterday.
It was the lowest number of injures in eight years, he said.
"Filipinos chose to be safer this year," Duque said at a news conference, which he traditionally holds on Jan. 1 to announce the gory details of firecracker blast injuries and deaths.
"The effective strategy was showing the public the incontrovertible horror of losing their limbs and possibly their lives," he said.
Last week, Duque showed the media a father and son who lost their arms to a powerful firecracker blast in 2006 in Manila. He also showed a long surgical saw, pliers and a syringe with a 12.7cm needle -- the tools used to amputate the limbs of firecracker blast victims.
Local TV networks repeatedly showed gory scenes from last year's New Year's eve celebrations, including blood-splattered victims yelling in pain in hospital emergency rooms as doctors attended to their wounds.
Organized fireworks displays in public parks and near shopping centers and the hard economic times also helped discourage many Filipinos from setting off firecrackers in their neighborhoods, officials said.
Despite the government campaign, Manila and other cities resembled war zones late on Monday as the New Year approached. Powerful firecracker blasts could be heard booming everywhere, and neighborhoods and commercial districts were shrouded in dark-gray smoke. Ambulance sirens later wailed as the wounded were brought to hospitals.
However, the explosions were over in less than an hour -- markedly shorter than in years past -- and a drizzle later helped clear the smoke from Manila.
Duque said about 30 percent of those injured by firecrackers were children under 10 years old.
He said he would ask Congress to permanently ban firecrackers in neighborhoods, but acknowledged that it would be difficult to stop the ingrained tradition, partly because thousands of poor Filipinos depend on the legal and underground firecracker industry for a living.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS