■PHILIPPINES
Swine flu cases rise to 21
Health Secretary Francisco Duque says tests have confirmed five new swine flu cases, raising the total to 21. Duque said two of the new cases confirmed yesterday include guests at a wedding attended by two Taiwanese who fell sick after returning to Taiwan earlier this month. The three others all returned from travel to the US. Duque said seven of the 21 cases had tested negative in repeat tests, and three of them have been discharged from a hospital while four others were to be sent home yesterday. Twenty of the cases are Filipinos, and one is a 13-year-old foreign boy.
■IRAQ
Market bombing kills four
A police official said a bomb exploded at a Baghdad fruit and vegetable market, killing four people and wounding 14. The official said the blast occurred shortly before 8am yesterday at the Rasheed market in the southern district of Dora. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information to the media. The same market was the scene of a car bombing last month that killed 15 people and wounded nearly 50.
■NEPAL
Strike shuts down capital
Supporters of an ethnic rights group stopped vehicles and closed down markets in Kathmandu yesterday, demanding that the city be turned into an autonomous state. They blocked off main intersections of the city, stopping vehicles and forcing shopkeepers to close their doors. Streets were mostly deserted, while government workers were forced to walk to their offices. The committee demanded that Kathmandu be declared an autonomous state for the Newa ethnic group and that their language be recognized as one of the official languages. Police said there were reports of minor violence yesterday morning by supporters enforcing the strike, but no major incidents were reported.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Last ‘Titanic’ survivor dies
The last survivor of the 1912 sinking of the Titanic, Millvina Dean, has died in a nursing home in England at the age of 97, the Titanic International Society said yesterday. Dean was just nine weeks old when her family sold a pub they owned in London to travel on the maiden voyage of the passenger liner and begin a new life in Wichita, Kansas, where her father Bertram hoped to open a tobacco shop. Her father was one of the 1,517 people who died after the supposedly unsinkable ship hit an iceberg in the Atlantic and sank. Dean, who was wrapped in a sack to protect her from the cold and lowered into a lifeboat, was the youngest of the 706 Titanic survivors. Her mother Georgetta and two-year-old brother Bertram also survived, dying in 1975 and 1992 respectively. Dean, who never married, said she had no memory of the disaster but was told of the event at the age of eight when her mother was about to remarry.
■EGYPT
Reluctant groom protests
A man cut off his penis on Sunday in protest at his parents’ choice of bride, a police official said. The 25-year-old laborer from the village of Sheikh Eissa in the south was taken to hospital in stable condition, the official said, adding that the man had also mutilated his testicles. “He was in love with a woman but his parents rejected her and told him to marry another woman he didn’t want. He took a knife and cut off his penis in his room.” Doctors were unable to reattach the severed member, the official said.
■UNITED STATES
Octuplet mom signs deal
The Southern California woman who gave birth to the world’s longest-surviving set of octuplets has signed a deal to star in a reality TV series, her lawyer said on Sunday. Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to the six boys and two girls in January and also has six other children, agreed to be filmed for a proposed TV show by Eyeworks, a Netherlands-based production company, attorney Jeff Czech said. The company hasn’t yet sold the show to any TV network, he said.
■EL SALVADOR
Funes appoints wife
President-elect Mauricio Funes has appointed his wife and a former Marxist guerrilla to Cabinet posts just hours before starting his five-year term. Funes, the first president from the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, has named first lady Vanda Pignato as minister of social inclusion. Funes announced late on Sunday that former FMLN guerrilla leader and Vice President Salvador Sanchez Ceren would be education minister and Hugo Martinez would be foreign minister. The FMLN fought to overthrow US-backed governments in the 1980s.
■CHILE
Grannies charged with drugs
They did not fit the typical drug dealer profile: two elderly grandmothers, one of them bedridden, living beside a police academy on a leafy suburban street. But authorities say Maria Valdebenito, 80, and Giselle Gilbert, 72, ran a profitable drugs business from their home in Providencia, a suburb in the capital, Santiago. They have been charged with drug trafficking after a police raid at the weekend netted almost 2kg of cocaine, cocaine paste and £45,000 (US$74,000) in cash. Because of their age and Valdebenito’s infirmity, they have been placed under house arrest.
■UNITED STATES
Israeli official to mend rift
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was to try to heal a growing rift with his country’s main ally over the Middle East peace process when he was to start talks with top officials yesterday. Barak is likely to devote a lot of time to easing tensions, although the talks were originally planned to focus on bilateral defense ties and Washington-led international efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear drive, an aide said. During the three-day trip, he is expected to meet Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, National Security Adviser James Jones and President Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Taxi drivers are grumpiest
Taxi drivers are Britain’s grumpiest workers, a survey showed yesterday, while secretaries are the happiest. The gloomy prospect of ferrying around strangers every day makes taxi drivers laugh less than any other profession, the survey of 4,000 workers showed. Drivers cited traffic jams, the rising cost of petrol, drunken passengers and frisky couples as reasons not to be cheerful. Fitness instructors could lighten up too, with just 0.9 percent of them saying they enjoy a giggle in the gym. Those in recruitment could also do with a good dose of humor, the survey said, as just 3.8 percent laughed regularly during the working day. By contrast, 53.5 percent of secretaries said they laughed on a regular basis during a working day, with a quarter of those surveyed confessing that most of their amusement comes from watching the stressful lives of their disgruntled bosses.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing