■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.
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