PHILIPPINES
Foreign work rules tightened
Manila has tightened rules for foreign workers as more Chinese nationals enter the nation to take up jobs. Along with a permit from the Department of Labor, foreign workers now also need a working visa and a tax number, President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman Salvador Panelo said in a statement yesterday. Agencies agreed to the new requirements at a meeting with Duterte on Monday night, Panelo said. More than half of the 45,000 work permits issued by the department in 2017 were given to Chinese nationals, department figures showed. The number of Chinese workers who secured permits doubled in 2016 to 18,000 when Duterte assumed the presidency and fostered friendlier ties with Beijing.
IRAN
US resident to be released
Tehran has agreed to hand over a US permanent resident imprisoned for years to Lebanese officials, judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said yesterday. It is the first official confirmation that Nizar Zakka would be sent back to Lebanon, years after his internationally criticized spying conviction. State TV on Monday said that Zakka was to be released “only because of the respect and dignity” Tehran has for the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. A top Lebanese security official is in Tehran to secure Zakka’s release, which has been anticipated. The Revolutionary Guard detained Zakka in 2015 after he attended a conference in Tehran on the invitation of one of Iranian nation’s vice presidents. He was convicted of spying and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
IRAN
Toddler stuck in well dies
A two-year-old boy stuck in a narrow well for more than four days was yesterday pulled out dead, triggering protests over delays in reaching the toddler. The case of Fatehveer Singh captured national attention after he fell into the 33m-deep well in Punjab’s Sangrur District while playing on Thursday. The disused well was just 23cm wide, complicating desperate efforts by dozens of rescue workers and volunteers as locals and television cameras looked on. The toddler, who had oxygen supplies, but no food or water, was flown in an air ambulance to a hospital in the capital, Chandigarh, where he was declared dead. Authorities had dug a hole parallel to the well and inserted a 0.9m-wide pipe into it, in an attempt to reach the trapped toddler. The rescue operation was “delayed due to lack of required technical assistance,” resident Kultar Singh was quoted as saying by local media. The borewell was dug by the child’s family in 1984. They used to draw water from it to irrigate the fields but stopped using it after 1991.
SAMOA
Gay ‘Rocketman’ banned
The government has banned the Elton John biopic Rocketman because of its depictions of homosexuality. About 97 percent of Samoans identify as Christian and society is generally considered conservative and traditional. Under the 2013 Crimes Act, sodomy is deemed an offense that is punishable by up to seven years in prison, even if both parties consent. Principal censor Leiataua Niuapu Faaui yesterday told the Samoa Observer that the homosexual activity depicted on screen violated laws and did not sit well with the country’s cultural and Christian beliefs. The censor did concede to the newspaper that “it’s a good story, in that it’s about an individual trying to move on in life.” The movie examines John’s sexuality and relationship with then-manager John Reid.
GREECE
Boat sinks, killing seven
At least seven people died yesterday when a boat carrying migrants sank near the Greek island of Lesbos, the coast guard said. Assisted by an EU border patrol boat, the coast guard said it had rescued 57 people and is continuing to search for survivors. No information was given on the nationalities of the migrants, but a source said that the dead were four women, a man and two young girls. More than 300 refugees and migrants have died this year while trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, according to the International Organization for Migration. Greece is hosting about 70,000 mostly Syrian refugees and migrants who have fled their nation since 2015 and crossed over from neighboring Turkey.
UNITED STATES
Measles arrives in Idaho
The nation’s worst measles outbreak in a quarter of a century spread to Idaho and Virginia last week as public health authorities on Monday reported 41 new cases of the highly contagious and sometimes deadly disease. The nation had recorded 1,022 cases of the disease this year as of Thursday last week, in an outbreak blamed on misinformation about vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. This year’s outbreak, which has reached 28 states, is the worst since 1992, when 2,126 cases were recorded. Federal health officials attribute this year’s outbreak to parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. These parents believe, contrary to scientific evidence, that ingredients in the vaccine can cause autism.
UNITED STATES
‘Times’ to drop cartoons
The New York Times has announced it is no longer including daily political cartoons in its international edition, weeks after apologizing for publishing a caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deemed anti-Semitic. The cartoon, published in April, depicted Netanyahu as a guide dog wearing a Star of David collar and leading a blind US President Donald Trump — who was wearing a kippah. It prompted an uproar within the Jewish community, with the Israeli ambassador to the UN likening the drawing to the content of Nazi propaganda tabloid Der Sturmer. Editor James Bennet said the paper had planned for a year to cease running political cartoons in the international print version of the Times, in line with the US edition. The decision is to come into effect on July 1, Bennet said.
UNITED STATES
Led Zeppelin face new trial
Stairway to Heaven is to get another hearing, this time to a packed house. A panel of 11 judges from the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday agreed to hear Led Zeppelin’s appeal in a copyright lawsuit alleging the group stole its 1971 rock epic from an obscure 1960s instrumental. In a 2016 trial that included testimony from Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant, a jury found that Stairway to Heaven did not significantly resemble the song Taurus, written by the late Randy Wolfe and performed by his band Spirit. Page said he wrote the music for the song and Plant the lyrics, and that both were original, but in September last year, a three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit ruled that the judge at the trial had failed to advise the jury properly and ordered a new trial. The judges unanimously found that the trial judge was wrong to tell jurors that individual elements of a song such as its notes or scale might not qualify for copyright protection, because a combination of those elements might qualify if they are sufficiently original.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the