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.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
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
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of