■ PHILIPPINES
Dengue cases hit 40,000
The nation has recorded nearly 40,000 cases of dengue fever in the first 11 months of the year, the Department of Health said on Thursday. The number of cases for the 11 months rose 11.7 percent over the same period last year to 37,538, the department's dengue program coordinator Lyndon Lee Suy said. "Despite the increase, we have not touched the epidemic threshold," Suy said. The department said about 290 people had died from dengue fever in the first 10 months of the year.
■ INDIA
Female bartenders allowed
Women will be allowed to work as bartenders in New Delhi, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, upholding a lower court's decision that an earlier ban was unconstitutional, local TV channels reported. City authorities had wanted the ban reinstated, arguing that women needed to be protected from the bad behaviour of drunken Delhi men. The Delhi High Court had scrapped the ban last year, saying it went against the constitution's principles of equality, the reports said. Women enjoy equal rights in most professions in India, but women's groups complain of gender discrimination.
■ FIJI
Cyclone warning raised
A tropical cyclone bearing down on Fiji has intensified into a Category 4 storm, the second most powerful cyclone, with destructive winds up to 200kph. Cyclone Daman is expected to hit the nation's second largest island Vanua Levu early today, officials said, as people began moving to higher ground and securing their homes and animals. Fiji's Director of Meteorology Rajendra Prasad told local media that Daman had increased in intensity and was "just one category short of being a super hurricane." Fiji media broadcyesterday to prepare for destructive winds, widespread flooding of rivers and high seas along low-lying coastal areas.
■ JAPAN
US embassy to pay back rent
The US has agreed to pay ?70 million (US$630,000) in back rent for land occupied by its embassy in Tokyo and pay a sharply higher rent in future, media said yesterday, ending a decade-long row. The agreement would increase the embassy's rent sixfold, but it would still mean the US embassy pays less than 1 percent of commercial rents in Tokyo. "Japan compromised at a rent that is still cheap compared with rents in the neighborhood, while the United States agreed to pay the rent it has not paid and to a phased rent hike," the Daily Yomiuri quoted a diplomatic source as saying.
■ AUSTRIA
Former captive to host show
A young woman who was kidnapped and kept in a cell for more than eight years will soon get her own television show, local media reported. Natascha Kampusch, who fled to freedom on Aug. 23 last year, will host a talk show to be broadcast on a new private channel that is expected to be launched in February, the Austria Press Agency reported on Wednesday. Kampusch, now 19, was 10 years old when she was kidnapped in Vienna on her way to school in March 1998. She was held for eight years, mostly in a tiny underground dungeon. The kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, threw himself in front of a train just hours after Kampusch escaped.
■ GREECE
Illegal immigrants rescued
The coastguard rescued about 200 illegal immigrants on Thursday from a ship wallowing in heavy seas south of the island of Crete, authorities said. One man was found dead, possibly from an illness, and more than 190 others, including many children, were taken off the cargo vessel and transferred to Crete. "At this moment, they have disembarked. In total there are 193 people plus seven crew members. One person was found dead," said a Merchant Marine Ministry official. The 120m ship sent an emergency signal and floundered in rough seas for hours before it was spotted by helicopters and towed to land. The immigrants were mostly from Egypt.
■ BOSNIA
Thieves take US$1.9m
Four men in police uniforms and armed with automatic weapons stormed Sarajevo international airport's cargo zone and stole 1.3 million euros (US$1.9 million), the district attorney's office said on Thursday. A police officer guarding the four bags of money before their planned transfer to ABS Bank was held at gunpoint while thieves loaded the cash into a car and drove away on Wednesday. The getaway vehicle, along with the automatic weapons, was later found burned at an abandoned military base. The fire brigade said it had trouble extinguishing the fire, as the flames had caused rounds to be fired from inside the vehicle.
■ MOROCCO
Prisoner sneaks woman in
A man jailed for terrorism offenses smuggled a woman into his prison cell in a large plastic bag and spent six hours with her before being caught, reports said on Thursday. The prisoner is in a Casablanca jail for belonging to the radical Islamist movement Salafia Jihadia and engaging in "terrorist activities," newspapers said. The young woman came to see the prisoner on Tuesday and he smuggled her from the visiting room into his cell in a bag that he persuaded guards contained clothes, according to Assabah newspaper. A prison official confirmed "the discovery by guards of a woman inside the prison" but said the reports contained "inaccuracies." He said that she was only in the prisoner's cell for an hour.
■ GERMANY
Hairdresser finds bank plan
A Berlin hairdresser discovered top-secret plans for a safety vault at the Bundesbank's Berlin branch in a garbage bin, the bank said on Thursday. Only four weeks ago, the bank's building in western Berlin was officially opened after renovation work that cost about 150 million euros (US$221 million). The hairdresser found detailed drawings of the safety arrangements at the bank, Bild newspaper reported. The garbage bin was in a backyard in central Berlin.
■ UNITED STATES
NASA delays launch
Space agency NASA said on Thursday it would launch its Atlantis shuttle today, after the mission to deliver a European laboratory to an orbiting station was postponed because of a technical glitch. One of the mission's directors, Leroy Cain, said Thursday's scheduled launch was postponed hours before blast-off because of faulty fuel gauges.
■ UNITED STATES
Airport security arrested
A security screener at JFK International Airport trying to see his parents off on a trip boarded their plane without a ticket or a boarding pass and was arrested, authorities said. The man boarded an Etihad Airways flight bound for the United Arab Emirates on Thursday and when the plane's doors shut, he notified a flight attendant, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Police arrested the man on a misdemeanor charge of trespassing, Coleman said. The man, who was later released, is a passenger and baggage screener with airport security.
■ MEXICO
Police stop illegal mills
Police conducted the biggest anti-logging raid in the nation's history at clandestine sawmills that cut timber on a threatened nature reserve where Monarch butterflies nest in the winter, the government said on Thursday. Illegal deforestation in and around the reserves threatens the butterflies, which rely on the forest cover to protect them from the cold, high-altitude winds. The logs and lumber seizure was the equivalent of about 600 heavy truckloads of logs, the attorney general's office said, calling the Wednesday raid "the largest seizure of illegally logged wood in the country's history." Police detained 56 people, prosecutors said.
■ CUBA
Police sorry for church raid
Authorities have apologized for a raid on dissidents at a church in Santiago, Archbishop Dionisio Garcia said. The government's local Office for Religious Affairs and a member of the Communist Party's Ideological Department said they regretted the incident, the archbishop of the eastern Cuban city said on Thursday night. The incident occurred on Tuesday, when security personnel forced their way into Santa Teresita Church and attacked 25 dissidents, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation said. Up to 15 of the dissidents, who had earlier demonstrated peacefully for the release of political prisoners, were beaten and arrested at a church, it said.
■ FRANCE
Hillary popular abroad
Americans and Europeans agree that Democratic Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton would make the best US president of the candidates for the post, according to a poll made public yesterday. However, the survey by the Harris Institute for France 24 television and the Paris-based International Herald Tribune found enthusiasm for Clinton was significantly higher among Europeans than Americans. Asked which of 10 candidates would make the best president, Clinton received the nod from 22 percent of the Americans, 24 percent of the British, 29 percent of the Spaniards, 30 percent of the Italians, 35 percent of the French and 40 percent of the Germans. She was far ahead of the two men who finished second, Democratic rival Barack Obama and Republican Rudy Giuliani, both of whom were supported by 12 percent of the US respondents.
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
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