JAPAN
Some cruise takers to retest
Dozens of passengers who were allowed off the coronavirus-stricken Diamond Princess cruise ship, but have developed symptoms including fever, are to be asked to take tests for COVID-19, Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Katsunobu Kato said yesterday. The government has contacted 813 former passengers on the Diamond Princess. About 970 were allowed off the boat last week after testing negative for the virus, but several have subsequently been found to be carrying the virus. The ministry found that “45 people had certain symptoms,” Kato told the Diet. “We asked all of them [who have symptoms] to see a doctor and to take tests.” As of yesterday, at least two former passengers in the nation were confirmed to be infected, despite previously testing negative.
CHINA
Seoul arrivals quarantined
The government quarantined 94 air passengers arriving from Seoul after three people on the flight were discovered to have fevers, China Central Television (CCTV) reported yesterday. The three passengers, all Chinese, arrived in Nanjing on Tuesday morning and were discovered after customs personnel boarded the aircraft on landing to screen passengers for symptoms, CCTV said, adding that the three were immediately sent by ambulance to a hospital for isolation and testing, while 94 people who had sat near them were sent to a hotel to be quarantined. None of the three people with fevers had any history of travel to Wuhan, the city where the outbreak originated.
SOUTH KOREA
Fertility rate breaks record
The nation broke its own record for the world’s lowest fertility rate, adding to a list of challenges for a government already grappling with slowing economic growth. Women last year were projected to have an average of 0.92 children over their lifetimes, far less than the 2.1 required to maintain a stable population, the statistics office reported yesterday. The number of babies fell 7.3 percent in 2019 from the previous year, with the birth rate plummeting among women in their late 20s, the agency said.
AUSTRALIA
Baboon trio runs amok
A baboon scheduled to undergo a vasectomy in Sydney on Tuesday made a dash for freedom along with his “two wives,” leaving the trio running amok on the streets of the country’s biggest city. Animal wranglers and police were called after the trio escaped from a truck on route to a hospital in the evening rush hour as bemused locals looked on. New South Wales Minister for Health and Medical Research Brad Hazzard told the Daily Telegraph that one of the primates had been about to get the snip and the other two were there to “keep him calm.” “The two girls came as, effectively, his wives to keep him company while he had his vasectomy,” Hazzard said. The runaways were eventually recaptured.
CAMEROON
HRW condemns deaths
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday accused the nation’s armed forces of taking part in the killing of at least 21 civilians on Feb. 14 in a region where troops are battling anglophone separatists. “Government forces and armed ethnic Fulani” carried out the slaughter in Ngarbuh, whose victims included 13 children and a pregnant woman, the group said in a statement. The Fulani are an ethnic group also called Peuls. “The gruesome killings of civilians, including children, are egregious crimes that should be effectively and independently investigated, and those responsible should be brought to justice,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, a senior central Africa researcher for HRW. The army said that there were only five civilian deaths, which it said happened when fuel containers exploded in a firefight.
SPAIN
Hotel guests quarantined
Authorities identified five new COVID-19 cases and isolated about 1,000 guests and workers at a Canary Island hotel, as it stepped up efforts to contain the spread of the disease. An Italian tourist and his wife were hospitalized in Tenerife after testing positive in initial tests for the virus, an official from the Canary Islands government said by telephone. Their hotel, the H10 Costa Adeje Palace, was sealed off and guests were told they could not leave as testing continued. Three people in Barcelona, the Valencia region and Madrid were also found to have the virus, the Ministry of Health said.
SYRIA
Civilians die in strikes
At least 20 civilians died in regime strikes on targets including schools, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday, in a relentless advance on the country’s last major opposition holdout that saw loyalists seize a symbolic town. Pro-regime bombing killed at least nine children, the monitor said, as regime forces wage a fierce offensive to seize Idlib, the final major territory still controlled by rebels and militants. Later, the observatory reported that regime forces had recaptured 19 towns and villages over 48 hours.
SCOTLAND
Man guilty of sheep abuse
A wool farmer has pleaded guilty to animal abuse after he was caught on video punching two sheep in the face, the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) said on Tuesday. William Brown, 59, was fined ￡550 (US$714) under Section 19 of the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2006, after he admitted to causing unnecessary suffering to two rams on his farm in Penicuik in 2018. The Scottish SPCA chief inspector said he hoped the fine “will serve as a warning that this behaviour is unacceptable.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Malala, Thunberg meet
Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg on Tuesday met Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai at the University of Oxford, where they posed for a photograph together. Yousafzai, widely known by her first name, is a student at the university. The 22-year-old posted a photograph on Instagram of herself and Thunberg sitting on a bench with their arms around each other, with a caption “Thank you, @gretathunberg” and a heart emoji. Thunberg, 17, is to join a school strike in Bristol tomorrow. The pair met to discuss their activism at Lady Margaret Hall, Malala’s college.
UNITED STATES
Taliban truce holding
Washington on Tuesday voiced optimism about reaching an accord to end the war in Afghanistan as a partial truce held with the Taliban. The government plans to sign an agreement with the Taliban on Saturday in Qatar if the weeklong truce holds. Four days in, the number of Taliban attacks has fallen dramatically. “So far the reduction in violence is working — imperfect, but it’s working,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a news conference in Washington. The deal would see the nation withdraw thousands of troops. The Taliban would then open negotiations with the Kabul government.
UNITED STATES
Body cam shows child arrest
A police officer’s body camera shows a six-year-old girl, Kaia Rolle, crying and begging officers not to arrest her, as one fastens zip ties around her wrists at a charter school in Florida. The video Rolle’s family shared with the Orlando Sentinel and other media outlets on Monday shows the girl being arrested in September last year for kicking and punching staff members at her Orlando school. “What are those for?” Kaia asks about the zip ties in the video. “They’re for you,” Officer Dennis Turner says before another officer tightens them around her wrists and Kaia begins weeping. Turner was fired shortly after the arrest. Orlando Police Chief Orlando Rolon said at the time that Turner, a reserve officer, did not follow department policy of getting the approval of a watch commander to arrest someone younger than 12.
UNITED STATES
Doctor fed Trump veggies
A former White House physician who famously said President Donald Trump might have lived to 200 if he had improved his notoriously junk-food heavy diet has confessed to sneaking cauliflower into Trump’s mashed potatoes. “The exercise stuff never took off as much as I wanted it to,” Ronny Jackson told the New York Times on Monday. “But we were working on his diet.” In terms familiar to harassed parents of toddlers worldwide, Jackson said that work included “making the ice cream less accessible” and “putting cauliflower into the mashed potatoes.” The retired navy rear admiral left the White House in December last year and is now running for one of Texas’ congressional seats.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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