SAMOA
First virus case confirmed
The country yesterday announced its first case of COVID-19, as the pandemic continued to spread to previously untouched Pacific island nations. Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi called for calm in the nation of 200,000 after confirming that a man who arrived in the country on Friday last week had tested positive while under quarantine. “We now have one case and will be added to the countries of the world that have the coronavirus,” the mask-wearing leader said during a televised address.
HONG KONG
Graduates mark clashes
Dozens of Chinese University of Hong Kong students yesterday turned their graduation ceremony into a march to commemorate protests last year that included clashes with police. Wearing black graduation robes and Guy Fawkes masks, the students marched across the campus. They said that they were organizing their own graduation after the university decided to hold one online. “I want to pass on the spirit ... so the next generation of students doesn’t forget what happened,” said Philip, a social sciences graduate, who declined to give his last name.
JAPAN
Climate emergency declared
Lawmakers yesterday declared a climate emergency in a symbolic vote aimed at increasing pressure for action to combat global climate change after the government last month committed to a firm timetable for net-zero emissions. With the vote by parliament’s lower chamber, the world’s fifth-biggest carbon emitter joins fellow G7 members Britain, Canada and France in similar resolutions. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga last month announced that the country would aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, a major shift for the world’s third-largest economy.
SRI LANKA
Lawmaker bites raw fish
A former fisheries minister bit into a raw fish at a news conference in Colombo on Tuesday to encourage sales following a slump during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fish sales in the country have cratered after a major COVID-19 cluster emerged at the Central Fish Market on the outskirts of the capital last month. “Our people who are in the fisheries industry cannot sell their fish. People of this country are not eating fish,” said Dilip Wedaarachchi, gesticulating with a medium-sized fish. Wedaarachchi, an opposition lawmaker, served as fisheries minister until last year. “I brought this fish to show you. I am making an appeal to the people of this country to eat this fish. Don’t be afraid. You will not get infected by the coronavirus,” he said, before taking a bite out of the whole fish.
GREECE
Santa candles get masks
A candlemaker has come up with a novel way of highlighting the need to wear masks to curb the spread of COVID-19: putting them on his Santa candles. Alexios Gerakis in the northern town of Thessaloniki has made candles of Father Christmas wearing a big blue mask over his white beard. “Because of the times, we are trying to convey a message that health comes first, then everything else,” Gerakis, 37, told Reuters television. “Christmas is a bit of a question mark for all of us this year I think, we don’t know how this will end. We have to be optimistic, but it’s uncertain what will happen.” His snowmen also sport masks.
CENTRAL AMERICA
Iota’s death toll rises
Iota’s death toll on Wednesday rose to more than 30 after the storm unleashed mudslides, smashed infrastructure and left thousands homeless in its wake across Central America. Nicaragua has so far suffered the highest death toll from Iota’s sweep on Monday: 18. Another 14 were killed in Honduras, including five members of the same family whose home was swept away in a landslide. Two people died on Colombia’s offshore islands, two more were recorded dead in Guatemala, and one woman was killed in an indigenous community in Panama. By early on Wednesday, Iota had dissipated over El Salvador, but the storm’s torrential rains remained a threat. Salvadoran presidential official Carolina Recinos said timely evacuations prevented the country suffering a higher toll.
SPAIN
Canaries’ migrants increase
The government was under fire on Wednesday over its handling of a surge in migrant arrivals on the Canary Islands, which has overwhelmed local authorities’ capacity to house them. Conservative opposition parties called for Minister of the Interior Fernando Grande-Marlaska to resign after police late on Tuesday allowed about 200 migrants to leave a camp set up in Arguineguin port on the island of Gran Canaria. The migrants were later bussed to the capital, but left there with nowhere to go. Rights groups say about 2,000 people have been sleeping at the port, many in the rough.
UNITED STATES
Virus toll passes 250,000
Deaths from COVID-19 on Wednesday passed a quarter of a million people to reach 250,426, as New York City announced it would close schools to battle a rise in infections. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city’s 1,800 public schools would revert to remote learning beginning yesterday after the city recorded a seven-day average positivity rate of 3 percent. “We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19,” he said.
UNITED STATES
Judge blocks White House
Judge Emmet Sullivan of the federal district court in Washington on Wednesday ruled that President Donald Trump’s administration could not immediately expel immigrant minors who arrive alone at the border, a policy the White House said was necessary due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sullivan ruled in a preliminary injunction that unaccompanied children arrested at the border with Mexico could not be deported without due process. The ruling came as part of a lawsuit brought by rights groups on behalf of affected minors. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped a Guatemalan teenager challenge the rule, 13,000 minors have since been sent back to Mexico or their countries of origin without being able to file asylum requests.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
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