PHILIPPINES
Fire at COVID-19 hospital
Firefighters early yesterday put out a blaze at one of the Philippines’ largest hospitals that had prompted the evacuation of dozens of patients from the facility, which also treats people with COVID-19. No casualties were reported in the fire at the government-run Philippine General Hospital in Manila, which was extinguished at dawn. Its cause is not known. Vice President Leni Robredo made an appeal on Twitter for “big, industrial fans” to clear the smoke caused by the fire. Some patients were transferred to nearby hospitals, including two who needed surgery and 12 babies from the neonatal intensive care unit, CNN Philippines said, citing hospital officials. Hospital staff said the fire started in an operating room supply area soon after midnight.
IRAN
Cleric to run for president
The Chief Justice Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line cleric linked to mass executions in 1988, on Saturday registered to run in the Islamic Republic’s presidential election next month, a vote that comes as negotiators struggle to resuscitate Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers. Raisi is among the more prominent hopefuls — he garnered nearly 16 million votes in the 2017 election. He lost that race to the relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani, whose administration struck the atomic accord. Raisi’s close ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his popularity — due partly to his televised anti-corruption campaign — could make him a favorite in the election. Raisi said that if he wins the June 18 vote, corruption would be “dried up... Those who founded and partnered with the current situation can’t claim they can change it.”
GREECE
Far-right MEP extradited
Ioannis Lagos, a Greek far-right member of the European Parliament (MEP), was on Saturday extradited to Greece to begin serving a 13-year prison sentence. Authorities said Lagos was to spend his first night in isolation in the high-security prison of Domokos before being assigned to a regular cell yesterday. Lagos’ request that he be held at a prison in Athens, ostensibly to keep up with his work in the European Parliament, was rejected by authorities. Lagos had been living in Brussels since a Greek court in October last year convicted him and 17 other former Greek lawmakers from the extreme-right Golden Dawn party of leading a criminal organization, or being members in it.
CHILE
Key constitution vote held
People yesterday headed to the polls in a second day of voting to elect 155 people who are to rewrite the country’s dictatorship-era constitution in a bid to address deep-seated social inequality that gave rise to deadly protests in 2019. Some 14 million people were eligible to vote over the weekend in what many consider to be Chile’s most important election since its return to democracy 31 years ago. More than 3 million people, or approximately 20.4 percent of the electorate, cast their ballot on Saturday, the Electoral Service reported. “I hope that we have a constitution that captures the soul of our nation,” President Sebastian Pinera said after casting his ballot in the capital Santiago. Silvia Navarrete, a 35-year-old economist, said she had voted for a system that “works for everyone, allowing all voices to be heard” and ensuring “that rights and duties are really fair for all human beings.” Chile’s constitution dates from 1980, enacted at the height of former president Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 rule.
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
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
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