PHILIPPINES
First mpox report this year
The Department of Health yesterday reported the nation’s first case of mpox this year, but said it was still determining whether it was the new and dangerous variant, clade 1b, sparking global alarm. The WHO last week declared the mpox surge a public health emergency of international concern, its highest alert level. The 33-year-old Filipino man who contracted the virus had not traveled outside the country, the department said in a statement. His case was reported by a government hospital on Sunday. Health authorities are awaiting sequencing results to check whether the case is clade 1b. “Symptoms started more than a week ago with fever, which was followed four days later by findings of a distinct rash on the face, back, nape, trunk, groin, as well as palms and soles,” the department said. Test results of specimens collected from the man’s skin lesions “are positive for Monkeypox viral DNA,” the statement said.
SRI LANKA
Colombo defends diplomat
Colombo has defended a top diplomat ordered by an Australian court to pay more than A$540,000 (US$361,000) in back wages and interest to her former housekeeper, Priyanka Danaratna, held in Canberra under “slavery-type conditions.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Permanent Representative to the UN Himalee Arunatilaka had followed government-approved rates in paying low wages. Arunatilaka had previously been the deputy high commissioner in Canberra for three years, up until 2018. The Federal Court of Australia on Thursday found Arunatilaka had breached the Fair Work Act and was not entitled to diplomatic immunity. Danaratna “worked seven days a week for three years, and she had two days off in that entire time — and she did that because she burned her hand while preparing some food,” her lawyer, David Hillard, was quoted as saying. The court was told that Danaratna was paid a total of A$11,212 for three years of work, while the national minimum wage for a 38-hour week was A$656.90. After running away from the diplomatic compound, Danaratna had sought refuge with the Salvation Army. However, the Sri Lankan foreign ministry said it “is satisfied that the said salary was paid to the domestic assistant by the employer as mutually agreed.”
NEW ZEALAND
Population growth stalls
Population growth has come to a near halt, Statistics New Zealand said yesterday, as tens of thousands of people exit a spluttering economy for greener pastures. It grew a modest 0.1 percent in the second quarter, with the population of 5.3 million growing by a meager 7,000, figures showed. Although the nation ranks highly in lists of the most desirable places in the world to live and work, the record numbers of arrivals in the past few years have been matched by departures. Commentators have blamed slow economic growth, high living costs and a housing crisis that has made it difficult for young New Zealanders to get on the property ladder. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has gone from worrying about immigration stoking inflation to an emigration brain drain. At its meeting earlier this month it said that “slowing net immigration” — along with tight monetary policy and government austerity — could be “dampening demand.” Fewer people were arriving and more were leaving “partly in response to weakening economic and labour market conditions,” it said, adding that the trend was likely to intensify in the coming year, “before recovering as labour market conditions” eventually improve.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
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