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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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