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.
‘INTRUSIONS’: The ‘Global Times’ reported that Thitu Island in the Spratlys group is ‘illegally occupied’ by the Philippines, which is expanding military infrastructure on it The Philippines could “stir up trouble” at yet another “Chinese” island in the South China Sea, China’s state-backed Global Times reported late on Thursday, after what it said were Manila’s “provocative intrusions” into waters at two other reefs in the region. The Philippines is expanding military infrastructure on Thitu Island (Jhongye Island, 中業島) in the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), which Taiwan also claims, to potentially invite warships and warplanes from countries outside of the region such as the US and Japan, sabotaging peace and stability in the South China Sea, the newspaper reported, citing Chinese experts. Thitu Island is “illegally occupied”
China and Vietnam yesterday inked 14 documents spanning cross-border railways to crocodile exports after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met with new Vietnamese leader To Lam in Beijing. The Vietnamese president’s visit to Beijing, his first overseas trip since becoming the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam earlier this month, signals a desire between the two communist neighbors to strengthen ties, amid growing trade and investment, despite occasional clashes over boundaries in the South China Sea. “China has always regarded Vietnam as a priority in its neighborhood diplomacy, and supports Vietnam in adhering to the party leadership, taking the socialist
A former Saudi Arabian official alleged in a report that the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman forged the signature of his father on the royal decree that launched the kingdom’s years-long, stalemated war against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Saudi Arabia did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the allegations made without supporting evidence by Saad al-Jabri in an interview published yesterday by the BBC, but the kingdom has described him as “a discredited former government official.” Al-Jabri, a former Saudi Arabian intelligence official who lives in exile in Canada, has been a years-long dispute with the kingdom as
Police divers yesterday resumed searching for six people, including British tech magnate Mike Lynch, believed trapped about 50m underwater in the hull of a superyacht that sank in a storm off Sicily. Divers in wetsuits and oxygen tanks returned to the site off Porticello, near Palermo, to tag-team in 12-minute underwater search shifts where the luxury sailboat went down. Fire rescue crews reported that divers only made it to the bridge during a first search, and were unable to access the below-deck cabins because they were blocked by furniture that had shifted during the violent storm that toppled the vessel early