BEIJING: China reported one more death from the H7N9 strain of bird flu in southwestern Guizhou province, state news agency Xinhua said yesterday — the second death from the virus in the past week.
A 38-year-old man from Zunyi city died last Thursday, Xinhua said, citing health authorities in Guizhou. Xinhua said it was the first human case of H7N9 in Guizhou this year. Last Friday, China said a 38-year-old man in eastern Fujian province died from H7N9.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said last week that seven more people in China had been found to be infected with the H7N9 strain of bird flu in the previous week, taking to around 150 the total number of cases so far.
The H7N9 bird flu emerged last year in China and has infected around 150 people there and in Taiwan and Hong Kong, killing at least 45 of them.
Experts say there is no evidence as yet of any easy or sustained person-to person transmission of the strain.
But an early scientific analysis of probable transmission of the new flu from person to person, published last August, gave the strongest proof yet that it can at times jump between people and so could cause a human pandemic.
Abe’s ratings over 60pc
TOKYO: Support for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government rose to more than 60 percent in opinion polls, although voters were divided on his December visit to a Tokyo shrine seen by critics as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism.
The support rose 7 percentage points from last month to 62 percent in a poll by the Yomiuri newspaper, while backing for the main opposition Democratic Party fell 2 points to 4 percent and was dwarfed by the 40 percent who backed Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
Forty-five percent of respondents to the poll, conducted between Friday and Sunday, supported Abe’s Dec 26 visit to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, where Japanese leaders convicted as war criminals are enshrined along with other war dead.
Forty-seven percent were against it.
Support for Abe’s government had fallen last month to the lowest since he began his second term in late 2012 after his ruling coalition steamrolled through parliament a tough secrecy law that critics fear could muzzle media and let officials hide misdeeds.
Thai court frees Russian tycoon
PHNOM PENH: A Cambodian court freed Russian real estate tycoon Sergei Polonsky yesterday and he will not be extradited to Russia to face embezzlement charges there, his lawyer said.
Polonsky, who was once worth $1.2bn, is accused of fraud in a case in which authorities say 5.7bn roubles ($175m) was stolen from investors in a Moscow real estate development project.
Police re-arrested Polonsky in November last year, planning to extradite him at Moscow’s request.
He has since been added to Interpol’s wanted list. Polonsky’s Cambodian lawyer Benson Samay said judges at closed-door decision at the Appeal Court yesterday cited the lack of an extradition treaty between Cambodia and Russia in informing their decision.
Agencies
