1 Helping Africa to stop Ebola spread (BBC) The
World Health Organization is to "ramp up" efforts to prevent Ebola
spreading beyond the three countries most affected by the deadly virus. Fifteen
African countries are being prioritised, top WHO official Isabelle Nuttall said.
They will receive more help in areas including prevention and protection.
But former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said
he is "bitterly disappointed" with the international community's
response. Mr Annan said richer countries should have moved faster. "If the
crisis had hit some other region it probably would have been handled very
differently.
In Geneva, the WHO's Dr Nutall said the transmission
of the Ebola virus remained intense in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea - the
three countries at the centre of the Ebola outbreak. There was a "spike"
in the Guinean capital, Conakry, she said, and "intense transmission"
in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. In the Liberian capital, Monrovia,
she spoke of "significant underreporting" and problems with
data-gathering making it hard to reach firm conclusions.
2 First Japanese passenger jet in four decades (Yuri
Kageyama in San Francisco Chronicle) The first made in Japan passenger jet in
four decades reaches a development milestone later this week. A "rolling
out" ceremony in Nagoya, central Japan on Saturday will unveil the long
awaited Mitsubishi Regional Jet, or MRJ, a fuel-efficient lightweight
carbon-fiber composite passenger plane.
Major Japanese machinery maker Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries says the MRJ90 will seat 88 people,
while the MRJ70 will seat 76,
and the planned MRJ100X will have 100 seats. The plane is billed as
fuel-efficient, quiet and green, with a comfortable cabin of relatively wide
seats and high ceilings. The first flight is planned for the second quarter of
next year, with test flights to follow totaling 2,500 hours, and the first
deliveries are set for 2017.
MRJ has received 191 orders, from All Nippon
Airways, Trans State Holdings, SkyWest, Air Mandalay and Eastern Air Line with
184 additional purchase options. The MRJ is Japan's first nationally funded,
domestically manufactured passenger aircraft since the YS-11, a turboprop
airplane that was discontinued in 1973.
More than 5,000 deliveries of regional jets are
expected over the next 20 years, according to Mitsubishi, whose aircraft
division is called Mitsubishi Aircraft Corp. Japan's regional rival China has
two commercial jet aircraft projects underway, the first of which, the ARJ21,
is now ready for delivery, according to manufacturer Commercial Aircraft
Corporation of China, also known as Comac. The plane, with room for up to 90
passengers, had been promised for 2007, but technical problems led to years of
delay.
3 China’s violent land disputes (The Guardian) Villagers
in a bitter standoff with a property developer in rural south-western China
burned four construction workers to death in a clash that left eight people
dead, authorities have said. The incident in Yunnan province was one of the
most violent land conflicts to strike the country’s vast rural hinterland in
recent years, casting a spotlight on the plight and anger of residents who see
their livelihoods threatened when their lands are seized by developers with the
backing of local governments.
Alarmed by such violence, the ruling Communist party
is expected to grant more independence to local courts in the hope of extending
justice and alleviating tensions between members of the public and local
governments.
State media reports said the latest dispute at Fuyou
village was over land compensation. Villagers detained eight construction
workers on Tuesday when the developer attempted to restart work on the site,
the government statement said. The villagers then bound the workers’ hands and
feet, beat them up, and poured petrol on them. The government said the
villagers threw homemade petrol bombs and set fire to the petrol-drenched
detainees. Four workers burned to death and two others died from unspecified
injuries, it said.
The violence has not been unconditionally condemned
by members of the public, many of whom are instead questioning what led to the
conflict. State media, meanwhile, are blaming the local government. “It shows
the local government has not made effective efforts to resolve the conflict
between the developer and the villagers,” said a Beijing Times editorial,
pointing out that the villagers had lost fertile lands that once provided them
with handsome profits.
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