Sinosphere Blog: Back To School, To New Marching Orders

A person in Mexico died after contracting a strain of bird flu that hasn’t been confirmed in humans before, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. The virus was detected in a 59-year-old who had been hospitalized in Mexico City. The person died one week after developing a fever, shortness of breath and diarrhea.

After six long weeks of voting in the grueling heat, India’s election delivered stunning results. With all of the 640 million votes now counted, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is poised to preside over a rare, third consecutive term in power—making him only the second Indian prime minister to do so after Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru in 1962.

CAIRO — United Nations agencies warned Wednesday that over 1 million Palestinians in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by the middle of next month if hostilities continue. The World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a joint report that hunger is worsening because of heavy restrictions on humanitarian access and the collapse of the local food system in the nearly eight-month Israel-Hamas war. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] It says the situation remains dire in northern Gaza, which has been surrounded and largely isolated by Israeli troops for months.

U. S. intelligence officials are issuing a stark warning to America’s former “Top Gun” pilots: Don’t help China. A new threat bulletin issued Wednesday warns that China’s People’s Liberation Army “continues to target” current and former Western fighter pilots to help teach Chinese pilots how to master one of the hardest maneuvers in aviation: taking off and landing on aircraft carriers.

FLORENCE, Italy — An Italian court reconvicted Amanda Knox of slander on Wednesday, even after she was exonerated in the brutal 2007 murder of her British roommate while the two were exchange students in Italy. The court found that Knox had wrongly accused an innocent man, the Congolese owner of the bar where she worked part time, of the killing.

Hong Kong, the Chinese enclave that’s still struggling to revive its tourism economy post-pandemic and in the wake of a Beijing-influenced crackdown on civil liberties, has taken a new approach to wooing visitors: curbing its residents’ reputation for rudeness. Earlier this week, the city government launched a new campaign to promote politeness.