YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar’s junta, facing global outrage for spurning international assistance, appeared to relent Monday, saying it would allow countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to oversee the distribution of foreign relief to cyclone survivors.
It also approved a visit by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and prepared to host a meeting of aid donors, while claiming that losses from the May 2-3 disaster exceeded $10 billion.
But the United Nations said the rest of its foreign staff were still barred from the delta and it described conditions there as “terrible,” with hundreds of thousands of cyclone victims suffering from hunger, disease and lack of shelter.
A three-day official period of mourning was to begin today for the dead, which numbered more than 78,000, according to official figures. Another 56,000 people are missing.
Venezuela: U.S. Navy violated air space
Venezuela wants the U.S. ambassador to explain a violation of its airspace by a U.S. Navy plane, the country’s foreign minister said Monday. The S-3 U.S. Navy plane was detected in Venezuelan airspace on Saturday night near the Caribbean island of La Orchila, and questioned by the Caracas airport control tower, Defense Minister Gen. Gustavo Rangel Briceno said. U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the plane “may have strayed inadvertently into Venezuelan airspace” while conducting a counter-drug mission.
France: Government had contact with Hamas
France has had contacts with the leaders of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas for several months, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday. “We must be able to talk if we want to play a role,” Kouchner said in a radio interview. “These are not relations, they are contacts.” Hamas defeated the Fatah movement, long dominant in the Palestinian territories, in January 2006 parliamentary elections. After a power-sharing deal failed, Hamas last June forcibly took control of the Gaza Strip, where it is much stronger and more influential than Fatah, which continues to control the Palestinian Authority from its base in the West Bank.
Massachusetts: Kennedy illness still mystery
Sen. Edward Kennedy’s hospitalization after a seizure stretched to a third day Monday, with no word on how long it would be before the 76-year-old Democrat is released. Kennedy appeared to have been the victim of a seizure, an electrical disturbance in the brain. Physicians were conducting a battery of tests, the results of which may be available today.
N.Y.: Child dies from pain-patch use
A woman has been charged in the death of her 6-year-old stepdaughter because she used a controversial painkiller patch to try to cure the girl’s headache and neck pains, police said Monday. On Saturday night, Taylor Webster told her stepmother, Joanne Alvarez, 54, that her head and neck hurt. Alvarez gave the child Motrin and placed on Taylor’s neck a fentanyl transdermal patch, which is for adults. The fentanyl prescription was for Alvarez.
Florida: Shuttle to fly next week
NASA has set May 31 for the next space shuttle launch in which Discovery will deliver a Japanese lab to the international space station. The first part of the lab was ferried up in March.
California: Hilton hotel blast hurts 14
An apparently accidental explosion rocked a Hilton hotel under construction in San Diego on Monday, injuring 14 workers, five of them critically, authorities said. San Diego Deputy Fire-Rescue Chief Perry Peake said the blast occurred in an area of the building containing gas, electric and other utilities and that it appears to have been caused by a mechanical failure. The blast damaged floors four through seven of the building, Mayor Jerry Sanders said.
Pennsylvania: Firings in videotaped police beating
Philadelphia’s police commissioner said Monday that four officers will be fired and four others disciplined for their roles in the beatings of three shooting suspects, an encounter that was captured on videotape. Another eight officers who had physical contact with the suspects will undergo additional training on the department’s policies concerning the use of force, Commissioner Charles Ramsey said. The video, shot by a television news helicopter on May 5, shows the suspects being pulled from their car on the side of the road and groups of officers kicking, punching and beating the men. A total of 19 officers were involved.
From Herald news services
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