Liberia cautiously marks end of Ebola
MONROVIA, Liberia – On the day Mercy Kennedy lost her mother to Ebola, it was hard to imagine a time when Liberia would be free from one of the world’s deadliest viruses. It had swept through the 9-year-old’s neighborhood, killing people house by house.
Neighbors were so fearful that Mercy, too, might be sick that no one would touch her to comfort her as tears streamed down her face. She had only a tree to lean on as she wept.
Now seven months later, Liberia on Saturday officially marked the end of the epidemic that claimed more than 4,700 lives here, and Mercy is thriving in the care of a family friend not far from where she used to live.
Saturday marked 42 days since Liberia’s last Ebola case – the benchmark used to declare the outbreak over because it represents two incubation periods of 21 days for new cases to emerge.
Cameron facing disunited kingdom
LONDON – Standing outside 10 Downing Street the day after his unexpected election victory, Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to govern for “one nation, one United Kingdom.” That will be easier said than done, as competing brands of nationalism threaten to pull the country apart.
Separatists have swept the board in Scotland, Wales wants greater autonomy and England saw spreading support for the insular U.K. Independence Party and its demand to leave the European Union.
Newspaper editorial pages on Saturday oozed anxiety: The Independent said the election “leaves the prospect of the U.K. still being in one piece at the next general election in 2020 in some doubt”; the pro-Conservative Daily Telegraph agreed that “the biggest problem facing Mr. Cameron is the future of the Union,” while the liberal Guardian said leaving the EU would be “a catastrophe for Britain economically, politically and socially.”
Egypt’s Mubarak, sons sentenced to prison
CAIRO – A Cairo court sentenced Egypt’s deposed autocrat Hosni Mubarak and his two sons to three years in prison on corruption charges Saturday – a punishment that authorities may deem as having already been served but one which, if it withstands appeal, would officially establish Mubarak as a convicted criminal years after the 2011 popular uprising that toppled him.
The case – dubbed the “presidential palaces” affair by the Egyptian media – was a retrial, charging that Mubarak and sons embezzled millions of dollars’ worth of state funds over the course of a decade, diverting money meant to pay for renovating and maintaining presidential palaces to instead upgrade their private residences.
Associated Press
