Liberia's liberation

May 11, 2015 - Daily News Briefing

The West African country is now Ebola-free. Life is returning to normal.

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Cuban President Raul Castro on Sunday thanked Pope Francis for brokering the thaw between Havana and Washington and said the pope so impressed him that he might return to the Church, despite being a communist. The 83-year-old younger brother of Cuba's revolutionary leader Fidel spoke with the pope for nearly an hour - unusually long for a papal meeting - during a visit the Vatican said was strictly private and not a state visit. Papal audiences on Sundays are extremely rare. Francis made an exception when Castro asked if he could stop in Rome on his way back from Moscow to thank Francis for the Vatican's mediation between the United States and Cuba, Cuban officials said.

China cut interest rates Sunday for the third time in six months to boost sluggish economic growth and announced that it is giving banks more flexibility in setting rates paid to depositors in a new step to make its financial system more market-oriented. The central bank's rate cut reflects the communist leadership's growing urgency about reversing a deepening slump that threatens to cause a politically dangerous spike in unemployment. Economic growth has fallen to its lowest level since the aftermath of the 2008 global crisis, and exports fell by 6.2 percent in April. Surveys of manufacturers showed factory employment in April fell to its weakest level in a year.

Liberia is now officially free of Ebola after going 42 days without any new cases, the World Health Organization announced on Saturday -- twice the maximum incubation period for the disease. While celebrating the milestone, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Saturday told The Associated Press the damage wrought by the worst Ebola outbreak in history was "a scar on the conscience of the world." For some survivors, she said, "The pain and grief will take a generation to heal." Meanwhile, new cases were reported this week in neighboring Sierra Leone and in Guinea, the other two countries hit hardest by Ebola.

San Francisco has become the first city in the nation to outlaw chewing tobacco from its playing fields, including AT&T Park, home to the San Francisco Giants. Players and the manager of the team expressed support for the ordinance signed into law by Mayor Ed Lee on Friday but also concern about breaking the chewing habit. The ordinance, which will take effect Jan. 1, prohibits the use of smokeless tobacco at athletic venues, specifically singling out baseball, which has a long history of players masticating and spitting tobacco juice in view of children who worship them.

North Korea claims to have fired a ballistic missile from a submarine on Saturday, meeting a U.S. diplomatic overture with a fresh show of force and seemingly testing the Obama administration's resolve for new nuclear talks. After three years of diplomatic deadlock, the U.S. had appeared receptive to preliminary discussions to assess North Korea's intentions and the prospects of ridding the country of nuclear weapons. Then came Saturday's claim that North Korea successfully test-fired a newly developed ballistic missile from a submarine. Not long after that announcement, South Korean officials said the North fired three anti-ship cruise missiles into the sea off its east coast.

Tropical Storm Ana, the first named storm of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season, weakened on Sunday after making landfall near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina but high surf and flooding still threatened the coast. Ana was delivering maximum sustained wind of 40 miles per hour, with higher gusts, as it moved slowly on a northward track near the border of North and South Carolina, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

To send a comment to the Editor, email editor@csmonitor.com.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

To send a comment to the Editor, email editor@csmonitor.com.

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