TORONTO

Prominent radio host held on sexual assault charges

Police arrested a prominent former Canadian Broadcasting Corp. radio host on sexual assault charges on Wednesday.

Toronto police said in a statement that former CBC star radio host Jian Ghomeshi has been charged with four counts of sexual assault and one count of what they called “overcome resistance – choking.”

The allegations, first reported in the media in October, rocked the Canadian public broadcaster, a vaunted Canadian institution.

Ghomeshi, 47, had hosted “Q”, a CBC radio show on culture, since 2007. His show was also heard on many radio stations in the U.S.

Ghomeshi made a brief appearance in court where a justice of the peace granted him bail on condition he turns over his passport and lives with his mother. Bail was set at $100,000. He’s due in court again on Jan. 9.

CONAKRY, Guinea

Health workers have rare success fighting cholera

The health workers rode on canoes and rickety boats to deliver cholera vaccines to remote islands in Guinea. Months later, the country has recorded only one confirmed cholera case this year, down from thousands.

The rare success, overshadowed by the Ebola outbreak that has ravaged Guinea and two other West African countries, is being cautiously attributed to the vaccinations and to hand-washing in the campaign against Ebola.

Helen Matzger of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said Guinea’s experience is encouraging other countries to accept the cholera vaccine and has led the GAVI Alliance – which works to deliver vaccines to the world’s poor – to invest in a global stockpile and the U.N. World Health Organization to increase that stockpile to about 2 million doses.

Matzger said she was amazed at the ease and efficiency with which the vaccine was delivered to very remote islands.

– From news service reports

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