■PHILIPPINES
Lightning hits three farmers
Three pineapple growers were killed by lightning in a southern town, a police report said yesterday. Nine other plantation workers of Del Monte Philippines Inc were also hurt when lightning struck them late on Thursday in Manolo Fortich town in Bukidnon Province, 840km south of Manila. Police said the victims were harvesting pineapples when lighting struck them. The three died instantly while the nine injured suffered third-degree burns.
■HONG KONG
Tax arsonist charged
A 51-year-old man was charged yesterday with arson after allegedly setting fire to the territory’s tax headquarters and fleeing with his trousers on fire. The Chinese suspect, whose dramatic attack on Thursday led to 600 people being evacuated from the Inland Revenue offices in the central district, was due to appear in court later yesterday, police said. Security has been tightened at the offices after the arsonist walked in, emptied a bottle of petrol over two counters and set them on fire before fleeing with his trousers ablaze.
■HAWAII
Japanese stay out of fray
The Japanese consulate says it will not interfere with billionaire Genshiro Kawamoto at the request of his neighbors in Kahala who contend that he is allowing his properties to fall into disrepair and blight a posh neighborhood. Deputy consul general Hajime Kido calls the dispute commercial in nature. Thus, he says, the Japanese government will not get involved. He says that it is the city council’s task to resolve the matter. Kawamoto bought about 20 homes in the exclusive area just outside Waikiki for about US$115 million after selling about 160 Oahu homes he bought in the 1980s.
■THAILAND
Gunmen kill two soldiers
Suspected Muslim separatists gunned down two government soldiers on a motorcycle patrol in southern Thailand yesterday, police said. The gunmen opened fire from the back of a truck with assault rifles, killing the two privates in the province of Pattani, one of the most violent areas of the Muslim south, police colonel Narucha Suwanalapha said. The victims were members of a four-man patrol, Narucha said.
■MALAYSIA
Police beat Filipinos
Illegal Filipino workers expelled from Sabah state have been severely beaten by police, a fact-finding body said yesterday. Thousands of Filipinos, including women and children, remained in detention centers “and suffering from inhumane conditions,” said Luzviminda Ilagan, a member of the Philippines House of Representatives and of the Fact-Finding Committee on Sabah Deportees. Ilagan urged the government to provide the deportees with aid to ensure they would not return as illegal immigrants to Sabah.
■CHINA
Respiratory ailments dire
Tens of millions of people will die from respiratory illness and lung cancer over the next 25 years in China if nothing is done to reduce smoking and fuel burning indoors, scientists warned. In an article published in the Lancet, the periodical predicted 65 million deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and 18 million deaths from lung cancer between 2003 and 2033 from smoking and biomass burning at home. Those figures would account for 19 percent and 5 percent respectively of all deaths in China during that period, researchers said.
■SPAIN
ETA bombs courthouse
A small bomb exploded yesterday outside a court in the northeastern Basque region following a warning call from the armed Basque separatist group ETA, causing material damage but no injuries, local media reported. The bomb went off at 1:15am in the town of Tolosa about half an hour after a man speaking in the name of ETA called Basque traffic department DYA to warn of an imminent blast, public television TVE said. It had been left in a rucksack on the steps of the court.
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