■ PHILIPPINES
Air controllers late to work
An airplane was stuck circling a southern airport for several minutes before landing on Friday because air traffic controllers apparently still in a Christmas holiday mood came in late for work, officials said. The Philippine Airlines flight from Manila was unable to land at Zamboanga city’s airport on schedule because there were no traffic controllers around to answer their request to approach the runway, said Reynaldo Alforte, the airport’s assistant chief air traffic controller. “There were two controllers who reported for work a few minutes late, causing delays,” Alforte said. Two other tower workers scheduled to be on duty were absent on Friday, he said, adding that the case was under investigation.
■CAMBODIA
Belgian killed in crash
A Belgian man has died in Phnom Penh after driving under the influence of alcohol without a helmet and crashing into a truck, police said yesterday. Van Esbroeck Guido’s 44-year-old Cambodian wife told police on Thursday she had earlier refused to ride pillion on her husband’s bike when he fell off after drinking. Police said the 48-year-old Belgian continued driving alone and later crashed into a truck as it left a construction site. “He was very drunk while driving, didn’t have on a helmet and later crashed into a truck that didn’t give a signal when it turned,” said traffic police chief Tin Prasoeur. Deaths on the roads have more than doubled in the past five years, becoming Cambodia’s second biggest killer behind HIV/AIDS. In a bid to put an end to the carnage the government has pushed through drastic new traffic laws, previously unheard of in Cambodia’s free-wheeling road culture. From Thursday, drivers’ licenses will be mandatory, as will helmets for those on motorbikes and seatbelts for motorists.
■SINGAPORE
Fortune teller sentenced
A Malaysian fortune teller was sentenced to 15 months in jail by a Singapore court on Friday for fleecing a woman of S$60,000 (US$41,430), the Straits Times reported yesterday. Tan Ka Chuan received regular payments from Singaporean Lee Lye Fong in exchange for promises to perform rituals that would protect her family and make her wealthy. Lee herself went through a police probe for dipping into the funds of her employer to pay for Tan’s bogus promises. Tan, 36, a Malaysian national, used the money pay his gambling debts. He admitted to the police that he had no powers to see the future and did not perform religious rites. Lee’s payments to Tan go back five years, the report said.
■CHINA
Three earthquakes strike
Three moderate earthquakes hit the southwestern region, injuring 19 people and forcing the evacuation of thousands of homes, state media reported yesterday. A 4.9-magnitude quake hit Ruili, a city on the China-Myanmar border in Yunnan Province, early on Friday, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing the provincial seismic monitoring agency. Three people were seriously hurt while 16 others suffered minor injuries, said the city’s Communist Party chief. He said 10,000 people were evacuated and the quake destroyed the city government’s office building and damaged thousands of houses. Local officials were distributing 300,000 yuan (US$44,000) in relief supplies to affected residents, Xinhua said. A 4.3-magnitude quake hit a village near the Yunnan capital Kunming early on Friday but no casualties were reported. A third tremor measuring 4.0 hit Guizhou Province on Friday night but there were no reports of casualties or damage.
■PERU
Virgin Mary gives birth
Virgin Mary, a 20-year-old Peruvian woman, gave birth to a baby boy on Christmas day and named him Jesus, the state news agency said on Friday. The baby’s father, Adolfo Jorge Huamani, 24, is a carpenter. Religious people compared him to Joseph the Carpenter in the Bible. “Two thousand years later the story of Bethlehem is relived,” read the headline about the birth in El Comercio, the main newspaper in the predominantly Catholic country. The mother, Virgen Maria Huarcaya, delivered the 3.5kg boy, Jesus Emanuel, in the early hours of Christmas at the central maternity hospital in Lima. “A few days ago we had decided to name my son after a professional soccer player,” the father said. “But thanks to a happy coincidence this is how things ended up.”
■RODRIGUES ISLAND
Tanner the bat turns 23
Tanner the golden bat, the oldest of his kind in captivity, will celebrate his 23rd birthday by hanging around and chomping on a few pieces of papaya, mango and melon. Officials marked the occasion on Friday at the Cranbrook Institute. “He’s in good health. He’s retired,” Organization for Bat Conservation director Rob Mies said. By his species’ standards Tanner is a senior citizen. Only about 4,000 of the large, fruit-eating bats still live on tiny Rodrigues Island in the Indian Ocean. They live about 20 years in the wild, Mies said. Tanner had been the second oldest of the 1,000 or so golden bats in captivity until a few months ago when a 23-year-old female died at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo. He’s also three years older than others in captivity. Their ages are confirmed because each of the captive bats are registered worldwide, Mies said.
■MEXICO
Navy looks for US woman
Three Navy boats and a helicopter were searching the waters off the Caribbean resort of Cancun on Friday for a US woman who reportedly fell from a cruise ship, authorities said. A US Coast Guard search-and-rescue crew using a Falcon jet halted efforts to find 36-year-old Jennifer Feitz late on Friday, but was to resume yesterday morning using a larger C-130 aircraft, Petty Officer Nick Ameen said. Feitz’s husband reported her missing from the Norwegian Pearl cruise ship just before 5am on Friday. Her hometown was not available. Mexico’s Fifth Naval Regional Command said in a statement that by late on Friday it had found no sign of Feitz and was having to deal with “adverse conditions” and strong waves in the search taking place just over 27km east of Cancun.
■MEXICO
Drug lord’s ex-fiance killed
A major drug lord’s former fiancee was killed and a rival drug cartel carved its signature on her body, local press reported on Friday, citing official sources. A body found on Dec. 17 in a car trunk was identified as that of Zulema Yulia Hernandez, former companion of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel who escaped prison in 2001. The letter “Z” was carved into her skin and marked several times elsewhere on her body, in what is believed to be the signature of the “Zetas” gang, an armed branch of the Gulf cartel at war with the Sinaloa cartel. The group was created in the 1990s by retired army officers and defectors. No official confirmation could be obtained midday on Friday. Hernandez, 35, met Guzman in prison, after she was also sentenced for drug trafficking with the Sinaloa cartel. Feuding drug cartels have engaged in a brutal battle for dominance, with more than 5,300 people killed this year.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
POINTING FINGERS: The two countries have accused each other of firing first, with Bangkok accusing Phnom Penh of targeting civilian infrastructure, including a hospital Thai acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai yesterday warned that cross-border clashes with Cambodia that have uprooted more than 130,000 people “could develop into war,” as the countries traded deadly strikes for a second day. A long-running border dispute erupted into intense fighting with jets, artillery, tanks and ground troops on Thursday, and the UN Security Council was set to hold an emergency meeting on the crisis yesterday. A steady thump of artillery strikes could be heard from the Cambodian side of the border, where the province of Oddar Meanchey reported that one civilian — a 70-year-old man — had been killed and
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr is to meet US President Donald Trump this week, hoping Manila’s status as a key Asian ally would secure a more favorable trade deal before the deadline on Friday next week. Marcos would be the first Southeast Asian leader to meet Trump in his second term. Trump has already struck trade deals with two of Manila’s regional partners, Vietnam and Indonesia, driving tough bargains in trade talks even with close allies that Washington needs to keep onside in its strategic rivalry with China. “I expect our discussions to focus on security and defense, of course, but also
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