■ 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.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was