■PHILIPPINES
Teacher beheaded: police
The severed head of a school principal who was abducted by Islamic militants in Jolo was dumped at a gas station yesterday, authorities said. The head of Gabriel Canizares was found inside a bag at dawn, 22 days after the 36-year-old elementary school headmaster was kidnapped, local police chief inspector Usman Pingay said. “We shall make them pay for the enormity of this savagery,” President Gloria Arroyo’s spokeswoman Lorelei Fajardo said in a statement.
■PHILIPPINES
Blasts rock Metro Manila
Two explosions rocked Metro Manila yesterday, but no one was hurt in the attacks, police said. The first blast was outside the main office of food and beverage giant San Miguel Corp at 3am at the corner of Julia Vargas and San Miguel Avenue in Mandaluyong, said Senior Superintendent Carlos De Sagun, Mandaluyong City police chief. More than two hours later, the second explosion struck the Puregold Supermarket along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City. The blast damaged a canopy outside the supermarket but also did not hurt anyone, said Chief Superintendent Elmo San Diego, Quezon City police chief. San Diego ruled out terrorism as a motive for the attack.
■MALAYSIA
Floods kill two people
Two people drowned and thousands evacuated their homes in flooding caused by heavy rains, news reports said yesterday. The onslaught of the annual year-end monsoon season, which typically lasts until early January, forced more than 4,000 people from four states to live in temporary evacuation centers until water levels subside. On Sunday, a nine-year-old girl drowned in the state of Terengganu. Last week, the flood claimed its first victim when a car dealer in Pahang state was swept away by strong river currents.
■AUSTRALIA
Burglar caught napping
An exhausted man fell asleep while apparently trying to pick the lock of a shopping center after a “long night,” police said yesterday. The man was found snoozing outside a Perth shopping complex early on Sunday with a lock-breaking wire still in his hand, police spokesman Samuel Dinnison said. Keys found on the man opened a car parked nearby which was filled with a large quantity of prescription drugs linked to the burglary of a pharmacy earlier in the morning.
■CHINA
Police hunt for condoms
Police have closed a factory producing fake and unsterile condoms and are tracking down more than 2 million of the unsafe contraceptives already on the market, the China Youth Daily said yesterday. The condoms were made in a factory in Hunan Province and are believed to have been sold nationwide under a variety of names, including Jissbon and Durex, the report said. Police have detained suspect manufacturer Li Anping, it said.
■HONG KONG
Newborn found dead
A 28-year-old woman was being questioned by police yesterday after the body of a newborn was found suspended on a clothes-drying rack outside a block of apartments. A horrified resident called police on Sunday evening after discovering the baby’s body outside an apartment in the Ma On Shan District. Door-to-door checks were made, and a woman living in the same block was arrested on suspicion of giving birth and then throwing the newborn from her apartment, a police spokesman said.
■UNITED STATES
Mourning families sue
Relatives of eight victims of an Air France flight that crashed en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris have filed lawsuits in the US and Britain seeking damages. The US lawsuits filed in Illinois and California name as defendants Airbus and a number of companies that make airplane instruments, including General Electric, Motorola and Intel. Flight 447 crashed shortly after takeoff on May 31, killing all 228 people on board. The lawsuit filed in Illinois alleges negligence and products liability on the parts of Airbus and the makers of various instruments used on the flight.
■QATAR
Talks target corruption
Hundreds of envoys from around the world are in Doha, seeking to expand the powers of a UN accord to battle financial corruption. The five-day gathering was to begin yesterday. Officials from the UN and World Bank were expected to call on the international community to help track down and return looted money. The meeting will also try to establish an independent review process to look into countries’ books and try to detect missing funds. UN reports estimate that up to US$1.6 trillion in siphoned public funds cross borders each year.
■ITALY
Mobster found despite wig
Rome on Sunday hailed the capture of a wig-disguised mobster who had been on the list of the country’s top 30 fugitives. Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa’s office said paramilitary police arrested Luigi Esposito on Saturday in a suburb of Naples. Esposito, on the run since 2003, was using a wig and false name when captured. The Naples newspaper Mattino quoted local commander Mario Cinque as describing Esposito as an expert money-launderer of the Camorra crime syndicate.
■IRAN
Shariah penalties enforced
Police are ready to enforce Shariah punishments such as amputating hands, claiming that a failure to carry out these punishments had led an increase of crimes, the Ebtekar newspaper reported yesterday. Under the country’s Shariah laws, repeat offenders face amputation of their fingers for theft, but sentences are seldom carried out. In recent years, such sentences have rarely been reported. “Not carrying the Islamic punishment law, particularly its most important part — that is hand amputation — spreads insecurity in Iran,” the Ebtekar quoted the head of Iran’s criminal police as saying.
■JORDAN
Crowd goes on rampage
An angry crowd protesting the death of a man allegedly at the hands of police went on the rampage in Amman on Sunday, burning and damaging cars and buildings and injuring six policemen, police said. Anti-riot forces retaliated by firing teargas at the demonstrators, who had gathered in their hundreds in the Tafayeleh district of the capital, Lieutenant Colonel Ahmad Abu Hammad of the public security department said. “Police fired teargas to disperse protesters. Four policemen were shot and injured by the protesters, while two others were injured by stone-throwers in the clashes,” he said. “Protesters set fire to a police booth, a civil defense vehicle and a car. They also damaged six shops,” he added. Another security official said no arrests were made and none of the demonstrators was hurt. The protest was sparked by the death of Sadem Saud, 20, after allegedly being beaten up and detained by police following a brawl.
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
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
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