A school official who was among three people held hostage by suspected Islamist militants in a lawless region of the Philippines has been released unharmed, a local official said yesterday.
The circumstances surrounding the release of Orlando Fajardo, the vice president of a college who was abducted at his home in southern Basilan island two weeks ago were unclear, with the country’s largest Muslim separatist guerrilla group claiming credit.
Al-Rasheed Sakalahul, vice-governor of Basilan Province, told reporters he personally picked up the former hostage at a mountainous area late on Christmas Eve.
“It’s a good Christmas present. We have now in our possession Doctor Fajardo,” Sakalahul said.
Three other people, including two employees of a lumber yard are still held hostage in Basilan by suspected Abu Sayyaf militants, who had beheaded another hostage earlier this month.
Fajardo’s kidnappers had initially sought 20 million pesos (US$430,000) in exchange for his liberty, but Sakalahul later said no ransom was paid and that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) helped him convince the gunmen to free him.
“The MILF secured the release of Mr Fajardo and handed him over to me. There was no ransom paid and the release was made possible through the help of the MILF,” he said.
Eid Kabalu, spokesman for the separatist group that is holding peace talks with the Philippine government, said: “We have been helping the government secure the release of kidnap victims through the ad-hoc joint action group.”
The liaison group is a mechanism set up after a 2004 truce under which the MILF committed to help the government stamp out terrorism and crime in areas the insurgents controlled.
Basilan gunmen are still holding lumber firm workers Michael Tan and Oscar Lu who were both kidnapped last month, and another local, Donald John Capili, who was abducted in October.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
STILL IN POWER: US intelligence reports showed that the Iranian regime is not in danger of collapse and retains control of the public, casting doubt on Trump’s exit Nearly every US Senate Democrat on Wednesday signed a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting a “swift investigation” of airstrikes on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and any other potential US military actions causing civilian harm. Reuters reported on Thursday last week that US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the Feb. 28 strike on the school, as US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran. “The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages
RSS