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.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS