At least five people were killed and about 600 others were injured in traditional riotous New Year’s Eve revelry involving fireworks and guns across the Philippines, officials said yesterday.
A five-year-old boy and his mother were killed after being trapped inside their family-owned pyrotechnics store that went up in flames just hours before midnight on Thursday in Gingoog City on southern Mindanao island, police said.
The inferno started when the boy’s father and uncle tested a firecracker inside the store, setting off a chain reaction, police said.
The boy was sleeping inside the store and his mother rushed into the flames in a failed bid to save him, while a store helper also perished, police said.
In Zamboanga City also on Mindanao, another two revelers were killed and five others injured when a footbridge collapsed as they converged to watch a fireworks show minutes before midnight, police said.
Elsewhere in the Philippines, another 571 people were injured by firecrackers and 26 by stray bullets, Philippine Health Secretary Francisco Duque said.
“Thirty-six cases, or 6 percent, had blast burn injuries [that needed] amputation” of mangled fingers or limbs, Duque told a press conference.
Duque said this year’s New Year’s Eve injuries were less than last year, when 683 people were wounded by firecrackers and 17 by stray bullets. He said the lower firecracker-related injuries may be attributed to the government’s “scare tactics.”
These included television ads that showed gruesome images of severely mangled limbs and a tray of surgical instruments used in the amputation of a limb.
Making noise by exploding firecrackers and firing guns into the air are common ways of greeting the New Year in the Philippines.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.