PHILIPPINES
Bomb rips through church
A bomb exploded during Christmas Day Mass at a chapel inside a police camp in the volatile south on Saturday night, wounding a priest and 10 churchgoers. The device was hidden in a ventilation window near the ceiling of the chapel, which is on the compound where the provincial police office is located in Jolo on Jolo Island, Sulu province, police said. The island is a stronghold of al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants, but it wasn’t clear who was responsible for the bombing. Investigators recovered parts of a cellphone they believe detonated the device.
NEW ZEALAND
Quakes rattle Christchurch
A series of earthquake aftershocks rattled the country’s second-largest city, Christchurch, yesterday morning, causing some damage to buildings, police said. Most of the damage, which included falling masonry and broken glass, was the result of a magnitude 4.9 tremor recorded at 10:30am, Stephen Hill, a spokesman for Christchurch police, said in a telephone interview yesterday. The Christchurch area has been dealing with aftershocks since a 7.0 earthquake on Sept. 4 damaged more than 100,000 homes, broke water and sewage lines and caused about NZ$4 billion damage (US$3 billion). Yesterday’s damage occurred in a small area of the central business district, with commercial and retail buildings affected, Hill said.
INDONESIA
Prisoners’ sentences cut
Some time has been cut off the prison terms of 7,300 inmates, including two Australian women convicted of drug smuggling. Holiday remissions are traditional in the country for some inmates with good behavior, except those on death row or serving life in prison. Australians Schapelle Leigh Corby and Renae Lawrence are serving 20-year terms after being convicted separately in 2005 of smuggling drug onto the resort island of Bali. Antara news agency reported on Saturday their sentences were slashed by 45 days each. The report quoted Minister of the Law and Human Rights Patrialis Akbar as saying 7,324 prisoners received sentence reductions ranging from 15 days to two months.
INDIA
Space rocket explodes
A rocket carrying a communication satellite exploded just after liftoff on Saturday in the second launch failure for the country’s space agency this year. Television images showed the rocket exploding in the first stage after it launched from the Sriharikota Space Center. It was carrying a GSAT-5P satellite into orbit. The Space Research Organization had no immediate comment. In April, a rocket on a developmental flight plunged into the Bay of Bengal. Yashpal, a retired scientist and independent commentator, said other countries too have experienced such failures.
INDIA
Crash kills funeral mourners
A bus collided head-on with a van that was carrying mourners returning from a funeral in northern India, killing 34 people, police said yesterday. State police official D.Y.S. Chauhan said another 14 people in the two vehicles were injured in the accident on Saturday near Badaun, a town in Uttar Pradesh. The bus driver was among those killed, he said. Chauhan said yesterday that the van’s driver lost control of the vehicle as it went through a mound of sand. It then crashed into the bus. Badaun is 280km southwest of Lucknow, the state capital. The country, with the world’s second-largest population, has the highest annual road death toll in the world, according to the WHO.
ARGENTINA
Fireworks wreak havoc
Fireworks from Christmas revelers injured at least 100 people, fewer than last year, medical officials said on Saturday. A dozen of the wounded were treated for burns at the Quernado hospital in Buenos Aires, including an 11-year-old boy who suffered severe burns to his shoulder from a firecracker, said on-call doctor Miriam Mino. She said the number of injured so far was still 3 percent less than those recorded last year. About 50 people, eight of them with serious injuries, were being treated at the Santa Lucia eye hospital, doctor Pablo Pauloni said. A child younger than six was in an induced coma after a firecracker hit him in the head in Cordoba, 700km north of Buenos Aires. In Rosario, 300km north of the capital, 13 people were wounded, including for gunshot wounds. Meanwhile, powerful fireworks sparked fires at eleven homes in Buenos Aires, but no casualties were reported.
UNITED STATES
Surfing Santas suit up
Nineteen surfing Santas brought some cheer to beach-goers as they hit the waves on Florida’s Space Coast. Water temperatures were in the upper teens when the group gathered with their boards on Christmas Eve, but they were undeterred. They wore red suits and beards. One surfer had a board covered in wrapping paper. Another donned a life preserver — for safety, sure, but also for a nice Santa belly. There was even a Mrs Claus among the lot. It’s the second year surfer George Trosset has held the event. The Rockledge, Florida, resident is hoping to convince people at Guinness World Records to create a category for “Santa surfing.”
UNITED STATES
Mogul helps fire victim
Entertainment mogul Tyler Perry is offering to rebuild the home of an 88-year-old great-grandmother who lost all her belongings in a fire. Rosa Lee Ransby and her four-year-old great-granddaughter escaped the fire on Tuesday that destroyed her home of 40 years in Coweta County, south of Atlanta, Georgia. Coweta County firefighters began soliciting donations and calls flooded in. The Atlanta-based filmmaker visited Ransby’s neighborhood on Thursday and pledged to rent her a house for a year, pay for her utilities, buy her furniture and then build her a new home. Coweta Fire Chief Todd Moore said Perry’s decision “made my Christmas.”
GAZA STRIP
Israel kills militants
Israeli forces killed two Palestinian militants in a firefight along the border with the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip yesterday, officials said. The Islamic Jihad militant group said two of its gunmen were killed by Israeli fire after they detonated an explosive device against a passing Israeli patrol. An Israeli military spokeswoman said the troops, later backed up by helicopters, confirmed hitting the militants who had tried to attack them.
IRAQ
Man hangs daughter
A man hanged his 19-year-old daughter after discovering she had joined al-Qaeda and was preparing to launch a suicide bombing, police said on Saturday. “Al-Najem Ambagui, a farmer aged 52, hanged his 19-year-old daughter Shakhla at his home 40 days ago because she had joined al-Qaeda,” said a police officer in Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province. The girl was “buried in a canal near his home in Mandali,” he said on condition of anonymity, referring to a town inhabited by Kurdish Shiites and a strong Sunni minority 100km northeast of Baghdad.
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