PHILIPPINES
Fire razes shantytown
About 10,000 people lost their homes and one child was killed when a fire swept through one of the country’s largest shantytowns in Manila yesterday, arson investigator Catherine Albino said. The authorities had yet to determine the cause of the blaze that destroyed about 500 houses in the Bahay Toro slum, Albino said. Firemen battled for more than three hours before the blaze was brought under control.
NORTH KOREA
Food needs being assessed
The UN said on Monday it had begun a new assessment of the impoverished country’s food needs. The country has reportedly asked the US and other nations to consider resuming food aid. US handouts were suspended in 2009 after monitors of its distribution were expelled. Last Thursday, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization began a joint mission to assess food needs in the country, said Bettina Luescher, the WFP’s spokeswoman in New York. WFP’s current food aid operation is only 20 percent funded, she said. It requires about US$4 million a month.
CHINA
Smoking on way out
The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television is ordering makers of films and TV shows to limit the amount of smoking depicted on-screen, the latest effort to curb rampant tobacco use in the country with the largest number of smokers in the world. The order, viewed yesterday on its Web site, orders producers to minimize plot lines and scenes involving tobacco and show smoking only when necessary for artistic purposes or character development.
HONDURAS
Air crash kills 14 people
A small commercial airliner crashed on Monday near the capital, killing all 14 people aboard, including a senior government official and a top union leader, authorities said. Two Americans and a Canadian were listed as passengers on the Central American Airlines’ flight to Toncontin airport in Tegucigalpa, said Melvin Duarte, spokesman for the Attorney General’s office. US and Canadian embassy officials said they would release details on the victims after notifying their families. The Let L-410 Turbolet crashed on Monday morning in the town of Las Mesitas, about 5km south of the airport. It was carrying two pilots and 12 passengers, including Assistant Secretary for Public Works Rodolfo Rovelo, United Workers Federation of Honduras leader Jose Israel Salinas and former economy secretary Carlos Chain, airline manager Felix Pacheco said.
UNITED STATES
Composer Shearing dies
British-born jazz pianist and composer George Shearing, known for his Lullaby of Birdland that paid tribute to Charlie Parker, died on Monday, his agent said. Manager Dale Sheets said Shearing “passed away in New York this morning at 1:05am of congestive heart failure.” He was 91. Shearing, who was blind from birth, emigrated to the US in 1947 and formed a jazz quintet that recorded numerous hits. He became a superstar of the jazz world a couple of years after he arrived in the US, although he was already hugely popular in England. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007.
ITALY
Berlusconi trial date set
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will go on trial for abuse of power and buying underage sex in April, a judge ruled yesterday. Judge Cristina Di Censa, the examining judge at the court in Milan, fixed the date for the first hearing in a fast-track trial for April 6. “We didn’t expect anything else,” Berlusconi’s lawyers said on hearing the news. Berlusconi will be tried by three female judges. Di Censa upheld requests by Milan magistrates to fast-track a trial against the 74-year-old leader on allegations he paid for sex with a nightclub dancer called “Ruby the Heart Stealer.”
UNITED STATES
Condom finder released
Health officials have released a mobile phone application to help people in New York City find free condoms. The app is designed to locate the five nearest venues that distribute official NYC Condoms in jazzy wrappers printed with colorful subway maps or other city themes. People can manually enter addresses or use their phones’ GPS technology. The app provides the hours of operation for each location and directions by foot, car or public transportation. It also offers tips on condom usage.
UNITED STATES
Airport worker admits theft
A supervisor at a New Jersey airport has admitted accepting bribes and kickbacks from a subordinate who stole money from passengers during security screenings. Michael Arato of Ewing also admitted on Monday in federal court that he regularly stole from passengers who went through his checkpoint at Newark Liberty Airport. Prosecutors say the 41-year-old Arato permitted a worker he supervised to steal US$10,000 to US$30,000 in cash from travelers’ bags over 13 months. In exchange, the subordinate would give some of the money to Arato. The subordinate, who was not named, cooperated with the investigation that led to Arato’s arrest in October. Arato faces a maximum of 15 years in prison and is to be sentenced on May 24.
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
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
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.