PHILIPPINES
Fraud suspects arrested
An ongoing joint Taiwan-Philippines battle against cross-border crime has resulted in a new round of arrests, with law enforcement officers raiding an alleged telecommunication fraud base on Luzon Island on Friday and arresting 17 suspects, including four Taiwanese. An anti-fraud squad of the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) stormed into a house on the Kalayaan Heights in Subic, 120km north of Manila, in the morning after being tipped off by Taiwanese authorities that the house might have been used as an operations base by fraudsters, according to the NBI. During the raid, the squad also seized telephones, notebooks, wireless USB adapters and other communication devices.
INDONESIA
Suharto descendant in rehab
A court on Thursday ordered a great-granddaughter of the late president Suharto to undergo a year in rehabilitation for drug abuse, after dropping a more serious possession charge. Putri Aryanti Haryowibowo, 22, was arrested in a police raid that found 0.88g of methamphetamine at a hotel in Jakarta in March. Judge Maman Ambari threw out a charge of possession, which carries a jail sentence of up to 15 years, saying the drugs belonged to the defendant’s friend. “She only used it,” Ambari told the South Jakarta district court. Prosecutors recommended a sentence of a year in jail. Haryowibowo, accompanied by her parents, smiled as the verdict was read out. “We had expected six months in rehabilitation. But since it’s a year, she’ll be totally clean,” her father, Haryowibowo, told reporters. Military strongman Suharto died of natural causes in January 2008, a decade after resigning from office following 32 years of autocratic rule. The country enforces stiff penalties, including life imprisonment and the death penalty, for drug trafficking.
AFGHANISTAN
Quake hits Hindu Kush
A magnitude 5.4 earthquake rattled the Hindu Kush region early yesterday, the US Geological Survey reported. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries from the quake that hit at 1:02am yesterday. No tsunami alerts were issued. The quake was deep, about 199.1km below the surface, the USGS said. The USGS said the quake hit was about 74km southeast of Faizabad and 254km northeast of Kabul.
PHILIPPINES
Landslide kills two children
Typhoon Nanmadol triggered a landslide that killed two children yesterday as the storm made landfall and drenched most of the north, officials said. The predawn landslide triggered by the slow-moving typhoon buried a hillside house, killing a six-year-old girl and her five-year-old brother in Pangasinan province’s San Fabian township, civil defense officials said. The young siblings were buried in the mud and other debris for more than two hours before rescuers recovered their bodies, said Milchito Santos, regional civil defense chief for the northwestern region of the main island of Luzon. A fisherman remained missing in stormy waters off Catanduanes province, about 350km east of Manila, after failing to return home on Thursday, the coast guard said, adding that the search was ongoing. Forecasters said Nanmadol hit land near Cagayan province’s Gonzaga township on the northeastern tip of Luzon at about 6am yesterday with winds of 195kph and gusts of 230kph.
RUSSIA
Erotic dance disrupts plane
Sleepy early-morning passengers on a flight from Moscow’s biggest airport to London may have thought they were dreaming on Friday when a drunken Russian woman staged erotic dances on the plane. Crew on the 7am flight from Domodedovo airport to London decided to return to Moscow because the woman, 39, a native of the region of Tatarstan, was deemed to be causing an inconvenience to passengers, the RIA Novosti news agency said. “The woman was in a state of insobriety, inconveniencing the passengers, taking off their glasses and dancing erotic dances,” a spokesman for transport police said, quoted by the news agency.
FRANCE
Talks fail, strike mulled
Eurotunnel employees were scheduled to decide yesterday whether to launch an indefinite strike, which would seriously disrupt cross-Channel traffic, after the collapse of negotiations with management. “There has been a warning of a strike, we will see tomorrow morning if the strike will be held or not,” a union official said. Talks between Eurotunnel and the unions, which are demanding a 14th month of salary, broke down on Friday evening, as the company claimed the demand was “unrealistic in this current economic context.” Eurotunnel said it had offered a 200 euro (US$290) bonus and proposed reviewing its pay scale, which the unions rejected.
UNITED STATES
Gibson, Gigorieva settle
Actor Mel Gibson and his former girlfriend, Oksana Gigorieva, have reached a settlement of their bitterly fought separation. Los Angeles Superior Court officials said in a statement late on Friday that the resolution came at the end of a multiday settlement conference. Terms and conditions of the settlement were not announced and the court said that a hearing is set for Wednesday. It said the civil financial agreement would be heard in open court, but one of the most contentious issues, custody of the couple’s small daughter, will be discussed in closed session.
BOLIVIA
Sect members sentenced
Seven members of a Protestant sect have been sentenced to 25 years each in prison for raping about 100 women in an agrarian commune, the judge and prosecutors told the press on Friday. An eighth man was sentenced to 12-and-a-half years in prison for providing a narcotic that the men sprayed to render the women unconscious before raping them in their dormitories, Judge Luis Enrique Perez said. “The victims were raped in a repeated manner. Among them, there were adults, children and elderly women,” prosecutor Freddy Perez was quoted as saying by El Dia newspaper.
UNITED KINGDOM
Man throws paint at Clegg
A man has been arrested for throwing paint at two politicians, including Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. The motive for Thursday’s attack in Scotland was not immediately known, and the politicians were not hurt as they were splattered with blue paint. The stunt occurred as the deputy prime minister and Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie were walking into a private event for their Liberal Democrat party members in Glasgow, a Clegg spokesman said. Clegg’s face and jacket were splattered, but he still attended the event after washing up. Police did not identify the man in his 20s who was arrested, or speculate on what his motive might have been.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin yesterday took the bull by the horns as he welcomed an unusual visitor to his offices — an enormous white buffalo that recently sold for US$500,000. The bulky bovine, named Ko Muang Phet, was renowned in Thai farming circles as a stud animal, but hit the mainstream last week with its big-ticket sale, and earned a trip to Government House to meet Srettha. Standing 1.8m tall, the four-year-old albino from western Phetchaburi Province weighs 1.4 tonnes — almost three times more than the average buffalo. Ko Muang Phet has already become a minor TV star, featuring in an
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
LIVING ONLINE: The findings are a ‘red flag that young people are really struggling,’ the US surgeon general said, while calling for legislation on social media platforms Young people are becoming less happy than older generations as they experience “the equivalent of a midlife crisis,” global research released yesterday revealed, as the US’ top doctor warned that “young people are really struggling.” Allowing children to use social media was like giving them medicine that is not proven to be safe, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said, adding that the failure of governments to better regulate social media in the past few years was “insane.” Murthy comments came as new data revealed that young people across North America were now less happy than their elders, with the same “historic” shift