PHILIPPINES
Firecrackers injure hundreds
An official said more than 200 people have been injured by illegally huge firecrackers and celebratory gunfire despite a government scare campaign against reckless holiday revelries. Health Assistant Secretary Enrique Tayag said yesterday that most of those hurt were children. Stray bullets wounded eight people and 197 were injured by powerful firecrackers between Dec. 21 and Friday. Officials fear the number of injuries might rise as superstitious people bid goodbye to a year of natural disasters and economic uncertainties. Desperate to halt the violent tradition, officials have warned revelers they risk amputations if they are hurt lighting up huge firecrackers.
PHILIPPINES
Minister heads to Syria
The foreign minister will fly to Syria to help speed up the repatriation of its citizens from the strife-torn country, a statement said yesterday. Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario was to depart on a Qatar Airways flight to Damascus late yesterday to make sure that the repatriation of it citizens “can be made as secure as possible,” the ministry said in a statement. “During this visit to Syria, we will seek the cooperation and assistance of Syrian officials in ensuring the safety of our people there,” del Rosario was quoted as saying in the statement.
THAILAND
Funeral trip kills mourners
Twelve mourners were killed when their packed pickup truck collided with a passenger bus as they traveled to the funeral of a relative in the northeast, police said yesterday. Ten women and two men, many of whom were sitting in the open-top rear of the truck, were killed instantly in the smash in Buriram province. Four other people were injured. Colonel Pongsak Suk-im, commander of the local Nangrong district police, said the early morning collision happened when the truck pulled onto a main road in front of a long-distance bus from Bangkok. The accident came during the most dangerous week of the year on Thailand’s roads. Annual fatalities from vehicle crashes during the New Year period regularly run into the hundreds, due to a combination of the large number of people on the roads and drunk driving.
AUSTRALIA
Woman tried to cut off leg
A grandmother who survived three days trapped by her overturned car after a road accident on Christmas Day had become so desperate to escape she considered amputating her leg, police said. With her mobile phone battery dying, Deborah McKnight, who is in her mid-40s, was unable to reach emergency help after her car rolled over an embankment on an isolated country road last Sunday. “She told me she tried to cut her leg off but she couldn’t get through the bone,” daughter Ebony told Sydney’s Daily Telegraph on Friday. “I don’t know what she used. I felt sick when she told me that.” McKnight had been driving near Batlow when she told police she swerved to miss a kangaroo and lost control of her car which careered through a guard rail and tumbled down a cliff. The Holden Commodore landed on its roof at the foot of a tree and McKnight found herself thrown so she was partly outside the vehicle, with her left leg crushed between its roof and the ground. The grandmother was finally found when a teenager walking to a neighbor’s property late on Wednesday afternoon heard her moans and found the wreck which was still holding childrens’ Christmas presents.
RUSSIA
Nuclear sub fire put out
Firefighters on Friday put out flames on a nuclear submarine undergoing repairs near Norway after almost a day-long blaze that raised concerns about the security of the nation’s ageing fleet. The rubberized coating on the Delta IV-class submarine Yekaterinburg caught fire on Thursday at a dock in the Murmansk region. “The fire has been liquidated. There is no burning,” Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu told a meeting of officials. The ministry had repeatedly insisted there were no signs of above normal radiation in the area and Shoigu said radiation monitoring would revert to normal. A military source quoted by local news agencies said the Yekaterinburg would now be taken in for repairs that had initially been scheduled for next year.
ARGENTINA
Police search for attacker
Police yesterday searched for the attacker of an Australian tourist who was found alive three days after disappearing on a nature trail. Emma Kelly, 23, is recovering and out of danger, an Argentine friend said. She was found dehydrated and disoriented on Thursday and with obvious signs of being attacked after going hiking in the scenic “Cajon del Azul” canyon near El Bolson, a town in the southern Andean foothills. Kelly was flown by helicopter to a local hospital and was recovering said Bruno Meister, who lives in El Bolson with another Australian, a close friend of the injured woman.Police also responded quickly to an attack on two French tourists who went missing while hiking on another nature trail, about 2,000km to the north, in the Salta region in July. The women were found raped and shot to death, and three suspects were detained.
UNITED KINGDOM
Weather data released
Last year was the second-warmest on record in the country, the Met Office national weather service said yesterday, a marked swing from a chilly 2010. Provisional figures showed that the average temperature throughout the year was 9.62oC. The record high was recorded in 2006, which notched an average temperature of 9.73oC. All except one of the top 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997 and the nation’s top seven warmest years all happened over the past decade. Scotland suffered its wettest year on record last year, with 1,859.5mm of rain, beating the previous record set in 1990. The warmest temperature recorded last year was 33.1oC on June 27 at Gravesend in southeast England. The coldest was minus-13oC at Altnaharra in Scotland on Jan. 8.
RUSSIA
Morgue caviar seized
Even people who think caviar is to die for might lose their appetite when it’s stored in a hospital morgue, but that is where St Petersburg police found a huge stash of the delicacy this week — 175kg stored in the refrigerated space where cadavers are kept. A morgue employee and a businessman were arrested after the Wednesday discovery, but police said on Friday that the matter was still being investigated. The arrested men said the caviar was to be a treat for hospital employees at a New Year’s party. Most of the red caviar was from salmon, but 38kg of the stash was black caviar from sturgeon, an endangered fish. Amid heavy restrictions on sturgeon fishing, black caviar is increasingly produced and sold illegally. In the run-up to New Year’s, one of Russia’s most lavishly festive holidays, police have made a series of other seizures of caviar.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
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
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