PHILIPPINES
Aquino signs budget
President Benigno Aquino III yesterday signed into law a 2.005 trillion peso (US$49 billion) budget for next year, vowing to use higher taxes on tobacco and alcohol to boost programs to reduce poverty. Education, health, agriculture and a cash-transfer scheme for the poor are the key priorities of the appropriations, which are 10.5 percent higher than this year’s national budget, he said during the signing ceremony. “We designed this budget as an instrument to give the common man the power to control and improve his life,” Aquino said. He thanked congress for passing earlier this month an increase in “sin taxes” on tobacco and alcohol products, which is expected to bring in more than US$800 million in extra revenues next year.
MALAYSIA
Migrants find refuge
Local authorities have allowed 40 migrants from Myanmar into the country two weeks after their vessel sank in the Bay of Bengal, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said yesterday. Singapore did not let the migrants enter despite an appeal by the UNHCR after they were rescued by a Vietnamese cargo when their vessel sank on Dec. 5. It was not immediately clear if they were Rohingyas, Muslim people from northwest Myanmar. Many Rohingyas, facing violence and persecution, have left Myanmar in rickety boats bound for Southeast Asia in search of better lives.
IRAQ
Talabani’s health improving
President Jalal Talabani’s health condition was improving yesterday and he responded well to treatment in a Baghdad hospital two days after suffering a stroke, his medical team coordinator said. Talabani’s sudden illness prompted questions about his exit from politics where he has been a key mediator amoung Shiite, Sunni and Kurds, and helped ease tensions in the growing dispute over oil between Baghdad and the country’s autonomous Kurdistan. The Kurdish statesman was admitted to hospital on Monday night after suffering a form of stroke and was in intensive care with a team of specialists.
CHINA
Obesity-bacteria link found
Researchers in Shanghai’s Jiatong University have identified a bacterium that may cause obesity, according to a new paper suggesting diets that alter the presence of microbes in humans could combat the condition. They found that mice bred to be resistant to obesity even when fed high-fat foods became excessively overweight when injected with a kind of human bacterium and subjected to a rich diet. The bacterium — known as Enterobacter — had been linked with obesity after being found in high quantities in the gut of a morbidly obese human volunteer, the report said.
HONG KONG
Jackie Chan under probe?
Police yesterday said they would investigate comments made by action star Jackie Chan (成龍) that he had used guns and grenades to confront triad gang members. Chan told the Guangzhou-based Southern People Weekly magazine that he had been “bullied” by triads. “In the past, when they bullied me. I hid in the United States. They opened fire at me once I got off the airplane,” Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post quoted him as saying in the magazine interview published last week. “Later on, I confronted them with two guns and six grenades,” he said. A police spokeswoman said they would probe Chan’s comments, but stopped short of saying whether they would question him.
VENEZUELA
Chavez in stable condition
President Hugo Chavez is in “stable” condition after being diagnosed with a respiratory infection following his latest cancer surgery in Cuba, an official said on Tuesday. Communications Minister Ernesto Villegas said doctors had treated the infection and brought it under control, adding that it was a common consequence of “complicated surgeries” and that the ailing leader required “absolute rest.” Chavez, 58, is due to be sworn in for a third presidential term on Jan. 10, but the country is now on tenterhooks to see if the outspoken, formerly tireless leader will remain their president, become incapacitated or worse.
MEXICO
Prison break kills 17
A shootout during a prison break at a penitentiary in the north of the country late on Tuesday has left at least 11 inmates and six guards dead, authorities said. Durango State Public Safety Department said guards foiled “a massive prison escape” at the Cereso No. 2 facility in the city of Gomez Palacio. The inmates tried to climb the prison’s back walls and when guards fired into the air to stop them, the firefight ensued, a statement from the department said. “The inmates started firing guns into the watchtowers and into custodian areas,” it said. Soldiers surrounded the prison and helped stop the prison break, it said, adding that the prison was back under the control of authorities.
UNITED STATES
Gulf sheen remains mystery
Underwater inspections at the site of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig disaster have failed to identify the source of a persistent sheen on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, officials said on Tuesday. The coast guard and BP both said the recent inspections confirmed that the company’s Macondo well, which blew out in April 2010 and spawned the nation’s worst offshore oil spill, remains secure and is not leaking oil. However, investigators collected samples of a white, cloudy substance that appeared to be coming from several areas on the overturned rig on the sea floor. Lab tests were planned on the samples of the substance, which is not believed to be oil. The coast guard has said the sheen cannot be recovered and does not pose a risk to the shoreline.
IRELAND
New abortion law proposed
The government said on Tuesday that it was preparing to allow abortion under limited circumstances in an effort to comply with demands by the European Court of Human Rights to clarify the country’s legal position on the issue. The proposed legislative and regulatory changes would allow abortion only in cases where there is a real and substantial risk to a woman’s life. The Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that abortion was permissible when risk was present, but the government never passed a law to that effect.
UNITED STATES
Inmates escape from prison
A massive manhunt is under way for two bank robbers who pulled off a daring escape from downtown Chicago’s high-rise jail on Tuesday by apparently squeezing through a narrow window and scaling down about 20 stories using a makeshift rope tied to the bars in a cell window. Police helicopters and canine units swarmed the area, but not until more than three hours after Joseph “Jose” Banks and Kenneth Conley went unaccounted for during a 5am headcount, Marshal’s Service spokeswoman Belkis Cantor said. Both men were still at large late on Tuesday night.
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
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not