PHILIPPINES
Drugs worth US$30m seized
Police arrested four men and seized 1.3 billion pesos (US$30 million) worth of methamphetamine on Friday in the second large drug bust in Manila in 10 days. The men were in a van loaded with five wooden crates containing 272kg of crystal methamphetamine when they were intercepted by police, said Senior Superintendent Bartolome Tobias, head of the National Police anti-illegal drugs task force. The arrests followed a tip from an informant. Last week, the National Bureau of Investigation arrested four Canadian men suspected of trafficking drugs from Mexico in separate raids on posh condominiums. Tobias said police are investigating an “unholy alliance” between Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and Chinese drug syndicates in the Philippines. “We have to move fast to nip this partnership in the bud,” he said.
CHINA
Rover meets control glitch
The Jade Rabbit moon rover has experienced a “mechanical control abnormality,” state media said yesterday, in what appears to be a setback for a landmark mission in the country’s ambitious space program. The abnormality occurred due to “the complicated lunar surface environment,” Xinhua news agency said, citing the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND). Scientists were “organizing an overhaul,” the report added. There were no reports of the abnormality on SASTIND’s Web site.
INDONESIA
Soldier, ‘radicals’ killed
A soldier and three armed “radicals” were killed in two related shoot-outs in the country’s restive Papua region, an army official said yesterday. A team of soldiers were conducting a raid in the mountainous Puncak Jaya area, a known hideout for armed Papuan separatists, after receiving intelligence on a “radical group,” army spokesman Andika Perkasa said. The soldiers seized a rifle from the gunmen and three were killed in an extended shoot-out, Perkasa said, adding that it was unclear who opened fire first in the incident on Friday. “The team of soldiers had called for back-up,” Perkasa said. “The reinforcement team of 25 people were then ambushed by gunmen on the way to the site. They killed one soldier in that incident.” Police in Papua Province said the gunmen belonged to the separatist Free Papua Movement, but Perkasa said it was too early to speculate on the gunmen’s connections, adding that their motivations could be more complex.
INDONESIA
Earthquake shakes Java
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off Java yesterday, the US Geological Survey (USGS) reported, sending panicked residents running from their homes. People in the town of Adipala near the epicenter said they felt the ground shaking hard for up to 20 seconds, as the quake struck in the sea off the coast of southern Java. “We all just ran onto the street, there were so many people,” Astri, a florist who goes by one name, said by phone. “But it doesn’t seem to have damaged anything around here, and we’re getting back to work.” The quake struck at 12:14pm 39km south-southeast of Adipala at a depth of 83km, the USGS said. Officials said there was no risk of a tsunami and no immediate reports of damage or casualties. “We don’t expect a lot of damage because the quake was deep, but we will monitor as it was felt quite strongly on the coast near the epicentre,” meteorology, climatology and geophysics agency technical chief Suharjono said.
FRANCE
Chinese slur sparks fine
Leading magazine Le Point was fined 1,500 euros (US$2,050) on Friday by a court for slurring the country’s ethnic Chinese community as stingy, work-obsessed tax dodgers. The ruling followed a legal complaint filed by prominent anti-racism group SOS Racisme over an article published on Aug. 23, 2012, titled The Devious Success of the Chinese in France. Le Point editor-in-chief Franz-Olivier Giesbert had defended the article as a humorous piece of writing that had been misconstrued. A boxed text accompanying the article listed the “Five Commandments of the Chinese businessman.” These included: “Thou shalt work 80 hours a week,” “Thou shalt sleep in thy shop” and “Thou shalt not pay taxes.” The court said three of the points were defamatory and rejected Giesbert’s plea that the piece was humorous.
PERU
No sterilization charges
Prosecutors have decided not to file criminal charges against former president Alberto Fujimori or any of his ministers over a 1990s sterilization program that hundreds of women complained was coercive. Prosecutors said in a statement on Friday that the inquiry against Fujimori and more than 20 other former high-ranking officials in the case had been shelved. More than 2,000 women have formally complained of being forcibly sterilized under the program. Fujimori is now in prison for corruption and authorizing death squads. He says the sterilizations were voluntary, but women say they were deceived, threatened and bribed to meet quotas. At the urging of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, prosecutors in 2011 reopened a criminal investigation into the program that sterilized more than 300,000 women, mostly impoverished, illiterate Indians.
MEXICO
Man held in tourist’s death
Authorities detained a man Friday suspected of killing a Dutch tourist in Ciudad Juarez in 1998, officials said. Roberto Flores, 52, who went by the name Ramiro Adame Lopez, was arrested in Chihuahua after he was deported from the US. He had served jail time in the US state of Mississippi for illegally entering the US. Prosecutors said Flores rented a room in a downtown Ciudad Juarez hotel where the body of Hester Suzanne van Nierop, a visiting architect who was 28 at the time, was later found with signs of strangulation. When the case came to light 16 years ago, prosecutors said the woman was forcibly taken to the hotel, where she was tortured, raped and strangled. Local civic groups denounced Flores as a serial murderer of women. In 2004, van Nierop’s parents traveled to Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas, with a group of Dutch TV reporters to press the authorities to revive the case.
CANADA
Archbishop guilty of assault
An Orthodox archbishop has been found guilty of sexually assaulting one of two brothers almost 30 years ago. Justice Christopher Mainella on Friday said in his ruling that Seraphim Kenneth Storheim of the Orthodox Church in America was evasive and untrustworthy in his denials on the witness stand in Winnipeg. The judge also said one brother was clear in his testimony, while the other had memory and mental illness problems. The brothers, who are now in their 30s, testified they lived with Storheim briefly, on separate occasions, when they worked as altar boys in 1985. They said Storheim walked around naked and touched them sexually — accusations Storheim denied.
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