PHILIPPINES
NPA rebels raid plantations
Communist insurgents raided two banana plantations in one day in the south in some of their most brazen attacks for months in the face of recent setbacks, authorities said yesterday. The attacks by the New People’s Army (NPA) on Mindanao on Saturday caused extensive damage, but no one was killed, officials added. About 50 guerrillas raided an aircraft hangar at a plantation owned by Del Monte Philippines in the town of Tubay on Saturday evening. “The rebels disarmed the security guards and seized their two shotguns, tied their arms ... then proceeded to the hangar and poured gasoline onto the [crop-duster] plane. It took only less than thirty minutes to burn the area,” investigating police officer Jomar Ascares said. Just hours before the burning of the airplane and hangar, about 60 NPA fighters raided another banana plantation in Pantukan town, disarming 10 security guards, burning a building and equipment and cutting down about 300 banana plants, police Senior Superintendent Abraham Roxas said.
INDONESIA
Search called off
Authorities called off their search for two Spanish men on Saturday, finding no sign of them one week after their tour boat sank. The boat carrying 25 people was headed from Lombok to Komodo when it hit a reef and later sank in stormy weather on Aug. 16. The 18 other tourists on board, as well as four Indonesian crew and one guide, survived. A team with three rescue boats and three fishing vessels combed the seas around several islands in the area for the final day of the search, to no avail. “We found no sign of the men at all. There are many fishermen in the area looking out for them, and they will continue to do so, even though we’ve ended our official search,” local search and rescue chief Budiawan said.
NIGER
Agriculture minister held
Minister of Agriculture Abdou Labo was remanded into custody on Saturday in a politically charged probe into suspected baby trafficking from neighboring Nigeria, aides said. One of the wives of former prime minister and current parliamentary speaker Hama Amadou is among the 17 people, including 12 women, being held in the case since the end of June. Labo “was taken to Niamey’s Say prison after he was heard by a judge who remanded him in custody,” one of the minister’s aides said. All suspects have been charged with substituting children, forgery and making false statements. Labo is suspected of “complicity” in the trafficking of babies between Nigeria, where they were conceived, Benin and Niger. Amadou is the main rival of President Mahamadou Issoufou.
FRANCE
Kurds protest IS actions
Hundreds of ethnic Kurds marched in Paris on Saturday to demand more international support for civilians in Iraq facing assaults by militants of the Islamic State (IS), formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Waving flags, chanting and marching behind a banner, the demonstrators pressed for more humanitarian and military aid for thousands of Yazidi refugees in the Sinjar mountains. Yekbun Eksen, a member of the Federation of Kurdish Associations of France, said the international aid was not yet enough to protect civilians. The group has led peaceful weekly protests since Islamic State fighters attacked Sinjar earlier this month.
CHILE
Quake shakes Santiago area
A strong, magnitude 6.4 earthquake jolted the center of the country on Saturday, officials said, though there were no immediate reports of fatalities or serious damage. The quake struck at 6:32pm about 108km northwest of Santiago at a depth of 35km, the US Geological Survey said. National emergency office ONEMI said the temblor shook Santiago and five other regions. More than 5 million people live in the capital and the quake shook buildings for 30 to 40 seconds, causing panic even in a country used to temblors. “There have been some power outages, but no reports of damage to buildings or infrastructure ... though this is still preliminary information,” ONEMI head Miguel Ortiz said.
MEXICO
States brace for hurricane
Six states were on high alert yesterday as Hurricane Marie approached the country. Marie, the eighth hurricane of the eastern Pacific season, was packing maximum sustained winds of 215kph and gaining strength, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center, which cautioned that it would likely become a major hurricane by yesterday. Although at the time of the warning the storm was far from land — about 470km from the port city of Manzanillo — and no storm watches or warnings were in effect for the coast, the center said portions of the nation’s south-central and southwestern coast were already seeing powerful waves. It added that the impact was likely to spread toward the Baja California Peninsula as the storm moves northwest. “These swells are likely to cause extremely dangerous life-threatening surf and rip current conditions,” forecasters said.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Storm kills one, ruins homes
One person was swept away and 4,000 displaced on Saturday when heavy rains from a newly forming tropical depression slammed into the country, authorities said, warning that the Bahamas was next. Alfonso Astacio was trying to cross a river in a van in Hato Mayor, about 110km northeast of Santo Domingo, when he was swept away in a torrent, said Juan Manuel Mendez, director of the national emergency operations center. Flooding near rivers and in cities also damaged more than 800 homes and cut off 23 towns, the center said in its latest update. About 4,105 people went to take refuge in the homes of family and friends, it added. A hospital in the east, where the rains were the heaviest, also experienced flooding, the bulletin said. After passing the country, the storm strengthened further and was named Tropical Depression Four. It was moving toward the Bahamas and forecast to strengthen into a tropical storm by yesterday, the National Hurricane Center said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Two charged for trafficking
Police have charged two truck drivers with people-smuggling after an Afghan migrant was found dead, along with 34 survivors, in a shipping container at a port in England. Stephen McLaughlin and Timothy Murphy, both from Northern Ireland, have been charged with conspiring to facilitate illegal entry into Britain. They appeared separately in court on Saturday. Workers at Tilbury docks, east of London, discovered the migrants on Aug. 16 aboard an unloaded container from Zeebrugge, Belgium. Dock workers said they heard bangs and screams coming from the container. The dead man was identified as 40-year-old Meet Singh Kapoor. Police have yet to determine the cause of death. The survivors, among them 13 children, were treated for dehydration and hypothermia.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing