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.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion