Thu, Jun 19, 2003 page5

• World news quick take

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  ■The Philippines
  

  Terrorist plot uncovered

  Police said yesterday they thwarted a bombing plot and arrested four suspects at a bus terminal in the southern Philippines. Three of the men, detained Tuesday in the southern port city of General Santos, were found carrying an improvised bomb, said Senior Supt. George Aquisap. They were detained in an eatery near the city's public bus terminal following days of surveillance, he said. A fourth man was arrested in another area of the city in a follow-up operation later Tuesday, Aquisap said. Local media identified the suspects as Indonesians, but Aquisap declined to identify their nationalities.

  ■ The Philippines

  War on drugs declared

  Philippine President Gloria Arroyo on yesterday declared war on druglords, amid warnings that the country has become a favorite transhipment point for foreign drug cartels. Arroyo said she would personally monitor the campaign and told law enforcement agencies she wanted immediate "strategic results." "This means the neutralization on the top syndicates and the arrest of the leaders -- a focused campaign against drug pushers, dealers and patrons in the government, and especially those in uniforms and a stop in the transnational smuggling of drugs through our shores," Arroyo said in a statement.

  ■ Vietnam

  Democracy activist on trial

  Vietnam began the espionage trial yesterday of a cyber-dissident who published an article on democracy on a website, one of at least six dissident writers jailed in the last 18 months. Plainclothes policemen closely monitored the entrance to the Hanoi People's Court and foreign media were barred from the trial of Pham Hong Son, 36, who could face life in prison. "This is the internal affair of Vietnam. You should leave," one security officer told reporters outside the court. Earlier that month, Son had posted a translation of a US State Department essay titled "What Is Democracy" on a Web site. He is charged with espionage.

  ■ China

  Scorpions get loose on train

  Passengers screamed in terror when more than 600 scorpions escaped from a box on board a train in southern China, a news report said yesterday. The scorpions were taken onto the train from Guangzhou to Chongqing in a cardboard box by a passenger who was on his way home to set up a scorpion farm, the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily reported. They escaped in Zhaoqing during Monday's journey and set off a panic as railway police, crew members and some passengers spent 30 minutes gathering the scorpions. The owner, from Sichuan, told officials afterwards he bought the scorpions for 2,000 yuan (US$241) to set up a scorpion farm, the newspaper said.

  ■ Singapore

  Party's Web site attacked

  Hackers have taken over the Singapore Democratic Party's Web site and turned www.singaporedemocrats.org into a pornographic website called "Mature Sex: Experience is Everything." Visitors to the site will find pictures of nude women instead of the opposition party's news and press releases. The party has since dropped the "s" and moved its contents to www.singaporedemocrat.org. Party Secretary-General Chee Soon-juan said, "The government monitors the opposition party Web sites, so they should know about this. Yet, they haven't made any attempts to block the Web site, even though it now contains pornographic material," he said.

  ■United Kingdom
  

  Hoon sure about Saddam

  The US and its allies in the war on Iraq have little doubt that former president Saddam Hussein remains in Iraq and will eventually be caught, British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said yesterday. Hoon, on a visit to Australia, also reiterated his view that Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction would be found in time. "I think the fact that as each day goes by we are successfully rounding up still more names on the list, that shows that we are having successes in locating particular individuals and I'm confident that eventually we will locate Saddam Hussein," he said.

  ■ Peru

  Truth about victims told

  In a dramatic upward revision of the number of victims, Peru's truth commission found between 40,000 and 60,000 people died or disappeared in the two decades when government forces battled a brutal insurgency by Shining Path guerrillas, the commission's president said. Previous estimates held that 30,000 were killed and 6,000 disappeared between 1980 and the early 1990s, the period of heaviest violence. The new figures emerged Tuesday as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission -- an autonomous, government appointed group -- neared the end of its two-year investigation, which included interviews with nearly 18,000 victims.

  ■ United States

  Biker's death sparks riots

  Hundreds of people in Benton Harbor Michigan rioted for a second straight night following the death of a biker who lost control of his speeding motorcycle while being chased by a police officer, setting houses and cars ablaze as authorities declared a state of emergency. Police confirmed one person was shot in the shoulder and said there have been a couple stabbings as well as beatings. Four houses and five private cars were on fire and several police cars were damaged in this southwestern Michigan city of about 12,000 people where allegations of police harassment have been a source of tension.

  ■ United States

  Drunk pilots cause concern

  After a doubling of airline pilots failing sobriety tests, the government has tightened procedures to keep those caught drunk out of the cockpit. Last year, 22 commercial airline pilots in the US tested positive for alcohol use, up from nine in 2001, and nine pilots have tested positive this year. That's only a fraction of the approximately 75,000 US. airline pilots but enough to cause the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to establish new procedures for dealing with drunk pilots. The jump in numbers led the FAA to change its policy in January so that pilots who fail sobriety tests immediately have both their medical and airman's certificates revoked.

  ■ United States

  Humvee crushes thieves

  Using his enormous all-terrain vehicle in an act of crime-fighting vigilantism, an Arizona business owner chased down a car-full of robbery suspects and ran over their getaway car with his Humvee. Three armed suspects had walked into the Mr. Insurance building in Phoenix at the weekend and demanded money, while a fourth suspect waited in the getaway car. When they fled, a co-owner chased them with his 3-tonne "Hummer." When he caught up with them, he rolled the truck over their car, leaving two suspects in critical condition.

  ■Russia
  

  Trapped miners saved

  Rescuers early yesterday saved four miners trapped for 40 hours after a ceiling collapse in a Siberian coal mine that killed at least 11 of their colleagues. All four were in good health, and none required hospitalization, said Andrei Yegorov, spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry. The miners were trapped when a ceiling fell in a shaft in the Ziminka mine in the Kemerovo region mining town of Prokopyevsk, about 3,000km east of Moscow, on Monday. Two miners were rescued and hospitalized. Three miners were able to crawl out of the collapsed area on their own, and the bodies of 11 who died had been recovered by Tuesday.

  ■ Germany

  Corpse dumped at castle

  The headless and naked corpse of a man was discovered at the parking lot on a road leading to the landmark castle Frankenstein near Darmstadt. Officials said a couple made the grisly find on Monday and alerted the authorities. No further clues were found during an extensive search of the forests around the hilltop medieval-style fortress. In what was termed a "gangland-style" killing, the bullet-riddled body of a male 30 to 50 years of age was devoid of clothes or any other possible clues to identification.

  ■ United States

  Double agent wants bail

  A wealthy Chinese-American woman who claims she was a double agent working for the US should not be granted bail, prosecutors said in arguing that she is a flight risk who could easily flee to China. Katrina Leung, who is accused of passing classified documents to China, filed a motion in federal court in Los Angeles on Monday asking that she be released on US$1 million bail. Leung is charged with obtaining classified documents from the briefcase of her FBI handler, James Smith, and copying them with the intent of using them to benefit a foreign nation. The government also alleges that Leung, 49, carried on sexual relationships with Smith, 59, and another FBI agent.

  ■ Italy

  Leader protests innocence

  Italy's billionaire Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi made a symbolic appearance at his own corruption trial on Tuesday, blustering against his adversaries but giving little strong new evidence, while parliament prepared to pass a law giving him immunity. Berlusconi protested his innocence, claiming the trial -- for allegedly corrupting judges during the 80s -- had been one long, entirely fictitious smear campaign. "There is nobody here. There is no murder weapon. There is no motive," Berlusconi told a packed Milan courtroom.

  ■ South Africa

  Boy looks for white family

  A South African boy who said he was abducted from a white family and brought up tending animals in a rural black township is not related to two white families who thought he was theirs, officials said on Tuesday. The case of the blond, pale-skinned youth known as "Happy Sindane" has gripped the country's media since he turned up at a police station on May 19 saying he had been kidnapped years ago. A white Afrikaner couple from the capital Pretoria said they thought Sindane might be their son, who vanished in 1992. But justice department spokesman Heinrich Augustyn said they and another white family who had volunteered for DNA tests had been shown not to be related to Sindane.

  Agencies
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