■ Philippines
Captain `lacked training'
The captain of a sunken tanker that has created the country's worst ever oil spill was not properly trained to pilot the ship, a Manila newspaper claimed yesterday. The findings of a preliminary investigation into the Aug. 11 disaster by the Maritime Industry Authority showed the tanker captain did not have "advance training on oil tanker operations" according to a report in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. According to the Inquirer, the authority found that the tanker's captain, Norberto Aguro, "did not have advance training on oil tanker operations."
■ Nepal
Naked women plow for rain
Dozens of women stripped naked and plowed their fields in west Nepal, hoping to appease the gods and get some much needed rain, a newspaper report said yesterday. About 50 women in two villages in Kapilvastu District, 190km west of Kathmandu, resorted to the desperate move at night on Friday as days of prayers failed to bring rains for the parched paddy crop, it said. "This is our last weapon," the Rajdhani quoted one of the women as saying.
■ Nepal
Protesters take to streets
Thousands of protesters demonstrating against rises in the prices of gasoline, diesel and cooking fuel clashed with police, blocked traffic and vandalized government vehicles in the capital yesterday. Police used batons to beat protesters who gathered at three locations in Kathmandu while at least half a dozen government motorcycles and cars were torched by the protesters. Protesting drivers blocked the Prithvi highway, the main route to Kathmandu, cutting off most trans-portation to the capital.
■ United Kingdom
Woman opts for green travel
It's a dilemma for a dedicated environmental activist: your friend is getting married in Australia, you're in Britain, what do you do? Travel overland to avoid carbon emissions from aircraft, of course. Barbara "Babs" Haddrill, 28, is doing just that, undertaking a six-week trip from mid-Wales to Brisbane by train, bus and boat for bridesmaid duties in a homemade dress before heading back using the same means. "I feel like I have devoted myself to doing what I can to reduce my impact on the environment," she wrote on her blog, babs2brisbane.blogspot.com. "If I flew to Australia I would negate everything I have done for the last six years and that would seem sad."
■ Afghanistan
71 militants killed
Afghan forces aided by NATO aircraft and artillery killed 71 suspected Taliban militants in running battles in southern Afghanistan that also left five Afghan troops dead in one of the bloodiest clashes since the 2001 US-led invasion. The insurgents were killed in a series of clashes which started on Saturday and spilled into yesterday morning following a militant attack in Panjwayi district of southern Kandahar Province, said Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi, the district chief. A purported Taliban spokesman said 12 insurgents were killed and eight were wounded. Afghanistan's southern provinces are bearing the brunt of the worst bout of violence to have rocked the country as insurgents try to undermine the authority of President Hamid Karzai.
■ Hong Kong
BA warns staff of bar
British Airways (BA) has banned its staff from drinking at a popular bar after stewardesses were slipped a date-rape drug while drinking there, a media report said yesterday. The ban follows a warning to the British flag-carrier's 13,000 staff last November about the threat of drinks being spiked with the tranquillizer Rohypnol while drinking off-duty in unsavory bars. The Sunday Morning Post, citing sources, said the airline was concerned about one popular unnamed bar in the seedy Wanchai district following complaints from four stewardesses that they felt unwell after visiting it in the past year.
■ China
Alleged abbot killer arrested
Police have arrested a man suspected of slaying 10 people in a Taoist temple in the country's northwest last month, state media said yesterday. Qiu Xinghua, a 47-year old farmer, had confessed to killing the abbot, five other staff and four pilgrims at the Tiewadian temple in Ankang, Shaanxi Province, the Xinhua news agency reported, quoting local police. The murders at the remote mountain temple happened in the middle of last month, sparking a huge manhunt and a 50,000 yuan (US$6,250) reward. Xinhua quoted media reports saying the killer had cut out the abbot's eyes, heart and lungs and fried them in a wok.
■ Vietnam
Death toll rises to 33
New landslides and flash floods have claimed seven more lives, raising the death toll to 33 after 10 days of heavy rains, officials said yesterday. On Saturday, four people were killed in two separate landslips in the mountainous northern province of Yen Bai. Two others were found dead in a flash flood in Thanh Hoa Province and one in northern Phu Tho, said an official of the National Flood and Storm Control Committee in Hanoi. Dozens of people were also injured and three were reported missing, he said.
agencies
■ Nigeria
German hostage freed
A German oil worker taken hostage at gunpoint was freed late on Friday night unharmed after two weeks in captivity, a state government spokesman said on Saturday. The release of Guido Schiffarth was simultaneous with, but not a result of, a military raid on a suspected militant hideout on the outskirts of the city of Port Harcourt. "I was well treated and respected," Schiffarth was quoted as saying by a spokesman for the Rivers State government. The 62-year-old was snatched from his car by armed men disguised as soldiers in Port Harcourt on Aug. 3.
■ Germany
E-mail leaves red faces
Two women complaining on office e-mail about their partners' poor sex drive found the details of their private lives broadcast to thousands after one of them hit the wrong button, Bild newspaper said on Saturday. "Everyone stares at us now and whispers behind our backs," Anica G, a 21-year-old worker at the Federal Labor Office, told the paper. The e-mails between Anica and colleague Christina S, with descriptions on how the women try but fail to arouse their partners, were first sent by accident to other colleagues in their department. They were then forwarded to thousands throughout the Labor Office and other government agencies and then widely distributed nationwide.
■ United States
Man shoots at fire crew
An Arizona man angry at firefighters who refused to rescue a cat from a tree was arrested after he started shooting at the fire crew, officials said. Jeffrey Cullen, 58, was charged with four felony counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a Mohave County Sheriff's spokeswoman said. A fire crew went to Cullen's home on Thursday when he reported a tree fire, but found no blaze, a Fire Department spokeswoman said. Instead, Cullen told firefighters he wanted a cat rescued from his tree and knew they would only respond to a fire call, she said. A battalion chief told Cullen to call animal control or wait for the cat to get hungry and come down. Cullen apparently did not like the response, the spokeswoman said.
■ Spain
PM denies peace in danger
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero denied on Saturday that the Basque peace process was in crisis. "The only one who is in a total and definitive crisis is he who supports the violence," Zapatero told a public meeting in the Canary Islands in an apparent reference to a refusal by the outlawed Basque nationalist party Batasuna to condemn violence by its armed wing ETA. The comments came a day after ETA said the peace process was "in crisis" and threatened to retaliate against what it called "attacks" on nationalist politicians.
■ Germany
Marchers mark Hess' death
A few hundred far-right supporters marched in Jena on Saturday, marking the anniversary this week of the death of Adolf Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess. Some 350 people took part in the march, police said, while a larger crowd of about 1,800 turned out for a counter-demonstration. About 120 far-right supporters marched in Munich. Police said about 250 people demonstrated against right-wing extremism in Wunsiedel, where Hess is buried. Hess hanged himself at age 93 in Spandau Prison in Berlin on Aug. 17, 1987, after nearly 41 years as a prisoner.
■ United Kingdom
Prescott in spotlight again
Scandal-hit Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is on the spot about his son's business dealings amid claims that he was cashing in on his father's house-building plans. The Sunday Times said that Johnathan Prescott's regeneration firm, Estate Partnerships, was identifying land for property firms that would rise in value with planning permission. "I keep my business very clean and my dad doesn't know anything -- we never speak about my business. I don't tout my name," the younger Prescott told the paper. John Prescott was responsible for planning decisions in England and Wales until May 5, when he was stripped of his department in a government reshuffle.
■ Italy
Ten die after boat sinks
A boat carrying 120 illegal immigrants bound for Italy sank south of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa early on Saturday, killing at least 10 people, port authorities in Palermo said. An Italian Navy ship, the Minerva, spotted the boat before dawn on Saturday about 18km south of Lampedusa, and sent rescue vessels, Admiral Ferdinando Lavaggi said. The craft overturned after the migrants -- mostly Moroccans and Egyptians -- moved to one side of the 10m boat, he said. About 70 people were rescued and 10 bodies were recovered, Lavaggi said.
■ Kenya
Somalis back rebels
Somalia's weak, UN-backed transitional government will work with an Eritrean rebel group because it claims the Eritrean government is supporting Islamic groups who control most of southern Somalia, officials said. Officials of Somalia's transitional government said they met with those of the Eritrean Liberation Front in Geneva on Friday. They said in a joint statement e-mailed to reporters on Saturday that there would be other meetings of higher level representatives. The statement did not elaborate how the two would work together.
■ Ecuador
Aid needed after eruption
The eruption of Tungurahua has left 20,000 people living in the shadow of the volcano in urgent need of assistance, Red Cross officials said on Saturday. President Alfredo Palacio has appealed to the international community for donations of money and material aid for the residents of seven nearby villages damaged or destroyed by the current eruption, which began on Wednesday. The central government has issued disaster declarations for at least three provinces. At least five people have been killed and 30 more are believed to be missing since Wednesday. At least 4,000 people have evacuated and sought emergency shelter. Electricity was out and drinking water sources have been fouled by the eruption.
■ Germany
Bomb suspect arrested
The authorities arrested a Lebanese student suspected of helping plant two bombs that failed to explode on trains last month, officials said. The 21-year-old was detained on Saturday, a day after investigators released surveillance camera footage from July 31, the day of the attempted bombing, showing two men with heavy luggage who were believed to have planted the devices. The man was arrested early Saturday morning at the main station in the Baltic Sea port city of Kiel, where he lived and studied. Chief prosecutor Monika Harms said he apparently had planned to flee the country, but she did not say where he wanted to go.
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
ISSUE: Some foreigners seek women to give birth to their children in Cambodia, and the 13 women were charged with contravening a law banning commercial surrogacy Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday thanked Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni for granting a royal pardon last year to 13 Filipino women who were convicted of illegally serving as surrogate mothers in the Southeast Asian kingdom. Marcos expressed his gratitude in a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Manila for talks on expanding trade, agricultural, tourism, cultural and security relations. The Philippines and Cambodia belong to the 10-nation ASEAN, a regional bloc that promotes economic integration but is divided on other issues, including countries whose security alignments is with the US or China. Marcos has strengthened