■PHILIPPINES
Appeals made for priest
Authorities and church officials yesterday launched fresh appeals for the safety of an elderly Irish priest they fear may be in dire need of medical attention eight days after he was abducted by unknown gunmen. Thousands of flyers were being handed out in coastal communities on the troubled southern island of Mindanao seeking help to get medicine delivered to Father Michael Sinnott, 79. “We appeal to your kind heart that the medicines will be delivered to Father Sinnott who currently has a serious heart ailment,” read one flyer released by the provincial government of Zamboanga del Sur. No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction of the Roman Catholic missionary.
■PHILIPPINES
Bridge bombed on Jolo
Suspected Muslim militants bombed a bridge before dawn on Saturday on a southern island where two US soldiers were killed recently, the military said. The blast damaged one of the lanes of the bridge in Talipao town on Jolo, but caused no casualties, military spokesmen said. Despite the damage, the bridge was still passable, the military said.
■PHILIPPINES
Shootout erupts at mall
A shootout erupted yesterday in a posh shopping mall in Manila after suspected robbers broke into a watch shop, police said. One suspect was killed, but no customers were hurt in the incident at Greenbelt 5 in Makati City, Chief Superintendent Jaime Calungsod said. According to initial investigations, at least six heavily armed suspects barged into the Rolex shop on the ground floor of the mall before noon. Calungsod said authorities were conducting an inventory to determine how many watches were stolen. The mall was temporarily closed.
■CHINA
Villagers being resettled
Authorities have started resettling 330,000 people in central China to make way for a project to divert water from its major rivers across hundreds of kilometers to the booming cities in its arid north. People in Hubei and Henan provinces are being relocated from their homes near the Danjiangkou reservoir, where a sluice will be built to divert water from the Yangtze river to northern regions, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The resettlement will be completed in 2011, Xinhua said, citing Henan provincial authorities. An official said earlier this year the water project would be delayed to allow for more time to resettle villagers, saying the central route of the plan will not be finished until 2014, instead of next year. When completed, the project’s three routes will move billions of tonnes of water from China’s central, southern and western regions through pipes and man-made canals to Beijing and other fast-growing cities in the country’s north.
■AUSTRALIA
Train-strike mum stressed
The mother of a baby that miraculously survived a collision with a train is still recovering from the experience and becomes upset by footage of the accident, a report said yesterday. The six-month-old boy, who has not been named, was strapped into a pram which rolled away from his mother and into the path of an oncoming train at Melbourne’s Ashburton Station on Thursday. The train driver slammed on the brakes, but was unable to avoid hitting the stroller, which was pushed about 35m along the tracks before coming to a stop. The baby escaped with only a bump to the head. The incident was captured by a surveillance camera and the video has been shown around the world. The baby’s father said his wife had seen the footage. “My wife has seen the footage, but every time she sees it she gets very upset,” the 20-something man, who asked not to be identified, told Melbourne’s Sunday Herald Sun. “My wife is very stressed. We are all OK — my wife and my baby are OK — but we really just need some time to get over this.”
■JAPAN
Musician Kato found dead
Police say musician Kazuhiko Kato, founder of the Sadistic Mika Band, has been found dead in a hotel room in an apparent suicide. He was 62. A police official in Nagano, northwest of Tokyo, said yesterday that hotel employees and police officers found Kato on Saturday. They found two suicide notes in his room, said the police official, who declined to be named, citing department policy. Media reports said Kato hanged himself with a rope and had been suffering from depression.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Scottish defend decision
The controversial decision to free the Lockerbie bomber was in line with the principles of India’s Mahatma Gandhi, Scotland’s first minister said on Saturday, drawing criticism from opponents. Alex Salmond praised his Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill for making the decision to release Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds in August. Megrahi has terminal cancer and is now back in Libya, his homeland. The only person ever convicted of the crime, Megrahi was jailed for at least 27 years in 2001 over the bombing of a Pan Am flight above the town of Lockerbie on Dec. 21, 1988, and served eight years of a life sentence. The bombing killed 270 people, most of them Americans.
■SPAIN
Thousands protest abortion
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Madrid on Saturday to condemn plans by the socialist government to liberalize abortion laws in the overwhelmingly Catholic country. In warm autumnal sunshine, protesters staged an early evening march across the city behind a huge banner reading “Every Life Matters” to protest the plan, which would allow girls of 16 to undergo abortions without their parents’ consent. The crowd, which included many families and people of all ages, rallied in the central Plaza de Independencia, where pop music blared over loudspeakers and 300 white helium balloons were released.
■GUINEA
Junta wants AU talks
The head of the military junta has told the African Union (AU) he wants the question of his standing in presidential polls to be discussed as part of international mediation, his foreign minister said. Junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara “wrote to the African Union and Economic Community of West African States requesting that it be assigned to the mediation of Burkina Faso” President Blaise Compaore, Alexandre Cece Loua said. The AU had given Camara until midnight on Saturday to make a written pledge not to stand in the January presidential election, as he had promised when he seized power in January the year following the death of longtime strongman Lansana Conte, or have sanctions slapped on his country.
■CZECH REPUBLIC
President may sign EU text
“Euroskeptic” President Vaclav Klaus, the last EU leader holding out on signing the EU’s reforming Lisbon Treaty, suggested on Saturday that he would ultimately sign the text. “The train carrying the treaty is going so fast and it’s so far that it can’t be stopped or returned, no matter how much some of us would want that,” he told the Lidove noviny daily. Klaus, who angered EU partners when he further delayed the ratification process by asking for an opt-out on the treaty earlier this month, added that he still did not see the text as a good thing for “freedom in Europe.”
■SUDAN
Two aid workers released
Two members of Irish aid agency GOAL kidnapped in the conflict-stricken Darfur region in July were freed early yesterday after more than 100 days in captivity, a minister said. Irish national Sharon Commins and Ugandan Hilda Kawuki were kidnapped in the North Darfur town of Kutum on July 3. They were taken by a gang of armed men from a compound run by GOAL.
The two women were in Kutum and were due later yesterday to fly to Khartoum before returning to their respective countries.
■MEXICO
Dead man hung from bridge
Tijuana police found a man’s nude, mutilated body hung by the neck from an expressway overpass on Saturday, the second such grisly discovery in nine days. The prosecutor’s office said the victim “showed multiple blows” and “cuts on several parts of the body.” Local news media said the man’s tongue was cut out, a kind of mutilation often inflicted by gangs on suspected informants. The unidentified victim was believed to be between 55 and 60 years old. On Oct. 9, the mutilated body of a state official who authorities said was suspected of giving fake driver’s licenses to drug gang members were found hanging from another bridge in Tijuana. Also on Saturday, prosecutors said that police reported finding the mutilated body of a woman in a reservoir in another part of Tijuana. The woman’s hands and head were missing.
■UNITED STATES
Lost manatee’s fate unclear
The fate of a Florida manatee that has wandered into northern New Jersey waters remained unclear on Saturday night. The wayward male — known as Ilya — has been stuck near a Linden oil refinery, and officials say plunging temperatures and a lack of food were endangering its life. And while the manatee appears to be in good health, it had been huddling near an outfall pipe at an oil refinery — the only place it could find warm water. Officials with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in New Jersey say Ilya was last seen Friday afternoon. Bad weather along the New Jersey shore has stymied rescue efforts.
■UNITED STATES
Store gets bear cooler
Shoppers at Marketplace Foods in Hayward, Wisconsin, got an unexpected surprise on Friday night when a 58kg black bear wandered inside and headed straight for the beer cooler. The bear sauntered through the store’s automatic doors and headed straight for the liquor department, WEAU-TV reported. It calmly climbed up 3.7m onto a shelf in the beer cooler where it sat for about an hour while employees helped evacuate customers and summoned wildlife officials. Officials from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources tranquilized the animal and took it out of the store. Store workers say the bear seemed content in the cooler and did not consume any alcohol.
■UNITED STATES
Andover hires goat herd
Andover, Massachusetts has hired a half-dozen goats to clear and maintain an overgrown public meadow. Lucy McKain’s dairy goats will rotate their grazing around the meadow for an all-you-can-eat buffet of grass, brush and other growth — for free. The fact it’s free was important to Andover officials, since money is tight and they couldn’t afford the heavy equipment, fuel and labor needed to clean up the meadow. If this pilot program proves a success, Andover officials want to make more public parkland available to other grazing animals.
■CANADA
Circus performer dies
A Cirque du Soleil performer has died after falling off a trampoline during a training session in Montreal. The company said Oleksandr Zhurov (Sacha) died in a Montreal hospital on Saturday, one day after the 24-year-old Ukrainian performer fell while doing general training exercises. Zhurov joined the company a few months ago. Cirque founder Guy Laliberte says he was deeply saddened by the death of the artist.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
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