■PHILIPPINES
Military kills two gunmen
Government troops yesterday clashed with armed followers of a political warlord who was arrested in connection with the nation’s worst election-related massacre, killing two gunmen, the military said. Troops on combat patrol confronted about 30 men in the outskirts of southern Maguindanao province, triggering a gunfight that killed two, military spokesman Major Randolph Cabangbang said. Prosecutors have charged Andal Ampatuan Sr, a former three-term Maguindanao governor, and his son, Andal Ampatuan Jr, with murder in connection with the killings of 57 people on Nov. 23. Among the massacre victims were supporters and relatives of Esmael Mangudadatu, who is running for governor.
■CHINA
Panda feasts on bones
Hunger drove a wild panda to break into a farmer’s pig pen and eat their food, consisting of meat and bones. State-run China Central TV said the giant panda had apparently descended from the mountains in a region of Sichuan Province and was spotted in a field before the animal was found inside the pig pen, chewing on bones and spitting out the meat. After eating its fill, the panda quietly left. Although classified as carnivores, the giant pandas’ diet is mainly bamboo, but it also eats other foods, including honey, eggs, fish, oranges and bananas when available.
■SOUTH KOREA
Clampdown on abortion
The health ministry announced a crackdown on abortionists as part of a drive to boost its low birthrate, a pressing issue in the rapidly aging society. The ministry said it would establish a “call center” on illegal abortion and informants would receive rewards. Obstetricians involved in illegal abortion will be referred to prosecutors for criminal charges, it said. An association of obstetrics and gynecology also promised to expel members who do not follow government guidelines. Official data showed the birth rate — the average number of babies born during a woman’s lifetime — was 1.15 last year, the lowest since 1.08 in 2005, as more couples delayed marriage.
■AUSTRALIA
Residents urged to flee
A wildfire towering up to 18m-high bore down on homes in the Outback yesterday, officials said, urging residents to flee. An emergency warning released at 5pm Sydney time said houses in an area near Eneabba, north of Perth, would be in danger in a matter of hours as the blaze burns out of control. “Homes in these areas will be impacted by fire in the next three hours. Embers are likely to be blown around your home,” the Fire and Emergency Services Authority of Western Australia said in a statement. “This means if you are in this area your best option for survival is away from the fire. If the way is clear, leave for your safer place now and take your survival kit with you.” About 166 firefighters using dozens of fire engines and aircraft were battling the flames, which have already consumed 22,000 hectares of land.
■CAMBODIA
Seoul to fund Angkor road
South Korea has provided US$9.2 million to Cambodia to build a new road that will circle the famed Angkor temple complex and reduce traffic in the area, officials said yesterday. The 21km road will be closed to trucks to reduce pollution, noise and vibrations that could damage the ancient ruins, said Soeung Kong, vice secretary-general of the government agency that oversees the temples. Construction will start this year and take three years to complete, he said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Cold War bunker for sale
A Cold War-era nuclear bunker has been put up for sale on online auction site eBay, and by yesterday bidders had pushed the price up to £19,300 (US$29,000). “A rare opportunity to acquire a piece of Cold War history,” the sale advert read on the Web site. After being advertised at a starting price of £500 late on Thursday, a bidding war saw the price of the underground shelter rocket. Early yesterday the price stood at £19,300 after 39 bids. Late on Sunday, eBay listed the top bid as more than £27,000, but later canceled this offer, saying it had been an “unsound bid.” The auction ends on Sunday. The bunker came into service in 1959 and was used by the Royal Observer Corps, a civilian defense organization composed mainly of volunteers who had the task of reporting nuclear attack and fallout.
■EGYPT
Ancient statue resurfaces
A colossal 3,000-year-old red granite head of Amenhotep III, the grandfather of Tutankhamun, has been discovered in Luxor, Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said on Sunday. Smoothly polished and showing “youthful sculpted features,” the 2.5m-high head belonged to a statue of Amenhotep III in a standing position wearing the Upper Egyptian white crown and clutching the royal insignia. Scientists conducting DNA tests and CT scans on a number of mummies have identified Amenhotep III as the grandfather of Tutakhamun, the teenage-king who was born of an incestuous marriage between Akhenaten and his sister, both the offspring of Amenhotep III.
■IRAN
Journalists, professor freed
Four reformist journalists and a professor detained after last year’s disputed presidential poll that sparked anti-government protests were freed on bail on Sunday, ILNA news agency said. It said journalists Abdolreza Tajik, Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, Mohammad Javad Mozafar, who is also a prisoners rights activist, and Behrang Tonkaboni, chief editor of a cultural magazine, were freed from Tehran’s Evin prison. A retired university professor, Mohammad Sadeq Rabani, was also released after posting bail, the agency said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
New drug offers hope
New imaging technology suggests an experimental drug for Alzheimer’s reduces clumps of plaque in the brain by about 25 percent, lifting hopes for a medicine that disappointed in clinical tests two years ago. Bapineuzumab — being developed by Pfizer Inc, Irish drugmaker Elan Corp and Johnson & Johnson — is a potential game-changer because it could be the first drug to treat the underlying cause of the degenerative brain disease.
■UNITED STATES
Sony atrium collapses
Ice broke through the ceiling of an atrium at the Sony Building in New York City, showering glass over partygoers who scurried to avoid it and leaving 10 with minor injuries, authorities and a witness said. Ice left by last week’s storms fell from the 32nd floor of the building on Madison Avenue in Manhattan late on Saturday night, shattering two 1m-by-1.5m glass panels in the lobby, Buildings Department spokesman Tony Sclafani said. Shirley Rozman said she was attending a party celebrating the Jewish holiday of Purim in the building when she heard “what sounded like some plates breaking.” She said she then heard a pop. “I looked up, and there was glass flying everywhere,” Rozman said. “It looked like a hailstorm.”
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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