■PHILIPPINES
Aquino officially wins
Senator Benigno Aquino won last month’s presidential election by a landslide, final results released by parliament yesterday show. Aquino won 15,208,678 votes, with former president Joseph Estrada well back in second place with 9,487,837 votes. “We have finished our task,” House of Representatives Speaker Prospero Nograles said at the end of the official count. Aquino is scheduled to be proclaimed as the next president today.
■SINAGPORE
Briton sought for graffiti
The government said it would seek to extradite a British man accused of spray-painting a subway car with an alleged Swiss accomplice last month. A court issued an arrest warrant for Lloyd Dane Alexander for allegedly breaking into a train depot and vandalizing a subway car on May 16 with Oliver Fricker of Switzerland, the police said yesterday. They declined to give details on Alexander’s age, profession or possible whereabouts. Fricker, 33, was been charged on Saturday with one count of trespassing and two counts of vandalism. He is free after posting bail of S$100,000 (US$71,000). A preliminary hearing is set for June 21.
■NEW ZEALAND
Film cache returning to US
A cache of 75 long-lost silent films uncovered in the Film Archive vault is being sent back to the US. Among the movies found in storage is the only known copy of Upstream, by legendary director John Ford, the earliest surviving movie by comic actor and director Mabel Normand, and a period drama starring 1920s icon Clara Bow. Only 15 percent of the silent films made by Ford, who won four Oscars, have survived. Because the movies were printed on highly inflammable nitrate film stock, “there are very strict conditions when sending it by air,” Film Archive corporate services manager Steve Russell told the Dominion Post. Returning the films will cost the US National Film Preservation Foundation more than NZ$750,000 (US$500,000). “We’re having to ship in UN-approved steel barrels, a little bit at a time,” foundation director Annette Melville said. “So far, we’ve got about one-third of the films, and preservation work has already begun on four titles.”
■PHILIPPINES
Taal rumbling to life
A volcano 65km south of Manila is becoming active and may eventually erupt, scientists said yesterday as they warned tourists to avoid its famous crater. Taal is one of the most unstable of the country’s 22 known active volcanoes with 33 recorded eruptions, the last one in 1977. Experts raised the second of a five-level alert on Taal yesterday. Scientists say volcanic quakes in the area have been occurring since April and the crater lake was heating up.
■CHINA
Farmer makes a cannon
A farmer has declared war on property developers who want his land, building a cannon out of a wheelbarrow and pipes and firing rockets at would-be eviction teams, the China Daily said yesterday. Yang Youde, who lives on the outskirts of Wuhan, says he has fended off two eviction attempts with his cannon, which uses ammunition made from fireworks. “I shot only over their heads to frighten them,” the paper quoted him saying of his attacks on demolition workers. “I didn’t want to cause any injuries.” Yang says the local government has offered him 130,000 yuan (US$19,030) for his fields, but he wants five times that amount. In May he held off 100 people by firing from a makeshift watchtower.
■KUWAIT
Rights group defends writer
Human Rights Watch yesterday urged the government to stop prosecuting a prominent writer for criticizing officials and to lift a ban on media coverage. “Kuwait should stop prosecuting Mohammad Abdulqader al-Jassem, a journalist and blogger, for criticizing public officials,” the New York-based rights watchdog said in a statement. “Kuwait’s prosecution office should also lift its ban on media coverage of his case.” Jassem’s detention was extended until June 21.
■RUSSIA
Magistrate shot dead
A magistrate was shot dead in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan yesterday, where hours earlier a bomb beside a police car injured six, news agencies reported. Magistrate Abdurakhman Gamzatov was shot dead at night in his house, the Interfax news agency reported, citing police. Earlier, an explosive device packed with nuts and bolts injured six when it exploded beside a parked police car, near a market and a cafe in Makhachkala, ITAR-TASS reported. In Ingushetia, police killed two suspected rebels after they opened fire from a BMW car early yesterday, Interfax reported. The passengers shot at police with machine guns after being ordered to stop their car. Police responded, and the crossfire triggered an explosive device in the car, Interfax reported, citing an Interior Ministry source.
■IRAN
Reporter out on bail: report
A woman journalist arrested after violent clashes between police and protesters on the Shiite mourning day of Ashura has been freed on bail, an opposition Web site said yesterday. Badrolsadat Mofidi, secretary of the reformist Iran Journalists’ Association, was freed on bail of 1 billion rials (US$95,200), Kaleme.com said. Mofidi was detained after mass protests during the Ashura ceremonies on Dec. 27 by opposition supporters against the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
■POLAND
Crash victim’s account used
Authorities said on Monday someone stole a credit card from the wreckage of the plane crash that killed former president Lech Kaczynski and 95 others in Russia, and the card was used to withdraw cash. Itar-Tass news agency reported on Monday that three soldiers have been arrested. An unnamed source said the three worked at the airport in Smolensk, where the plane was to land. Monika Lewandowska, a spokeswoman for Warsaw prosecutors, said 6,000 Polish zlotys (US$1,700) was withdrawn from the account of Andrzej Przewoznik, who died in the crash on April 10 near Smolensk. Przewoznik oversaw Poland’s wartime memorials. Lewandowska said two cards were stolen and one was used hours later, in the first of 11 withdrawals over three days from an automatic teller machine in Smolensk.
■RWANDA
US lawyer denied bail
A court denied bail on Monday to a US lawyer arrested 10 days ago on charges of genocide denial and threatening state security, despite pleas from his legal team that he be freed on health grounds. Peter Erlinder, the first foreigner accused under the 2008 genocide ideology law, pleaded not guilty at a hearing on Friday and his four-lawyer team said they will appeal the bail ruling. He faces a minimum sentence of 10 years prison. Erlinder was in the country to defend outspoken opposition presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire, head of the United Democratic Forces movement. She has been released on bail.
■TURKEY
Bomb blast injures 15
A bomb attack targeting police in Istanbul injured at least 15 people yesterday, most of them police officers, officials and media reports said. Police said it was not immediately clear who was behind the blast in the Kucukcekmece district. The bomb went off as a police minibus carrying officers to work was passing in front of a hospital in the morning rush hour. “It looks like a bomb that was placed by the side of the road … It may have been set off by remote control,” Istanbul police chief Huseyin Capkin told the Anatolia news agency. The NTV news channel said most of the casualties had shrapnel injuries, none of them serious.
■CUBA
Havana Province to be split
The government will split the province of Havana into two to make local government more efficient, state-run media said yesterday. The division would cut travel distances for provincial employees, make services more accessible and add local political clout by giving each province its own capital, said Granma, the Communist Party newspaper. The idea, awaiting approval by parliament, appears to be part of President Raul Castro’s drive to improve the country’s productivity. The two provinces would be called Mayabeque and Artemisa, the paper said.
■UNITED STATES
Bird smugglers sentenced
A man who smuggled 14 Asian songbirds into the country by hiding them inside his pants during a flight from Vietnam to Los Angeles was sentenced on Monday to four months in prison. Sony Dong, of Garden Grove, California, was also ordered to pay US$4,000 in restitution to federal authorities caring for the birds. The 46-year-old was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport last year after an inspector spotted bird droppings on his socks and saw feathers peeking out from under his pants. The birds were held in cloth wrappings attached to his legs and calves. Codefendant Duc Le, whom prosecutors said was the ringleader of the operation, was sentenced to six months in prison. He was ordered to pay US$25,000 in restitution.
■UNITED STATES
Proposal plan leads to death
Richard Butler wanted his girlfriend to think they were just taking a scenic hike in the North Carolina mountains, but he had a secret plan. When they got to the top, he planned to pull out a ring and ask her to be his bride. Lightning struck three times as the Knoxville, Tennessee, couple were on Max Patch Bald, near Asheville. The third hit Butler, 30, and his girlfriend, Bethany Lott, 25, killing her on Friday, he told the Asheville Citizen Times. He suffered third-degree burns. “She didn’t say anything, and I turned around and she was laying a few feet away, and I crawled to her,” he told the newspaper on Monday. “I did CPR for probably 15 minutes and the whole time was trying her cellphone, but I couldn’t get anything out.” His mother, Janet Delaney, said Lott loved the mountains: “She hiked thousands of miles and spent a couple of years in Utah just hiking.”
■PERU
Kangaroo on the menu
The government has approved the import of kangaroo meat from Australia, officials said on Monday. Only kangaroo meat raised for the express purpose of being used for human consumption will be allowed for import. Kangaroo is a red meat very similar in appearance to tenderloin that might come from ox. It is seen as a low-fat alternative to beef.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
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