■PHILIPPINES
President fish nearly extinct
A species of mullet reputed to be one of the favorite dishes of former president Ferdinand Marcos is facing extinction because it is so valuable, a fisheries official said yesterday. The high value of the “president’s fish” has resulted in over fishing, seriously diminishing its numbers, said Jovita Ayson, a regional director of the fisheries bureau. “It is a threatened species and we have to do something about it before it goes extinct,” she said. The fisheries bureau is calling for a five-year ban on the catching of Cestraeus plicatilis, locally known as “ludong” or “banak.”
■NEW ZEALAND
Muslims demand apology
The Islamic community has written to Prime Minister John Key demanding an apology for a joke one of his ministers made about Muslims, the Dominion Post newspaper reported yesterday. The president of the Federation of Islamic Associations New Zealand, Anwar Ghani, said Muslims were “very upset” about the remarks made in a speech by Building Minister Maurice Williamson. “We brought it to the notice of the PM saying that what was said was highly inappropriate and the minister should be reprimanded and apologize,” Ghani told the newspaper. Williamson cracked a joke about Muslims and the practice of stoning while giving a speech at a building industry awards ceremony last month.
■MYANMAR
Free Suu Kyi, says US
The US on Friday dismissed a decision by the military regime that runs the country to allow opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to vote in the Nov. 7 elections, saying that the junta should instead free her and start a genuine dialogue. “We urge the authorities to release all the political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi,” US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. He urged the junta “to begin a genuine political dialogue with the democratic opposition and also the ethnic minority leaders as a first step towards national reconciliation.” Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, is boycotting the elections.
■MYANMAR
White elephant hailed
Myanmar’s military regime yesterday hailed the capture of a rare white elephant as a sign of a successful “democratic transition” in the upcoming controversial elections. Historically considered to herald good fortune, the elephant was caught on Thursday in western Rakhine state — the fifth found since 2001 and a source of “national pride,” the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper said. Kings and leaders in Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country, have traditionally treasured white elephants, whose rare appearances in the country are believed to herald good fortune, including power and political change.
■INDIA
Actor helps save tigers
Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio will put his fame to work to raise global awareness about the dwindling number of tigers in the country, an official said yesterday. DiCaprio and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh met at a reception on Friday in New York organized by the Coalition of Rainforest Nations, an inter-governmental organization. “The actor met the minister and has expressed his interest to play a crucial role in sensitising the global community to the cause of the Indian tiger,” a senior environment ministry said in New Delhi. India’s endangered tiger population has plummeted to 1,350 — just over a third of the 3,700 estimated to be alive in 2002.
■BRAZIL
Blade removed after years
A man in Recife is recovering after surgeons removed a 1cm blade that had been stuck in his head for three years following a bar fight. Edeilson Nascimento, a 29-year-old tire repairman, told reporters on Friday he was feeling great after the three-hour surgery. Nascimento said he got into a bar fight in 2007 and was attacked by assailants. At the time, doctors only removed the knife handle, fearing that pulling the blade from his head would cause brain damage. However, three years of intense headaches led Nascimento to take a chance on the surgery.
■RUSSIA
Suicide bomber strikes
A suicide bomber blew himself up in the North Caucasus province of Dagestan, wounding at least 26 people, Russian news agencies reported yesterday. The attacker set off explosives after approaching police guarding a cordoned-off site where security forces had battled with suspected militants hours earlier, Interfax reported. Unidentified assailants gunned down a school principal in her home in Makhachkala earlier on Friday, while separate shootouts killed 12 people across the North Caucasus. An Islamist insurgency is raging in the mainly Muslim region, where rebels angry about poverty and fueled by the ideology of global jihad want to carve out an independent state governed by Shariah law.
■VENEZUELA
Chavez low-key after death
President Hugo Chavez says the death of a top Colombian rebel leader in a military raid shouldn’t make anyone happy and that he hopes the sides in Colombia reach a peace deal. In 2008 he called the death of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) commander Raul Reyes in another raid a “cowardly assassination.” However, his reaction to this week’s killing of the FARC’s powerful No. 2 commander Jorge Briceno, or “Mono Jojoy,” was much calmer. Chavez said on Friday that “like the monsignor of the Colombia Catholic Church said, and I say as well: ‘One shouldn’t be happy at the death of anyone.’”
■UNITED STATES
Georgia delays execution
Georgia’s state Supreme Court has delayed until tomorrow the execution of a convicted triple murderer, his second reprieve this week after an attempted suicide. The court said it granted the delay 2.5 hours before Brandon Joseph Rode, 31, had been due to be executed by lethal injection at 7pm on Friday. Rhode and an accomplice were sentenced to death for murdering an 11-year-old boy, his 15-year-old sister and their father during a botched robbery in 1998. On Tuesday, Rhode’s execution was given a three-day reprieve by the state Supreme Court after he tried to slash his throat and elbows with a razor.
■UNITED STATES
Teller kidnapped for burglary
Bank robbers in Miami kidnapped a teller from his home, strapped explosives on him and forced him on Friday to de mand an undisclosed sum of money from the branch where he works. FBI Miami chief Dena Choucair said bank teller Diego Uscamayta was kidnapped late on Thursday at his home by three gunmen and was threatened with being blown up if he did not follow their instructions. Coral Gables Police Chief Richard Naue told reporters the three suspects sent Uscamayta inside the Bank of America branch in Miami’s Coral Gables neighborhood and fled after Uscamayta handed the money to them and police freed him from the explosive-laced vest. The suspects are still at large.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
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