PHILIPPINES
Army finds mutilated bodies
Soldiers found four bodies, including the mutilated corpses of two soldiers, after a breakaway Muslim rebel group launched co-ordinated raids in the south, the army said yesterday. The discoveries raised the death toll to seven a day after the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters simultaneously attacked 11 towns on Mindanao Island, the soldiers’ commander Lieutenant Colonel Kit Teofilo said. “The face of one soldier was mangled [and he] was shot in the head. The other had torture marks all over his body, including hack wounds. It was a horrible crime committed by heartless individuals,” Teofilo said. The corpses of two more male victims were recovered at a roadside, also suspected to have been killed by the raiders, the battalion commander said in a statement.
VIETNAM
Tourists die mysteriously
Authorities are investigating the mysterious deaths of two tourists from the US and Canada who stayed in the same guesthouse, official media reported on Monday. American Karin Joy Bowerman, 27, and Canadian Cathy Huynh, 26, died last week at a hospital in southern Nha Trang Province, the Tuoi Tre newspaper said. Bowerman died on July 30 after suffering “a mysterious illness” and respiratory failure, while Huynh died two days later after developing similar symptoms and suffering a cardiac arrest, the report said. The pair, who had shared a room in a guesthouse in Nha Trang — a popular seaside resort — might have “drunk too much wine” which led to their deaths, a police investigator told the paper. The family of Huynh, a Canadian of Vietnamese descent, has disputed this account, the report said, adding that police are waiting for the results of the autopsy tests to establish the cause of death.
MALAYSIA
Suspected exorcism kills girl
A three-year-old girl was killed in a suspected exorcism ritual by family members who believed she was possessed by evil spirits, police said yesterday. Police raided a house in northern Penang State late on Sunday after receiving a distress call from a family member and found a group of eight people lying on top of the girl in a bedroom, district police chief Azman Abdul Lah said. The girl was face-down under the human pile, which comprised her parents, grandmother, uncle, aunt, two cousins and their Indonesian maid, he said. The room was dark and chanting could be heard from under a blanket covering the group, Azman said. The girl died of suffocation, and all eight involved have been detained, he added.
SOUTH KOREA
K-pop singer goes viral
An eccentric K-pop singer has become a global online hit after a video of his latest song was viewed more than 15 million times on YouTube. Park Jae-sang, 34, better known by his stage name “Psy,” is riding high in the charts with Gangnam Style, the title track of his sixth album. The video featuring Psy performing the so-called “horse dance” — similar to riding a horse — has gone viral and pop stars overseas have tweeted about the wacky performance. Fans all over the world have created parody versions of the song and posted them on YouTube. The song has been No. 1 on the country’s major music charts for more than three weeks and is also high on the iTunes store in the US, Canada, Finland, New Zealand and Denmark. Psy could not be reached for comment on Monday, but he told Yonhap News Agency on Sunday: “My motto is: ‘Be funny, but not stupid.’”
MEXICO
Kiss-in held to protest arrest
Couples of all ages locked lips outside a church in the conservative central city of Leon to protest the arrest of a man for kissing his female companion. The “kiss-in” — held at noon on Sunday to coincide with mass — received applause from some parishioners at the Catholic church. Manuel Berumen, a 38-year-old university lecturer, was detained for 12 hours for engaging in the public display of affection while strolling on Thursday in a nearby square with his partner and their four-year-old son. “I took Mayra and kissed her, nothing out of the ordinary. And then we heard a person screaming: ‘There are children here — children!’ as if we were naked or engaging in pornography on the street,” Berumen said on Monday after filing a complaint to the country’s human rights advocacy agency. He and his partner were charged with offenses against morality.
UNITED KINGDOM
Microwaves are not dryer
Firefighters say they saved an apartment from destruction after its domestically challenged resident tried to dry his wet socks and underwear in a microwave oven. The Dorset Fire and Rescue Service said kitchen blaze on Monday destroyed the microwave along with the two pairs of underwear and socks inside it, and caused smoke damage to the apartment in Weymouth. “The fire safety message here is to never put clothing of any kind in the microwave or an oven to attempt to dry them,” the firefighters said.
UNITED STATES
Two airplanes intercepted
F-15 fighter jets have intercepted two small airplanes in the New York metropolitan area after they entered airspace temporarily restricted because of President Barack Obama’s campaign visit to Connecticut. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) says the first incident was at 7pm on Monday over Long Island. The plane was followed until it landed, where local law enforcement was waiting. NORAD says the second incident was at 7:30pm near New Haven, Connecticut. That plane was allowed to continue to its destination.
UNITED STATES
Woman tries to steal baby
A woman disguised in scrubs was caught trying to steal a newborn girl from a Southern California hospital in a duffel bag after sensors attached to the baby alerted employees, Garden Grove police said. The 48-year-old woman was arrested on Monday at Garden Grove Medical Center after a hospital staffer stopped her from leaving with the baby, Lieutenant Jeff Nightengale said. The suspect is accused of posing as a nurse who came into the room of the baby’s mother and told her to take a shower before a doctor came to examine her, Nightengale said. Once the baby’s mother was out of the room, the woman allegedly put the newborn in a duffel bag and tried to carry her out of the ward.
UNITED STATES
NBC defends itself
NBC defended itself on Monday against Sharon Osbourne’s claim the network discriminated against her son in casting a new reality show. She told the New York Post that she’s quitting America’s Got Talent because NBC fired her son, Jack Osbourne, by e-mail two days before he was to co-star on the reality show Stars Earn Stripes. Jack Osbourne, 26, was diagnosed recently with multiple sclerosis. In a statement on Monday, NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt said the network “does not discriminate on any basis.”
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
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