PHILIPPINES
Hostage escapes militants
An Indian man escaped from militant group Abu Sayyaf yesterday after being held captive in the south of the nation for nearly 14 months. Bijo Kolara Veetil escaped before dawn as his captors were preparing breakfast, Sulu Provincial Police Chief Antonio Freyra said. A heavily bearded Veetil, 37, later told reporters at a hospital that after he slipped out of the militants’ encampment in Patikul Township, a villager brought him to a provincial official, who handed him to police. Veetil, who worked as an operations manager for a garment company in Kuwait, said he was kidnapped in June last year while visiting his wife’s family in Patikul. The kidnappers demanded about 300,000 pesos (US$7,100) in ransom, but his family refused to pay. He said he was not harmed because he is a Muslim.
PHILIPPINES
Cambodian envoy recalled
Cambodia’s ambassador to the Philipines has been recalled, the foreign minister said yesterday, after the envoy accused his host country of playing “dirty politics” in its maritime row with China. Secretary of Foreign Affairs Albert del Rosario told reporters that Cambodian Ambassador Hos Sereythonh had been recalled, although he did not give reasons. The recall came after Del Rosario summoned the ambassador last month to explain comments he made in a letter to a Manila newspaper, but the ambassador did not appear, pleading illness. Manila had charged that during an ASEAN ministerial meeting over territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Cambodia, a close ally of China, rejected at least five drafts of a joint statement that would have addressed the maritime row with Beijing. Two weeks later, Hos Sereythonh in the letter accused the Philippines and Vietnam of working to “sabotage and hijack the joint communique.”
SOMALIA
UN warns al-Shabaab
The UN Security Council warned al-Shabaab rebels on Thursday against trying to impede the peace process in Somalia. Council members hailed the adoption of a new provisional constitution earlier this month by the National Constituent Assembly, saying it marked an “important milestone” in the nation’s transition toward “more stable and accountable governance.” “The members of the Security Council strongly condemn ongoing attempts, including by the Shebab [al-Shabaab], to undermine the transition process,” they said in a statement. The council called for new members of parliament to be chosen “as quickly as possible, and in a transparent manner,” stressing that lawmakers should be picked “without fear of violence or intimidation.” UN Special Representative to Somalia Augustine Mahiga has reported bribes and intimidation in the selection of new members of parliament.
LEBANON
Security forces on Thursday arrested Michel Samaha, a former information minister considered close to Syria’s embattled regime, in a case linked to explosives, a senior official said. His arrest was connected to a seizure of explosives that were to have been used mostly in the north of the country, a region of tensions linked to the conflict in neighboring Syria, the official told reporters. “The accusations against Samaha are related to explosives, which were going to be placed in several parts of the country, especially the north,” he said on condition of anonymity. The official declined to elaborate on the alleged link between the former minister and the explosives, but said the material was not seized from Samaha’s home where the arrest was carried out. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Najib Mikati told reporters there was no link between Samaha’s arrest and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, set up to investigate the 2005 murder of former premier Rafiq Hariri. The arrest of Samaha, information minister under Hariri, was made on the order of Lebanon’s attorney general at his residence in Khenshara, 30km north of Beirut, a senior official told media.
MEXICO
Bodies stuffed into SUV
Police found the bodies of 14 men stuffed into a sport utility vehicle near a gas station in the northern Mexican city of San Luis Potosi city on Thursday and hours later a shootout between soldiers and gunmen killed three people in the same city, authorities said. The victims in the vehicle had apparently been shot dead and evidence suggested the killings were drug-related, a spokeswoman for the San Luis Potosi state prosecutor’s office said. The bodies were discovered after police received an anonymous tip, she said. Hours after the discovery, a clash between soldiers and alleged gunmen left three assailants dead, the army said in a statement. Two more gunmen were detained, it added.
UNITED KINGDOM
Ministry kept body parts
The Ministry of Defense has admitted it kept body parts and tissue samples from dead soldiers without notifying their families. The Military Police’s Special Investigations Branch routinely keeps slides of forensic material — with families’ consent — from troops killed in operations in countries such as Afghanistan to aid in investigations. The defense ministry said on Thursday it is urgently investigating how in a “small number of cases” body parts and forensic material, such as microscope tissue slides, were retained without following procedures to inform families. It said there could be 60 “forensic items” involved. The ministry blamed the mix-up on a change in the way military investigators liaised with families and said it is working to identify affected families as quickly as possible.
UNITED KINGDOM
Artwork kept in public hands
An impressionist portrait by French painter Edouard Manet will stay in Britain after an eight-month campaign raised nearly ￡8 million (US$12.47 million) to buy it. The Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus is to go on display at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, which launched the campaign to stop it going abroad. The painting was sold to a foreign buyer last year for ￡28.35 million. However, the British government placed an export bar on the work which allowed it to be bought by a British public institution for a quarter of its market value. “The public’s response to the campaign for the Manet has been overwhelming,” Ashmolean director Christopher Brown said. The campaign saw donations from more than 1,000 members of the public, trusts and foundations, along with ￡5.9 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund and ￡850,000 from the Art Fund charity.
UNITED STATES
Entire town goes up for sale
A historic US town with a population of two people will be auctioned off on Aug. 15, the auctioneers Williams & Williams said on Thursday. The northwestern town of Garryowen, Montana — little over 3 hectares — includes houses, a grocery store, a fast food restaurant, a shop and a post office. “The town has a population of two, making it one of the smallest towns in the US,” reads the auction house’s Web site. The parcel of land is also situated on the site of the legendary 1876 battle of Little Big Horn, in which US troops led by General George Armstrong Custer were routed by Native American tribes, including the Cheyenne and the Sioux. The historic defeat, in which Custer was killed, has inspired books and a number of films, including Little Big Man (1970), with actor Dustin Hoffman. The bid for the little piece of Americana will open at US$250,000.
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
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