PHILIPPINES
Three hurt in China standoff
Three navy personnel were injured in the latest China Coast Guard water cannon attack on a Filipino supply vessel near a South China Sea reef, National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano said yesterday. The government said that Saturday’s confrontation caused severe damage to the Unaizah May 4 vessel while it was on its way to deliver troops and provisions to a Philippine navy ship grounded atop the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙). The extent and nature of the injuries to the navy personnel was not disclosed, but the military said they were treated aboard a coast guard escort ship.
MEXICO
Search continues for missing
Authorities were on Saturday searching for two dozen people in Sinaloa state reported to have been kidnapped along with more than 40 others who have since been found alive. “In total, 66 people were allegedly deprived of their freedom ... of which 42 [24 adults and 18 children] have been located,” Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha Moya wrote on X. The local government has not reported any possible motives behind the kidnappings. On Friday, an emergency hotline received reports of abductions from several homes in a working-class neighborhood of Culiacan, Sinaloa Department of Public Security Secretary Gerardo Merida said in a brief statement. On Thursday, an armed clash left three people dead in Badiraguato, the birthplace of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in the US.
UNITED KINGDOM
China targets lawmakers
Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden is today to report to parliament on a string of cyberattacks launched by China targeting a group of lawmakers, the Times reported. Meanwhile, members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) have been called on to attend a briefing from Parliament Director of Security Alison Giles, the newspaper said, without saying where it obtained the information. The attacks are part of a wave of state-backed interference aimed at undermining British democracy, the Times said. “About a year ago the Belgian and French foreign ministries publicly confirmed [Chinese state] sponsored cyberattacks against our members, IPAC executive director Luke de Pulford said on Friday. “Other countries have done the same privately. Beijing has made no secret of their desire to attack foreign politicians who dare to stand up to them.”
LAOS
Bear cubs found in home
Sixteen undernourished Asiatic black bear cubs have been found in a home in Vientiane by a conservation charity, the largest rescue of the year. Free the Bears said they found 17 cubs in the private home in Laos early last week, but that one of them had already died. “When we arrived at the house there were bear cubs everywhere,” said Fatong Yang, animal manager with the charity. The group found 10 males and six females, weighing between 1.3kg and 4kg and believed to be about two to four months old. “Cubs this small are extremely vulnerable. In the wild their mothers would never leave them and we suspect the mothers were killed by poachers,” Fatong said in a statement over the weekend. Police were alerted after a neighbor heard the cries of one of the cubs, the group said. Thousands of the animals are kept as pets or farmed to extract their bile for use in costly traditional medicine. “This is the most bears we’ve rescued in a single year and we’re only three months into 2024,” he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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