PHILIPPINES
Lost hikers rescued
Four foreign hikers who had been missing for days in a mountainous area in the central part of the country were rescued yesterday, local authorities said, a day after their two companions were found safe. The six-person group, which included German, British, Russian and Canadian nationals, had set out on Wednesday for what was to be a four-hour excursion in an area of the Negros Oriental province, which officials said was hit by a downpour. Philippine Army personnel found the hikers in a mountainous area thick with vegetation, investigator Leo Gil Villafranca said. “They told the army they got lost due to the fog,” he said, adding all the hikers were residents of the province.
NORTH KOREA
Kim vows support for Russia
Leader Kim Jong-un expressed his unwavering support for Russia’s war in Ukraine during a meeting with a top Russian security official in Pyongyang, state media said yesterday. Friday’s meeting between Kim and Russian Secretary of the Security Council Sergei Shoigu followed a South Korean intelligence assessment late last month that North Korea had likely sent additional troops to Russia after its forces sustained heavy casualties fighting in the war. North Korean and Russian state media said Kim and Shoigu reaffirmed the willingness of the two countries’ leaders to “unconditionally” uphold a major mutual defense treaty reached at a summit last year in Pyongyang, which pledges mutual assistance if either country faces aggression, according to the reports.
TURKEY
Protest erupt across nation
Protests on Friday erupted across multiple cities as people rallied against the arrest of Istanbul’s mayor and top rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, despite the leader’s stern warning that street protests would not be tolerated. In Istanbul, police used pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets to push back hundreds of protesters who tried to break through a barricade in front of the city’s historic aqueduct and threw flares, stones and other objects at them. Police also broke up demonstrations in the capital, Ankara, as well as in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir, resorting to forceful measures at times, according to images shown on the private Halk TV. Thousands marched in several other cities calling on the government to resign, the station reported. At least 97 people were detained nationwide during the protests, Minister of the Interior Ali Yerlikaya said.
UNITED STATES
Woman kills dog in airport
A woman drowned her dog in a Florida airport bathroom and then boarded an international flight after she was prevented from bringing the white miniature schnauzer with her because of a paperwork issue, authorities said. The woman was arrested in Lake County on Wednesday on a charge of aggravated animal abuse, a third-degree felony. She was released on US$5,000 bail. “This act was intentional and resulted in a cruel and unnecessary death of the animal,” an arrest affidavit from the Orlando Police Department said. The investigation into the death of the nine-year-old schnauzer named Tywinn started in December last year when a janitor found the dog in a trash bag in a bathroom stall at Orlando International Airport, along with a companion vest, collar, rabies tag, a dog travel bag and a bone-shaped dog tag with the woman’s name and phone number, investigators said. The dog was identified by its implanted microchip and a necropsy determined that Tywinn had been drowned.
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
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
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
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