A homemade bomb ripped through a commuter bus in the southern Philippines yesterday, wounding 27 people, police said.
The military initially reported three people were killed, but police and army officials later corrected themselves and said there were no deaths.
The bus had stopped at a Digos city terminal on the way to the regional center of Davao. Moments after the driver returned and started the engine, the blast shattered the windows and some of the seats, provincial police chief Cesario Darantinao said.
Police recovered broken nails used as shrapnel, he said.
The owner of the bus company, who is also the mayor of a nearby town, had complained of extortion demands purportedly from communist rebels, Darantinao said.
But Oyo Uy, son of the mayor and president of the bus company, Metro Shuttle, said no extortion attempt had come from any group.
Among the 27 injured, four were in serious condition, Darantinao said.
Meanwhile, Muslim separatist guerrillas clashed with government militiamen yesterday despite a breakthrough in protracted peace talks, a local official said.
Farmers in the town of Aleosan in Mindanao saw members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) massing near their rice fields, prompting a brief firefight with the local militia, town mayor Loreto Cabaya said.
The firefight lasted around 15 minutes before the MILF withdrew with no casualties on either side.
In areas troubled by communist or Muslim insurgencies, the Philippine military trains and equips villagers to serve as militia units to provide security for their communities.
Cabaya said he suspected the rebels were after the rice harvest, as MILF forces are rarely seen in the area before harvest time.
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The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
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‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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