■ PHILIPPINES
Air controllers late to work
An airplane was stuck circling a southern airport for several minutes before landing on Friday because air traffic controllers apparently still in a Christmas holiday mood came in late for work, officials said. The Philippine Airlines flight from Manila was unable to land at Zamboanga city’s airport on schedule because there were no traffic controllers around to answer their request to approach the runway, said Reynaldo Alforte, the airport’s assistant chief air traffic controller. “There were two controllers who reported for work a few minutes late, causing delays,” Alforte said. Two other tower workers scheduled to be on duty were absent on Friday, he said, adding that the case was under investigation.
■CAMBODIA
Belgian killed in crash
A Belgian man has died in Phnom Penh after driving under the influence of alcohol without a helmet and crashing into a truck, police said yesterday. Van Esbroeck Guido’s 44-year-old Cambodian wife told police on Thursday she had earlier refused to ride pillion on her husband’s bike when he fell off after drinking. Police said the 48-year-old Belgian continued driving alone and later crashed into a truck as it left a construction site. “He was very drunk while driving, didn’t have on a helmet and later crashed into a truck that didn’t give a signal when it turned,” said traffic police chief Tin Prasoeur. Deaths on the roads have more than doubled in the past five years, becoming Cambodia’s second biggest killer behind HIV/AIDS. In a bid to put an end to the carnage the government has pushed through drastic new traffic laws, previously unheard of in Cambodia’s free-wheeling road culture. From Thursday, drivers’ licenses will be mandatory, as will helmets for those on motorbikes and seatbelts for motorists.
■SINGAPORE
Fortune teller sentenced
A Malaysian fortune teller was sentenced to 15 months in jail by a Singapore court on Friday for fleecing a woman of S$60,000 (US$41,430), the Straits Times reported yesterday. Tan Ka Chuan received regular payments from Singaporean Lee Lye Fong in exchange for promises to perform rituals that would protect her family and make her wealthy. Lee herself went through a police probe for dipping into the funds of her employer to pay for Tan’s bogus promises. Tan, 36, a Malaysian national, used the money pay his gambling debts. He admitted to the police that he had no powers to see the future and did not perform religious rites. Lee’s payments to Tan go back five years, the report said.
■CHINA
Three earthquakes strike
Three moderate earthquakes hit the southwestern region, injuring 19 people and forcing the evacuation of thousands of homes, state media reported yesterday. A 4.9-magnitude quake hit Ruili, a city on the China-Myanmar border in Yunnan Province, early on Friday, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing the provincial seismic monitoring agency. Three people were seriously hurt while 16 others suffered minor injuries, said the city’s Communist Party chief. He said 10,000 people were evacuated and the quake destroyed the city government’s office building and damaged thousands of houses. Local officials were distributing 300,000 yuan (US$44,000) in relief supplies to affected residents, Xinhua said. A 4.3-magnitude quake hit a village near the Yunnan capital Kunming early on Friday but no casualties were reported. A third tremor measuring 4.0 hit Guizhou Province on Friday night but there were no reports of casualties or damage.
■PERU
Virgin Mary gives birth
Virgin Mary, a 20-year-old Peruvian woman, gave birth to a baby boy on Christmas day and named him Jesus, the state news agency said on Friday. The baby’s father, Adolfo Jorge Huamani, 24, is a carpenter. Religious people compared him to Joseph the Carpenter in the Bible. “Two thousand years later the story of Bethlehem is relived,” read the headline about the birth in El Comercio, the main newspaper in the predominantly Catholic country. The mother, Virgen Maria Huarcaya, delivered the 3.5kg boy, Jesus Emanuel, in the early hours of Christmas at the central maternity hospital in Lima. “A few days ago we had decided to name my son after a professional soccer player,” the father said. “But thanks to a happy coincidence this is how things ended up.”
■RODRIGUES ISLAND
Tanner the bat turns 23
Tanner the golden bat, the oldest of his kind in captivity, will celebrate his 23rd birthday by hanging around and chomping on a few pieces of papaya, mango and melon. Officials marked the occasion on Friday at the Cranbrook Institute. “He’s in good health. He’s retired,” Organization for Bat Conservation director Rob Mies said. By his species’ standards Tanner is a senior citizen. Only about 4,000 of the large, fruit-eating bats still live on tiny Rodrigues Island in the Indian Ocean. They live about 20 years in the wild, Mies said. Tanner had been the second oldest of the 1,000 or so golden bats in captivity until a few months ago when a 23-year-old female died at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo. He’s also three years older than others in captivity. Their ages are confirmed because each of the captive bats are registered worldwide, Mies said.
■MEXICO
Navy looks for US woman
Three Navy boats and a helicopter were searching the waters off the Caribbean resort of Cancun on Friday for a US woman who reportedly fell from a cruise ship, authorities said. A US Coast Guard search-and-rescue crew using a Falcon jet halted efforts to find 36-year-old Jennifer Feitz late on Friday, but was to resume yesterday morning using a larger C-130 aircraft, Petty Officer Nick Ameen said. Feitz’s husband reported her missing from the Norwegian Pearl cruise ship just before 5am on Friday. Her hometown was not available. Mexico’s Fifth Naval Regional Command said in a statement that by late on Friday it had found no sign of Feitz and was having to deal with “adverse conditions” and strong waves in the search taking place just over 27km east of Cancun.
■MEXICO
Drug lord’s ex-fiance killed
A major drug lord’s former fiancee was killed and a rival drug cartel carved its signature on her body, local press reported on Friday, citing official sources. A body found on Dec. 17 in a car trunk was identified as that of Zulema Yulia Hernandez, former companion of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel who escaped prison in 2001. The letter “Z” was carved into her skin and marked several times elsewhere on her body, in what is believed to be the signature of the “Zetas” gang, an armed branch of the Gulf cartel at war with the Sinaloa cartel. The group was created in the 1990s by retired army officers and defectors. No official confirmation could be obtained midday on Friday. Hernandez, 35, met Guzman in prison, after she was also sentenced for drug trafficking with the Sinaloa cartel. Feuding drug cartels have engaged in a brutal battle for dominance, with more than 5,300 people killed this year.
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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