A senior Red Cross official said yesterday there was no news on the fate of the agency’s three workers kidnapped in the Philippines by Islamic militants who have threatened to behead them.
The Abu Sayyaf guerrillas had said they would behead one of the trio unless Philippine troops effectively ceded control of the island of Jolo, where the army has been battling the militants, by March 31.
The military made a partial withdrawal from five towns but refused to go further. The regional operations chief for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Alain Aeschlimann, said he had no new word on the captives’ fate.
“We continue to hope that the worst did not happen and will not happen,” Aeschlimann said in an interview posted on the ICRC Web site. “We have taken note of reports that the kidnappers’ threat was not carried out.”
Philippine Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno said the authorities were trying to re-establish contact with the kidnappers, who he insisted had been prevailed upon by local religious leaders not to carry out their threat.
“Our focus is on trying to make sure that these kidnappers will get back in the direction of negotiations,” he told a local television station.
Andreas Notter of Switzerland, Eugenio Vagni of Italy and Mary Jean Lacaba of the Philippines were abducted on the southern island of Jolo on January 15 by the Abu Sayyaf group.
Founded in the 1990s, allegedly with funds from al-Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf has been blamed for bombings and kidnappings across the Philippines.
Pope Benedict XVI issued a last-minute appeal for the lives of the hostages, as did the governments of Italy and Switzerland.
With a population of around 650,000, Jolo is home mainly to Muslims in the south of the overwhelmingly Catholic Philippines.
Puno said the kidnappers are penned in a 15km² area of Jolo.
“It is raining hard [there] and they cannot get away too far from that because it is the only source of water in the area,” he said.
Meanwhile, Singapore said yesterday it was talking with Manila about reports a suspected Singaporean extremist was acting on behalf of the kidnappers.
“We have been in touch and working with the Philippine authorities on this issue. We are unable to disclose any other details,” the Philippine Ministry of Home Affairs said in a brief statement.
Puno said on Wednesday the Singaporean militant had served as an interpreter for the Abu Sayyaf as it negotiated with the ICRC and the government.
Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper said the militant may have been Muawiyah, an Indian-Singaporean extremist who uses the alias Manobo and who is suspected to have links with Jemaah Islamiyah.
That group has been blamed for deadly bombings in Indonesia, and Western intelligence agencies say some Jemaah fugitives may have found refuge in the southern Philippines.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
RSS