■PHILIPPINES
Estrada warns rebels
Former Philippine president Joseph Estrada yesterday ignored a fatwa by Muslim elders branding him an enemy of Islam and warned separatist rebels of an “all out war” if he wins re-election to the post. Estrada said he was confident the religious edict issued last week by the Bangsamoro Supreme Council, a grouping of Islamic academics and elders in the south, would not be supported by the region’s 5 million Muslims. He also warned the 12,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front to disarm or risk being crushed by the army under his command if he wins the poll. “I am a friend of Islam and I respect Islam,” Estrada said. “However, I will not tolerate any organization regardless of religion if they violate the law.”
■PAKISTAN
Four alleged spies killed
The bullet-riddled bodies of four tribesmen killed for allegedly spying for the US were found yesterday in a semi-autonomous region, witnesses and officials said. Officials said the four were kidnapped by the Taliban about 10 days ago. Gul Akber Khan, who lives in the village of Srakhula, just outside of Mir Ali, said he heard gunshots in the middle of the night. When he went to the mosque for morning prayers, he found the bodies dumped along the road into Miran Shah. Intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a note was found by one of the corpses. It warned, in Pashto: “Spies are spies and they will come to the same fate as these men ... Do not spy for America.”
■JAPAN
Strong winds buffet country
Strong winds buffeted Japan over the weekend, killing at least one person and injuring 46 others while disrupting air, land and sea traffic, officials and press reports said yesterday. The strong winds of around 60kph also sent out of control an annual burn at an army firing range at the foot of Mount Fuji on Saturday, killing three fire officials, police said. A strong low-pressure system moved over the Japanese islands from west to east, packing winds of up to 135kph, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. In Kita-Kyushu, a 47-year-old woman died from an injury to her neck after a steel canopy at a public parking lot caved in on Saturday, police said.
■INDIA
Bomb scare grounds plane
A suspected explosive found on a passenger plane sparked a bomb scare and grounded the aircraft in Kerala State, police said yesterday. A bomb disposal squad was inspecting the package found in a bag inside the cargo hold of the aircraft after all passengers had disembarked. The plane has been moved to an isolated area at Thiruvananthapuram airport.
■ICELAND
Volcano forces evacuations
Authorities evacuated hundreds of people after a volcano erupted beneath a glacier in the south, the civil protection agency said yesterday. The eruption occurred about 11:30pm on Saturday beneath the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, the fifth largest glacier in the country. The volcano is covered by an ice cap. Fearing flooding from the glacier melt, authorities evacuated some 400 people in the area 160km southeast of the capital, Reykjavik, as a precaution but no damage or injuries have been reported, said Vidir Reynisson, the department manager for the Civil Protection Department.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Kidnappers’ threat unveiled
The father of a five-year-old British boy held hostage for 12 days in Pakistan said yesterday the kidnappers had threatened to chop off parts of the boy’s body if he did not pay a ransom. Raja Naqqash Saeed told the Mail on Sunday newspaper how the gang holding his son Sahil had warned: “Do exactly as we say, or you will be receiving a little gift — any part of his body.” When he tried to explain that he could not afford the amount they wanted, the gang said: “Look, you know how we came to your house in jackets packed with bullets and grenades? You know what we can do to him — we can put a jacket around him with grenades and explosives and blow him to pieces. And we will deliver what’s left of him to you in a bin bag on a roundabout.”
■IRAN
‘Will “cut hands” of foes’
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a Persian New Year message on Saturday that Tehran would “cut the hands” of anyone who tries to harm the Islamic republic. “The Iranian nation will guard its national security with full strength and will decisively cut any unclean hand from any part of the globe which tries to harm it,” he said in a message broadcast on state TV. The hardliner reiterated that his re-election last June was a “true” example of democracy for the world. “The decisive vote by the nation for the president clearly outlined what path the government should take,” Ahmadinejad said.
■ISRAEL
Construction to proceed
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday he would not restrict construction in east Jerusalem, a step requested by the US, but would upgrade upcoming indirect talks with the Palestinians to include the main issues dividing them. Netanyahu originally had wanted to put off a discussion of issues like the status of contested east Jerusalem, final borders and the fate of Palestinian refugees until direct talks are launched. It was not clear what his refusal to budge on east Jerusalem — the territory that lies at the crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — would mean for future relations with Washington and the rest of the international community.
■WEST BANK
Boy dies of his wounds
A Palestinian shot by Israeli soldiers during clashes in the West Bank died of his wounds yesterday, medics at Nablus hospital said. Osayed Qadus, 20, was seriously wounded on Saturday after being shot at Burin, south of Nablus, when Israeli troops soldiers opened fire on a group of protesters, medics and Palestinian security officials said. Another Palestinian, 17-year-old Mohammed Qadus, was shot dead by Israeli fire during the same clashes, they said. Soldiers moved in to Burin, south of Nablus, to prevent clashes between Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the neighboring settlement of Bracha.
■UNITED STATES
Clinton jokes at Gridiron
Former president Bill Clinton poked fun at Republicans, Democrats, his own health and his audience of reporters on Saturday night, telling the Gridiron Club’s annual dinner he was there because “I really didn’t have anything much better to do tonight.” Clinton, who stood in for President Barack Obama, said Democrats were going to pass health care. “It may not happen in my lifetime, or Dick Cheney’s, but hopefully by Easter,” he said referring to his and the former vice president’s heart ailments. In a poke at Obama’s combative chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, the former president said: “I found Rahm. I created him. I made him what he is today. I am so sorry.” In the 1990s, Emanuel worked in Clinton’s White House.
■CUBA
Earthquake rattles nerves
A magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck near Guantanamo city on Saturday, sending residents fleeing into the streets, but a local government official said there were no casualties. A spokesman at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay reported no damage there. State-run Radio Reloj reported from Guantanamo that the quake caused cracks in some buildings and some pieces of masonry fell. The quake, which was also felt strongly in the country’s second city of Santiago de Cuba, was centered 43km southwest of Guantanamo at a depth of 22km, the US Geological Survey reported.
■UNITED STATES
Environmental elder dies
Stewart Udall, who sowed the seeds of the modern environmental movement as secretary of the interior during the 1960s and later became a crusader for victims of radiation exposure from the government’s Cold War nuclear programs, died on Saturday. He was 90. A statement from Udall’s family, released through the office of his son, Senator Tom Udall, said he died of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, surrounded by his children and their families.
■UNITED STATES
Johnson press secretary dies
Liz Carpenter, an author and former press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson, died on Saturday at an Austin hospital after contracting pneumonia earlier in the week, said her daughter, Christy Carpenter. Liz Carpenter was 89. On Nov. 22, 1963, Carpenter scribbled the 58 words that former president Lyndon Johnson delivered to the nation when he returned to Washington from Dallas following the assassination of president John F. Kennedy: “This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help and God’s.”
■UNITED STATES
‘Air Force One’ grounded
Rooms were booked, limousines waiting, snipers staking out positions. Then President Barack Obama ditched plans to visit Guam, Indonesia and Australia — health care trumping Asia, an expected House vote yesterday grounding Air Force One’s planned departure. Obama’s decision on Thursday morning to call off his first international trip of the year left scores of White House aides holding briefing books in Jakarta and Sydney, motorcades lined up with nowhere to go and security personnel in place at sites Obama wouldn’t visit. Come back home, those advance teams were told, as Obama shifted his focus away from Pacific matters and onto health care.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
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