A 14-year-old boy whose body was found with dozens of stab wounds is the latest atrocity in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war, critics said on Wednesday as outrage built over a trio of teen killings.
The National Bureau of Investigation announced it would probe the murder of the boy, who politicians and rights groups said appeared to be the third teenager murdered as part of Duterte’s drug war in the past month.
Filipinos have mostly backed Duterte’s drug war…
Philippine troops team up with old enemy to fight pro-Islamic State gunmen in Mindanao
The Philippine military said it has teamed up with old foes behind a long-running Muslim insurgency as it looks to eject a breakaway gang of radical militants pledging loyalty to Islamic State.
As artillery shells and rockets pounded targets nearby, soldiers were seen mingling freely with several hundred Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) fighters who have joined an assault on gunmen in the restive southern island Mindanao.
The joint operation is the latest tactic by the Philippine government…
Business that monitored employee’s personal communications breached his rights to privacy, rules ECHR
A business that monitored an employee’s personal communications during work time breached his rights to privacy, the Grand Chamber at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte wants media to accompany police on anti-narcotics operations
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday ordered the police to conduct anti-drug operations in the presence of media to prove law enforcers were not executing drug suspects.
Duterte took office in June last year after winning an election on a vow to get tough on drugs and crime. He soon launched a “war on drugs” in which thousands of people have been killed.
Duterte and his campaign remain popular but opposition to the bloodshed, including from within the influential Catholic…
How a new generation of Chinese art collectors are taking on the world
Lin Han and his wife Wanwan Lei have had a fruitful summer. The co-founders of Beijing’s M Woods Museum recently spent nearly a month on an art tour around Europe. Their travels took them from Antwerp in Brussels and Basel in Switzerland to Venice in Italy and Kassel in Germany, but the young collectors are keen to emphasise this was no shopping spree. Rather, it was an intense learning experience.
“When we planned for this trip, we wanted to focus on art. On the road we went to…
In faraway Chechnya, tens of thousands rally against ‘genocide’ of Rohingya in Myanmar
In an apparent bid to raise his profile as Russia’s most influential Muslim, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov brought tens of thousands of people to the streets of the capital Grozny on Monday to protest what he called the “genocide of Muslims” in Myanmar.
Violence over the past few days in Myanmar’s Rakhine state has killed nearly 400 people and prompted thousands of ethnic Rohingya refugees to flee into neighboring Bangladesh.
State television footage showed tens of…
Insurers should innovate in wake of Hurricane Harvey, says expert
The catastrophic flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey in Texas will not have a significant impact on the insurance and reinsurance markets, despite the damage caused to thousands of homes, an expert has said.
In stark terms, US tells North Korea it risks ‘massive military response’ after nuclear test
The United States has warned it could launch a “massive military response” to threats from North Korea following Pyongyang’s provocative detonation of what it claimed was a miniaturised hydrogen bomb.
The comments from Defence Secretary Jim Mattis came after US President Donald Trump called an emergency meeting of his national security advisers to discuss what was an unexpectedly powerful nuclear test said to exceed in magnitude the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.
South…
Cambodia Daily to close after US$6.3 million tax row with government
One of Cambodia’s last remaining independent newspapers announced on Sunday it was closing after 24 years, the latest in a series of blows to critics of strongman premier Hun Sen.
The Cambodia Daily said Monday’s edition would be its last after it was slapped with a US$6.3 million tax bill which its publishers said was politically motivated.
“The power to tax is the power to destroy. And after 24 years, one month and 15 days, the Cambodian government has destroyed The Cambodia…
6.3 magnitude ‘explosion’ in North Korea, could be nuclear test
An “explosion” measuring 6.3 magnitude was detected in North Korea Sunday after Pyongyang said it had developed an advanced hydrogen bomb that possessed “great destructive power”.
South Korea and Japan said the North may have conducted a sixth nuclear test, according to reports from the Blue House and Kyodo.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the seismic event was “artificial”.
The US Geological Survey said the explosion struck 55 km north…