QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Everyone who could ran into the coffee fields. It smothered the homes and sent them into the river. Half the homes in town were smothered and buried.”
Marta Alvarez, a 22-year-old homemaker from La Pintada, Mexico, on a landslide Monday that struck the remote mountainous village, where 68 people were reported missing Article, this page
Bomb kills 3 in turbulent Philippine city
ZAMBOANGA, Philippines - A bomb exploded Friday inside a parked bus, killing three people in a southern Philippine city where government troops are battling a group of Muslim rebels holding about 20 hostages.
The improvised explosive was placed inside a bag and killed the bus conductor and two other employees. The driver was wounded, police Chief Inspector Ariel Huesca said.
The violence in Zamboanga comes as troops search from house to house in two neighborhoods to flush out about 30 to 40 Muslim rebels who seized scores of civilians as human shields 12 days ago when government forces repulsed their bid to occupy the port city.
The military operations have led to the rescue of more than 170 hostages, and about 200 rebels have been captured or killed. Thirteen members of security forces and eight civilians also have died.
Super typhoon nears Philippines, Taiwan
TAIPEI, Taiwan - The most powerful typhoon of the year approached the northern Philippines and southern Taiwan on Friday with gusts of up to 184 miles per hour. It was expected to skirt both regions, but authorities warned of torrential rains and destructive winds.
Super Typhoon Usagi had maximum sustained winds of 150 mph Friday evening and was about 373 miles southeast of Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, according to the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center. A storm achieves super typhoon status when its sustained winds are at least 150 mph.
The storm was on track to pass near the Batanes Islands, the northernmost part of the Philippines, as it moved across the Luzon Strait, close to Taiwan’s southernmost Hengchun peninsula.
In Taiwan, torrential rains were forecast for all of the eastern coast and the south.
Usagi was projected to push on toward southern China, with its outer bands slamming into the Guangdong-Hong Kong coastline Sunday. The storm is expected to weaken and by Sunday is projected to have maximum sustained winds of 98 mph.
Russians seize Greenpeace ship in arctic
MOSCOW - The Russian coast guard is towing a Greenpeace ship toward the nearest port after armed officers stormed it after a protest against oil drilling in Arctic waters.
The agency said Friday that the ship’s captain refused to operate the Arctic Sunrise, so a coast guard ship arrived at the scene to tow the vessel to the port of Murmansk. The trip is expected to take three to four days.
Russian officials said that Greenpeace activists could face terrorism or piracy charges.
One of the activists aboard the vessel, Faiza Oulahsen, said late Thursday that about 15 armed men had boarded the Arctic Sunrise, aggressively herding 29 activists into one compartment. The vessel’s captain was held separately on the bridge.
“They used violence against some of us, they were hitting people, kicking people down, pushing people,” she said in a phone call from the ship.
The Greenpeace ship is in the Pechora Sea, an arm of the Barents Sea.
Slain police general draws Cairo turnout
CAIRO - Joined by Egypt’s top interim leaders, the country’s military chief led a funeral procession Friday for a police general killed in a raid on an Islamist stronghold near Cairo.
Draped in the Egyptian flag, the coffin of slain police Gen.
Nabil Farrag was carried by an ambulance, preceded by lines of marching policemen and a police band with drums.
Military Apache helicopters hovered overhead as Egypt’s defense minister, Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, led the heavily guarded funeral, joined by army Chief of Staff Sedki Sobhi, interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi and Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, who heads the police forces, as well as top Muslim and Christian religious figures.
Hundreds of Egyptian men and women poured in to join the funeral procession.
Farrag was killed Thursday when security forces and troops stormed Kerdasa, a town outside Cairo near the Pyramids that armed Islamist hard-liners loyal to ousted President Mohammed Morsi took over last month.
A security official said that security forces are in control of Kerdasa, where the military installed checkpoints at the town’s entrances. He said 87 suspects have been rounded up, and security forces continued searches Friday.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 09/21/2013