JOLO, Philippine – Villagers in the southern Philippines found a headless body on Wednesday, an army spokesman said, two days after the execution of a Canadian captive by Islamist militants, condemned as a “cold-blooded murder” by Canada’s prime minister. 

Canadian John Ridsdel, 68, a former mining executive, was captured by Islamist militants along with three other people in September 2015 while on vacation on a Philippine island. 

This week, the Philippine army said a severed head had been found on a remote island on Monday, five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by the militants, who had threatened to execute one of four captives. 

• Army spokesman Major Filemon Tan said a headless body was found in a dried creek, near the jungles where Ridsdel was believed to have been beheaded by militants belonging to the Abu Sayyaf group. 
• “We are still verifying if the body is that of John Ridsdel,” Tan told reporters, adding that a police forensics team was conducting tests. “There were no blood stains in the area, suggesting the body was not beheaded in the area.”
•  Abu Sayyaf is a small but brutal militant group known for beheading, kidnapping, bombing and extortion in the south of the mainly Catholic country. Ridsdel, 68, and three others, including a Norwegian and another Canadian, were abducted seven months ago in the southern Philippines. 
• They had appealed in a March video for their families and governments to secure their release. In the video, they said the militants had threatened to behead one of them if the 300 million pesos (£4.39 million) ransom for each of them was not paid by Monday. 

The initial demand was one billion pesos each. Hours after Abu Sayyaf carried out its threat, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau(photo) condemned the execution as “an act of cold-blooded murder.

In the capital, Manila, Rodrigo Duterte(photo), a front-runner in the presidential elections next month, told businessmen, “Kidnapping has to stop. It is destroying our country and it is destroying our country’s reputation.” 

YANGON: The freak storms struck across five states in Myanmar on Friday and Saturday after weeks of heatwave temperatures regularly topping 40C (104F). 

"From what we know now there are eight people killed and 7,500 houses destroyed during these days," Phyu Lei Lei Tun, director of the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, told AFP, adding that the toll may increase as more information becomes available. 

Six of the victims died in Yay Tha Yauk village in the central region of Mandalay after flash flooding. Other regions that were struck included Sagaing and Magway as well as the states of Shan and Chin. 

The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar said more than 1,700 pagodas were damaged by gale- force winds in the southern state of Shan on Friday night.

Pictures on social media showed some of the pagoda spires, which were hundreds of years old, lying shattered on the ground. Like much of the Greater Mekong region, Myanmar has been hit by drought in recent weeks amid a particularly fierce dry season. 

Former deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin has asked for a confirmation from the Registrar of Societies (RoS) on whether his suspension as Umno deputy president is valid. 

"My suspension was not in accordance with the Umno constitution and I have sent a letter to the RoS seeking an explanation as to whether my suspension was valid and in accordance with the party’s constitution," he said. 

He said RoS will determine if the Umno supreme council had overstepped its constitutional powers when it abruptly suspended him as deputy president in February this year.

This year, Brazil is scheduled to open its arms to people from all over the world for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

With the Games nearly three months away, the country is facing a series of unprecedented challenges: the Zika virus outbreak, which has been connected to a rare birth defect; a crippling recession that has left hundreds of thousands unemployed and sent inflation through the roof; and a political crisis that has implicated some of the country's most powerful lawmakers. 

Vienna – Natural disasters have caused more than US$7 trillion (RM27.1 trillion) in economic damage worldwide since 1900, with floods and storms accounting for nearly 60 per cent of the total, researchers said yesterday. 

The death toll from such natural calamities — which also include earthquakes, volcanoes, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires — topped eight million from 1900 to 2015, according to findings presented at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna. 

in Germany.

• Whether this shift was due to climate change was impossible to say, he told AFP. 
• “When we go back in time, the record is not complete,” he said on the sidelines of the annual gathering of about 13,000 Earth and space scientists. 
• “We probably have floods and storms from the 1930s or 1940s, for example, that never came into the database.
• ” The frequency of other natural disasters — notably earthquakes, which accounted for 26 per cent of losses, and volcanoes, which caused one percent — remained fairly constant over time.

Earthquakes accounted for nearly 30 per cent of deaths, some 2.3 million people over the 115-year period. Of those fatalities, nearly 60 per cent died when buildings collapsed, while about 28 per cent perished in a tsunami or landslide. 

Some 10,000 troops and 3,500 police are being deployed in the affected areas, as rescue operations continue.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has cut short a visit to Italy to deal with the crisis. He has declared a state of emergency and said the priority is finding survivors.

• Ecuador's Vice-President Jorge Glas, visiting one of the worst-hit cities, Manta, met a resident who pleaded for people trapped under rubble.
• "We cannot go in with heavy machinery because it can be tragic for the wounded," Mr Glas told him.

SHAH ALAM, Selangor, Malaysia - A total of 600 customers flooded the Rayani Air headquarters in Section 15 here yesterday, according to the airline. 

Some were lucky enough to find chairs and tables to fill in their forms inside Rayani’s small office, while others had to make do with the cement steps outside the second floor office. 

However, all those who spoke to The Star said they were satisfied with the airline staff’s service on the refund matter. 

“They were very apologetic,” said a police officer known as Safuan. He had booked a ticket to fly home to Kota Kinabalu for the Raya holidays and said he may have to wait 20-days for the airline to refund him.

“They are new, so maybe we have to understand,” he said. 

Mexico City – Mexican officials said they have captured a woman on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list who US officials say ordered the murder of a romantic rival who had been dating her former lover. 

Brenda Berenice Delgado Reynaga, 33, was detained at a home in the northern city of Torreon, in Coahuila state, Mexico’s attorney general’s office said. 

“Apparently she was jealous because the victim was dating her ex-boyfriend,” said FBI special agent Jason Ibrahim, according to the bureau’s “Most Wanted” posting. 

• Even though Delgado did not pull the trigger, she “is still responsible for the murder,” said Thomas Class, another FBI agent.
• Once notified of the US arrest request, Mexican authorities said they searched for Delgado “in places where her relatives and friends could help” in northern Mexico and Mexico City.

Delgado is only the ninth woman to make it onto the FBI’s list of infamous fugitives since its creation in 1950. 

 

Johor Baru South OCPD Supt Sulaiman Salleh said the victim told the pump attendant that his car was out of petrol and it was parked near the clinic.

"After filling up a plastic container with petrol, he walked to the clinic at Jalan Harimau and torched himself there and ran to a nearby hotel before falling into a drain," he said. 

Supt Sulaiman said the police did not know why the victim torched him颅self and urged witnesses to come forward.