'Kill them' Duterte leads at end of Philippine presidential campaign

MANILA (AFP) - 

Mass murder advocate Rodrigo Duterte heads into Saturday's final rallies of an extraordinary Philippine presidential campaign as the shock favourite, but with rivals still having a chance to counter his profanity-laced populist tirades.

Duterte, a pugnacious 71-year-old, has rocked the political establishment with cuss-filled vows to kill tens of thousands of criminals, threats to establish one-man rule if lawmakers disobey him, and promises to embrace communist rebels.

He has also caused disgust in international diplomatic circles with a joke that he wanted to rape a "beautiful" Australian missionary who was killed in a 1989 Philippine prison riot, and boasted repeatedly on the campaign trail about his Viagra-fuelled affairs.

President Benigno Aquino, whose mother led the democracy movement that ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos a generation ago, has warned the nation is at risk of succumbing to another dictatorship.

But Duterte's anti-establishment rhetoric and promises of quick fixes to deep-rooted problems have proved hypnotic for millions of Filipinos, and he heads into Monday's election with an 11-percentage-point lead over his rivals, according to the latest survey.

Senator Grace Poe, the adopted daughter of a late movie star, and establishment bedrock Mar Roxas, are tied in second place. Vice President Jejomar Binay, the early favourite, has fallen to fourth place under the weight of a barrage of corruption allegations.

While Duterte, the long-time mayor of the southern city of Davao, is undeniably the favourite, he lacks the sophisticated political machinery of some of his rivals and is not guaranteed victory, according to Manila-based political analyst Earl Parreno.

Roxas, a US-educated investment banker who served as interior and transport secretaries in Aquino's administration, is in the strongest position to challenge, Parreno, from the Institute of Political and Electoral Reforms, told AFP.

Roxas can expect a boost of about five percentage points from the machinery of the Liberal Party, which can use its money and influence to get people into voting booths, according to Parreno.

"We also still have the undecided. It's going to be a very, very close fight, a neck and neck fight, between Duterte and Roxas," Parreno said.

The presidential candidates will make their final pitches to voters on Saturday with rallies in Manila that are expected to attract tens of thousands of people. Politicians are not allowed to campaign on the final day before elections.

- Anti-Duterte alliance -

In a sign of the nervousness that Duterte will win, Aquino -- who is limited by the constitution to a single term of six years -- made an extraordinary plea on Friday night for the other candidates to unite against the frontrunner.

Under the proposed anti-Duterte alliance, one or more of the other candidates would withdraw from the race to back the person with the best chance of winning.

Roxas said he was willing to discuss the proposal with Poe. However Poe immediately rejected any suggestion that she should withdraw, and there were no signs late on Friday night that an 11th-hour partnership would be forced.

In a similar manner to US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Duterte's blistering campaign has upended conventional political wisdom, with controversies that pundits said would doom him instead only fuelling his popularity.

However Trump's trash-talk has been tame in comparison.

Duterte has promised to end crime nationally within the first six months of his presidency, with the seemingly impossible task to be achieved by ordering security forces to bypass an inefficient judicial system and go on an unprecedented killing spree.

He said tens of thousands of suspected criminals would die in the crackdown.

In a speech last week to the nation's most prominent business club, Duterte acknowledged his tactics could amount to mass murder but that he would pardon himself at the end of his term if he was found guilty of such crimes.

"Pardon given to Rodrigo Duterte for the crime of multiple murder, signed Rodrigo Duterte," he said, describing the document he would write for himself.

Human rights groups have warned his comments are not merely rhetoric.

They accuse him of running vigilante squads in Davao that have killed more than 1,000 suspected criminals. At times he has boasted about his involvement, and said 1,700 people were killed, but on other occasions denied any links to the vigilantes.

by Karl Malakunas

© 2016 AFP

Ceasefire in Syria’s Aleppo extended for 72 hours

A temporary truce in the Syrian battleground city of Aleppo was extended for 72 hours from 00:01 Saturday, as clashes raged further south.

The extended pause in fighting for Aleppo comes as international condemnation mounted over deadly air strikes on a camp for displaced people in northern Syria, which the regime and its Russian ally have denied responsibility for.

Russia's defence ministry said the fragile ceasefire had been extended "in order to prevent the situation from worsening" just minutes before the initial 48-hour truce for the city was due to expire.

"The regime of silence in the province of Latakia and in the city of Aleppo has been extended from 00:01 (local time) on May 7 (2200 GMT Friday) for 72 hours," the defence ministry said in a statement.

The United States -- which has been working with Moscow to pressure the regime to stop the violence and revive a landmark nationwide ceasefire agreed in February -- also confirmed the extension.

"While we welcome this recent extension, our goal is to get to a point where we no longer have to count the hours and that the cessation of hostilities is fully respected across Syria," said State Department spokesman John Kirby.

The international community hopes that a drop in fighting can galvanise faltering peace talks to end a five-year war that has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions.

Calm returned to the streets of Aleppo after the ceasefire first came into force at midnight on Thursday, giving residents some respite from two weeks of fighting that killed more than 280 civilians.

But south of the city, clashes between regime forces and jihadists and their allies have killed more than 70 on both sides, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

Al-Nusra and allied Islamists seized Khan Tuman and surrounding villages in less than 24 hours, according to the Britain-based monitor, after pro-regime troops had driven them out in December.

UN's Ban 'outraged'

Women and children were reported to be among 28 civilians killed in Thursday's raids on the camps near the Turkish border, which also wounded 50.

Mamun al-Khatib, director of the Aleppo-based pro-rebel Shahba Press news agency, accused "regime aircraft" of firing missiles at the camp in Al-Kammouna village Thursday -- an accusation Damascus denied.

"There is no truth in the information in some media that the Syrian air force targeted the displaced camp in Idlib province," the official SANA news agency quoted the military as saying.

Russia's military also insisted no aircraft flew over the camp on Thursday, suggesting Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front could have shelled it.

"The camp may have been shelled either on purpose or by mistake by multiple rocket launchers which are currently being used very actively in this area by terrorists from Al-Nusra," spokesman Igor Konashenkov told Russian news agencies.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was "outraged" by the attack on the camp and said those responsible must face justice.

Ban demanded once again that the UN Security Council refer Syria to the International Criminal Court so that the tribunal based in The Hague can open up investigations of possible war crimes.

The US earlier described the raids as "totally in keeping" with the regime's past operations.

"There's absolutely no justification for attacks on civilians in Syria, but especially on what appears to have been a refugee camp," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said the camp's tents could clearly be seen from the air so it was "extremely unlikely" to have been an accident.

"It is far more likely they were deliberate and amount to a war crime," he said.

Regime aircraft have previously targeted rebels other than Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State group, which are not covered by the February 27 ceasefire between the regime and non-jihadist rebels.

Russia also launched air raids in support of Damascus in September, and a US-led coalition has conducted air strikes against IS in Syria since 2014.

Prison assault

In central Syria, regime forces launched an assault against a prison in the central city of Hama aimed at ending a mutiny, the Observatory said.

The mutiny began on Monday after an attempt to transfer inmates to the military-run Saydnaya prison near Damascus.

Human Rights Watch said it had received WhatsApp messages from inmates saying that security forces "were attempting to storm their prison block, using tear gas and rubber bullets."

It said the assault "raises major concerns about possible excessive use of force".

As warplanes hit the Idlib camp on Thursday, Syria's regime celebrated its recapture of the ancient city of Palmyra with a concert in its amphitheatre.

A second concert conducted by Valery Gergiev was staged in the floodlit amphitheatre late Friday.

Before regime troops backed by Russian warplanes retook Palmyra in late March, the theatre was a backdrop for IS executions.

(AFP)

Massive Canada wildfire ‘could double in size’

Canadian officials fear a massive wildfire could double in size by the end of Saturday as they continue to evacuate residents of fire-ravaged Fort McMurray from work camps north of Alberta's oil sands city.

Thousands more displaced residents will get a sobering drive-by view of their burned out city as convoys continue Saturday.

Police and military will oversee another procession of hundreds of vehicles, and the mass airlift of evacuees will also resume. A day after 8,000 people were flown out, authorities said 5,500 more were expected to be evacuated by the end of Friday and another 4,000 on Saturday.

More than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray in the heart of Canada' oil sands, where the fire has torched 1,600 homes and other buildings. The mass evacuation forced as much as a quarter of Canada's oil output offlineand is expected to impact a country already hurt by a dramatic fall in the price of oil.

The Alberta provincial government, which declared a state of emergency, said Friday the size of the blaze had grown to 101,000 hectares (249,571 acres) or about 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles). No deaths or injuries were reported.

Chad Morrison, Alberta's manager of wildfire prevention, said there was a "high potential that the fire could double in size" by the end of Saturday. He expected the fire to expand into a more remote forested area northeast and away from Fort McMurray. Extremely dry conditions and a hot temperature of 27 Celsius (81 Fahrenheit) was expected Saturday along with strong winds, he said.

Morrison said no amount of resources would put this fire out, and what was needed was rain.

"We have not seen rain in this area for the last two months of significance," Morrison said. "This fire will continue to burn for a very long time until we see some significant rain."

Environment Canada forecast a 40 percent chance of showers in the area on Sunday. Morrison said cooler conditions were expected Sunday and Monday.

About 1,200 vehicles had passed through Fort McMurray by late Friday afternoon despite a one-hour interruption due to heavy smoke, authorities said.

Jim Dunstan was in the convoy with his wife, Tracy, and two young sons. "It was shocking to see the damaged cars all burned on the side of the road. It made you feel lucky to get out of there," he said.

In Edmonton, between 4,500 and 5,000 evacuees arrived at the airport on at least 45 flights Friday, airport spokesman Chris Chodan said. In total, more than 300 flights have arrived with evacuees since Tuesday, he said.

A group that arrived late Friday afternoon was greeted by volunteers who handed out bottled water and helped direct people where to go next.

Among them was Chad Robertson, a fuel truck driver who was evacuated from Husky Energy's Sunrise project, northeast of Fort McMurray. He said that when the fire started, even though the flames were relatively far away, "everyone started panicking."

Robertson said he had plans to go to a friend's house in Edmonton before heading home to Nova Scotia.

Scott Burrell, from Kelowna, British Columbia, was waiting with others in an airport terminal that had been repurposed for evacuees who were resting and waiting for flights. He said he was working for a scaffolding company at a plant called Fort Hills when the fire broke out Tuesday.

"We were working overtime and I just saw what looked like a massive cloud in the sky, but I knew it was fire," he said. "The very next day was my day to go home. Ends up we weren't going home that day."

Burrell and others were evacuated by plane Friday, after spending three days with families who arrived at the work camp because they were evacuated from their towns. He said he and other workers rationed food to help the families who were coming in, and some offered up their living spaces.

Burrell planned to catch a flight back to British Columbia.

About 25,000 evacuees moved north in the hours after Tuesday's mandatory evacuation, where oil sands work camps that usually house employees were used to house evacuees. But the bulk of the more than 80,000 evacuees fled south to Edmonton and elsewhere, and officials are moving everyone south where it is safer and they can get better support services. The convoy was stopped for an hour because of smoke.

Police were escorting 50 vehicles at a time, south through the city itself on Highway 63 at a distance of about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) south and then releasing the convoy. At that point another convoy of 50 cars begins.

All intersections along the convoy route have been blocked off and evacuees are not being allowed back to check on their homes in Fort McMurray. The city is surrounded by wilderness, and there are essentially only two ways out via road.

Fanned by high winds, scorching heat and low humidity, the fire grew from 75 square kilometers (29 square miles) Tuesday to 100 square kilometers (39 square miles) on Wednesday, but by Thursday it was almost nine times that - at 850 square kilometers (330 square miles). That's an area roughly the size of Calgary, Alberta's largest city.

The fire was so large that smoke from the fair is blanketing parts of the neighboring province of Saskatchewan where Environment Canada has issued special air quality statements for several areas.

The region has the third-largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Greg Pardy, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said that as much as 1 million barrels a day of oil may be offline, based on oil company announcements. That's just over a third of Canada's total oil sands output, Pardy noted.

(AP)

summary

Scandals deal blow to Panama's image as financial hub

PANAMA CITY (AFP) - 

Panama's reputation as a world-class financial hub is being torn apart from the double scandals of the Panama Papers and now the US designating one of its most prominent families as top money launderers for drug cartels.

"This is like a magnitude-10 earthquake for Panama's economic system and society, but it shouldn't be a surprise," said Miguel Antonio Bernal, a professor in constitutional law at the University of Panama.

"The country's image has been damaged by these scandals," said Francisco Bustamante, who used to work for the Inter-American Development Bank.

They and other analysts believe that, far from putting the scandals behind it, Panama could see them grow in the weeks and months ahead, subjecting the Central American nation to further international scrutiny and spooking investors.

The US announcement this week declaring members and associates of the Wakeds, a prominent family of Lebanese descent, to be among "the world?s most significant drug money launderers and criminal facilitators" was a bad blow on top of the Panama Papers revelations that emerged a month ago.

The US Treasury Department froze the US assets of Nidal Ahmed Waked Hatum and Abdul Mohamed Waked Fares and those of many of their businesses, which span real estate, luxury shops, hotels, a bank, media and duty-free outlets.

Colombia arrested Waked Hatum on Wednesday and said it would extradite him to the United States, where he faces money laundering and bank fraud charges.

Meanwhile, the Panama Papers revelations about how many of the world's wealthy shoved assets into offshore entities look set to deepen.

A US-based journalists' collective that has been poring over the 11.5 million documents plundered from the servers of a secretive Panamanian law firm is to release many of them online on Monday.

And the US government and European countries are stepping up measures against countries seen to be "havens" for tax avoiders and money-launderers.

- Financial sector hit -

Panama's authorities have been trying to emphasize that they are committed to "transparency" and stamping out illegal activity.

But there is little doubt that its financial services sector -- a nexus of banks and law firms catering to clients around the world -- has been hit hard, and will struggle to recover.

As a sign of its seriousness, Panama has created a committee of international experts, headed by Joseph Stiglitz, an American economist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2011, to recommend further reforms to the sector.

In the last couple of years, it has already cracked down on bearer shares and other instruments that helped obscure ownership of companies.

Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela last month also announced that his government was willing to adopt OECD standards on sharing tax information it had long resisted. But last week he said Panama still needed "a little more time" to comply.

The financial scandals will hang heavy over the country as it finally inaugurates next month a costly and behind-schedule expansion of the lucrative Panama Canal.

Varela has invited 70 heads of state and government to the ceremony, which will see a Chinese superfreighter be the first to navigate through the bigger waterway.

The canal, along with free economic zones, ports, tourism and recognized logistics and banking sectors have underpinned economic growth of more than six percent annually in recent years -- one of the highest in the region.

Nevertheless, Panama has found it hard to shake a perception that it is a shady nest of illicit transactions.

"We can't go on as if we are privateers or pirates of the 18th century," Bernal said.

- 'Opportunity' for Panama -

The professor agreed that Panama needed to bring in changes to stop money laundering. "But the government can't do it because most of the people in it have interests in these types of operations," he said.

Analysts said the scandals could instead provide impetus for officials to ensure new reforms fall in line with international transparency standards.

"This is a golden opportunity for Panama," Bustamante said.

"No need for it to talk, it just needs to show that the law exists, that it works, and that's that," he said.

Annette Planells, head of the Independent Movement for Panama, an association fighting for better citizens' rights, said: "Panama needs to bear its share of the sacrifice to stop our institutions being used for these illegal activities."

Still, the experts said Panama's institutions were relatively weak and often riddled with corruption, and the much-criticized justice system has shown itself unwilling or unable to convict senior officials or top businessmen.

"Panama really needs to adapt to this new global reality, and we can't isolate ourselves," Planells said.

by Juan José Rodríguez

© 2016 AFP

Thai activist's mother arrested for not condemning royal insult

BANGKOK (AFP) - 

Thai police have arrested a leading activist's mother for failing to condemn Facebook messages that criticised the monarchy, her legal team said Saturday, in a move a rights group described as an "outrageous twist" of the kingdom's royal insult law.

The arrest comes amid a heightened crackdown on dissent by the junta ahead of an August 7 referendum on a new constitution it scripted and is determined to see pass.

Prosecutions under Thailand's royal defamation law -- known as lese majeste -- have surged since the generals seized power two years ago.

The boundaries for what counts as an insult have also expanded dramatically, with authorities making arrests over even vague references to the royal family.

But human rights lawyers said police took a step further Friday night by charging Patnaree Chankij, 40, for simply receiving messages that criticised the monarchy in a private Facebook chat.

"She just received the messages. She didn't say anything in her own words about the royal family," Poonsuk Poonsukcharoen, one of the human rights attorneys representing Patnaree, told AFP.

Police denied a request for bail citing the seriousness of the crime, which carries up to 15 years in prison for each offence.

She is scheduled to appear before a military tribunal on May 8, the court told AFP.

Patnaree is the mother of prominent student activist Sirawith Seritiwat who has been at the fore of small but persistent anti-junta demonstrations.

She herself has not participated in the protests, which are banned by the junta and often end in arrests.

Human Rights Watch said the charge against her was a "new low".

"Prosecuting someone for her vague response to a Facebook message is just the junta's latest outrageous twist of the lese majeste law," said Brad Adams, the group's Asia director.

At least nine people have been detained in the past two weeks for online criticism of the junta or monarchy -- including an activist who allegedly sent the messages to Patnaree.

The military government says it is seeking to end the political turmoil that has dogged the kingdom for the past decade.

But critics say the generals are more concerned with enshrining their influence and weakening the political bloc led by ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

Thaksin was ousted in a 2006 coup and is hated by Bangkok's military-backed elite.

But his parties have continued to dominate elections with broad support from people in the country's rural north.

© 2016 AFP

Israel raid hits Gaza in response to rocket fire, army says

Israeli aircraft hit two Hamas targets in Gaza early Saturday in response to rocket fire, the army said, as the worst flare-up of violence since a 2014 war entered a fourth day.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the rocket launch and most such fire since 2014 has been carried out by fringe Islamist groups but Israel holds Hamas responsible for all such attacks.

"Earlier today (Saturday)... a rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel," the army said in a statement.

"In response... aircraft targeted two Hamas terror infrastructures in the southern Gaza Strip."

Hamas security sources said the retaliatory raid hit two brickworks in the southern city of Khan Yunis, causing damage but no casualties.

But witnesses said two missiles hit a base of Hamas's military wing east of the city, causing significant damage.

It was the fourth day of the worst violence across the border since the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas which left 2,251 Palestinians and 73 Israelis dead in 2014.

Mortar fire by Palestinian militants, and Israeli air strikes and shelling have raised concerns for the future of an informal truce that has held since the conflict ended.

An Israeli tank round killed a Palestinian woman when it hit her home east of Khan Yunis on Thursday.

Since Wednesday, Hamas and other militant groups have fired at least 12 mortar rounds at Israeli forces searching along the border and short distances inside Gaza for infiltration tunnels leading into Israel.

Such tunnels were among the most feared weapons of Hamas fighters during the 2014 conflict and one was uncovered by the army on Thursday.

Hamas's Gaza leader, Ismail Haniya, said on Friday that the group was "not calling for a new war", but would not accept Israeli incursions into Palestinian territory.

(AFP)

Morocco jails brother of presumed Paris attacks ringleade

RABAT (AFP) - 

A Moroccan court has sentenced the younger brother of suspected Paris attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud to two years in prison on charges including justifying terrorism, state media reported.

According to his lawyer, Yassine Abaaoud was unaware of the activities of his brother, who was killed in a French police raid just days after the November 13 attacks that killed 130 people in Paris.

Moroccan intelligence helped put French investigators on the trail of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian of Moroccan origin who had appeared in grisly Islamic State group videos and was linked to a series of plots in Europe.

Five other defendants were sentenced to between two and five years in prison on separate terrorism related cases by the same court in Rabat's twin city Sale on Thursday, the MAP state news agency reported.

Morocco, on guard against deadly attacks like those seen in Tunisia, says it has broken up 152 "terrorist cells" since 2002, including 31 with ties to jihadists in Iraq and Syria since 2013.

© 2016 AFP