The call for police officers to kill their colleagues is the latest inflammatory comment by Duterte in his controversial drug war, which has claimed thousands of lives, and comes shortly after a meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Duterte made the offer during a speech at national police headquarters, offering two million pesos ($40,000) for an unspecified number of officers who allegedly helped a mayor killed in an anti-drug operation on July 30.

“Each of those policemen carry on their heads now, I am announcing, two million per head and you are free to go on leave (to pursue them),” Duterte told the officers in the audience.

“I’ll cut short my speech so that you will have a chance for a crack at the two million for those idiots.”

Duterte added the bounty would be paid if the policemen were found “dead or alive — better dead”.

He said the unidentified policemen had worked with Reynaldo Parojinog, the mayor of the southern city of Ozamiz, who was killed in the pre-dawn raid along with his wife, his brother and 13 other people.

Police said they were forced to kill the 16 people in self-defence, but Parojinog’s lawyer has insisted the mayor and others had not resisted arrest.

Duterte had accused Parojinog of being a major drug trafficker.

As he has done in similar cases of alleged extrajudicial killings, Duterte on Wednesday also vowed to give legal protection to the policemen who killed Parojinog and the other 15.

If they were found guilty of murder, he would pardon them, he vowed.

Duterte easily won presidential elections last year after promising an unprecedented war on drugs in which tens of thousands of people would be killed.

Since he took office in the middle of last year, police have confirmed killing more than 3,400 people in anti-drug operations.

More than 2,000 other people have been killed in drug-related crimes and thousands more murdered in unexplained circumstances, according to police data.

Rights groups say many of those victims have been killed by government-backed vigilantes, and Duterte has boasted that he would be “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts.

Former US president Barack Obama was among the many international critics of Duterte’s tactics.

But criticism from the United States, the Philippines’ former colonial ruler and mutual defence partner, has been toned down under the administration of Donald Trump.

Tillerson met Duterte in Manila on Monday on the sidelines of a regional security forum. Duterte said American officials did not raise any concerns with him.

The car sped off after the incident described by local mayor Patrick Balkany as “without doubt a deliberate act”.

The Paris prosecutors’ office said its anti-terrorism unit has launched a probe into “attempted killings… in relation to a terrorist undertaking”.

Defence Minister Florence Parly condemned the car ramming as a “cowardly act”, saying it did “nothing to dent soldiers’ determination to work for the security of the French people”.

“Security forces are actively seeking the perpetrator who is on the run. The ongoing probe will determine his motives and the circumstances in which he acted,” Parly said.

France, which has been under a state of emergency since the November 2015 attacks in Paris, has seen a string of assaults on security forces, including those guarding key tourist sites.

Parly said three of the soldiers were “more seriously injured”. All six were hospitalised, but none have life-threatening injuries, Balkany said.

They are part of the 7,000-strong anti-terrorism Sentinelle force set up after the November 2015 bombings and shootings that killed 130 people in the French capital and were claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.

IS has repeatedly said that France is a target because of its participation in the US-led international coalition fighting the jihadist group, with French jets carrying out air strikes against the extremist group in Syria.

– ‘Car accelerated very fast’ –

Wednesday’s incident took place at about 8:00 am (0600 GMT) outside the barracks in the northwestern Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret.

“This morning, as a group of our soldiers were leaving their barracks to go out on patrol, a BMW vehicle parked in the alley rammed into them,” Balkany told news channel BFMTV, adding that the car had “accelerated very fast”.

The incident came just four days after Sentinelle soldiers arrested an 18-year-old with a history of psychological problems at the Eiffel Tower where he brandished a knife and shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest).

He told investigators he wanted to kill a soldier, sources close to the case told AFP.

In February, a man armed with a machete attacked four soldiers on patrol at Paris’s Louvre Museum, while in April another extremist shot and killed a policeman on the Champs Elysees, the French capital’s most famous boulevard.

In June, a 40-year-old Algerian doctorate student who had pledged allegiance to IS attacked a policeman with a hammer outside Notre Dame cathedral.

The wave of attacks in France has had a serious impact on tourism in the world’s top tourist destination, but the industry has begun to recover as incidents have become more widespread and generally less deadly.

With terror attacks hitting not just France but also Belgium, Britain and Germany, potential travellers show “a kind of fatalism”, said Josette Sicsic, head of Touriscopie, a firm that tracks tourist behaviour.

The French tourism ministry expects a five to six per cent increase in overall arrivals to France this year, for a new record of 89 million visitors.

The lowest point for Paris came at the end of March 2016 — four and a half months after the Paris attacks when IS jihadists targeted people enjoying an evening out at trendy eateries, a concert hall and the national stadium.

In a rebound that began at the end of 2016, Paris saw a record 2.6 million foreign arrivals in the first four months of this year — a 19 per cent increase over the same period last year.

He live streamed a movie from a cinema to his Facebook Live video and garnered more than 200,000 views before it was finally removed.

The movie was Kau Yang Satu (You’re the Only One), a film adaptation of a novel by Nia Azalea. It was directed by Osman Ali and jointly produced by Global Station, AstroShaw and Nuansa. The film was released on July 27 and stars Aaron Aziz, Izara Aishah, Hisyam Hamid and Soo Wincci.

Malaysian cinema operator Golden Screen Cinemas (GSC) said the house rules were that no recording was allowed.

A GSC representative said that even though handphones are allowed in their cinemas, the rules state that recording and photography are prohibited.

“Our rules are displayed at the entrance of our cinemas,” he said.

The GSC representative said that during the movie, cinema stewards would patrol the cinema halls to monitor the audience.

“You might not see them, but they are there,” he said.

The representative said that streaming the movie on Facebook Live seems to be a new occurrence, with GSC usually finding people smuggling in video cameras.

“Anyone found recording will be asked to leave the hall,” he added.

Earlier this year, GSC faced a possible blacklist from anime distributor Odex Private Limited after footage of anime film Sword Art Online was filmed and uploaded online.

The movie’s director Osman said he was disappointed after finding out that the movie had been illegally shared on social media.

“Although the individual admitted his guilt after receiving our warnings, this will undoubtedly affect collections for the second week,” he told mStar, The Star’s Malay portal.

Osman said the person who uploaded the video on his Facebook page should face legal action.

“This kind of person needs to be made an example. This is still our film industry, and this is a problem.

“This issue is not new, but it now seems like they are daring enough to do it openly.

“I’m afraid that it will become a trend,” he said.

The Thai Labour Ministry reported yesterday that nearly 223,000 Cambodians had registered at centres in the country during a two-week window for undocumented migrants to get papers, a number that falls well short of legalising all Cambodian workers in the country, according to estimates from experts.

Preeda Tongchumnum, a member of the Migrant Working Group in Thailand, said that registered migrants would receive a work permit valid until March 31 after their work status is verified, but that next steps were unclear.“We still need to wait for a government policy to renew the work permit for workers again,” she said.

While experts and Thai businesses advocate for an amendment of a harsh new Thai law that imposes strict punishments on undocumented migrants and their employers, and will go into effect at the start of next year, the government has no plans to make changes, according to an official of the Thai Employment Department.

Migrant rights workers have previously estimated that the number of undocumented Cambodian workers is as high as 500,000 – leaving many migrants and their employers exposed when the law kicks in.

Undocumented migrants throughout the region are at risk of abuse and exploitation, experts say, and a recent crackdown in Malaysia has led to arrests of thousands of undocumented migrants.

In an attempt to regulate migration, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam last Wednesday signed a Joint Declaration on Safe Labour Migration, vowing to “collaboratively strengthen cooperation”.

This includes “systematically addressing the root causes of irregular migration”, and to “comprehensively monitor” treatment of migrant workers.

However, Jelen Canzana Paclarin, executive director of Women’s Legal and Human Rights Bureau in Indonesia, said in an email that “the statement focused on legal and safe migration and [remains] silent on the issue faced by irregular and undocumented migrants”.

She argued a legally binding instrument was required to ensure the protection of all migrant workers “regardless of their status”.

To this end, 23 organisations endorsed a July 18 statement demanding Asean member states sign such an instrument to fully implement the 2007 Asean Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers. A plan of action, the statement said, should include “programs for the realization of decent work for migrant workers”.

Sumitha Shaanthinni Kishna, co-coordinator at Migration Working Group Malaysia, called for more cooperation among countries whose citizens tend to leave for work elsewhere. “[They] in fact have a strong bargaining power against receiving countries,” she said in an email, referring to countries that source labour from elsewhere. “Sending” countries competing against each other has the effect of giving receiving nations the advantage, she said, because they can accept migrants from countries that agree to the least labour protections. She pointed to Cambodia’s agreement to lift the ban on sending domestic workers to Malaysia as an example. “This is after Malaysia failed to get more domestic workers from Indonesia,” she said.

Kishna recommended concrete measures regionally, including agreements to regulate and punish recruiters; insisting on written contracts; restricting recruiter fees; pre-departure training for workers; prohibiting requirements by employers to forfeit passports and the establishment of a legal aid fund to help migrant workers in the receiving country, among others.

Investigators believe that the endangered animal it might have been a victim of revenge rather than a victim of poachers.

Rangers from the Sabah Wildlife Department and the national Wildlife Department are on the ground interviewing workers at plantations along the Malua and Segama Forest reserves, where the elephant was found dying on Aug 4.

Sabah Forestry Department chief conservator of forests Datuk Sam Mannan said the elephant that was shot in its head, stomach and torso could not have been valuable to poachers because it was a female and did not have tusks.

“So we are not sure why someone would want to kill a female elephant if not for revenge,” he said.

He said investigators believe the elephant may have been killed because it had probably destroyed crops or young oil palm trees.

Human-elephant conflicts on the east coast have seen landowners killing these elephants in trying to stop them from destroying their crops.

“However, we are still not sure about the motive or who killed it,” Mannan said when contacted by phone on Wednesday.

He said forest rangers have identified landowners in the area and were in the process of interviewing them.

“We are also looking for witnesses, and we hope someone can tell us who did this and why,” he added.

The jumbo was first discovered still alive by plantation workers at 7am on Aug 4, but had died by the time wildlife officers arrived on Sunday.

Late last year, three pygmy elephants, including a rare sabre tusk jumbo, were killed by poachers in the Segama area. The suspects remain unidentified.

Aftershocks shuddered across the quake-prone province of Sichuan, adding to the anxiety of victims, with the most powerful reaching a magnitude of 4.8 on Wednesday.

Images emerging from the quake zone showed cars and buses tossed into ravines or smashed by giant boulders apparently jolted loose from surrounding hills, while uniformed paramilitary police with shovels were pictured digging through rubble for victims.

The earthquake hit late Tuesday, killing 13 and injuring 175, 28 of them seriously, according to a statement by the government of Aba prefecture, where the epicentre was located.

Aid organisations warned that it will take time before a clear picture of the scale of the disaster comes into focus due to the area’s difficulty geography.

China’s National Commission for Disaster Reduction estimated that as many as 100 people may have perished, based on past census data of the sparsely populated region, and that tens of thousands of homes may have been damaged.

Pictures circulating on social media showed stunned people milling about on debris-strewn streets, fearful of going back inside as more than 1,000 aftershocks were detected, according to China’s official earthquake monitoring agency.

Yet another sparsely-populated part of China was rocked by a strong quake Wednesday morning.

The 6.3-magnitude tremor shook northwestern Xinjiang region, more than 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) from Sichuan, according to the USGS, and was followed by local aftershocks of 5.2 and 5.3 magnitude.

At least three people there were injured when their home collapsed, official Xinhua news agency said, adding that the initial Xinjiang quake was felt as far away as the regional capital Urumqi more than 200 kilometres to the east.

‘All-out efforts’

The Sichuan quake was centred near Jiuzhaigou, a picturesque valley region designated as a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site and which is famed for its striking scenery, karst rock formations, waterfalls and lakes.

Xinhua said at least five of the deaths occurred in Jiuzhaigou, adding that more than 34,000 people were visiting the popular tourist area at the time and that 31,500 tourists had been moved to safety.

Tuesday’s quake evoked memories of a massive 8.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated wide areas of the same region in 2008, leaving 87,000 people dead or missing in what was China’s worst seismic disaster in a generation.

The 2008 quake set off deadly landslides, obliterating towns and damning rivers, creating menacing “quake lakes” that required the evacuation of thousands downstream as the army worked to clear the blockages.

President Xi Jinping called for “all-out efforts to rapidly organise relief work and rescue the injured” in Tuesday’s quake, according to Xinhua.

Sichuan provincial fire authorities said 1,250 soldiers had been mobilised to head to Jiuzhaigou, along with hundreds of vehicles, 30 sniffer dogs and 55 devices used to detect life underneath rubble.

Restaurant owner Tang Sesheng fled her business in Jiuzhaigou when the earthquake struck, joining masses of others seeking safety in the town’s large public square for safety.

“I was also in Jiuzhaigou in 2008 during the last big quake, so I knew what it was. This felt even stronger,” she told AFP by phone.

“People didn’t dare grab anything like money or clothes — we just all ran outside right away.”

The quake’s epicentre was 284 kilometres north of the provincial capital Chengdu — where the earthquake was reportedly felt — and struck at a depth of 10 kilometres, the USGS said.

Houses collapse

Xinhua said a landslide at the tourist site left more than 100 visitors trapped and that some houses in Jiuzhaigou collapsed, but there were no immediate reports of casualties from those incidents.

The People’s Daily posted video footage on Twitter reportedly showing stranded tourists keeping warm around a campfire at night and photographs of people sleeping under blankets in the street.

The Red Cross Society of China said it was sending emergency specialists and volunteers to assist affected communities.

“It may take some time to learn the extent of damage and casualties,” said Gwendolyn Pang, a spokesperson with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in China.

China is regularly hit by earthquakes, especially its mountainous western and southwestern regions.

Xi made the pledge when sending congratulations on the 50th anniversary of ASEAN’s founding in a message to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whose country has ASEAN’s rotating chairmanship this year.

As a sign of the booming ties between China and the 10-country group, China has been ASEAN’s largest trade partner for eight years.

Their trade amounted to $452.2 billion last year, and currently about 2,700 flights connect China and the 10 countries in every week.

Xi said that since their dialogue partnership was built in 1991, China and ASEAN have stayed true to cooperation and development, their political mutual trust has deepened and their pragmatic cooperation has seen fruitful outcomes.

“China-ASEAN ties have become one of the most vigorous and enriched dialogue partnerships of ASEAN,” Xi added.

He noted that ASEAN has played an important role in securing regional peace and stability since its founding half a century ago, and it has become a force that represents the world’s developing multipolar nature.

China expects greater development of the ASEAN community, which will contribute more to regional peace, stability and prosperity and better benefit the people of its member countries, Xi said.

As next year marks the 15th anniversary of China and ASEAN establishing their strategic partnership, Xi said China would like to take the year as an opportunity to appreciate all that has been accomplished and look at what can be done over the long run.

In Manila on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended the grand celebration of ASEAN’s 50th anniversary along with his counterparts from ASEAN and other nations.

Duterte said, “We seek to engage with our neighbors positively in dialogue partnerships that continue to grow.”

Philippine Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano told reporters on Tuesday that “China plays a very positive role” in the region.

“China has shown economic strength … in the last decades, its economy has also fueled our growth in ASEAN with tourism from China, manufacturing and infrastructure projects,” he said.

In regard to the South China Sea situation, Cayetano said, “All the positive sides China has given to the relationship with ASEAN will not be disturbed” because of disputes there.

“We will not allow this to disturb our good relationships,” he said.

Wang said on Monday night that with the joint efforts of China and ASEAN countries, the situation in the South China Sea has been stabilized, and pragmatic cooperation has unfolded.

Extreme weather this summer has triggered a series of landslides and floods across the country, leaving scores dead and tens of thousands displaced.

The latest disaster hit a village in Puge county at around 6 am, the official Xinhua news agency said, adding that four others were injured and one person remained missing.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, authorities estimated that 71 houses and five kilometres of roads had been destroyed, the Sichuan government information office said in a social media post.

Photos showed rescue workers digging with hoes through sticky brown mud, their bodies caked and splattered, and women in colorful headwraps typical of the Yi ethnic minority watxching the rescue from a destroyed hillside.

One image showed hard-hatted men in bright orange jumpsuits holding an IV drip aloft as they carried a man through a muddy cornfield on a stretcher.

Landslides are a frequent danger in rural and mountainous parts of China, particularly after heavy rain.

A massive landslide in June killed at least 10 people and buried dozens of homes in a village in Sichuan after rains brought down a mountainside.

In July 63 people were killed by landslides and floods in the central province of Hunan. Some 1.6 million people were forced from their homes.

Their efforts came as the government said around 1,000 tonnes of the solidified oil had spilled from a cargo ship after a collision with another vessel near the Pearl River estuary in southern China Thursday.

It was the first time authorities had confirmed how much had been spilled.

Around 200 tonnes is likely to reach Hong Kong’s shores, deputy environment chief Tse Chin-wan told reporters.

Thirteen of the city’s most popular swimming spots are closed after white clumps of the oil started appearing Sunday.

Official cleaning teams have been sent to clear it from beaches and surrounding waters.

But criticism of the government’s response is mounting.

On Wednesday afternoon a team of local volunteers from Lamma Island in the south of Hong Kong braved sweltering heat and humidity to comb one of the worst-affected beaches, filling black bin bags with the lumps of oil.

A sour stench hung over the area and small numbers of dead fish were washing in.

The surrounding pathways were slippery with oil that had melted as temperatures hit 33 degrees Celsius (91 degrees Fahrenheit).

“The government should put in more effort to clean up. I’m here because no one else is doing it,” Tony Mok, 31, told AFP.

“Every morning it looks like it has snowed in Hong Kong, and every afternoon it’s all melted back down under the sand,” said Lamma resident Robert Lockyer, who was leading the two dozen volunteers working to remove the oily white clumps.

Aleli Pena, 38, described the clean-up effort as “hard, hot and disgusting”.

“We’re all volunteers — where are you government?” she asked.

 – Too little, too late? –

Others said government cleaners had been working hard, but questioned why more had not been done to intercept the oil before it reached the beaches.

Environment campaigner Gary Stokes said the government should have installed pollution booms — a kind of floating barrier — to stop the oil reaching the beaches.

Stokes, Asia Director for Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has written to the marine department asking them to install the booms to guard against more oil washing in.

Tse had said earlier that he would not rule out the oil spreading to other areas.

The government has repeatedly described the palm oil as non-toxic and “harmless” to humans.

“You will see that many instant noodles have palm oil in them,” Tse said Wednesday, although he acknowledged a large amount would affect the environment.

Stokes said the oil was hazardous to wildlife because it attracts bacteria and had left a greasy film on the water which would reduce the supply of oxygen.

After examining the waters by boat himself, he told AFP the fish were “going crazy” for the lumps of oil and eating it, with unknown consequences.

The government has been questioned over why it was not notified by mainland authorities until Saturday of the Thursday spill.

Tse said it was only then that Chinese authorities realised it would spread to “other regions”.

The marine department then dispatched ships to try to recover some of the oil, he said.

So far 50 tonnes had been gathered in Hong Kong and 38 tonnes in Guangdong, Tse added.

Mary Ho’s late-flourishing career will reach its zenith Wednesday when she performs in front of a huge crowd at Singapore’s National Day Parade, marking 52 years of the city-state’s independence.

Grandmother of seven Ho only started playing the guitar at 60, fulfilling a lifelong dream to learn the instrument.

She initially taught herself from a book with an acoustic and was content strumming along and singing.

But when a friend introduced her to rock star Carlos Santana’s classic track “Samba Pa Ti” about a decade ago, she decided to seek some professional tutoring to shift things up a few gears.

“It was too difficult (to learn on my own) so I found a teacher,” she told AFP.

“But the teacher looked at me and said ‘Oh I’ve never taught anyone your age before’.”

Despite not knowing how to read music, Ho was determined to learn her favourite song and practised up to three hours a day to get the hang of it.

Since then, she’s amassed a collection of more than 20 guitars, recorded her own album of Latin music and is often in demand for charity gigs.

A video of Ho playing rock classic “Need Your Love So Bad” has more than 1.1 million views on YouTube.

In fast-ageing Singapore, Ho is a poster child for how to remain active when elderly, and has featured in various campaigns encouraging senior citizens to stay active.

She admitted to feeling a little anxious ahead of Wednesday’s performance before a crowd of 27,000 at the parade, which features a military tattoo before a festive show featuring local stars.

“Being my first time for such a large performance, I naturally feel very nervous,” she said.

Asked if she was exhausted from all her activities, Ho simply laughed.

“Maybe it’s just my nature, it’s the love of doing things, learning things… I don’t ever get tired,” she said.