Though frowned upon by the church, the gruesome re-enactments of Christ’s final moments draw thousands of believers — and tourists — in a carnival-like atmosphere that is big business for locals.

In towns located north of Manila at least three people had eight-centimetre (three-inch) spikes driven through their palms and feet in hot, dry fields. More devotees were expected to take part later in the day.

At the same time, bare-chested men, some of whose faces were concealed by hoods, lashed their backs bloody, as selfie-snapping onlookers watched.

They left droplets of blood on cars, houses and even bottles of soda displayed on snack vendors’ tables that lined the road.

“If one of my family members gets sick, this is what we do,” said Norman Lapuot, 25, as he flogged himself with a bamboo-tipped whip. “I do this for my relatives.”

Lapuot, who said it was his fourth time taking part in the ceremony, added that he believed the ritual bloodletting had helped his grandfather recover from a stroke.

While a majority of the Philippines’ 80 million Catholics spend Good Friday at church or with family, participants undergo the gruesome spectacle to atone for sins or give thanks for divine intervention.

The mock crucifixions on Good Friday have been going on for decades despite official disapproval from the nation’s dominant Catholic Church.

“The church never encourages self-flagellation, much less crucifixion,” Roy Bellen, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Manila, told AFP.

“All sacrifices being asked from Catholics during Lent and Holy Week should lead to actions that benefit the poor and the needy,” he added.

Food stalls, cab drivers and even souvenir stands get a boost from the event which draws some 35,000 people every year to the area over the course of Good Friday.

Nearly 80 percent of people in the Philippines are Catholic, a legacy of the nation’s 300 years of Spanish colonial rule that ended at the turn of the 20th century.

China’s space agency said on Thursday that the nearly eight-tonne Tiangong-1 will re-enter the atmosphere some time between Saturday and Monday. The European Space Agency has a smaller window between midday Saturday and early Sunday afternoon GMT time.

But there is “no need for people to worry”, the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) said on its WeChat social media account.

Such falling spacecraft do “not crash into the Earth fiercely like in sci-fi movies, but turn into a splendid (meteor shower) and move across the beautiful starry sky as they race towards the Earth”, it said.

The lab was placed in orbit in September 2011 and had been slated for a controlled re-entry, but it ceased functioning in March 2016 and space enthusiasts have been bracing for its fiery return.

Beijing sees its multi-billion-dollar space programme as a symbol of the country’s rise. It plans to send a manned mission to the moon in the future.

China sent another lab into orbit, the Tiangong-2, in September 2016 and hopes to turn it into a crewed space station by 2022.

Experts have downplayed any concerns about the Tiangong-1 causing any damage when it hurtles back to Earth, with the ESA noting that nearly 6,000 uncontrolled re-entries of large objects have occurred over the past 60 years without harming anyone.

The CMSEO said the probability of someone being hit by a meteorite of more than 200 grammes is one in 700 million.

During the uncontrolled re-entry, atmospheric drag will rip away solar arrays, antennas and other external components at an altitude of around 100 kilometres, according to the Chinese space office.

The intensifying heat and friction will cause the main structure to burn or blow up, and it should disintegrate at an altitude of around 80 kilometres, it said.

Most fragments will dissipate in the air and a small amount of debris will fall relatively slowly before landing, most likely in the ocean, which covers more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, estimates that the Tiangong-1 is the 50th most massive uncontrolled re-entry of an object since 1957.

“Much bigger things have come down with no casualties,” McDowell told AFP.

“This thing is like a small plane crash,” he said, adding that the trail of debris will scatter pieces several hundred kilometres apart.

At an altitude of 60-70 kilometres, debris will begin to turn into “a series of fireballs”, which is when people on the ground will “see a spectacular show,” he said.//AFP

In the 55-second video dated March 28, a car is seen travelling on a winding road at 3.25am when it drives past a woman in red walking slowly by the roadside.

The car moves on ahead for several metres, but the same eerie figure crops up repeatedly. The figure, shown walking slowly on the left side of the road, appears two more times.

The driver continues his journey before the “apparition” appears in front of the car.

The car comes to a halt and immediately reverses from the scene and the video ends. Netizens were spooked by the video, which has been shared 2,700 times since it was uploaded on Facebook on Wednesday (March 28).

Netizens were spooked by the video, which has been shared 2,700 times since it was uploaded on Facebook on Wednesday (March 28).

While social media speculates on the authenticity of the video, mStar Online, the Star Media Group’s Bahasa Malaysia news portal, reported that a man had jokingly told a WhatsApp chat group that he created the video with the help of four friends.

Other netizens speculate that the video is a publicity stunt for actress Nur Fazura Sharifuddin’s upcoming horror flick The Legend Of Pontianak.

Earlier in February, Nur Fazura had shared a photo on Instagram of herself wearing a red kebaya taken on the set of the movie.

General Prayut will meet separately with Vietnam’s leader Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Thongloun Sisoulith of Laos ahead of the summit.

Tomorrow he will attend a retreat at which delegates will discuss “economic cooperation amid the changing global landscape” and a meeting on sustainable cooperation and development.

He will return to Thailand the same day.

The summit’s theme is “Leveraging 25 Years of Cooperation and Building a Sustainable, Integrated and Prosperous GMS”.

The region’s leaders are expected to endorse the five-year Hanoi Action Plan and the Regional Investment Framework 2022.

The quake struck at 5:25 pm local time (2125 GMT) about 162 kilometres from the New Britain town of Rabaul, the US Geological Survey said.

It was initially recorded at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres (six miles), before it was revised by the USGS to a depth of 35 kilometres.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center earlier said “hazardous” waves of between 0.3-one metre above tide level could be generated by the quake for some coasts of PNG.

It said smaller waves could also hit the Solomon Islands, but later added that the “tsunami threat from this earthquake has now passed”.

“It was felt as far away as Kokopo (150 kilometres from the epicentre),” Geoscience Australia seismologist Spiro Spiliopoulos told AFP of the tremor.

There were no reports of damage at this stage, Spiliopoulos said, adding that the affected areas were remote.

The earthquake was quickly followed by two powerful smaller tremors, measuring 5.3 and 5.1, both at a depth of 35 kilometres, according to USGS.

The quake came on the heels of a separate 5.8-magnitude tremor some 43 kilometres west of Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, which struck at 6:51 am local time (1851 GMT) at a depth of 10 kilometres.

There are regular quakes in the region, and PNG is sitting on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire which is a hotspot for seismic activity due to friction between tectonic plates.

PNG was hit by a 7.5-magnitude quake on February 26 that buried homes and triggered landslides in its highlands region, killing at least 125 people.

Its mountainous and remote terrain means it often takes several days for information about damage from quakes to reach officials and aid agencies.

    In a lime green barely-there mesh dress and towering silver heels, the 22-year-old hopes to bring drag into the mainstream with regular performances in Hanoi, a conservative capital better known for its colonial charm than men in sequined minis.

“If we dare to be pioneers, soon this art will be accepted in Vietnam,” Betty told AFP before a show Saturday that stirred up crowds with renditions of hits by Whitney Houston and Alicia Keys.

The drag night started as a weekly viewing party for the hit TV series “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and quickly transformed into a show of its own — drawing a handful of men in drag to the stage for punchy lip-sync performances.

Organiser Tamah Lake said it’s the only event of its kind in Hanoi.

“It’s brought it more into the open… I think it’s becoming slightly more mainstream and slightly more well-known,” said Lake, not herself a drag queen, who works as a teacher during the week.

The drag queens who turn out for her Saturday night parties say they have few places to perform in a city where cross-dressing is almost unheard of, unlike in the West where starlets like RuPaul — the drag queen mother — have helped to popularise it.

“In Vietnam, there are drag queens that have been active for a long time but have not been acknowledged. This show helps more people know about our art,” said Betty, who started the five-member drag group “Victeam” in Haiphong, east of Hanoi.

Communist Vietnam is seen as relatively progressive on LGBT issues — the one-party state decriminalised gay marriage celebrations in 2015, although it stopped short of full legal recognition for same-sex unions — and the government is currently drafting a transgender law to allow legal gender changes.

But cross-dressing can help to boost tolerance, according to Vuong Kha Phong, LGBT rights programme officer at Vietnamese NGO iSEE.

“Drag queens being out there performing helps tremendously in getting people to know and be more comfortable with diversity,” Vuong told AFP.

Though the drag scene is still just emerging in much of Vietnam, cross-dressing has historic roots: the centuries-old ritual of “Hau Dong” requires mediums to dress as the opposite sex to channel spirits.

Still, when it comes to modern cross-dressing, some drag queens face pushback from the community for blurring gender norms.

First-time performer Za Za Zellia hopes the drag show will help to sway conservative attitudes.

“Hanoi is really traditional, they don’t hate (drag) but they don’t approve of it at the same time,” the 25-year-old told AFP, after debuting in a Gatsby-inspired sequined look.

“This just tells people it’s alright, it’s completely normal,” Za Za said after the show, a huge white feather emerging from a wig of thick black curls.//AFP

    Attorney General Tarek William Saab gave the death toll in the pre-dawn mayhem at the police headquarters in northern Carabobo state, blaming a fire thought to have been started deliberately.

Carlos Nieto, head of a prisoners’ rights group called Una Ventana a la Libertad (A Window on Freedom), said that some prisoners burned to death and others choked after setting fire to mattresses and stealing a guard’s gun in an attempt to break out.

The dead included two women who were visiting the jail, the attorney general said, adding that four prosecutors have been named to investigate.

Photos taken by Nieto’s group showed the body of a man with burns and firefighters trying to put out flames.

Relatives of those being kept in the detention center tried to force their way in. After one officer was injured by a tossed stone, the crowd was dispersed by police firing tear gas.

A video posted on Twitter showed dozens of people demanding information in front of police guarding the site. Women were seen crying.

“I am a desperate mother. My son has been here a week. They have not given any information,” Dora Blanco told local media.

Local news correspondents wrote on Twitter that the facility was tense Wednesday night.

– Dire prison conditions –

Venezuela’s prisons suffer from dire overcrowding and a shortage of basic supplies, struggling under the deepening economic crisis that is gripping the once-wealthy oil-producing country.

Because of the lack of space in penitentiaries, convicts are often sent to police holding cells like the ones in Carabobo, meant to be used as temporary pens for suspects facing charges or court hearings, where detainees are supposed to spend a maximum of 48 hours.

Nieto’s association estimated that the temporary detention centers were overfilled by five times their capacity.

And what happened Wednesday in Carabobo is not an isolated incident, he added.

“All the police stations in Venezuela are facing similar or worse conditions of overcrowding, lack of food and disease,” he said.

The association said 65 people died last year in the holding cells due to violence, malnutrition or tuberculosis.

Two weeks ago, 58 detainees escaped holding cells on Margarita Island, a favored tourist spot, after punching a hole in their facility’s wall. They were all soon recaptured.

In August 2017, a riot left 37 dead and 14 wounded in police cells in the southern state of Amazonas, while an April 2017 clash between rival gangs left 12 dead and 11 injured in the Puente Ayala prison in the eastern city of Barcelona.

A month before that, the remains of 14 people were found in a mass grave in the General Penitentiary of Venezuela, in San Juan de Los Morros in the country’s center.//AFP

“According to the will of both leaders, the South and North agreed to hold the ‘2018 South-North summit’ on April 27 at the South’s Peace House in Panmunjom,” said a joint press statement, read out in turn by both delegations’ leaders.

The meeting between Kim Jong Un, leader of nuclear-armed North Korea, and the South’s President Moon Jae-in will be only the third of its kind, and will be followed by landmark talks with US President Donald Trump which could come as early as May.

The venue will make Kim the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South since the end of the Korean War — although according to Pyongyang’s official accounts, during the conflict his grandfather and predecessor Kim Il Sung went several times to Seoul, which twice fell to his forces.

The two sides did not settle on the summit agenda at Thursday’s meeting in the Unification Pavilion on Panmunjom’s northern side, but the South’s delegation leader Cho Myoung-gyon told reporters they agreed Kim and Moon should be able to hold “frank discussions on all matters”.

That would include the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, Cho said.

The leader of Pyongyang’s delegation Ri Son Gwon added: “What the people want is our agenda.”

Another round of working-level talks next Wednesday will discuss issues including protocol and security.

Next month’s meeting comes after previous inter-Korean summits in Pyongyang in 2000 and 2007, since when the North has made extensive progress in its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.

It has been subjected to multiple rounds of sanctions by the UN Security Council, US, South and others as a result, and tensions in the region have soared, with Kim and Trump engaging in a fiery war of words last year.

But a rapid rapprochement on the peninsula was kicked off by the Winter Olympics in the South and events have moved quickly since then, with a flurry of official visits between the two Koreas.

An advance team of Southern performers headed north on Thursday ahead of K-pop concerts in Pyongyang.

– Kim-Xi meeting –

Beijing welcomed Thursday’s developments, with foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang saying improved relations between the Koreas “will help promote regional peace and stability”.

“We believe it serves their mutual interests as well as the regional situation,” he added.

China’s top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, arrived in Seoul Thursday to brief Moon and other officials on Kim’s secretive visit to Beijing this week to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time.

It was the North Korean leader’s first overseas trip since inheriting power following the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in 2011.

China has long been the North’s key diplomatic defender and provider of trade and aid, but relations have been strained by Pyongyang’s weapons programmes, with Beijing showing a new willingness to implement UN sanctions against it.

Even so the two leaders hailed their nations’ historic ties, with Xi accepting Kim’s invitation to visit Pyongyang, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

“There is no question that my first foreign visit would be to the Chinese capital,” it quoted Kim as saying, calling it a “noble obligation”.

Kim pledged that he was “committed to denuclearisation” on the Korean peninsula, according to China’s Xinhua news agency — but added this would depend on South Korea and the US taking what he called “progressive and synchronous measures for the realisation of peace”.

Analysts say both sides had reason to hold the meeting — Pyongyang to secure Beijing’s backing and support, and China to protect its interests in what it considers its backyard.

Robert Kelly, a professor at Pusan National University in South Korea, said: “Xi would not grant this meeting unless the Chinese were genuinely concerned about the summits to come and wanted some kind of role to play.”

The South’s JoongAng Daily newspaper said in an editorial Thursday that the meeting “makes the situation more complicated because Xi stepped into the negotiation all of a sudden”.

“China will not simply look on,” it added.//AFP

Ri Sol-ju, the mysterious young wife of the totalitarian leader and a former star singer, was filmed by state television in at least three different outfits during their two-day stay in Beijing.

William Tang Tat-chi, a Hong Kong fashion designer, said the style was “subtle” but not conservative.

The Beijing visit was a rare public appearance by Ri in a diplomatic setting as she has mainly been seen at domestic events.

Many Chinese internet users praised Ri’s looks and compared her style to that of Peng Liyuan, China’s first lady, before censors rolled on to remove nearly all discussions from social media platforms.

“Ri Sol-ju is indeed beautiful and amiable. I can tell she would be good at ‘first-lady diplomacy’, better than Kim’s sister,” one internet user commented on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.

Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of Kim Jong-un, recently represented the country at the Winter Olympics in South Korea, and there had been speculation that she was the mystery visitor to Beijing before her brother’s presence was confirmed.

Another commented that Ri had “a powerful presence”, looking prettier than Peng, even though Peng dressed more fashionably.

Others compared Ri’s look with that of South Korean celebrities, saying she was “as pretty as Song Hye-kuo”, an actress widely popular in China.

Ri remains an enigmatic figure and little is known about her for certain. Kim announced their marriage in 2012, and some analysts believe Ri was born in September 1989, making her 28 years old.

She is believed to have given birth to three children and some reports have suggested she had a career as a singer before her marriage.

In the welcoming ceremony, Ri wore a camel cropped jacket with a matching midi skirt and a pair of nude pumps.

She also wore a necklace, a pair of tiny ear studs and a big shiny pink and gold butterfly-shaped brooch, with her hair draped on her back, to finish off a calm, energetic and clean-cut look.

Peng, a famous singer in her own right, was dressed in a white coat dress with dramatic black ink patterns during the ceremony.

During a visit to the Chinese Academy of Science, Ri wore a white jacket and an apple green dress with a brown flower-shaped ribbon brooch and a nude leather clutch.

At a lunch with Xi and Peng at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, where Kim stayed, Ri changed to an elegant ivory two-piece dress with flowery decorations on the collar and soft frilled sleeves.

Tang said although the style of Ri’s two looks were “outdated”, it was still impressive considering she came from a totalitarian country where access to fashion is limited to common people.

Search results of “Ri Sol-ju” remained blocked on Weibo as of midday Wednesday, and most of the comments under news reports of the pair’s trip had been removed.

Rozita Mohamad Ali, 44, will now have to serve an eight-year jail sentence for causing grievous hurt to her domestic helper Suyanti Sutrinso, 21, at a house in Mutiara Damansara on June 21, 2016.

Judge Datuk Seri Tun Abdul Majid Tun Hamzah also rejected the defence counsel’s plea for a stay of execution and ordered Rozita to serve her sentence beginning Thursday (March 29).

Rozita’s defence counsel Haniff Khatri Abdulla said his client was willing to have her passport impounded and to adhere to any other additional conditions imposed.

Dressed in black from head to toe, Rozita appeared calm and had an in-depth discussion with her platoon of lawyers led by Haniff Khatri.

Before she was handcuffed and led out of the court, she pinned part of her headscarf to cover the lower part of her face.

Rozita was initially charged under Section 307 of the Penal Code with attempted murder, which was later amended to Section 326 of the Penal Code for causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means.

She had pleaded guilty to the charge.

She had used a kitchen knife, a steel mop and an umbrella to attack her maid Suyanti at a house in Mutiara Damansara on June 21, 2016.

She was bound over for five years on a good behaviour bond of RM20,000 on March 15 by Sessions Court judge Mohammed Mokhzani Mokhtar.

However, the lenient sentence was criticised by members of the public who demanded she be duly dealt with for abusing Suyanti.