Black smoke no pope: story, photos, and videos from the Vatican by CBS News;
From star.com, press release of military: Soldier & 3 armed Filipinos killed in gunfight in Sungai Yamuk, Lahad Datu; soldier dies in road accident; press release of police: Police opened two investigation papers on Lahad Datu incidents; Malaysian govt press release: Govt to assist residents affected by incidents; man on wanted list among detained;
Plus: MaribuBot the robot news aggregator gathered for you 50 stories on health, environment, more world news, restaurant reviews etc. (Maribubot seems to like restaurant reviews): Read all about it in:
From thestar.com : “22 more bodies of militants removed from Kampung Tanduo”
“Security forces have removed 22 more bodies of Sulu militants from Kampung Tanjung Batu and Semporna, and recorded another… shot dead, Sabah Police Commissioner Datuk Hamza Taib said Monday.
“The bodies were sent to the Tawau Hospital and Lahad Datu Hospital for forensic investigations and post mortem, he added.
“…death toll among the Sulu intruders to 54.xxx This brings the number of injured personnel to five.
“xxx Comm Hamza also said six more people have been detained for suspected links xxx bringing the total to 97 detained under Second 130(C) of the Security Offences and Special Measures Act 2012.
“Another 125 people have also been detained for trying to enter areas where operations were being conducted.
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And another story, the bittersweet firsthand account of a Malaysian photographer who saw an armed combatant for the first time in her 17-year career as photojournalist in Malaysia – it should have been set to musical arrangement by Hans Zimmer:
From thestar.com Normimie Diun, photographer “The armed gunman was watching us”:
(where are my violins — i need some strings here..and…cue music please, decrescendo)
: “In my 17 years with The Star as a photographer, this is the first time I had come face-to-face with a gunman in a battle zone.”
“As we passed Kampung Labian, I saw a shadow of a man squatting among oil palm trees on the left side of the road, about 10m from our car. I said that I had seen a man.
“Serieffa (Mushtafa Al Bakry, the Al-Hijrah television news journalist) who was driving the car said he too saw the man holding a gun.
“I looked again at the man and noticed that he was holding a gun that looked like an M-16. He was dressed in black and looked like he was in his 50s.
“I saw that he was staring at us. He looked like a typical villager but he was holding a gun.
“My companions wanted to shoot the armed man (with their cameras). I shouted to them: ‘Don’t!’ I also told them to keep down and put away their cameras.
“My immediate thought was that he could mistake our equipment as weapons and fire at us.
“In the car we kept saying ‘Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar’ (God is great, God is great) as Serieffa slammed the accelerator and sped off at 120kph.”
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And other stories:
“No tunnels found in KgTanduo” (thestar.com);
“Navy fetching 400 more Sabah evacuees” (interaksyon.com);
“Raja muda escapes arrest in Sabah” (rappler.com);
“Filipinos flee Sabah for fear of reprisal” (YahooPh);
Here’s the Agence France Presse story on yesterday’s carpet bombing of Tanduo, Sabah by the Malaysian military, reprinted below. See how the Agence France Presse was very careful in not using any loaded words or derogatory labels. It took pains in writing out: “Filipinos loyal to the former Sultan of Sulu” instead of the shorter, more convenient but loaded and derogatory “gunmen” , “intruders”, “terrorists”, etc. . These epithets connote crime, criminal suspects, etc.. They make the state-party Malaysia fall outside the pale of international humanitarian law that prohibits carpet bombings of civilian-populated areas.
Throughout the story, Agence France Presse took pains in being accurate, journalistically correct and politically correct.
See how the Inquirer and Interaksyon handled the storification of the news item. Inquirer and Interaksyon used generic nouns while at the same time being accurate and correct about it. The Inquirer simply referred to the Sulu “Royal Army” members as:Filipinos (see their headline: “Filipinos survive attack”) . It’s accurate, correct, objective. Interaksyon referred to them simply as : Pinoy (see their headline: “No dead Pinoy found 9 hours after Sabah assault”. Accurate, correct, objective. But look at Rappler’s headline of the exact Agence France Presse story (Agence France Presse precisely took pains in referring to the combatants as “Filipinos loyal to the sultan” throughout the article)…. Rappler headlined it as: “Pinoy gunmen survive Sabah raid”.
Gunmen.
Headline-writing can be tricky. A tabloid headline writer might have bannered: “ ‘I’m alive!!’ – Sulu commander”.
I know that you want your headlines to be short and crisp, but not at the cost of sacrificing correctness, or of avoiding loaded words, especially in conflict-reporting.
Here’s the Agence France Presse story, it also appears in my news site : for a comprehensive coverage of the Sabah conflict with 12 stories and 12 angles on the confrontation, pls click:
(i also have soft news on that site from Readers Digest, Vegetarian Society, Good Housekeeping, Yahoo Shine, New York Times, etc. — see for yourself!)
“Manila, Philippines – Filipinos loyal to the former Sultan of Sulu survived a bombing raid and ground offensive launched by Malaysian security forces on Tuesday, the group’s spokesman said.
“More than 200 men loyal to the sultan who have been in Malaysia’s Sabah state for about 3 weeks moved outside the area that was attacked before the offensive operation began, the sultan’s spokesman, Abraham Idjirani, told AFP.
“ “They heard a lot of explosions and saw two bombs being dropped by Malaysian aircraft,” Idjirani said in Manila. “But this was happening away from where he and his men are.”
“Following the morning air raid, Malaysia’s national police chief said that “mopping up” operations had yet to find any dead militants, but expressed fears that at least some of them might have slipped away.
“Idjirani said he spoke with the leader of the armed men in Sabah by telephone at 3:00 pm (0700 GMT).
“ “They are fine,” Idjirani said.
“Jamalul Kiram III, a self-styled Filipino Muslim sultan, sent the men to Sabah in a bid to enforce the sultanate’s centuries-old ownership claim on the state.
“On Tuesday afternoon, Malaysian officials and the Malaysian media reported that their army defeated the Filipino gunmen. The Star newspaper of Malaysia said, quoting police sources: “The Sulu armed group was totally routed by [the] Malaysian security forces’ overwhelming firepower.” “
