A bent laptop, a damage hair curling iron and torn clothes were among the items that a traveller received when she got her missing luggage back.

As for her suitcase? It was a mangled mess that is beyond recognition.

The passenger voiced her displeasure online and posted images on Pantip.com, when the airline offered her 2,000 baht (S$77.30) in compensation for her badly damaged suitcase, reported The Bangkok Post. 

On May 5, the woman had flown on budget airline Thai Smile from Phuket to Bangkok. 

When she arrived at Suvarnabhumi airport at around 11pm, her suitcase was nowhere to be found. 

When she went looking for her missing baggage, the airline said that all bags had already been loaded onto the carousel.

The woman waited at the airport until 1am to no avail.

The next day at 5pm, she received a call from the airline saying that her bag had been located, but it was damaged.

When she picked up her bag, she found that, not only was the suitcase badly banged-up, many items in her luggage were also damaged.

The airline expressed regret over the incident and has apologised for the damage.

They offered her 2,000 baht in compensation for the damaged suitcase but said that they would not cover damage to the bag’s contents. However, the woman could get a new bag from the airline. 

maryanns@sph.com.sg

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

pantip.com

MANILA – The Philippine parliament on Monday proclaimed Rodrigo Duterte the nation’s next president following his landslide election win this month, but he snubbed the high-profile event.

A joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate in Manila endorsed the official count of the ballots, which saw Duterte win by more than six million votes. Duterte declined to attend, remaining instead in his southern hometown of Davao.

Duterte’s refusal to attend broke tradition and disappointed even some of his supporters, reinforcing the foul-mouthed politician’s reputation as a maverick who is happy to offend the political establishment.

“I am not attending the proclamation. I’ve never attended any proclamation all my life,” Duterte told reporters on the weekend in Davao, a city more than 900 kilometres (560 miles) from Manila that he has ruled as mayor for most of the past two decades.

Duterte, who won largely due to an incendiary law-and-order platform headlined by a vow to wipe out crime within six months, is due to be sworn in on June 30.

Duterte pledged to give security forces shoot-to-kill orders, and vowed that tens of thousands of criminals would die. Since the election Duterte has repeatedly encouraged police to kill drug suspects, and said he would bring back the death penalty.

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

AFP, Reuters

Also on the campaign trail, he variously denied and acknowledged links to vigilante death squads in Davao, the biggest city in the conflict-plagued southern region of Mindanao.

Duterte has promised to stay in Davao until his term starts, and has been holding midnight news conferences at various hotels. This has forced politicians, powerbrokers, business leaders and courtiers to fly from Manila for an audience.

He has also begun forming his cabinet from Davao, naming many regional politicians to key posts. He has also met with communist and Muslim guerrilla emissaries ahead of planned peace talks.

Duterte has said he wants to stay in Davao because he is comfortable there. He has also repeatedly expressed his disdain for spending time in Manila, which he described last week as a “dead city” that is overrun by slums.

At Monday’s congressional session, Leni Robredo was declared the winner of the vice president election, narrowly edging out Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, the son and namesake of the late Philippine dictator.

Robredo, a member of outgoing president Benigno Aquino’s Liberal Party, attended the event along with her family and supporters.

Highlighting the importance of the event to many in the Philippines, the ceremonies were broadcast live on national television.

In the Philippines, presidents and vice presidents are elected separately. The constitution limits them to serving a single term of six years.

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine parliament on Monday proclaimed Rodrigo Duterte the nation’s next president following his landslide election win this month, but he snubbed the event.

A joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate in Manila endorsed the official count of the ballots, which saw Duterte win by more than six million votes. Duterte declined to attend, remaining instead in his southern hometown of Davao.

TOKYO – Japan said Monday that it believed a new photo posted online of a Japanese journalist missing in Syria – showing him for the first time since a video released earlier this year – is authentic.

The photo, which received widespread coverage in Japanese media, shows freelance journalist Jumpei Yasuda, who has been out of contact since June last year, wearing an orange shirt, his hair and beard grown long.

He is seen holding a piece of paper with a handwritten message in Japanese that says: “Please help. This is the last chance. Jumpei Yasuda.” It was not clear when or where the image was taken, but Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters that the man is likely Yasuda.

“The government is now analysing the image,” he said.

Footage of Yasuda was posted online in March. In the one-minute video, the bearded man wearing a black jumper with a scarf around his neck says in English: “Hello, I am Jumpei Yasuda. Today is my birthday, 16 March.” The footage was posted online by Tarik Abdul Hak, who told AFP it had been provided to him by a group called al-Noor, which he said “has been mandated by (the al-Qaeda-linked) al-Nusra to carry out a mediation for his release”.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported that the same person posted the new photo online.

Militants from the self-styled Islamic State group last year beheaded Japanese war correspondent Kenji Goto and his friend Haruna Yukawa.

The government in Tokyo was criticised for what detractors saw as a flat-footed response to the crisis at the time, including apparently missed opportunities to free both men.

Earlier this month, three Spanish journalists, who had been held hostage in Syria by an Al Qaeda-linked group, were released.

They shared part of their time in captivity with Yasuda, according to Spain’s Europa Press news agency.

TOKYO – Japanese rescuers on Monday expanded the search for a seven-year-old boy missing for three days after his parents left him in a mountain forest inhabited by bears as punishment in a case that has infuriated public opinion.

The parents originally told police the boy got lost on Saturday while they were hiking to gather wild vegetables but later admitted they had left him in the forest to punish him.

The boy, Yamato Tanooka, went missing in mountains on the northern main island of Hokkaido inhabited by wild bears.

Yamato, his older sister, mother and father came to a park near the forest on Saturday, but the parents became angry as the boy threw stones at cars and people, Japanese police and media reports said.

On the way back home, they made Yamato get out of the car and left him alone in the forest, driving the car about 500 metres (some 550 yards) away, TV Asahi and other reports said.

“They said they went back to the site immediately but the boy was no longer there,” a local police spokesman earlier told AFP.

Some 180 rescuers and police officers widened the search area on Monday, mobilising sniffer dogs and horses to go deeper into the woodlands, NTV footage showed.

“I feel very sorry for my child,” the father told an NTV reporter. “I am so sorry for causing trouble for many people.” Japanese public opinion reacted with outrage at the actions of the parents.

“This is not punishment but abuse!” one Twitter post read.

“The parents are so stupid that I am speechless,” said another.

Many also worried about the fate of the child in the forest alone and reportedly with no food or water as heavy rain fell overnight.

Mitsuru Wakayama, a spokesman for the local town of Nanae, said the mountainous area is a place that only local residents pass through occasionally as a short-cut.

“Not many people or cars pass by, and it gets totally dark as there are no lights,” Wakayama said.

“It’s not surprising to encounter bears anywhere in the area.”

KAMPALA – Uganda promised to halt military cooperation with old ally North Korea after a visit to Kampala by South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Sunday.

North Korea, which is under UN sanctions for its defiant efforts to build nuclear weapons, has for many years sent military trainers to Uganda, but Uganda’s foreign minister Sam Kutesa said the relationship would now end.

“We are disengaging the cooperation we have with North Korea as a result of UN sanctions,” Kutesa said.

“Our policy is that we do not support nuclear proliferation.” The about-turn followed a meeting between Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and his South Korean counterpart Park Geun-Hye.

“President Museveni said Uganda would enforce the UN Security Council resolutions, adding that the government had already been given orders to disengage with North Korea on police and other military engagements,” Uganda’s State House said in a statement late Sunday.

Earlier in the day, a Ugandan government spokesman had denied severing ties with North Korea, calling the reports “propaganda”. However, officials later backtracked.

Uganda has been one of North Korea’s allies in Africa with diplomatic relations since 1963. Beginning in 2007, North Korea has run training programmes for Uganda’s army and police.

Museveni, who has led his country since 1986 and was re-elected in February for a fifth term, has made three visits to North Korea, where he met the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, father of current leader Kim Jong-Un.

In March, the UN Security Council adopted the heaviest sanctions ever imposed on North Korea after it went ahead with its fourth nuclear test on 6 January followed by a rocket launch a month later.

Sunday’s visit to Uganda was Park’s first since taking power in 2013 and is part of an East Africa tour that includes Ethiopia and Kenya.