While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, Oct 1, 2025
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Rescuers carrying an injured woman in Ilo-Ilo city, after an earthquake hit the central Philippines on Sept 30.
PHOTO: EPA
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Strong quake in central Philippines kills at least 20
A strong earthquake jolted the central Philippines on the night of Sept 30, collapsing buildings and killing at least 20 people and injuring more than three dozen others, a government spokesperson said.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology reported that the 6.9-magnitude earthquake shook the province of Cebu, home to 3.2 million people, just before 10pm local time. It was followed by a series of smaller aftershocks.
Ms Ainjeliz de la Torre-Orong, a spokesperson for Cebu, said in an email that at least 20 people had been confirmed dead and at least 37 had been injured.
Four buildings had collapsed, three government buildings had been damaged and six bridges and one road were not passable, she said.
Nine killed in power station accident in India’s Chennai
Nine workers were killed in an accident at a thermal power plant that is under construction in the southern Indian city of Chennai, officials said on Sept 30.
The incident occurred when a steel arch collapsed at a construction site at the Ennore SEZ Supercritical Thermal Power Project, said Dr J. Radhakrishnan, secretary of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board and chairman of the plant’s owner, Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation.
Dr Radhakrishnan said one person was injured in the accident, in addition to the nine deaths.
Malaysian fixer admits role in $28m UK bitcoin scam
PHOTO: METROPOLITAN POLICE
UK authorities are trying to recover £16.2 million (S$28 million) from a Malaysian fixer at the centre of a massive bitcoin scam, a court was told on Sept 30.
Ling Hok Seng, 47, admitted money laundering at London’s Southwark Crown Court.
Speaking through an interpreter, he just said the word “guilty”.
‘Critical’ situation, Zelensky warns, at nuclear plant
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sept 30 said the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been off the grid for seven straight days, warning of the potential threat of a “critical” situation.
He said one of the backup diesel generators used to maintain operations had “malfunctioned” and the blackout posed “a threat to everyone”.
It is the longest outage at Zaporizhzhia since Russia invaded and seized the nuclear plant, Europe’s largest.
Trump says US government will ‘probably’ shut down
President Donald Trump said on Sept 30 that the US government would probably see its first shutdown in more than six years, with funding expiring at midnight and no breakthrough in sight in acrimonious negotiations between Democrats and Republicans.
“We’ll probably have a shutdown,” Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, just hours before the deadline for a deal. “Nothing is inevitable, but I would say it’s probably likely.”
Mr Trump’s assessment came after a last-gasp meeting at the White House on Sept 29 yielded no deal, with top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer saying afterwards that “large differences” remained between the sides.
