Authorities allege Hu's home-brewed Chinese herbal medicines included lethal amounts of sodium sulphate. Police told him the open area on campus where he was handing out flyers was private property. The Supreme Court ordered the execution of convicted rapist Leo Echegaray, withdrawing its earlier six-month reprieve. A lower court is to set the date for the execution, the first in the country for 23 years. President Joseph Estrada backed a proposed multilateral meeting that the United States will broker to discuss rival claims to the Spratly Islands.
Manila claims the buildings erected by China on Filipino-claimed Mischief Reef are for military use.
Beijing, which says the buildings are fishermen's shelters, is opposed to a meeting. Armed forces chief Gen. Joselin Nazareno increased patrols in southern cities to combat escalating violence by Muslim guerrillas. Since the start of the year, bomb attacks on crowds and buses in the southern island of Mindanao have killed at least 15 people and wounded more than 100. Officials blame Muslim groups for all the attacks. In a letter to its Taipei counterpart, Beijing's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait said that a visit later this year by the association's chairman, Wang Daohan, should take up political as well as economic issues.