MANILA, CULIACAN - Philippines tourism officials on Tuesday said a threat by an Islamic State-related group to bomb the Miss Universe beauty contest was “serious”, but insisted the country would be ready to hold the pageant next year.
A pro-IS social media channel tracked by the terror-monitoring SITE Intelligence Group showed a video on how to “create a bomb for Miss Universe”, referring to the beauty pageant to be held in Manila in January 2017. The video, posted on Monday, appeared to show how to make an explosive belt for suicide operations.
Meanwhile, the director of the Miss World Mexico pageant has been found shot dead after being kidnapped from a bar, officials in the violence-racked northwestern state of Sinaloa said on Monday.
Hugo Ruben Castellanos was abducted late Saturday from a bar in the town of Culiacan by armed men wearing hoods. He had gone there after attending a local beauty contest, officials said.
Sinaloa prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera said Castellanos’s body was discovered in a van early Sunday. Two other people who had been kidnapped with him were allowed to go free. Sinaloa is infamous as the birthplace of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, who is currently in custody and facing possible extradition to the United States.
Mexico saw a rise in the homicide rate last year after three years of declines. According to official figures, more than 9,400 people were killed between January and June compared to 8,156 during the same period last year.
