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Asia Beat: Aug 20 08
RANGON, Burma
The United Nations has acknowledged that over the past three months some $1.60-million in aid for the victims of the devastating cyclone in May has been lost to Burma’s odd foreign exchange regulations.
Singapore
Nearly 25 per cent of the traditional Chinese medicine companies in Singapore have pledged not to sell products derived from endangered species. The shops from 189 companies are displaying a bright red and white label proclaiming, "We do not sell endangered species products."
Taipei, TAIWAN
Taiwan’s former president Chen Shui-bian has quit the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as investigators look into alleged money laundering activities implicating him and his family. He previously admitted failing to fully declare campaign funds.
JAKARTA, Indonesia
A former top Indonesian intelligence official suspected of involvement in the murder of prominent human rights activist Munir Thalib will be formally charged. A panel of judges is set to try Muchdi Purwoprandjono, a former deputy chief of Indonesia’s spy agency, on Aug. 21. He faces the death penalty.
KABUL, Afghanistan
The Asian Development Bank is providing a $55 million loan to Afghanistan’s leading mobile phone provider, Roshan, to expand its coverage to parts of the country with little or no telecommunications infrastructure in place. The Afghanistan telecom market has grown at an unprecedented pace since Roshan began operations in 2003.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
What began as a classroom furore in a Malaysian school may reach the courtroom, with students and the ethnic Indian community appointing a lawyer to sue a teacher who cast a racial slur. The female teacher also allegedly called the four Tamil-background students "thieves and gangsters", and wrote those words on the blackboard. Some 500 parents and members of the public protested in front of the school last week.
NEW DELHI, India
An Indian pilgrim knocked unconscious in a stampede that killed 150 people woke up in a morgue as doctors prepared to perform a post-mortem examination on him. Mange Ram, 19, lost consciousness in the stampede triggered by rumours of a landslide that caused panic among thousands of people climbing a steep mountain path at the Naina Devi shrine in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh.
HONG KONG
An 11-year-old girl gang member plead guilty before a Hong Kong court after a crime spree involving three burglaries and two robberies. Some of her victims were lured into meetings with the girl via internet chat rooms and were then bound and robbed by other gang members. Her 18-year-old boyfriend and a second teenager were jailed earlier this month for five years for what the magistrate described as a "rampage of pure hooliganism" with the girl. She has been remanded in custody at a juvenile centre.
BEIJING, China
More than 53,000 Chinese students are volunteering in the Beijing Olympic Games, and also are helping at the Paralympic games later this summer, while around 400 million Chinese have been taught about the Games to promote awareness, an official said. China has become a new destination for overseas students with some 1.23 million foreign students enrolling in various disciplines of language, culture, engineering, social and medical sciences.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand
New Zealand police are seeking a man with an odd habit — he urinates into a car park coin machine. "He pees up in the air in a big arc, so it goes in the coin slot and out the hole where people collect their tickets," Detective Daryl Moore told the Dominion Post. "It’s absolutely disgusting." Police filmed the villain on the second floor of the council parking building with a hidden camera, after council staff complained, and released a video in the hope that a member of the public would recognize the phantom piddler and tip off authorities.
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