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Asia Beat: June 11 08
PHNOM PEHH, Cambodia NEW DELHI, India BOGALAY, Burma LABUANBAJO, Indonesia MANILA, The Philippines DUJIANGYAN, China NANCHANG, China HANOI, Vietnam BEIJING, China China will test bridge and chess players for performance-enhancing drugs at the first World Mind Sports Games in Beijing in October. The games comprise four mind sports — including checkers and Go — and about 3,000 participants from about 100 countries will compete for 35 gold medals in the inaugural Games, Oct. 3-18, a few weeks after the Olympic Games in Beijing.
Cambodia’s former king Norodom Sihanouk says that his son, King Norodom Sihamoni, may be considering abdicating to live a "simple life" in France. In a letter posted on his website, the octogenarian former monarch said Sihamoni, a bachelor dancer who lives in Paris, wanted to "hire a small room and stay with my wife, have a simple bathroom and eat simple food I can buy from a simple shop."
In a city where accident victims are often left to bleed on the road by callous passersby, Anil Sharma has picked up five victims in the last four months "because I just cannot leave them on the road to die." Sharma, a 35-year-old anesthesiologist working at a city trauma centre, never hesitates to stop, pick up accident victims, and haul them to the nearest hospital. Only one of his cases has died, a journalism student left bleeding for 45 minutes.
Burma has tightened security across the cyclone-ravaged Irrawaddy Delta but has denied evicting storm victims from emergency shelters and forcing them to return to ruined villages. Soldiers armed with assault rifles stage frequent roadblocks along the main highways in the delta, and have set up posts at every street leading into the town, according to reports that also claim soldiers are clearing the highways of begging refugees.
A Swedish diver who spent two nights marooned on a deserted Indonesian island managed to fight off an aggressive Komodo dragon with her weight belt. Helena Nevalainen said the dragon, a member of the largest lizard species in the world, lunged at her three times before it was driven off as she and four other thirsty European divers awaited rescue for two days on remote Rinca Island in the Komodo National Park.
Heavily-armed communist guerrillas burned heavy equipment and stole radio communications equipment and cell phones during raids at two coal mines in the central Philippines earlier this week. The New People’s Army, active in 69 of 81 provinces, is viewed by the government as its most serious security threat, scaring away potential foreign and domestic investors and slowing economic growth.
More than 10,000 troops have been assigned to find a crashed helicopter in China’s rugged earthquake zone, where authorities also were monitoring a dangerously swollen lake. There was still no sign this week of the Mi-171 chopper from the People’s Liberation Army or the five crew members and 14 injured quake survivors who were on board.
At least nine people were drowned and two were missing after they fell into a river in China’s eastern province of Jiangxi. The villagers, who had come to watch the traditional Duanwu Dragon boat festival in Tonggubao village, slipped off the rain-slick riverbank and were swept away in the current. The government has ordered a search for the missing people. So far, nine bodies have been retrieved from the river.
Four students are on trial for allegedly posting an online a sex video clip of a popular TV soap star that caused a scandal and led to the axing of her show. The four, aged 22 to 26, were accused of "disseminating debauched cultural products." The charge carries a maximum 10-year jail term. The cell phone clip showed actress Hoang Thuy Linh, now 20, having sex with her boyfriend, who filmed the 16-minute clip last July and uploaded the file onto his laptop, later borrowed by a friend.
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