Opium cultivation in military-run Myanmar rose for the second year in a row in 2008, the UN’s anti-drugs agency said, jeopardizing Southeast Asia’s goal to rid itself of the illicit crop. Despite massive drops in cultivation since the 1990s, Myanmar remains the world’s second biggest opium producer as poverty, rising opium prices and the global financial crisis force many impoverished farmers into the trade. Since 2006, poppy cultivation in and around the Golden Triangle area, where Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet under the cover of thick jungle and mountains, has risen 26 per cent, after having declined 87 per cent since 1996.

 

A Singaporean who poured hot water on her maid’s back and forced her to sleep among a group of dogs has been sentenced to 10 months’ jail. Brenda Tan Bee Khim, 40, a housewife, was sentenced for the 2006 attack on the maid identified as Tasiyem from Indonesia. Advocacy groups say about 170,000 migrant women work as domestic helpers in Singapore, where cases of employers abusing their maids appear often in the local media.

 

Japan’s Meteorological Agency has increased the alert level at Mount Asama volcano in central Japan, warning of an eruption. The alert level was raised due to signs of increased seismic activity on Mount Asama, a 2,568 metre peak 140 km northwest of Tokyo, the official said. Mount Asama had its biggest eruption in 21 years on Sept. 1, 2004.

 

A British man has been charged in Thailand for organizing so-called “swinging” parties during which couples swap sexual partners, tourist police said. Christian Arthur Richards, 54, was arrested along with six Thais and 16 foreigners including U.S., French, Indian and Chinese citizens at one of the parties in a Bangkok hotel. Richards, who is married to a Thai woman, is alleged to have organized at least 100 swinging parties in Bangkok and the resort town of Pattaya.

 

Indonesian authorities rescued more boat people from Myanmar after finding them floating in a wooden boat off the coast of Aceh after 21 days at sea. Some of them were in critical condition, officials said. The group of 198 males had not eaten for a week and included a 13-year-old. The plight of Myanmar’s estimated 800,000 Rohingya has been in the headlines since reports of serial abuse by the Thai military against the boat people.

 

A 13-year-old girl in China is in critical condition after trying to commit suicide so her liver could be given to her cancer-stricken father. Chen Jin tried to kill herself last month after discovering a medical report in her mother’s purse saying her father was dying of liver cancer and had only three months to live, the Shanghai Daily reported. The newspaper quoted her suicide note as saying. “Please give my liver to dad and save him after my death.”

 

 

Two people were killed after dynamite apparently intended for quarrying exploded in a house in the southern Philippines. The powerful blast on Jolo Island also injured three others and damaged the house in the coastal township of Patikul, provincial police chief Julasirim Kasim said. Two men apparently making a dynamite bomb were killed while three relatives in the house, including two children, were wounded and taken to a hospital, he said.

 

 

Nine big cats have died at Assam’s Kaziranga National Park in the past three months, but wildlife authorities in the state say the tigers were not victims of poachers. “Three died of old age, one each died in cases of infighting, poisoning by local villagers, fights with buffaloes, besides three other decomposed bodies found,” said Assam’s Chief Wildlife Warden M.C. Malakar. The 430 sq km park is home to about 86 Royal Bengal tigers. At present only 1,400 tigers are left in India.