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Asia Beat: Jul 16 08
SINGAPORE
An American lawyer is scheduled to go on trial in September for insulting Singapore High Court Justice Belinda Ang on the Internet. Gopalan Nair, 58, who used to be a Singapore citizen and an opposition party member was charged with accusing Ang of "prostituting herself" to Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. The accusations were posted on his web log. Nair was defending opposition leader Chee Soon Juan.
Dhaka, Bangladesh
A wild elephant that strayed into a village trampled four members of a family to death and injured another in southeastern Bangladesh. The elephant attacked the villagers in the Bandarban hill district’s Lama area, 350 kilometres from Dhaka, and fled back into the forest. Elephants, an endangered species in Bangladesh, kill an average of 15 people annually in recent years in the country, where their forest habitats are being destroyed by human development.
BHOPAL, India
A final decision is expected this year on what to do about hundreds of tons of toxic waste on the grounds of a Union Carbide factory pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, the site of a 1984 poison gas leak that killed 3,000.
Bangkok, Thailand
Suspected Islamic separatists shot dead a Thai-Buddhist couple and burned their bodies on the roadside in the latest atrocity to hit Thailand’s troubled, majority-Muslim deep South. More than 2,700 people have died in clashes and revenge killings in the border area since January, 2004. The three provinces bordering Malaysia comprised the independent Islamic sultanate of Pattani more than 200 years ago before it fell under Bangkok’s rule. More than 80 per cent of the three provinces’ two million people are Muslims, making the region an anomaly in predominantly Buddhist Thailand.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
Malaysian Muslim clerics from the north-eastern Terengganu state will soon begin spreading the message of turtle conservation through their sermons as part of efforts to stop locals from egg-poaching. Leatherback turtles were previously believed to have ceased landing on Terengganu’s beaches, once famed as a popular spot for the turtles. Wildlife officials say that despite intense enforcement, locals and fishermen still rampantly poach the turtle eggs at their hatching sites and markets in the state still sell the eggs openly.
SICHUAN, China
Experts have drawn up a $292-million plan to relocate one of China’s major panda breeding centres after it was badly damaged in the recent Sichuan earthquake. The Wolong Giant Panda Research Centre, which was near the epicentre of the earthquake, will take seven years to relocate. Large areas of bamboo forest were also destroyed.
Melbourne, Australia
Australia’s largest brewer has launched a super premium lager with a price tag you’d expect to find on a bottle of wine, saying it wants to take the nation’s love of a cold beer to a new level. Carlton & United Breweries’ Crown Ambassador Reserve is on sale at $58 a bottle, about 10 times the price of a regular 750ml ‘longneck’ brew. Only 5,000 bottles have been produced — each individually numbered, sealed with wax and sold in a presentation box. The beer could be cellared for up to 10 years because it has an alcohol almost twice that of regular beer.
Jakarta, India
Reclusive Mak Erot, famed for her penis extension treatments that incorporated traditional herbs and Islamic prayer, died last week in Caringin village on the western coast of Java island, the Kompas daily’s website reported. Mak Erot — reportedly aged anywhere from 101 to over 130 — prompted legions of imitations of her famous clinics, many using her famously craggy and birthmarked face to lure anxious men.
Hanoi, Vietnam
Police have detained two cemetery custodians who were about to harvest their first crop of cannabis from a graveyard in Vietnam’s capital. The two men, one of whom heads the caretaker team at the cemetery, were arrested after authorities found pot plants grown on a 25 sq. m patch. Vietnam has strict drug trafficking laws, including the death penalty, but it is also a transit point for trade in heroin, hashish, opium, amphetamine pills and other illegal drugs.
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