A Thai senator who champions the rights of the underprivileged and an Indonesian anti-corruption crusader lead the recipients of the 2005 Ramon Magsaysay Awards -- Asia's equivalent to the Noble Prize, organizers said yesterday.
Thai Senator Jon Ungphakorn was chosen as the awardee for government service for "his impassioned insistence as a senator that Thailand respect the rights and attend humanely to the needs of its least advantaged citizens."
The 58-year-old senator founded in 1980 the Thai Volunteer Service aimed at exposing university graduates to the rural poor and the non-government organizations working with them, according to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF).
In 1991, he founded a foundation that provides counselling to people afflicted with the deadly AIDS virus and their families, as well as campaigning for affordable treatment.
Indonesian Teten Masduki, 42, will receive the award for public service for "challenging Indonesians to expose corruption and claim their right to clean government."
Indian V. Shanta is also being cited for the public service award category for his untiring advocacy for cancer research, the foundation said.
Other awardees are Bangladeshi Matiur Rahman for journalism, literature and creative communications arts for using the power of the press to crusade against "acid throwing" and South Korean Hye-Ran Yoon for emergent leadership for her "catalytic role" in promoting social responsibility. Laotian Sombath Somphone won the award for community leadership for training young people on sustainable development.
There was no awardee this year for the peace and international understanding category.
Lourdes Balbin, RMAF communications officer, said the board "did not find a suitable choice" for the category.
The winners will be honored in ceremonies in Manila on Aug. 31.
The Ramon Magsaysay Award was established in 1957.
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
Former Chinese ministers of national defense Wei Fenghe(魏鳳和) and Li Shangfu (李尚福) were both sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve over graft charges, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday, underscoring the severity of the purge in the military. The armed forces have been one of the main targets of a broad corruption crackdown ordered by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) after coming to power in 2012. The purges reached the elite Rocket Force, which oversees nuclear weapons as well as conventional missiles, in 2023. Earlier this year they escalated further, resulting in the removal of the top general in
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
The Philippine Coast Guard yesterday said it deployed aircraft to issue radio warnings to a Chinese research ship in a disputed area of the South China Sea “swarming” with vessels from Beijing’s so-called maritime militia. The research vessel Xiang Yang Hong 33 (向陽紅33), which is capable of supporting submersible craft, was operating near a reef in the contested Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), which Taiwan also claims, the Philippine Coast Guard said. The Chinese ship was deploying a service boat toward the Spratly’s Iroquois Reef on Wednesday when it was spotted by a coast guard plane, “confirming ongoing unauthorized [marine scientific research]
RSS