Officials from the UN, World Bank, governments and humanitarian groups launched talks yesterday on how lessons learned from the Dec. 26 tsunami can help Asia better prepare for threats ranging from diseases to terrorism.
"This [tsunami] experience has set new benchmarks for international cooperation," Defense Minister Teo Chee Hean of Singapore, where the two-day conference was held, said in opening remarks.
The calamity prompted the mobilization of the largest disaster relief operation on record.
"It provides us with a useful model of cooperation which can be applied across a wider range of complex multinational challenges -- from health hazards like severe acute respiratory syndrome, to environmental threats like the haze, and transnational security threats like terrorism," Teo said.
SARS has killed 774 people worldwide -- mostly in Asia -- since the disease was officially recognized in 2002. Teo was also referring to smoke haze, mostly from illegal land-clearing fires in Indonesia, that has repeatedly choked other parts of Southeast Asia in the mid-year dry season.
The Dec. 26 earthquake and ensuing tsunami that struck 12 countries from Asia to Africa killed more than 178,000 people and left nearly 50,000 more missing and presumed dead.
The two-day conference is hosted by the Singapore International Foundation.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
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