■SOUTH KOREA
Britain, Seoul team up
Seoul will help London to identify 450 people who recently sought asylum in Britain claiming to be North Korean defectors, a report said yesterday. London has sent fingerprints of the 450 applicants to Seoul, asking it to check whether any of them had already been granted permission to live in South Korea, Yonhap news agency said. “We will run their fingerprints against those in our database and if they match, his or her chances to be granted asylum in Britain will seriously diminish,” the agency quoted an unidentified foreign ministry official as saying. The number of North Koreans who sought asylum in Britain surged last year. They include some North Koreans who have chosen to seek asylum in Britain after failing to adapt to life in South Korea, according to Yonhap.
■AUSTRALIA
Former deputy PM retires
Former deputy prime minister Mark Vaile announced his resignation from politics yesterday, ending a 15-year career in parliament during which he spent seven years as trade minister. Vaile was deputy prime minister from 2005 until November last year when the conservative coalition of his National Party and former prime minister John Howard’s Liberal Party was voted from power. The 52-year-old said that he was proud of his work as trade minister from July 1999 to September 2006. “Our work to secure Free Trade Agreements with Singapore, Thailand, the United States of America and Chile and launching negotiations with ASEAN, Malaysia, China and Japan are all outstanding policy achievements which I am honored to be part of,” he said in a statement on his website. Vaile’s resignation follows that of Howard’s long-standing foreign minister, Alexander Downer, earlier this month.
■VIETNAM
Australian couple sentenced
A court has sentenced an Australian woman to life in prison and her husband to 20 years after they were convicted of heroin smuggling, reports said yesterday. Hoang Le Thuy and her husband Nguyen Van Huy, both of Vietnamese origin, were arrested in July 2006 at Ho Chi Minh City airport with 500g of heroin, the Sai Gon Giai Phong and Thanh Nien daily newspapers said. The communist-ruled country has one of the world’s toughest drug-trafficking laws. Any one arrested with more than 600g of heroin or 20kg of opium usually receives the death penalty.
■INDIA
Man divorces fake wife
A man who took an impersonator to court to get a divorce faces legal action after his real wife found out, lawyers said on Friday. Sanjib Saha presented a woman as his wife in a lower court in the eastern city of Kolkata this month. Both said they sought a mutual divorce, something the court granted immediately. Saha’s real wife was then asked to leave the marital home. She has since appealed the ruling at a higher court, charged her husband with cheating and the original divorce was suspended. “The case exposed the legal loopholes in our system,” Kaushik Chanda, lawyer of Saha’s real wife, said.
■MALAYSIA
Indonesian singer banned
A popular Indonesian singer has been banned from giving a concert in the southern state of Johor because her performing is considered too risque by authorities, reports said yesterday. Inul Daratista, known for gyrating her hips at fast speed while on stage, has demanded an explanation for the cancellation of yesterday’s show, the New Straits Times said. Johor district officer Jaafar Awang told Kosmo newspaper that the application for a permit was rejected due to Inul’s risque performances. Concert organizer MS Prima moved the concert to a stadium outside Kuala Lumpur on July 27, the reports said. But Inul was quoted by Utusan Malaysia newspaper as saying she has a concert in Indonesia’s Surabaya city on July 26 and would need to discuss with her manager if she is able to rush to Malaysia the next day.
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