■ MALAYSIA
Retail spies employed
The government has enlisted 2,000 housewives and students to go undercover to unmask traders and retailers who charge exorbitant prices for their goods and services, news reports said yesterday. It has imposed price controls on 17 items, and traders caught selling those goods for more than the stipulated ceiling would be fined. “A kilo of red chillies is priced at 10 ringgit [US$3], and if they sell it for more, we will issue a maximum fine of 7,500 ringgit per offense,” Mohamad Roslan Mahayudin, director-general at the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, was quoted as saying by the Star daily. The retail spies, who were offered a monthly allowance of 1,500 ringgit, are to report on errant traders to the ministry. The undercover agents, who responded to an advertisement in a local newspaper, were chosen in March.
■ SRI LANKA
Ministry wants cannabis
Facing a lack of the fresh weed for use in traditional Ayurvedic medical preparations, the Ministry of Indigenous Medicine wants to be exempted from laws that have made marijuana illegal since the 1890s. The ministry this month broached a plan to grow 4,000kg a year of marijuana on a farm. “We are interested in getting some approval to grow some cannabis with government sponsorship, but there must be controls. It is under study,” Asoka Malimage, secretary at the ministry, said yesterday. Fresh marijuana fried in ghee, a form of clarified butter, is used in about 18 different traditional medicines for treating a wide variety of ailments, Malimage said. “At the moment they are getting some stocks from the courts of law, because there are people who grow this cannabis illegally and they have been raided by the police,” Malimage said. But the problem with that weed is that it is old and dried out, said Dayangani Senasekara, head of state-run Bandaranaike Memorial Ayurvedic Research Institute in Colombo. You can’t get the fresh juice from old cannabis. What we get now is the powdered form and it’s not effective,” Senasekara said.
■ SINGAPORE
Senior sues for divorce
A 96-year-old Singaporean man has gone to court to divorce his third wife, who is 71, the Straits Times reported yesterday. Pang Tee Gam accused his wife of “unreasonable behaviour, distrust and irresponsibility,” the daily said. Much of his quarrel with Chui Ah Mui was over money, the report said, citing court documents. The newspaper said she denied his allegations and in turn accused him of bigamy and harassment. Pang married his first wife in China but split with her after she had an affair with his brother, the report said. His second union lasted 24 years until his wife died, and then friends set him up with Chui, he said in an affidavit cited by the newspaper. They wed in 1982.
■ INDIA
Dalai Lama back at work
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama returned to work yesterday, four weeks after he was hospitalized suffering from abdominal pains, an aide said. The 73-year-old Nobel peace laureate began teaching sessions in Dharamshala, the northern Indian town where he lives in exile from China, but his planned trips to Germany and Switzerland next month have been canceled. “His Holiness is doing very well, he begins public teachings from today. There will be two sessions each day,” said Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese