VIETNAM
Law to keep beer cold tabled
A ministry official is proposing that the temperature in restaurants selling beer should not exceed 30?C, a rule that will be hard to enforce considering outdoor beer parlors are hugely popular in big cities. The Tuoi Tre newspaper yesterday quoted Nguyen Phu Cuong, an official at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, which was drafting the regulation, as saying the rule aims to “protect consumers.” Yet many drinkers say the proposal shows how are out of touch officials are because of the popularity of the outdoor bars. Last year, the 90 million-strong population consumed 3 trillion liters of beer, or 33.3 liters per head, making them the top beer drinkers per capita in Southeast Asia.
THAILAND
Amnesty urges torture probe
Amnesty International yesterday called on the authorities to launch an independent investigation into allegations that police tortured a pair of suspects who reportedly confessed to killing two British tourists on Koh Tao last month. The tourists were found dead on Sept. 15 and police last week arrested two migrant workers from Myanmar who they say confessed to the killings. Police deny the suspects were tortured and said they have DNA evidence that backs up the confessions. The arrests followed weeks of pressure on police to solve a case that dealt the latest blow to the struggling tourism industry. Amnesty said one of the migrants “alleged police beat and threatened him with electrocution” and that “numerous sources have reported further acts of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of other migrant workers from Myanmar arrested by police in connection with the investigation.” On Tuesday, National Police Chief Somyot Poompanmoung held a press conference to quash allegations that his officers framed the suspects or made them scapegoats. Police Lieutenant General Jaktip Chaijinda, head of the investigation, yesterday said “there was neither torture, nor threats against the suspects in this case.”
VIETNAM
Oil tanker feared hijacked
Maritime authorities across Southeast Asia are scouring the seas for a Vietnamese oil tanker, which has not been heard from for six days and is now feared to have been taken by pirates. The Sunrise 689, which had a crew of 18 people and was carrying more than 5,000 tonnes of gas oil, vanished from radar 40 minutes after leaving Singapore on Oct. 2 bound for Quang Tri Province in Vietnam. Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur, said they suspect it was hijacked. “It looks like their communication system is off or destroyed,” Choong said yesterday, adding that an attempt to trace the tanker using satellites had failed.
CHINA
China last in open aid index
China took last place in an aid transparency index released yesterday. The country was last for the second year in a row in the index of 68 donors compiled by Publish What You Fund. It was followed by Greece, Cyprus, Lithuania and Malta, all of which were in the bottom 10 last year. The index assessed transparency among 68 aid-giving entities. Fund director Rachel Rank said progress had stalled on a promise to publish aid information to an internationally agreed standard by the end of next year. “The ranking shows that no matter how many international promises are made, and no matter how many speeches there are around openness, a startling amount of organizations are still not publishing what they fund,” Rank said in a statement.
UNITED STATES
Dead bear cub was run over
A dead baby bear found dumped in New York’s Central Park was killed by being run over, an autopsy concluded on Tuesday. The mysterious discovery of the six-month-old female cub in a grassy area in Manhattan’s largest park on Monday baffled conservationists and police who are investigating where the cub came from. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which on Tuesday performed a necropsy, said that the cause of death was “blunt force trauma consistent with a motor vehicle collision.” The female cub weighed 30kg and was about six months old, it said. New York police said the bear sustained trauma and lacerations to its body and that its animal cruelty squad was investigating. No animals have been reported missing from any zoo in the city, leading to speculation that the bear may have been killed elsewhere.
UNITED STATES
Air tanker pilot dies in crash
An air tanker plane being used to fight a wildfire in Yosemite National Park crashed in flames on Tuesday, killing the pilot, officials for the park and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said. Emergency workers reached the crash site near the so-called Dog Rock Fire on Tuesday evening and determined that the pilot, who has not been identified, had been killed, the department said in a statement. Witnesses saw the plane slam into the wall of a cliff above Highway 140 near the Arch Rock entrance to Yosemite on the western edge of the park, park spokeswoman Kari Cobb said by telephone. There was no word on what caused the crash.
UNITED STATES
About 168m children work
The Department of Labor reported on Tuesday that about 168 million children, aged five to seven, worked last year as laborers around the world, about half of them in hazardous jobs. The report on child labor in 140 countries called this an improvement from previous years, but while the decline is a move in the right direction, 10 percent of the world’s children are still being forced to work rather than go to school, the department said. The report does not include the US or Western Europe. Of the 168 million child workers, 85 million of them work at hazardous jobs, the agency said. . The countries topping the list for “significant advancement” from previous years included: Albania, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Ecuador, El Salvador, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, Tunisia and Uganda. The countries with “no advancement” in child-labor practices included: British Virgin Islands, Central African Republic, the Republic of the Congo, Cook Islands, Eritrea, the Falkland Islands, Montserrat and Norfolk Island.
CYPRUS
Talks with Turkey canceled
President Nicos Anastasiade on Tuesday suspended talks on reunifying the ethnically divided island in response to Turkish plans to search for oil and gas in waters where the government has already licensed companies to drill. Government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides said the decision was the result of what he called Turkey’s “provocative” and “aggressive” actions that violate Cyprus’ sovereign rights and international law. Christodoulides said the nation would not be deterred from continuing with its own drilling and accused Turkey of undermining regional stability. Anastasiades made the decision after consulting with party leaders who are urging the international community to speak out against Turkey’s actions.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in