■ 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.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
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