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e82ec6f78263767c92775462c099cabb | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18453996 | Last Aum cult fugitive Katsuya Takahashi arrested in Japan | Last Aum cult fugitive Katsuya Takahashi arrested in Japan
Police in Japan have arrested the last fugitive of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, ending a 17-year manhunt.
Katsuya Takahashi is suspected of involvement in the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system that killed 13 people.
The police have verified his identity after detaining him near a cafe in Tokyo.
A manhunt involving thousands of officers began last week after the suspect fled his home.
Mr Takahashi has been on the run since the attacks, which also injured 6,000.
On Friday, police took him into custody near a comic book cafe in Tokyo, local media reported.
The 54-year-old is suspected of driving a fellow cult-member to a station to release the gas during the morning rush hour.
Another suspect, Naoko Kikuchi, was reportedly arrested two weeks ago.
Information from her led the police to a construction firm in Kawasaki where Mr Takahashi had worked under an assumed name, says the BBC's Roland Buerk in Tokyo.
He had already fled his room in the company's dormitory, but the police found a recent photograph of him.
It was released, along with CCTV footage of Takahashi withdrawing money from his bank account.
A massive manhunt was deployed across Tokyo last week. The man suspected of being Mr Takahashi was detained after a tip-off from a member of the public.
On New Year's Eve another former member of Aum Shinrikyo, Makoto Hirata, turned himself in to police after nearly 17 years on the run.
Nearly 200 Aum Shinrikyo members have been convicted in connection with the sarin attack and other crimes. Thirteen are awaiting execution.
Aum Shinrikyo began as a spiritual group mixing Hindu and Buddhist beliefs in the 1980s, but developed into a paranoid cult obsessed with Armageddon.
Cult leader Shoko Asahara is among those on death row.
Aum Shinrikyo reinvented itself as the Aleph group, which continues to operate as a spiritual group.
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ec2e0feba112d6519abfaf6c5ab31fad | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18986249 | North Korea leader Kim Jong-un married to Ri Sol-ju | North Korea leader Kim Jong-un married to Ri Sol-ju
North Korean state media have confirmed for the first time that the country's leader Kim Jong-un is married.
Reports referred to him attending the opening of an amusement park with his wife, "Comrade Ri Sol-ju".
There had been much speculation about Mr Kim's private life in recent weeks when an unidentified woman was pictured attending events with him.
Kim Jong-un took over as leader of the country after the death of his father Kim Jong-il in December last year.
The eight-minute report on North Korean radio which mentioned Ms Ri was broadcast at 20:00 local time on Wednesday (11:00 GMT).
Analysts have been watching Mr Kim and his inner circle for clues as to the direction in which they will take the isolated state.
Last week authorities performed a military reshuffle widely interpreted by analysts as an attempt to stamp the authority of the new leader on North Korea's powerful army.
The United States wished Mr Kim well, but said that its concern was ''first and foremost'' for the North Korean people and hopes that ''conditions for them will improve''.
''We would always wish any kind of newlyweds well,'' State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.
There is a North Korean singer by the name of Ri Sol-ju but it has not been confirmed whether Mr Kim's wife is the same woman.
Nor did state media mention when the couple got married.
Ms Ri is thought to be the same "mystery woman" who accompanied Mr Kim to several events in recent weeks and whose Western dress and hairstyle led some to speculate on the influence of Mr Kim's brief European education.
The woman was spotted with him at a concert featuring Disney characters and at a ceremony to mark the 18th anniversary of the death of Kim Il-sung, Mr Kim's grandfather.
South Korean media had previously speculated that the woman was another North Korean singer, Hyon Song-wol.
Appearing with his wife may be part of a more informal style that Mr Kim is trying to cultivate to contrast with the austere manner of his father.
The announcement also appears to have caught North Korean media off guard: while state TV and radio named Ms Ri as Mr Kim's wife, the initial English-language reports on the news agency KCNA made no mention of her at all.
The focus on Mr Kim's personal life has been intense in recent weeks - within minutes of the news breaking, Ms Ri's name was trending on micro-blogging site Twitter.
Ms Ri is believed to have married Mr Kim in 2009 and given birth to a child the following year, analyst Cheong Seong-chang told the South Korean Korea Times newspaper.
"The late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il arranged his youngest son's marriage in a hurry after suffering a stroke in 2008," Mr Cheong said.
Ms Ri studied science and is from an upper-class family, her father being a professor and her mother an obstetrician, he added.
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8f4953ae44599e438b53f8dbf8e9aafe | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19204847 | Bo Xilai scandal: Police 'admit Neil Heywood cover-up' | Bo Xilai scandal: Police 'admit Neil Heywood cover-up'
A court official in China says four policemen have admitted covering up the murder of Briton Neil Heywood, a day after the wife of a former top politician was tried for the killing.
Mr Heywood was found dead in the city of Chongqing in November 2011.
The court official told reporters the senior officers had hidden evidence linking Gu Kailai, wife of Chongqing's ex-leader Bo Xilai, to the case.
Ms Gu was charged with the murder of Mr Heywood in a one-day trial on Thursday.
She did not contest the charges, according to a court official.
The dates for the verdicts in both trials are yet to be announced.
The case appears to have ended the career of Bo Xilai, who had been seen as a likely candidate for a top job in the leadership transition due later this year.
Seven members of the nine-strong politburo Standing Committee are due to retire, paving the way for a new generation of leaders.
But former high-flier Mr Bo, a populist and an ambitious politician, has not been seen in public since the investigation into his wife was announced.
The four police officers were charged with covering up Ms Gu's actions and "bending the law to achieve personal benefit", Tang Yigan, an official with the Hefei Intermediate Court in eastern China, told reporters.
The four include Guo Weiguo, former deputy chief of Chongqing's Public Security Bureau, and Li Yang, former chief of the bureau's criminal section, Xinhua news agency said.
The other two officers were named as Wang Pengfei and Wang Zhi.
Foreign journalists seeking to attend the police officers' trial could not get in.
The court official did not specify why the officers had sought to cover up the murder and made no mention of Mr Bo, the Reuters news agency reported.
Mr Heywood's death was initially recorded as a heart attack. But the case was reopened after Chongqing's top security official - police chief Wang Lijun - fled to the US consulate in Chengdu, reportedly with information that the Briton had been murdered.
Speaking after Ms Gu's trial on Thursday, Mr Tang said she and her aide Zhang Xiaojun - who was also charged - "did not raise objections to the facts and the charges".
The prosecution alleged Ms Gu had been involved in a business dispute with Mr Heywood, and believed he had "threatened the personal safety of her son... and decided to kill him", Mr Tang said, reading from a statement.
"After Heywood became intoxicated, vomited and asked for a drink of water, she poured a poison into his mouth that had been prepared beforehand and that she had given to Zhang Xiaojun to bring along, causing Heywood's death," he said in the statement.
A formal verdict is to be delivered at a later date, the court said. Both face the death penalty if convicted but many observers say the suggestion that Ms Gu was protecting her son could be used as a justification for a degree of leniency.
Mr Heywood's relatives have not commented on the case and nor has the UK Foreign Office. Two British diplomats were allowed to witness the trial but no foreign journalists were allowed in.
Wang Lijun, who was once Bo Xilai's right-hand man, has not been seen in public since his flight to the US consulate in February.
The South China Morning Post, citing an unidentified source, said Mr Wang was expected to go on trial in Chengdu in the coming days.
How the party will handle Mr Bo, who has been sacked from his posts, remains unclear.
This scandal risked tainting the inner sanctum of the Communist Party just as it embarked on a delicate political transition to a new party leadership, reports the BBC's diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall.
Reporting of the case is being tightly controlled in Chinese media.
Comment on Twitter-like microblogs was also being tightly controlled, with all the key names in the case banned as keywords.
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01c4ac55301a16756633ada394252d0e | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19248413 | Japan's women footballers get Olympic flight upgrades | Japan's women footballers get Olympic flight upgrades
The Japanese women's football team was upgraded to business class on its flight home from the Olympics, Japan's football association has confirmed.
Team members had complained they had flown economy class to London while the men's team sat in the business cabin.
The women's team returned on Saturday from Britain after losing in the Olympic final to the US.
The Japan Football Association said the women had their flights upgraded because they won the silver medal.
The men's team came home empty-handed.
The Associated Press news agency quoted the JFA as saying the men's team had flown business class to London because they were professionals.
But after both teams arrived in London, members of the women's squad had complained they had been treated unequally.
Japan are the current women's football World Cup champions, having beaten the US in July 2011 in Germany, and were strong contenders for gold. The men were not expected to win a medal.
Star player Homare Sawa told Japanese media that her team had been given business class seats last year, but only after they won the World Cup.
Japan's Olympic Committee allocated most of its athletes economy class seats.
The Japan Football Association has been funding male footballers to fly business class since 1996. The women's plane tickets to London for the Olympics had also been upgraded, but only to premium economy.
Despite their homeward upgrade to business class, Kyodo news agency said many of the women's team looked tired when they arrived at Narita Airport from the London Olympics on Saturday.
The silver medallists, known as "Nadeshiko Japan", were greeted by about 600 fans at Narita Airport, Kyodo reported.
"It's a tournament I will remember for the rest of my life," captain Aya Miyama was quoted as saying.
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ffed4e2539ff4903f59ba0b16b794708 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19311098 | Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy | Pakistan disabled girl arrested for blasphemy
Pakistani police have arrested a mentally disabled 11-year-old girl after a mob accused her of desecrating pages of the Koran.
The mob demanded the Christian girl's arrest and threatened to burn down Christian homes outside the capital Islamabad, local media say.
Officials said the girl could not properly answer police questions.
Her parents have been taken into protective custody following threats and other Christian families have fled.
It is thought that the girl has Down's syndrome.
Paul Bhatti, Pakistan's minister for National Harmony, told the BBC that the girl was known to have a mental disorder and that it seemed "unlikely she purposefully desecrated the Koran".
"From the reports I have seen, she was found carrying a waste bag which also had pages of the Koran," he said.
"This infuriated some local people and a large crowd gathered to demand action against her. The police were initially reluctant to arrest her, but they came under a lot of pressure from a very large crowd, who were threatening to burn down Christian homes."
He said more than 600 people have fled from the Christian neighbourhood.
Rights activists have urged Pakistan to reform its controversial blasphemy laws, under which a person can be jailed for life for desecrating the Koran.
Many of those accused of blasphemy have been killed by violent mobs, while politicians who advocate a change in legislation have also been targeted.
Last year, Shahbaz Bhatti, the minister for minority affairs, was killed after calling for the repeal of the blasphemy law.
His death came just two months after the murder of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who also spoke out about the issue.
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c9c8c4f6319b5fc77713765fdb7e5087 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19616356 | Afghanistan: Nato air strike 'kills eight women' in Laghman | Afghanistan: Nato air strike 'kills eight women' in Laghman
At least eight women have died in a Nato air strike in Afghanistan's eastern province of Laghman, local officials say.
Nato has conceded that between five and eight civilians died as it targeted insurgents, and offered condolences.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai "strongly condemned" the deaths and has sent officials to the area to investigate.
Earlier on Sunday, four US soldiers with the Nato forces were killed in an attack by suspected Afghan police.
The attack in southern Zabul province brought to 51 the number of Nato troops killed in "insider attacks" this year, and came a day after two UK soldiers were killed at a checkpoint in Helmand by a man in police uniform.
Local officials in the remote area of Laghman told the BBC at least eight women had died, while provincial council member Gulzar Sangarwal said nine were dead.
Major Adam Wojack, a spokesman for the Isaf international forces, said between five and eight civilians could have been killed, and said an investigation was under way.
He told the BBC that a group of some 45 insurgents had been targeted by an Isaf unit, and many had been killed.
"Unfortunately, we have become aware of possible Isaf-caused civilian casualties as a result of this strike, numbering five-eight Afghans," he said.
"Isaf offers its sincerest condolences to the affected community and family members, as well as to the Afghan people, concerning this tragic loss of life."
At least seven women were also reported to have been injured. Provincial health director Latif Qayumi said some of them injured were girls aged as young as 10.
The Laghman governor's office said a number of civilians had gone to the mountains to collect wood and nuts from a forest in the Noarlam Saib valley, a common practice in the area.
The mountainous, highly forested terrain remote from government control make the area attractive to Taliban and other insurgent groups, correspondents say.
The issue of civilian deaths by international forces has created tensions between the US President Karzai.
In August, UN figures suggested the number of civilians killed and injured in the first half of 2012 had fallen 15% on the same period of 2011.
Analysts said increased sensitivity on both sides about the impact of civilian deaths had led to more carefully targeted attacks.
In his statement,
Mr Karzai expressed his "sorrow" over the incident, saying he "strongly condemns the airstrike by Nato forces which resulted in the deaths of eight women".
Isaf spokesman Lt Col Hagen Messers said the remote base in Zabul province came under attack in the early hours of the morning, AFP reports.
The US troops were scrambled to help the Afghans repel the attack, but four of them were shot dead by Afghans in police unfirm
Officials said it was not yet clear whether the attacker or attackers were genuine police, but one provincial office told AFP that three or four known policemen had since disappeared from the base.
"At the moment, we don't know where they have gone. We don't know if they fled fearing arrest or if they are linked to the Taliban," he said.
Zabul's deputy police chief Ghulam Gilani told the Associated Press the police could have been forced into attacking the American troops.
"Whether they attacked the Americans willingly we don't know," he said.
Meanwhile, more details have also emerged of the scale of damage caused by an insurgent attack on Nato's heavily fortified Camp Bastion base in Helmand province, in which two US marines were killed.
Militants breached the perimeter of the sprawling base in Helmand province, destroying six US Harrier aircraft and damaging two more, destroying three refuelling stations and damaging six aircraft hangars.
Nato said 14 of the insurgents were killed and one was injured and taken into custody. Nine coalition personnel were wounded.
In a statement, Nato said the attack had been carried out by 15 insurgents dressed in US Army uniforms who "appeared to be well-equipped, trained and rehearsed".
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386e3895faaa1a07c6d91100c542a02c | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19725296 | Japan ex-PM Shinzo Abe elected opposition leader | Japan ex-PM Shinzo Abe elected opposition leader
Japan's opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has chosen Shinzo Abe to be its new leader, potentially positioning him to become the next prime minister.
He defeated ex-defence chief Shigeru Ishiba in a run-off vote.
Mr Abe is a former prime minister who, when in office, called for a bigger global role for Japan and promoted efforts to boost national pride.
The vote comes with polls expected in coming months and the ruling Democratic Party (DPJ) hit by low public support.
The LDP governed Japan for half a century before it was ousted by the DPJ in 2009.
Three other candidates contested the leadership - Nobuteru Ishihara, son of Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, Nobutaka Machimura, the former foreign minister, and Yoshimasa Hayashi, another former defence minister.
Shinzo Abe succeeded Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister in September 2006 but stood down less than a year later after his party suffered a crushing defeat in upper house elections, citing ill health.
Initially popular, his administration was hit by a series of gaffes and scandals that caused his support to plummet.
Unlike his predecessor, he did not visit the controversial war-linked Yasukuni Shrine while in office - something which angers Japan's neighbours.
But he provoked anger in China and South Korea when he said there was no evidence that women were forced to become sex slaves by the Japanese army during World War II - a statement he later apologised for.
After his win, he said he would do his utmost to return the party to power.
"Not only for ourselves, not only for the LDP but for the purpose of building a strong Japan, a prosperous Japan, and a Japan in which Japanese people will be able to feel happy about being Japanese," he said.
While campaigning, he talked tough on the dispute over islands with China, saying: "I promise to protect Japan's land and sea, and the lives of the Japanese people no matter what."
His leadership win comes as the DPJ government, led by Yoshihiko Noda, faces low poll ratings.
Mr Noda's government is currently grappling with the territorial dispute with China and also trying to win public support for a hike in sales tax aimed at reducing public debt.
It is also tackling the problem of formulating an energy policy in a nation where anti-nuclear sentiment is running high.
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94b5fbb030b7990fd57d7f6e49d0f196 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19790977 | Hong Kong boat crash off Lamma Island kills 36 | Hong Kong boat crash off Lamma Island kills 36
A collision between two passenger boats off Hong Kong has left at least 36 people dead, officials say.
One of the boats was carrying more than 120 people to a fireworks display when it half-sank following Monday night's collision near Lamma Island.
Twenty-eight people were pronounced dead at the scene. About 100 others have been taken to hospital, eight of whom were later said to have died.
A large-scale air and sea search for survivors is still continuing.
A Hong Kong government statement said: "Over 100 people were sent to five hospitals during the incident; nine of them have sustained serious injuries or are in critical condition."
Rescue work would continue, the statement added, because the fire department could not rule out that there were still people inside the vessel or missing.
The collision occurred during a busy period for passenger travel in Hong Kong, at the end of a long holiday weekend to mark the mid-autumn festival that this year coincides with China's National Day on 1 October.
Power company Hong Kong Electric has confirmed to the BBC that it owned the boat which sank. It was taking staff and family members to watch National Day fireworks in Victoria Harbour.
The vessel and another boat - reportedly operated by Hong Kong and Kowloon Ferry - collided, causing the HK Electric vessel to list, a company official was quoted as saying.
The other boat reportedly had about 100 people on board.
It was slightly damaged in the crash but returned safely to port, according to Radio Television Hong Kong. A number of passengers on board were treated for minor injuries.
Hong Kong Chief Executive CY Leung promised an investigation into the accident.
"All of Hong Kong's emergency forces are focused here," he said. "Wide-ranging rescue work is being carried out in the sea, on land and in the air."
Dozens of boats and two helicopters were involved in the search.
The crash happened about 20:30 local time (12:30 GMT) on Monday. Low visibility and the many obstacles on the vessel made it difficult for people to escape the listing ship, says the BBC's Juliana Liu in Hong Kong.
One survivor told The South China Morning Post: "After 10 minutes out, a boat crashed into ours from the side at very high speed. The rear... started to sink. I suddenly found myself deep under the sea.
"I swam hard and tried to grab a life buoy," added the man. "I don't know where my two kids are."
Witnesses said the boat went under very fast.
"Within 10 minutes, the ship had sunk. We had to wait at least 20 minutes before we were rescued," Reuters news agency quoted one man as saying.
"We thought we were going to die. Everyone was trapped inside," another woman said.
Sarah Blackman was on the ferry involved in the collision.
"I was on the top deck of the ferry and felt the impact - it threw people off of their seats," she told the BBC. "The sound the collision made was horrific."
"As my ferry docked in Lamma, it was clear everyone was in shock and desperately concerned for the ship left behind."
Lamma lies some 3km (two miles) south-west of Hong Kong island, and is popular with tourists and expatriates.
Hong Kong is one of the world's busiest shipping channels, but its ferries have a good safety record.
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b2f72ef48c88187a872587ed762d456c | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19887497 | Karachi: Brain-eating amoeba kills 10 | Karachi: Brain-eating amoeba kills 10
A rare brain-eating amoeba is responsible for at least 10 deaths in the Pakistani city of Karachi in recent months, health officials believe.
The source of the parasite is not yet known, but it is thought victims may have been exposed to it when using water to rinse their nasal passages.
The amoeba, Naegleria Fowleri, lives in warm water and kills its victims by destroying brain tissue.
Officials are now increasing the amount of chlorine in the public water supply.
The deaths are in various locations across Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city.
Dr Shakeel Mallick, who works for the provincial health department, said nine of those killed were men, while one victim was a child of four.
Officials suspect other cases may have gone undetected. Dr Mallick said hospitals were now being "vigilant".
The ministry was "very concerned" about the amoeba, he said.
Although the amoeba is usually picked up in contaminated pools or lakes, only one of those killed had been swimming.
Officials are therefore concentrating their attention on the possibility that people picked it up when cleaning out their nostrils - a practice which is common in South Asia, BBC regional analyst Jill McGivering says.
The amoeba travels to the brain through the nasal passages.
Those infected have symptoms including fever, nausea and vomiting, as well as a stiff neck and headaches. Most die within a week.
The World Health Authority's Musa Khan says other cities across Pakistan have been put on alert.
An awareness campaign has also been launched among health workers and the public.
"People should avoid getting water too deep into their nostrils," Mr Khan said. "Those with symptoms should seek help immediately."
People are being advised to use boiled or chlorinated water to rinse their noses, and to clean out domestic water tanks where amoeba may flourish.
The amoeba cannot be passed from person to person.
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3f3d56747ebd1e4eb3dddc24b79dce5d | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19940437 | Mongolia capital Ulan-Bator removes Lenin statue | Mongolia capital Ulan-Bator removes Lenin statue
Ulan-Bator, the capital of Mongolia, has removed its last bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin, denouncing the communist leader as a "murderer".
The monument was hoisted from its plinth in a park and dropped on to the back of a flat-bed lorry at a ceremony attended by city mayor Bat-Uul Erdene.
During the Cold War, Mongolia was effectively a Soviet satellite state.
Mr Bat-Uul said the statue would be auctioned off with a starting price of about $280 (£174; 216 euros).
In a 10-minute speech, he denounced Lenin and his fellow communists as "murderers".
Mongolia had suffered at the hands of the communists but had moved on to create an open society, he added.
For decades Vladimir Lenin was worshipped by Mongolian schoolchildren as Teacher Lenin, the BBC's Michael Kohn reports from Ulan-Bator.
In 1990 the country abandoned its one-party state system and embraced political and economic reforms.
A crowd of around 300 people gathered to watch the statue being taken down. A few threw old shoes at it to display their distaste at the former Soviet leader.
Many statues of Lenin, who died in 1924, remain standing around Russia and other countries once under Soviet control.
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f27423ef2b27f29b82156a9326e53851 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20041320 | Q&A: Where will China's innovators come from? | Q&A: Where will China's innovators come from?
China is making rapid advances in technology, but without reform in the education system and a culture tolerant of failure, it won't produce the next Steve Jobs, says technology entrepreneur Kai-Fu Lee in an interview with the BBC, as part of a series of features on challenges for China's new leaders.
In 1998 I returned to China to work for Microsoft and start up technology research labs. Young Chinese people I met while in the US showed a lot of potential and were very hungry for success, very hard-working. I felt with my experience that I could help them realise their potential as well as to do great things for my employer.
In the late 1990s business leadership was lacking. Companies were being built, but leaders did not have enough experience to run them. Industries were much smaller and it felt like a backward country.
Fourteen years on, we see a very vibrant economy with powerful and successful companies led by leaders with experience. At that time, many companies were about pure manufacturing and now there are quite a few in the hi-tech sector. They are not in the forefront of the world, but they are capable companies with decent technology portfolios.
I think China is well on the path to becoming competitive with South Korea. Companies are able to come up with product concepts and understand user needs. But it will be much more difficult to catch up with the US - Silicon Valley.
Companies like Apple and Google are innovative from their very roots, built to change the world and with people willing to take big risks. The US has a culture tolerant of failure, driven by individual passion. Companies are not started to make money or make the founders a billionaire, but to build great technology.
China is in a state where entrepreneurs' major desire is to gain influence and wealth. It is still in a place where Chinese companies are understanding user needs and filling them rather than understanding user needs that users can't even articulate.
Before China gets to that level of innovation, it has to overcome a lot of issues that are cultural and about education, where there is emphasis on discipline and obedience. Silicon Valley, on the other hand is innovative, passionate, rebellious and fearless. Because of such differences, it will be difficult to produce a Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerburg in China.
Innovation is a key part of the current as well as the next five-year plan so the government will have the opportunity to put resources into venture capital incubation, universities and research.
But there are some questions: you cannot force or decree innovation out of funding or planning. I think the current five-year plans will drive China to South Korea's level but it will probably fall short of reaching the true innovation that people like Jobs and Zuckerburg pioneered.
Censorship is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it limits what people can do but it also creates an environment where many American companies cannot or choose not to enter, thus reducing competition - so the market is open to local players.
What would you like China's new leaders do to encourage innovation?
I would like to see education reform, but done in an appropriate, gradual way so that the Chinese education system can retain all that is good about it, such as developing basic skills.
But it would be important to let in some Western influences so students are not just sitting in a room and following orders but learning to ask the key questions. The injection of critical thinking and curiosity is probably the most important thing I would hope to see.
I think the government should also put resources into letting experts make key decisions, because government bureaucrats can't possibly be experts on what companies to fund, what technologies to reward or even what kind of talent to educate or bring to China.
I wrote a book on microblogs changing China. It is something I thought would happen and it did. It created a platform for people to contribute their expressions, ideas, observations and share it all in real time.
Microblogs reflect current news events, social problems, unfairness in courts, local government corruption and information about events in the US, such as the presidential elections - all difficult to access before.
The state-owned press has one view, not multiple views, and microblogs opened people eyes and created a degree of relative freedom of speech and transparency. They even act as a kind of media check on government, because when media is state-owned it is difficult for them to perform that purpose.
Although microblogs have generated more criticism of the government, the authorities have also tended to respond in a constructive manner. And when government officials start their own microblogs, it brings them closer to the people.
China is not likely to come up with next world-changing product. Innovation is likely to come from taking products that are already known and applying them in another context. I can see this working in areas where there is government support, in areas that do not require out-of-the box thinking but innovative trial and error, such as pharmaceuticals and alternative energy.
Software innovation is certainly possible. A company called Tencent has a very innovative product called "wechat" - an online communication system. It has reached 200m people in China already and is available in English.
Venture capital investment is also important - it has a very clever multi-phase approach so when funding runs out for a project, you make fresh decisions about its direction.
That is a very difficult one to speculate about. There is a lot of pressure and desire for improvements in rule of law, greater representation and greater transparency. I would take an optimistic view - I think we will see progress.
There can always be unfortunate incidents and I can't assess the degrees to which these changes might take place. If you adopt a view that spans three or four years, progress might not appear significant, but if you adopt the longer view looking across eight to 10 years, there is likely to be progress on openness.
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2c6d42ac43681026a7451775cf3476db | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20078481 | Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara quits to form new party | Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara quits to form new party
Tokyo's governor Shintaro Ishihara is resigning to form a new national political party, ahead of expected general elections in Japan.
"As of today, I will resign as the Tokyo governor," he told reporters.
The 80-year-old, serving his fourth term as governor, is known for making provocative comments.
Earlier this year, he sparked off a row when he said he would use public money to buy a group of islands at the centre of a dispute between China and Japan.
The novelist-turned-politician, who began his current term as governor only last April, said he wants to return to national politics.
He said he would be founding a party with other right-wing politicians to challenge the two dominant parties in polls that must be called by the end of next year.
He blamed Japan's current economic and political problems on the government and compared the administration to the rule of the shogun, referring to the hereditary commanders-in-chief in feudal Japan.
"We must change the inflexible rule of the central government bureaucrats," Mr Ishihara said.
Earlier reports had said Mr Ishihara was aiming to form a group large enough to challenge the two established parties - the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) - at the next elections.
But the reports in the Japanese media had not suggested that Mr Ishihara would quit his role as governor - one he has come to own.
He said he saw ''several contradictions, big contradictions'' in national politics.
"One contradiction, bigger than anything, is the Japanese constitution, which was imposed by the [post-WWII US] occupying army, and is rendered in ugly Japanese," he said.
He is demanding the repeal of pacifist clauses in Japan's constitution, which restricts the activities of the country's armed forces.
The BBC's Charles Scanlon says Shintaro Ishihara has long been Japan's most outspoken and confrontational politician.
He has consistently antagonised China, and provoked the crisis in relations this year with his plan to buy and develop a group of disputed islands, our correspondent says.
Foreign policy analyst Tomohiko Taniguchi told the BBC that one of Mr Ishihara's aims might be "to push his party and himself to a position pivotal enough to change the course of coalition-building in Japan".
"Japan's political landscape will therefore look more confrontational between the left - which is also friendlier to Beijing - and the right, [which] takes [the] national interest [and] national security more highly than the left," Prof Taniguchi said.
Ahead of the elections the DPJ is seeing its support plummeting. Earlier this week, approval ratings for the government slipped below 20% for the first time, Japanese media reported.
Meanwhile, the opposition LDP chose former PM Shinzo Abe as its new leader last month, potentially positioning him to become the next prime minister.
Ties between Tokyo and Beijing remain severely strained by a row over a group of islands both claim - known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.
Tension flared again when Mr Ishihara said he wanted to buy the islands in April. In September, the Japanese government confirmed its purchase of the disputed islands from private owners.
Japanese ministers said the move prevented ties from worsening with China - which was certain to happen if Mr Ishihara had succeeded in buying the islands.
On Thursday, four Chinese surveillance ships were seen near the islands, the Japanese coastguard said, prompting Japan to lodge a diplomatic protest with China. China confirmed the vessels were in the area but said they were on routine patrol.
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3841d32c4b20fabf5c010b65be0b66c1 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20308610 | UN 'failed Sri Lanka civilians', says internal probe | UN 'failed Sri Lanka civilians', says internal probe
The United Nations failed in its mandate to protect civilians in the last months of Sri Lanka's bloody civil war, a leaked draft of a highly critical internal UN report says.
"Events in Sri Lanka mark a grave failure of the UN," it concludes.
The government and Tamil rebels are accused of war crimes in the brutal conflict which ended in May 2009.
The UN's former humanitarian chief, John Holmes, has criticised the report.
Mr Holmes said the UN faced "some very difficult dilemmas" at the time and could be criticised for the decisions it had taken.
"But the idea that if we behaved differently, the Sri Lankan government would have behaved differently I think is not one that is easy to reconcile with the reality at the time," he told the BBC's Newshour programme.
The UN does not comment on leaked reports and says it will publish the final version.
The 26-year war left at least 100,000 people dead. There are still no confirmed figures for tens of thousands of civilian deaths in the last months of battle. An earlier UN investigation said it was possible up to 40,000 people had been killed in the final five months alone. Others suggest the number of deaths could be even higher.
Former senior UN official Charles Petrie, who headed the internal review panel, told the BBC the "penultimate" draft the BBC has seen "very much reflects the findings of the panel". He is now in New York to present the report to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Sources say a brief executive summary, which sets out the panel's conclusions in stark terms, has been removed in a final report which will number about 30 pages, with additional detailed annexes.
UN spokesman Martin Nesirky told the BBC the UN does not comment on leaked reports. He said a final version would be published once the secretary general had received and read it.
Senior UN sources say Ban Ki-moon is determined to act on its wide-ranging recommendations in order to "learn lessons" and respond more effectively to major new crises, such as Syria, now confronting the international community.
The UN's investigation into its own conduct during the last months of the conflict says the organisation should in future "be able to meet a much higher standard in fulfilling its protection and humanitarian responsibilities".
The report does highlight the positive role played by some UN staff on the ground and the secretary general, but it points to a "systemic failure".
The panel questions decisions such as the withdrawal of UN staff from the war zone in September 2008 after the Sri Lankan government warned it could no longer guarantee their safety.
Benjamin Dix, who was part of the UN team that left, says he disagreed with the pullout.
"I believe we should have gone further north, not evacuate south, and basically abandon the civilian population with no protection or witness," Mr Dix told the BBC.
"As a humanitarian worker, questions were running through my mind 'what is this all about? Isn't this what we signed up to do?'"
Hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians remained in the war zone, exploited by both sides: forcibly recruited by Tamil Tigers or used as human shields; or under indiscriminate government fire.
"We begged them, we pleaded with them not to leave the area. They did not listen to us," said a Tamil school teacher now seeking asylum in Britain, who did not want to be named. "If they had stayed there, and listened to us, many more people would be alive today."
Despite a "catastrophic" situation on the ground, this report bluntly points out that in the capital Colombo "many senior UN staff did not perceive the prevention of killing of civilians as their responsibility - and agency and department heads at UNHQ were not instructing them otherwise".
It says there was "a sustained and institutionalised reluctance" among UN personnel in Sri Lanka "to stand up for the rights of people they were mandated to assist".
Citing detailed records of meetings and reports, the review highlights how the UN did not publish mounting civilian casualty figures even though a detailed annex makes clear there was a "rigorous methodology."
Under intense pressure from the Sri Lankan government, it also did not make public that "a large majority" of deaths were caused by government shelling. The government repeatedly denied it shelled civilian areas.
How did the UN failure happen? The report explores at length how senior staff in Colombo "had insufficient political expertise and experience in armed conflicts and in human rights... to deal with the challenge that Sri Lanka presented", and were not given "sufficient policy and political support" from headquarters.
It also points to the Sri Lankan government's "stratagem of intimidation", including "control of visas to sanction staff critical of the state".
The result was a UN system dominated by "a culture of trade-offs" - UN staff chose not to speak out against the government in an effort to try to improve humanitarian access.
The UN spokesman in Colombo at the time says the organisation's staff felt bullied by the Sri Lankan government, and that there was a "genuine fear" for their safety.
The decision to withhold casualty figures was a result of the difficulties of operating in the country, added the spokesman, Gordon Weiss.
"It was an institutional decision not to use those [casualty lists] on the basis that those could not be verified and of course they couldn't be verified because the government of Sri Lanka wasn't letting us get anywhere near the war zone," Mr Weiss told BBC's Newshour programme.
Edward Mortimer, a former senior UN official who now chairs the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, says UN staff left when the population needed them more than ever.
"I fear this report will show the UN has not lived up to the standards we expect of it and has not behaved as the moral conscience of the world," Mr Mortimer said.
"There was a responsibility to protect in Sri Lanka but unfortunately it didn't get publicity like in Libya. The north of Sri Lanka was destroyed field by field, street by street, hospital by hospital but we didn't get that kind of reaction - Sri Lanka doesn't have much oil and isn't situated on the Mediterranean."
The executive summary of the draft highlights how "the UN struggled to exert influence on the government which, with the effective acquiescence of a post 9/11 world order, was determined to defeat militarily an organisation designated as terrorist".
The separatist Tamil Tigers, or LTTE, are a proscribed terrorist organisation in many capitals.
There were no UN peacekeepers in Sri Lanka but this report says the UN should have told the world what was happening, and done more to try to stop it.
In New York, "engagement with member states regarding Sri Lanka was heavily influenced by what it perceived member states wanted to hear, rather than by what member states needed to know if they were to respond".
During the last months of war, there was not a single formal meeting of the Security Council or other top UN bodies.
Frances Harrison, author of the book Still Counting the Dead on the last months of the war, told the BBC "the only way now for Ban Ki-moon to restore the UN's tattered credibility on Sri Lanka is to call an independent international investigation into the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians in 2009".
"The UN chose to remain silent about potential war crimes," says the former BBC Sri Lanka correspondent.
A former UN official said the establishment of a panel, headed by Mr Petrie who is known for his outspoken views, is a sign "at least part of the UN is very serious about dealing with its failure in Sri Lanka".
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31e7af0823091a88bba4d1ab7288b539 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20407511 | Afghanistan opium harvest drops by a third - UN | Afghanistan opium harvest drops by a third - UN
Opium production in Afghanistan has fallen by a third, according to a United Nations report.
The fall came even as the amount of land used to cultivate the crop rose by 18%,
the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said
.
More farmers have been trying to grow the crop as the price of opium has been rising.
The fall in the harvest is being attributed to bad weather and disease.
The rise in the area devoted to growing opium poppies came despite the intensification of government eradication efforts, with almost 10,000 hectares of the crop eradicated in 2012, UNODC reported.
Cultivation was concentrated in the south and west of the country in areas where "insecurity and organised crime are present", UNODC said.
The number of provinces with "poppy-free" status remain unchanged at 17, according to the report.
The UN says the correlation between insecurity and opium cultivation has been apparent for several years.
"Improved living conditions, including greater security and rule of law, should be encouraged in Helmand and nationwide if we are to help poor farming communities to support themselves," said UNODC's director Yury Fedotov.
Helmand was the province with the largest amount of land being used for opium production, the report said.
Last year, opium production in the country was reported to have doubled on the back of rising prices for the crop.
Government eradication programmes are deeply unpopular in the south and west of the country, the BBC's Quentin Somerville in Kabul reports.
The Taliban and criminal networks both in Afghanistan and Pakistan profit greatly from the drug, our correspondent adds.
Afghanistan produces more than 90% of the world's opium.
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b49f597967ebd28bd04be5870ff34abf | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20752337 | Afghan landmine blast kills girls in Nangarhar | Afghan landmine blast kills girls in Nangarhar
At least nine young girls have been killed and three more injured in a landmine explosion in eastern Afghanistan, officials say.
The girls were collecting firewood when one of them hit the mine with an axe, a provincial official said. Earlier reports said 10 girls were killed.
It is unclear if the mine was recent or one left over from a previous conflict.
Meanwhile at least one person has been killed in an explosion on the outskirts of the capital, Kabul.
Several more were injured in the blast, which took place on the Jalalabad road, home to many Nato bases and compounds housing international staff.
Police said the explosion happened near the offices of an international construction company, but it is unclear what the target was.
The Taliban say they carried the attack, adding that a suicide bomber drove into the compound of a US-based engineering and construction company.
Foreigners are among the wounded.
There are conflicting reports as to whether the landmine in Nangarhar was planted by insurgents or was left over from Afghanistan's many decades of conflict. Such unexploded mines are still commonly found in rural areas.
One spokesman said that this was a recent landmine, but another official said it dated from the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. Another landmine was found nearby.
"Most of those killed were aspiring engineers, doctors and teachers. Only four bodies can be recognised," a tribal elder told the BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul.
"This area was used during fighting against Russians but the Taliban and Afghan government are also fighting in this area," the elder said.
The mine blew up near Dawlatzai village, in Nangarhar's Chaperhar district.
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632d84def9e3450b4f67dd5097499d02 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20769324 | North Korea satellite 'tumbling in space' | North Korea satellite 'tumbling in space'
North Korea appears to be struggling to control a satellite it put into orbit last week, a space expert has said.
The Unha-3 satellite was launched on board a long-range rocket on 12 December, in defiance of sanctions and international warnings.
Pyongyang says the device, the size of a washing machine, is working and is beaming revolutionary songs to Earth.
But US astronomer Jonathan McDowell says it may be tumbling, and does not yet appear to be transmitting.
"Those two things are most consistent with the satellite being entirely inactive at this point," he
told the New York Times.
The satellite was designed to point towards Earth, but Mr McDowell said the light coming from it was repeatedly brightening and dimming, indicating it was not yet operating as intended.
"The preponderance of the evidence suggests that the satellite failed either during the ascent or shortly afterwards," he said.
He told the Associated Press news agency that the the device was still completing its orbits, and whether working or not, would remain in space for years to come.
Stuart Eves, principal engineer at Surrey Satellite Technology in the UK, said it was too early to say that the satellite was dead.
He stressed that any spacecraft would be unstable immediately after launch, and that North Korea could be trying to rectify the problem.
"Depending on how they plan to stabilise it, they may have a problem," he told the BBC.
"We take typically two or three days to get a satellite stable, and we know what we're doing - whereas this is the North Koreans' first try.
"It would be prudent to wait a little longer and monitor the tumble rate to see whether there's any attempt to stabilise it."
However, critics said the North Korean government was likely to view the launch as a success because the real purpose was to test rocket technology.
The UN Security Council condemned the launch, saying it violated two UN resolutions banning Pyongyang from missile tests, passed after its nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009
The launch last week was North Korea's first successful use of a three-stage rocket to put a satellite into orbit - a similar launch in April failed just after take-off.
The BBC's diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says it appears to mark another step towards North Korea's ability to field an intercontinental range ballistic missile.
Such a missile could be used to carry nuclear warheads.
The rocket was celebrated extravagantly in North Korea, with a mass rally held in the capital, Pyongyang.
State media credited the country's new leader, Kim Jong-un, with the success, praising his "endless loyalty, bravery and wisdom".
Pyongyang has said it will carry out further launches.
The US, South Korea and Japan want UN sanctions to be strengthened.
But China - North Korea's main ally - says any UN response should be "conducive to peace" and avoid escalating tensions.
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09e5cd7a77ffe004e2e78189423a1102 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20779388 | Pakistan killings near Peshawar disrupt polio campaign | Pakistan killings near Peshawar disrupt polio campaign
Two polio vaccination workers have been killed in north-western Pakistan in the latest of a spate of deadly attacks.
The shootings in the Peshawar region left a vaccination supervisor and her driver dead, and injured a volunteer.
The deaths brought to eight the number of health workers killed in this week's anti-polio drive. The three-day drive is now over.
No group has claimed responsibility, but the Taliban have issued threats against the UN's anti-polio efforts.
The militants have accused health workers of working as US spies and say the vaccine makes children sterile.
Pakistan is one of just three countries where the disease is still endemic.
Coming after five deaths on Tuesday, and one on Monday, the UN children's agency Unicef and the World Health Organisation halted work in Sindh province in the south and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the north-west on Tuesday. The suspension was extended nationwide on Wednesday.
The UN provides technical and financial support to employees and volunteers of the local health departments who administer the polio drops.
Despite the killings, the immunisation drive continued in some areas on Wednesday - although a number of local health workers refused to go out, Reuters news agency reported.
In Wednesday's violence, the vaccination supervisor and her driver died when their car was sprayed with bullets by gunmen riding motorbikes in Charsadda district, north-east of Peshawar, police said.
The student volunteer was shot in the head and critically injured when gunmen on two motorbikes fired at a team of vaccinators in a northern suburb of Peshawar.
Gunmen riding motorbikes also shot at polio vaccinators in another area of Charsadda and in the adjoining district of Nowshera, although no injuries were reported.
On Tuesday, four female health workers were shot dead in the space of 20 minutes in Karachi, and a fifth woman died after being shot in Peshawar. A day earlier a male health worker working on the anti-polio drive was also killed in Karachi, although police have suggested other factors may also lie behind his death.
Correspondents say the authorities were caught off guard by the violence - until now most attacks on health workers have taken place in north-western areas near militant strongholds.
At a rally in Islamabad, health worker Ambreen Bibi told Reuters: "We go out and risk our lives to save other people's children from being permanently handicapped, for what? So that our own children become orphans?"
Wednesday was the final day of a three-day nationwide anti-polio drive - during which an estimated 5.2 million polio drops were to be administered.
There has been opposition to such immunisation efforts in parts of Pakistan, particularly after a fake CIA hepatitis vaccination campaign helped to locate Osama Bin Laden in 2011.
Militants have kidnapped and killed foreign NGO workers in the past in an attempt to halt the immunisation drives, which they say are part of efforts to spy on them.
Afghanistan and Nigeria are the only other countries where polio is still endemic.
Pakistan is considered the key battleground in the global fight against the disease, which attacks the nervous system and can cause permanent paralysis within hours of infection.
Almost 200 children were paralysed in the country in 2011 - the worst figures in 15 years.
Earlier this year, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative warned that tackling the disease had entered "emergency mode" after "explosive" outbreaks in countries previously free of polio.
The World Health Organization said polio was at a tipping point, with experts fearing it could "come back with a vengeance" after large outbreaks in Africa and Tajikistan, and China's first recorded cases for more than a decade.
Declaring polio a national emergency, the Pakistani government is targeting 33 million children for vaccination with some 88,000 health workers delivering vaccination drops.
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962d53e13bc81e36864d5d9a7c3b1017 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20982990 | Sri Lanka Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake is impeached | Sri Lanka Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake is impeached
The Sri Lankan parliament has voted to remove Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake in a move analysts say could trigger a constitutional crisis.
The chamber, dominated by supporters of Sri Lanka's president, voted to impeach her by 155 votes to 49.
The government accuses her of corruption - an allegation she denies.
Recent court rulings said the process was unconstitutional, and she may refuse to leave. The president must now decide whether to enforce the sacking.
Critics of the government say that the judge is being victimised and the independence of the judiciary is being challenged. The government denies this.
The BBC's Charles Haviland in Colombo says that after the vote, supporters of the government took to the streets and rallied outside her official residence to celebrate her sacking.
Our correspondent says that recent rulings from the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal have quashed the whole impeachment process, branding it "unconstitutional".
Reports say that the chief justice is already arranging her schedules for the next week in her current job in defiance of the vote.
The impeachment process has in recent weeks triggered protests by thousands of opposition supporters, lawmakers, lawyers and religious leaders.
It has also been criticised by human rights groups who have raised concerns over judicial integrity in the country.
Civil society activists and lawyers say it is a vendetta against a judge who was once favoured by the government but then made some rulings inconvenient to it.
One human rights lawyer, Lakshan Dias, told the BBC that the situation was "threatening".
"The governing party has a two-thirds majority in the legislature, and the executive is also run by a very small amount of people who are connected to the president's family. So the only impartial and independent body was, and is, the judiciary," he said.
Critics add that the impeachment is aimed at swelling President Mahinda Rajapaksa's powers still further, and an umbrella group of lawyers has urged judges not to recognise any new chief justice imposed by the government.
The International Commission of Jurists has condemned the impeachment move, saying it erodes the rule of law and has caused a "constitutional crisis of unprecedented dimensions".
The United States has said it is "deeply concerned".
Dr Bandaranayake, 54, faced an 11-member parliamentary committee in November which investigated 14 charges of financial and official misconduct against her. She was found guilty of professional misconduct the following month.
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850a25ba8391e448e2c3887df503f850 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21218187 | North Korea warning follows nuclear threat | North Korea warning follows nuclear threat
North Korea has warned of "substantial and high-profile important state measures", days after announcing plans for a third nuclear test.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made the statement during a meeting with top security officials, state media said.
The reports did not give details of what the measures might entail.
North Korea has issued a series of warnings since the UN tightened sanctions against the country this week over a recent rocket test.
On Thursday, the North said it would proceed with a "high-level" nuclear test in a move aimed at the US, its "arch-enemy".
A day later, it promised "physical counter-measures" against South Korea if it participated in the UN sanctions regime.
North Korean state media reported on Sunday that Mr Kim had "advanced specific tasks to the officials concerned".
The latest warning came after Rodong Sinmun, a state newspaper, carried an essay on Saturday saying that a nuclear test was "the demand of the people".
"It is the people's demand that we should do something, not just a nuclear test, but something even greater. The UN Security Council has left us no room for choice."
North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests in the past, in 2006 and 2009. It has given no time-frame for its third test.
The UN resolution, passed on Tuesday, was proposed by the US and backed by China, North Korea's closest ally and biggest trading partner.
It was a response to a rocket launch in December that the US, Japan and South Korea say was a test of banned long-range missile technology.
The three-stage rocket put a satellite into space in what was Pyongyang's first successful test of such technology.
The UN resolution pledged "significant action" if North Korea carried out a third nuclear test.
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30847e5644adec5897332cdcad70ce56 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21218320 | Australian state of Queensland braces for flooding | Australian state of Queensland braces for flooding
The Australian state of Queensland is on alert for flooding in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Oswald.
Hundreds of people have been evacuated as heavy rain continued to fall on Sunday, with the towns of Gladstone and Bundaberg preparing for the possibility of major floods.
The bad weather is forecast to move towards the state capital, Brisbane, and the state of New South Wales.
Two years ago, flooding in Queensland left 35 people dead.
On Sunday, Australian media reported that authorities had pulled the body of an elderly man from the water at Burnett Heads, north-east of Bundaberg.
Two other people were reported missing, including a man who disappeared after trying to cross a creek in Gympie, north of Brisbane.
Six tornadoes have already hit the Bundaberg region, tearing off roofs and injuring 17 people.
The BBC's Nick Bryant reports from Sydney that the river in Bundaberg is already above the flood levels witnessed in 2010, and meteorologists fear it could rise another metre, reaching levels not seen in 70 years.
The council is expecting some 300 homes and businesses to be inundated.
In Gladstone, to the north, 400 properties have already been evacuated.
Sandbags are also being handed out in the state capital Brisbane, where bay areas are especially vulnerable from tidal surges.
Severe weather warnings are in place from central Queensland to the New South Wales border.
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7f13ade4c05130bcd7e292cc1d098dbb | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21231199 | Rescuers help Australia flood victims as waters recede | Rescuers help Australia flood victims as waters recede
Rescue workers in Australia are working to help people affected by floods which have inundated two eastern states.
In Queensland, helicopters rescued more than 1,000 people stranded in the city of Bundaberg as the Burnett River burst its banks, flooding 2,000 homes.
In New South Wales, Grafton escaped the worst of the flooding as the Clarence River peaked below the city's levees.
The waters are now beginning to drop gradually as troops prepare for a mammoth recovery effort and clean-up.
Tropical Cyclone Oswald, which triggered the flooding, is now heading out to sea south of Sydney.
Tens of thousands were left isolated or displaced by the torrent, which peaked in most areas late on Tuesday.
Four people are now known to have died in the severe weather, after a toddler who was hit by a falling tree in Brisbane died on Monday.
It comes two years after severe flooding in southern Queensland, including in the state capital Brisbane, that left 35 people dead and tens of thousands of homes flooded.
"We're planning to have some troops on the ground hopefully within the next 24 hours. It looks like waters will recede and we'll be able to gain access," Brigadier Greg Bilton told reporters.
"Severe major flooding is being experienced in the Burnett [river] catchment area," the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said in its latest statement.
It added: "Record major flooding continues at Bundaberg with the river rising slowly above 9.5m (31ft) in the last few hours."
The Burnett river is also running more than 1.5m (4.9ft) higher than the last serious flooding in December 2010.
Queensland Police Minister Jack Dempsey said that the flood levels will be some of the highest recorded for the whole of the Bundaberg and Burnett region.
"The main priority at the moment on the ground is life and we really do implore people to go to the highest points, listen to the emergency service workers and their directions," he said.
Some 7,500 people are reported to have been displaced in the city of Bundaberg, with more than 1,500 taking shelter in evacuation centres.
About 1,000 people were plucked from the roofs of their homes by helicopters in daring evening rescues after rivers broke their banks late on Monday.
Two air force transport planes are evacuating patients from the local hospital and Prime Minister Julia Gillard said 100 military personnel were being sent to help out.
Queensland State Premier Campbell Newman has praised the civilian and military rescue crews, saying their bravery was "what saved the day".
The BoM has warned
that "major flooding is continuing in the Logan River", with the towns of Waterford and Eagleby now threatened.
In Brisbane, low-lying parts of the central business district were flooded but the impact on residential areas was less than expected, ABC News said.
Officials in the city said that the flooding was not as bad as in 2011, when 22,000 homes were flooded and the damage to infrastructure cost $400m (£250m).
However, Brisbane's Lord Mayor, Graham Quirk, told the Herald Sun newspaper that high tides in coming days would see river levels rise again.
"At this stage anyway, it's good news," he said.
Brisbane residents have been advised to cut down on water use and boil drinking water, after the floods inundated treatment plants. The authorities have warned that some suburbs may run out of water on Wednesday.
In New South Wales, parts of which saw torrential rain on Monday as the cyclone moved south, 2,500 people were told to evacuate from the city of Grafton, where levees were threatened by rising water.
"On Thursday and Friday we were nearly in drought conditions. Here we are on Tuesday morning talking about the biggest flood on the history books," Mayor Richie Williamson told reporters.
Although river levels peaked at a record 8.1m this was below the city's protective levees, prompting the state premier Barry O'Farrell to say: "It does appear as though the worst of it is over".
The authorities estimate that more than 40,000 people have been isolated by floodwaters in the state's north, although no homes are reported to have been damaged there.
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e9472328a568e8d9a0a95fe626892407 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21244016 | Pakistan polio vaccination policeman shot dead by gunmen | Pakistan polio vaccination policeman shot dead by gunmen
A policeman providing security for a polio vaccination team in Pakistan has been killed by gunmen near the north-western town of Swabi, officials say.
The killing is the latest in a spate of deadly attacks against vaccination workers in the country.
In December at least eight people engaged in polio vaccinations were shot dead in Karachi and the north-west.
No group has said it carried out Tuesday's attack, but the Taliban have threatened anti-polio efforts.
The militants have accused health workers of working as US spies and say the vaccine makes children sterile.
Along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio is still endemic.
The latest attack took place on the southern outskirts of Swabi town, police say.
Tuesday was the second day of an immunisation drive in the area and a two-women team were administering polio drops to children.
"The team, after finishing the campaign in Kala [village of Swabi district] was heading towards a nearby village when three men armed with Kalashnikovs appeared from sugarcane fields and opened fire," Swabi police chief Abdul Rashid Khan told the AFP news agency.
He said that the two team members were unhurt and the gunmen escaped.
"It seems the target was the policeman," Mr Khan said.
Health officials say a total of 538 immunisation teams were deployed in Swabi district on Monday, each accompanied by a policeman for protection.
The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says Swabi has had its share of militant attacks in the past, mostly targeting non-governmental organisations involved in health and education projects.
On 1 January seven charity workers, six of them women, were shot dead in the Swabi area. Correspondents say it is not clear if they were targeted because their charity offered vaccinations or education for girls.
All NGO operations in Swabi district have now been suspended, officials say.
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96106b85aca6f7fc46b1df6997df64fe | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21325225 | Kashmir girl band Pragaash gives up after threats | Kashmir girl band Pragaash gives up after threats
An all-girl rock group in Indian-administered Kashmir say they have disbanded after the region's most senior cleric called them "un-Islamic".
"Just tell everyone we have quit. We are no more a band," one of the members of the group Pragaash told the BBC.
The three teenage members say they have received threats since they appeared at a Srinagar music event in December.
On Sunday the Muslim-majority state's grand mufti criticised them for what he said was indecent behaviour.
"When girls and young women stray from the rightful path... this kind of non-serious activity can become the first step towards our destruction," Grand Mufti Bashiruddin Ahmad said in a statement, quoted by AFP news agency.
Many others have leapt to the girls' defence, however. Support for a band which has broken with tradition has poured in from all over the state and elsewhere in India, where the story has been headline news.
Pragaash made their first live appearance at the Battle of the Bands music festival in Srinagar in December. Since then, they say they have received abuse and hate mail on their Facebook page.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has promised police will investigate the threats, and has promised the state will ensure their security.
"I hope these talented young girls will not let a handful of morons silence them," Mr Abdullah said on Twitter over the weekend.
Jammu and Kashmir is India's only Muslim-majority state and has been the scene of a violent insurgency against Indian rule since 1989.
The region has a long history of women dancing and singing in public at festivals and marriages, even though some clerics oppose such behaviour.
"Singing has been a part of our culture and we have had many famous female artistes from the region," said Mehbooba Mufti, president of the opposition People's Democratic Party.
A spokesman for the hardline Geelani faction of the separatist Hurriyat Conference distanced itself from the grand mufti's remarks.
"There is no threat to the girls. Nobody has issued any threats. It is a mere propaganda by the media," he said, adding that abuse posted on social networking sites could not be described as a threat.
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9a1d91d0651e69834993de0c1fb116d5 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21347496 | Quake off Solomon Islands triggers deadly tsunami | Quake off Solomon Islands triggers deadly tsunami
Homes were damaged and at least five people have been reported dead after a tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake hit the Solomon Islands.
The quake, with a magnitude 8.0, struck at 01:12 GMT near the Santa Cruz islands, the US Geological Survey said.
A tsunami measuring 0.9m (3ft) then hit Lata on eastern Santa Cruz island, swamping the island's airport.
A tsunami warning was triggered for several Pacific nations, but was cancelled about two hours later.
Lata is the main town on Santa Cruz, also known as Nendo. It is the largest island in the Santa Cruz island chain, part of the Solomon Islands nation.
The worst of the damage was said to have been on the western coast of Santa Cruz, with one report putting the waves there at 1.5m.
Medical staff at Lata hospital said five people had been killed - four elderly people and one young boy.
But director of nursing Augustine Pilve told New Zealand television that number could rise.
"It's more likely that other villages along the coast of Santa Cruz may be affected," he said.
Robert Iroga, press secretary to the Solomons prime minister, told the BBC that the waves west of Lata had travelled some 500m inland, and that three villages had been damaged.
Many of the homes in the area were semi-permanent, he said, and were reported to have been flattened.
Police were travelling to the area, he said, and the priority was to ensure the local airport is functioning so aid and supplies can be flown in.
Another government spokesman, George Herming, said reports suggested that between 60 to 70 homes have been damaged in four villages on Santa Cruz Islands.
"At this stage, authorities are still trying to establish the exact number and extent of damage," he told AFP, adding that communications with the islands was difficult because of their remoteness.
Initial reports by the USGS said the quake had a shallow depth of 5.8km (3.6 miles) but it later revised the figure to 28.7km (17.8 miles).
Luke Taula, a fisheries officer in Lata, told Reuters news agency the wave came as several small tidal surges.
"We have small waves come in, then go out again, then come back in. The waves have reached the airport terminal," he told the news agency.
Tsunami warnings were issued for the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, New Caledonia, Kosrae, Fiji, Kiribati, and Wallis and Futuna islands.
But they were later cancelled.
by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, which warned that some coastal areas may still experience small changes in sea level.
The Solomon Islands form part of the Ring Of Fire, a zone of volcanic arcs and oceanic trenches encircling the Pacific basin.
The 8.0 earthquake was followed by several aftershocks, the largest measuring 6.6 magnitude.
The region has been experiencing a series of smaller quakes in recent days.
In 2007 an 8.1 magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed at least 52 people in the Solomons and left thousands homeless.
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d8a04986bcca9b0a1a4ca0536f250b16 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21392248 | Senkaku/Diaoyu islands: Japan may release China radar data | Senkaku/Diaoyu islands: Japan may release China radar data
Japan says it may release evidence to prove a Chinese naval frigate locked its fire-control radar onto a Japanese ship near disputed islands.
Tokyo said it might release the data after Beijing rejected accusations it had targeted the destroyer last month.
China insists its ship was only using ordinary surveillance radar.
The incident would be the closest the two countries have come to exchanging fire in the reignited dispute over the islands in the East China Sea.
The two nations are embroiled in a bitter territorial row over the islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. Japan controls the islands, which are also claimed by Taiwan.
"The government is considering the extent of what can be disclosed," Kyodo news agency quoted Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera as saying.
On Friday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called on Beijing to acknowledge the 30 January incident and apologise.
Earlier this week, Mr Onodera said a Japanese military helicopter was also targeted with a similar type of radar by another Chinese frigate on 19 January.
But China's Defence Ministry has denied the Japanese allegations saying they "were against the facts" and urging Japan to "stop stirring up tension in the East China Sea".
The Chinese Defence Ministry,
in its statement,
said that in each incident, the Chinese vessel "kept normal observation and alert, and fire control radar was not used".
"China hopes that Japan take effective measures to stop stirring up tension in the East China Sea and making irresponsible remarks," it said.
Since the row over the islands flared up again last September, Chinese vessels have been sailing in and out of what Japan says are its territorial waters around the islands, prompting warnings from Tokyo.
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dc3dbb20af1bfde8b63ecd02de8056e3 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21501955 | Two charged in Papua New Guinea 'sorcery' killing case | Two charged in Papua New Guinea 'sorcery' killing case
Two people have been charged in Papua New Guinea with burning alive a woman they accused of sorcery, officials say.
The pair charged with the murder of Kepari Leniata, 20, are related to a six-year-old boy they accused her of using sorcery to kill, police said in a statement.
Ms Leniata was doused in petrol and set on fire in Mount Hagen on 6 February.
The case has drawn public condemnation, including from Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, who called it "barbaric".
Cecile Pouilly, spokesperson for the
UN's human rights office
, on 8 February expressed "great concern" over the incident.
"We urge the government to put an end to these crimes and to bring perpetrators of attacks and killings to justice through thorough, prompt and impartial investigations in accordance with international law," she said.
In parts of the Pacific nation deaths and mysterious illnesses are sometimes blamed on suspected sorcerers. Several reports have emerged in recent years of accused people, usually women, being killed.
In 2009, after a string of such killings, the chairman of Papua New Guinea's Constitutional Review and Law Reform Commission said defendants were using accusations of witchcraft as an excuse to kill people, and called for tougher legislation to tackle the issue.
The police have interviewed at least 40 people in connection with the incident.
The two who have been charged, from a village in the Laiagam district, are the boy's mother and uncle, according to a report in
The National newspaper
on Monday.
"We are not finished," provincial police commander Martin Lakari was quoted by paper as saying.
"If any evidence or reports come in later saying other people involved are still at large, we will also arrest them."
Police and fire-fighters were unable to intervene at the time because they were outnumbered by the crowd and chased away.
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d75e2e4058acb43cdc9499ba6cf0536f | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21504125 | Putting a face to the conflict in Thailand's south | Putting a face to the conflict in Thailand's south
Nine years ago, a forgotten conflict in the far south of Thailand flared up in the most dramatic way.
Gunmen raided a military arms depot, killing the four guards and making off with around 400 assault rifles.
Three months later waves of insurgents, armed with some of those captured weapons, launched co-ordinated attacks on 11 police posts in an almost suicidal fashion - 107 of them were killed, including 32 who had taken shelter in the historic Krue Se mosque in Pattani.
The insurgency, as it is now known, has killed more than 5,000 people, 550 of them members of the Thai security forces.
Most of the attacks have been on a small scale - drive-by shootings by gunmen on motorbikes, small roadside bombs detonated by mobile phones, gruesome beheadings of traders or rubber-tappers heading to work in the early morning.
The violence has never spread beyond the three-and-a-half provinces next to the Malaysian border, which have predominantly Malay Muslim populations. The almost daily attacks rarely make headlines, and the insurgents, who are mainly young Muslim men, make few statements and do not acknowledge any centralised leadership.
Theirs remains a faceless movement, although they are presumed to be fighting for the goal of an independent Islamic state, inspired by the old Malay sultanate of Pattani, which used to govern this region until it was annexed by Thailand in 1909.
But last week, a failed insurgent assault on a Thai marine base lifted the mask for a moment.
The marines had been warned and met the night-time raiders with booby traps and volleys of gunfire.
Sixteen of the militants were killed, their bodies strewn among the rubber trees. Most of them were well-known by the Thai authorities. Some were local - from the village of Tanyong, just a 10-minute drive from the base.
Many of the people in this region do not speak Thai and do not readily talk to outsiders, especially journalists. There is a climate of fear, created by the years of insurgent attacks and military retaliation.
But the day after the marine base raid, the families of three of the insurgents who lived next door to each other in Tanyong were receiving visitors and speaking.
I met the father and widow of 25-year-old Sa-oudi Alee. Both said they were proud of the way he had died, fighting for his beliefs.
Darunee Alee has been left to bring up their 18-month-old son, but refused to be downcast.
Why did Sa-oudi feel he had to join the insurgents, I asked?
She said that like many of the other insurgents, he became involved after the Tak Bai incident in October 2004, when the Thai army detained dozens of Muslim men and piled them, tied up, on top of each other in trucks before driving them for three hours.
Seventy-eight of them died on the journey from being crushed or suffocated.
Sa-oudi had spent two years in jail and was released last year. His passport showed he had also travelled six times to Malaysia between 2007 and 2008, although his family were unclear what he was doing there.
Darunee's father-in-law, Matohe Alee, has eight surviving children, six of them boys. Would he allow them to follow their brother and join the insurgency?
He would try to stop them, he said, but they don't always listen.
Marta Majid has three young daughters. She knew her husband, Hasem, was involved with the insurgents. He stayed away from home and the army often searched her house.
But his violent death clearly came as a shock and she looked bewildered. Most of his head was blown off in the attack, and she described having to identify him by the shape of his lower jaw.
Just down the road, a steady stream of neighbours was filing through the brand-new home of Marohso Jantarawadee to pay their respects to his widow, Rusanee.
He was the commander of the operation against the base and one of Thailand's most wanted men, with more than 12 arrest warrants against him and a price on his head.
Through her tears, Rusanee said she felt honoured to have been his wife, although she grieved that their young son would never know his father.
There were murmurs of approval from the visitors in the house. None questioned an insurgent campaign which has targeted teachers, Buddhist monks and anyone working for the Thai state.
Instead they recounted their own narrative, of repeated harassment by the authorities.
On the road outside, a platoon of Thai soldiers patrolled carefully, keeping a lookout for ambushes, prodding gingerly in the thick, tropical vegetation for possible bombs.
They have a good idea who the insurgent families are, but have found it hard to track down leaders in a movement which is so fragmented.
Sometimes suspected insurgents are taken in for questioning.
At times in the past they have been tortured, although the military has been presenting its most conciliatory face after last week's attack, regretting the loss of life and referring to the insurgents as "Thai citizens, like us".
The death of Marohso, though, is clearly seen as a coup.
'Historical
m
istrust'
But it will not change the course of the conflict, said Don Pathan, a long-time reporter and researcher on Thailand's deep south.
"Most of the people here share the same sentiment, the same historical mistrust of the Thai state", he said.
"They often look at these insurgents as local heroes. They may not agree with the brutality but I can assure you they share the same sentiments.
"And a lot of these the insurgents are their kids, their nephews, their neighbours' nephews - they are not going to turn them in."
He warned that although the insurgents use the language of jihad, and some of the methods of other jihadist groups, the conflict is at heart about Malay-Pattani nationalism and not Islam.
There are few signs that this or any other Thai government recognises that.
The current Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra did propose some form of autonomy during her election campaign two years ago, but quickly dropped it in the face of opposition from the military.
The army, the police, local politicians and the insurgents are all believed to make significant money from the rampant smuggling of everything from drugs, to people, to diesel fuel, in this border region.
There seems little incentive to risk bold initiatives that might end the fighting.
And so it grinds on, into its tenth year.
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05345f067abe57bfec29ec84de6be87c | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21628758 | Sabah stand-off 'turns deadly' as clashes break out | Sabah stand-off 'turns deadly' as clashes break out
At least 14 people have died in clashes to end the siege of a village in Malaysia's Sabah province by a Philippines clan, police say.
Sabah Police Chief Hamza Taib said two police officers and 12 Filipino rebels had been killed at Lahad Datu.
Lahad Datu was occupied in early February by members of a Muslim royal clan from the Philippines calling itself the Royal Army of Sulu.
They are demanding recognition as the rightful owners of Sabah province.
The group - some of them armed - had been urged to end their siege by both the Malaysian and Philippine governments.
Hamza Taib said the killings happened during a 30-minute shoot-out on Friday morning, when members of the clan opened fire as the security forces were tightening a security cordon around the village.
He told the Associated Press that the stand-off was continuing. "We don't want to engage them but they fired at us. We have no option but to return fire," he said.
But confusion remains over what exactly has happened in the remote part of Sabah.
The leader of the gang, Agbimuddin Kiram, told a Philippines radio station that police had surrounded them and opened fire.
"They are here, they entered our area so we have to defend ourselves. There's shooting already," he told Manila-based DZBB radio.
"We're surrounded. We will defend ourselves," he said. The group has put its death toll at 10.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed that two police officers had died and three were wounded, and said between 10 and 12 clan members had been killed.
He said he had given the security forces "full power" to do what was necessary to "defeat" the group, according to Malaysia state news agency Bernama.
"I am very sad over the incident because what we had wanted to prevent, which is bloodshed, had actually happened," the prime minister said.
Mr Kiram, the younger brother of the self-proclaimed Sultan of Sulu Jamalul Kiram III, led the gang of at least 100 from their home on the Philippine islands of Sulu in early February to the shores of Sabah.
The Sulu Sultanate once spread over several southern Philippine islands as well as parts of Borneo, and claimed Sabah as its own before it was designated a British protectorate in the 1800s.
Sabah became part of Malaysia in 1963, and the country still pays a token rent to the Sulu Sultanate each year.
The Royal Army of Sulu wants Malaysia to recognise it as the rightful owner of Sabah, and to renegotiate the terms of the old lease - something Malaysia has made clear it has no intention of doing.
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4a3d1ed94fe63b24b9ae418476a18f63 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21713340 | China warns against Korea escalation | China warns against Korea escalation
China has appealed for calm on the Korean peninsula, hours after North Korea said it had scrapped all peace pacts with the South and threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes.
China, the North's only major ally, said all sides should continue to talk and avoid "further escalation".
Pyongyang has reacted angrily to another round of sanctions imposed by the UN over its recent nuclear test.
The sanctions restrict luxury goods imports and banking activities.
Beijing provides fuel, food and diplomatic cover to Pyongyang.
It has repeatedly voted in favour of UN sanctions imposed over the nuclear programme, but enforcement of the measures in China is patchy.
Hua Chunying of China's foreign ministry told a news conference on Friday: "China and North Korea have normal country relations. At the same time, we also oppose North Korea's conducting of nuclear tests.
"China calls on the relevant parties to be calm and exercise restraint and avoid taking any further action that would cause any further escalations."
Chinese and US officials drafted the UN resolution passed on Thursday.
It contains similar measures to earlier resolutions, but the US said it had significantly strengthened the enforcement mechanisms.
In response, the North Korean regime published a message on the official KCNA news agency saying it had cancelled all non-aggression pacts with the South.
The two Koreas have signed a range of agreements over the years, including a 1991 pact on resolving disputes and avoiding military clashes.
However, analysts say the deals have had little practical effect.
The KCNA report detailed other measures including:
The North also claimed it had a right to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against its enemies.
The threat drew an angry response from the South's defence ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok, who said that the North would become "extinct from the Earth by the will of mankind" if it took such an action.
The US state department said such "extreme rhetoric" was not unusual, but said the US was well protected.
The BBC's Lucy Williamson in Seoul says it appears the North is trying to build a sense of crisis domestically, with a large rally staged in Pyongyang on Friday and reports of camouflage netting on public transport.
North Korea has breached agreements before and withdrawing from them does not necessarily mean war, our correspondent says, but it does signal a more unpredictable and unstable situation.
Shutting down the hotline will leave both more exposed to misunderstandings, she adds.
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42b5a01633c7aea46a43f83a57d2d7fd | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21894339 | Burma: State of emergency imposed in Meiktila | Burma: State of emergency imposed in Meiktila
A state of emergency has been imposed in the Burmese town of Meiktila following three days of communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims.
A statement announcing the decision on behalf of President Thein Sein was broadcast on state television.
He said that the move would enable the military to help restore order in the riot-hit town, south of Mandalay.
At least 20 people are reported to have been killed since the violence began, but exact figures are unclear.
A BBC reporter who has just returned from the town said he saw about 20 Muslim bodies, which local men were trying to destroy by burning.
Meiktila MP Win Thein told the BBC Burmese service that scores of mostly Buddhist people accused of being involved in the violence had been arrested by police.
He said that he saw the bodies of eight people who had been killed in violence in the town on Friday morning. Many Muslims had fled gangs of Buddhist youths, he said, while other Muslims were in hiding.
Mr Win said that that violence that recurred on Friday morning has now receded, although the atmosphere in Meiktila remains tense.
Police say that at least 15 Buddhist monks on Friday burnt down a house belonging to a Muslim family on the outskirts of the town. There are no reports of any injuries.
The disturbances began on Wednesday when an argument in a gold shop escalated quickly, with mobs setting mainly Muslim buildings alight, including some mosques.
Fighting in the streets between men from rival communities later broke out.
Meanwhile people in the town have told the BBC of food shortages because the main market in the town has been closed for the last five days.
Hundreds of riot police have been sent into Meiktila. They have been seen hurriedly evacuating crowds of men and women from their burning homes.
However they have been accused of doing little to stop the razing of entire neighbourhoods and the accumulation of casualties from both communities.
The BBC's south-east Asia correspondent Jonathan Head says that the eruption of communal anger uncomfortably echoes what happened in Rakhine state last year, where nearly 200 people were killed and tens of thousands forced from their homes.
The conflict that erupted in Rakhine involved Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, who are not recognised as Burmese citizens. Scores of Rohingyas have fled what they say is persecution in Burma in recent months.
The government has yet to present any long-term proposals to resolve that conflict, our correspondent says, and simmering fear and mistrust between Buddhists and the country's Muslim minorities has boiled over in the more open political climate prevailing since the first elected government in half a century took office two years ago.
Meanwhile residents in Meiktila have complained that police have struggled to control groups of people on the streets armed with knives and sticks.
Most of these men are Buddhists, police say, angered over the death of a Buddhist monk who suffered severe burns on Wednesday.
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7f8a3f87679397c8a57ede325421a875 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22165159 | The struggle of religious minorities in Indonesia | The struggle of religious minorities in Indonesia
A conflict between the Ahmadiyah community and the local government has been drawing attention to what rights groups say is an increasing trend of intolerance in Indonesia.
The Ahmadiyah are a minority Muslim sect who have struggled to practise their faith in the world's most populous Muslim nation despite being guaranteed the right to do so under the constitution.
In Bekasi, West Java, they have been struggling to save their mosque, which was sealed by the local government on 4 April.
The mosque, once a place of prayer, is now the scene of a stand-off.
It is surrounded by corrugated iron fences, its sprawling complex - often used by non-Ahmadi neighbours on Sundays for badminton or football - closed off to everyone.
A group of police and army members guard the entrance to prevent anyone from going inside.
A signboard at the front of the mosque has the details of the three ministerial decrees signed in 2008 that stipulates the Ahmadis cannot spread their faith.
The local government says this is why this mosque must be shut down.
But the Ahmadis say they have never tried to convert anyone and they just want to pray with the 400 or so members of their own community.
Now, 20 Ahmadis have locked themselves up inside the mosque, refusing to leave.
They have lived in bare and basic conditions inside the mosque for more than a week now.
When we visited the mosque last week, we were not allowed inside. And the Ahmadis did not want to come out for fear of being forced to vacate their house of worship.
So we spoke to one of the leaders through a hole in the door.
"Our worry is that this mosque will be taken over," said Rahmat Rahmadijaya, an Ahmadi leader.
"We have heard that hardline Islamic groups want to take over this mosque so that no Ahmadiyah activities are carried out here. We feel obligated to defend our mosque until our right to pray here is recognised."
The mosque was built in 1999 and leaders of the Ahmadi community in the area say they have never experienced any trouble before.
The clashes with the local government only began when hardline Islamic groups started protesting against their presence.
But the Ahmadis are not alone in their struggle to practise their faith in Indonesia.
Last week, a group of about 300 people from a variety of religious backgrounds staged a rally at Indonesia's parliament, demanding that their rights as citizens to freely worship, a right enshrined in the constitution, be respected.
Marwasas Nainggolan, a Batak Christian Protestant priest, took part in the demonstration. He said the government is to blame for the rising number of attacks on religious minorities.
"We've come here with people of all faiths to tell the Indonesian parliament that they must enforce the law," he said.
"We have seen a growth in religious intolerance in this country, and the government isn't strong enough to make it stop. It doesn't protect houses of worship."
Mr Nainggolan added that Indonesia's laws on building a house of worship work against minorities in the country.
"You have to get the permission of at least 60 people in the area where you want to build your house of worship. How is that possible?
"Even when you do get permission, often it is over-ruled by the local government."
He said that up to four churches in his congregation have run into obstacles.
"One has been destroyed, three others have not been given permits. Why is it forbidden to build a house of worship in this country?"
The Batak Christian Protestants are the largest Protestant denomination in Indonesia, part of the Lutheran church fellowship.
They have experienced a number of problems in the province of West Java in trying to secure permits for their houses of worship.
One of their churches was demolished last month by a government bulldozer in front of its distraught and desperate congregation.
Officials say the church did not have the proper permit. But the church says local authorities once again bowed to pressure from hardline Muslim groups.
Activists say the central government needs to step in and convince its citizens it is taking religious intolerance seriously.
"President [Susilo Bambang] Yudhoyono's government doesn't have the political will to solve these problems," said Hendardi, an expert on issues of religious intolerance at the Setara Institute, an advocacy group.
"They keep occurring again and again. We have seen the number of attacks on religious minorities rise steadily over the years."
"The people in charge of these problems have a political agenda. Intolerant groups are often used during elections to advance certain political goals," he added.
But Indonesia's government denies the insinuation that it is politically advantageous to cater to hardline Islamic groups at the expense of the country's minorities.
"Many countries look at Indonesia as a success story in allowing the religious communities to live in harmony," said Teuku Faizasyah, Indonesia's presidential spokesman for foreign affairs.
"I can tell you that the president takes these matters very personally and seriously."
He added that dealing with the issue is not an easy process.
"If others can learn from us, then certainly we can update our practices. We are dealing with thousands of ethnic groups, thousands of people who have identities so it's not an easy task."
But this is little comfort for Indonesia's minorities, many of whom say they feel like second-class citizens in their own countries.
As Indonesia heads towards an election next year, the issue of religious intolerance is likely to become even more politicised.
Indonesia's minorities are waiting to see whether their government will be on their side.
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fc7fbd4da974e2a169e6af13c3d1d122 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22254493 | EU lifts sanctions against Burma | EU lifts sanctions against Burma
The European Union has lifted the last of its trade, economic and individual sanctions against Burma in response to its political reform programme.
The sanctions were temporarily lifted last year, and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi agreed Burma's progress merited the move being made permanent.
An EU foreign ministers' meeting said an arms embargo would stay in place.
It warned Burma needed to address "significant challenges", particular regarding its minority Muslims.
Human rights groups say the lifting of sanctions reduces the leverage the EU has on Burma, with Human Rights Watch's Asia head Phil Robertson describing the move as "premature and regrettable".
It came shortly after the BBC obtained police video showing officers standing by while Buddhist rioters attacked minority Muslims in the Burmese town of Meiktila. It was filmed last month, when at least 43 people were killed in Meiktila.
An EU statement, approved without a vote and issued at a foreign ministers' meeting in Luxembourg, said: "In response to the changes that have taken place and in the expectation that they will continue, the Council (of ministers) has decided to lift all sanctions with the exception of the embargo on arms."
The decision came in response to political reforms implemented by President Thein Sein, who came to power after elections in November 2010. His administration has freed many political prisoners and relaxed censorship.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Burma's political progress was substantial enough and serious enough for the temporary lifting of sanctions to be made permanent.
But he told the BBC: "The work of the EU in Burma is not remotely finished. It is important to continue working on improving human rights, on improving the humanitarian situation, in helping the Burmese to address issues of ethnic violence, particularly attacks on Muslim communities."
Aung San Suu Kyi, who for years supported the sanctions against the country's military rulers, backed the EU's decision, telling the BBC the democracy movement could not depend on sanctions forever.
"It is time we let these sanctions go," she said. "I don't want to rely on external factors forever to bring about national reconciliation which is the key to progress in our country."
Ms Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest for many years, leads a pro-democracy opposition which has a small presence in parliament.
Violence between Buddhists and Muslims erupted in another part of Burma, Rakhine state, last year following the rape and murder of a young Buddhist woman in May.
Clashes in June and October resulted in the deaths of about 200 people. Thousands of people, mainly members of the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority, fled their homes and remain displaced.
On Monday, the New York-based organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) presented
a report
containing what it said was clear evidence of government complicity in ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity against Muslims in Rakhine state.
It said security forces had either stood aside or joined in when mobs attacked Muslim communities in nine townships, razing villages and killing residents.
It said HRW had discovered four mass grave sites in Rakhine state, which it said security forces had used to destroy evidence of the crimes.
However, the allegations were rejected by Win Myaing, a government spokesman for Rakhine state, AP news agency reported.
HRW investigators didn't "understand the situation on the ground," he said, adding that the government had no prior knowledge of the impending attacks, and had deployed forces to quell the unrest.
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eb6db8897c00acfdfd7b3ec1a01d809a | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22334883 | Burma report backs security boost for Rakhine | Burma report backs security boost for Rakhine
A government commission in Burma has recommended doubling the number of security forces in Rakhine state, which saw deadly ethnic clashes last year.
It also said that the segregation of Muslim Rohingyas and Buddhists should continue, but acknowledged that was not a suitable long-term solution.
More than 190 people were killed and 100,000 displaced in deadly clashes between Buddhists and Muslims.
The Rohingyas are a stateless group who are not recognised as Burmese citizens.
Burma's Prime Minister Thein Sein appointed a panel last year to investigate the origins of the conflict and suggest measures to prevent more violence, but its findings have been delayed several times.
"While keeping the two communities apart is not a long-term solution, it must be enforced at least until the overt emotions subside," the Associated Press quoted the report as saying.
Human Rights Watch last week accused Burmese security forces of taking part in "ethnic cleansing" in Rakhine.
Two waves of violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims engulfed parts of the state in June and October. The security forces at the time were accused of taking the side of the Rakhine Buddhists.
The Rohingya camps are now, with the rainy season approaching, in dire condition and this report calls for greater efforts to tackle overcrowding and provide water and sanitation, reports the BBC's Jonah Fisher in Bangkok.
While calling for the deployment of twice as many soldiers, policemen, and border guards, it also wants to see them better trained and equipped.
Throughout the report, the Rohingya Muslim community is referred to as Bengalis - a reflection of the widespread belief that this community of some 800,000 people belong in neighbouring Bangladesh, notes our correspondent.
The report also suggests family planning education to address what it describes as the rapid growth of the Muslim population.
It does say, however, that Rohingya citizenship claims should be addressed - but provides no new solutions saying they should only be allowed normal rights when they become citizens.
The United Nations describes Rohingya as a religious and linguistic minority from western Burma. It says the Rohingya are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.
The Rohingyas say they have lived in Burma for generations and feel they are part of the country.
The violence that swept across Rakhine last year and more recent attacks against Muslims in central Burma have posed a serious challenge to Burma's government three years after military rule ended.
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9d6dc694513c0eac9c696e93455dcd31 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22336540 | Everest: Climbers Steck and Moro in fight with Sherpas | Everest: Climbers Steck and Moro in fight with Sherpas
Police in Nepal are investigating an alleged fight between two famous European climbers and their Nepalese mountain guides on Mount Everest.
Switzerland's Ueli Steck and Simone Moro from Italy were at 7,470m (24,500ft) when the brawl occurred.
The pair allegedly ignored orders to hold their climb and triggered an icefall which hit the Sherpas laying fixed ropes. The climbers deny this.
Both sides have since reached a peace deal, reports say.
Mr Steck told the BBC that their three-man team - which included Briton Jonathan Griffith - was nearing Camp Three on Saturday, when the "conflict" broke out.
He said they had been keeping a respectful distance so as not to disturb the work of the Sherpas laying ropes.
The climbers continued to Camp Three but later descended to Camp Two to "finish the discussion" and were met by more than 100 angry Sherpas, who began to beat them and throw rocks, Mr Steck said.
He said the Sherpas threatened to kill the climbers if they did not leave the camp.
One of the Sherpas threw a pocket knife at Mr Moro but "luckily [it] just hit the belt of his backpack", Mr Steck said, adding that they escaped with no serious injuries.
Mr Steck said the conflict was the symptom of a long-term problem of "cultures", but did not elaborate.
Ang Tshering Sherpa, the former president of the Nepal Mountaineers Association, told the BBC that climbing leaders of various teams at base camp helped broker a peace deal on Sunday.
Exact details are not very clear, but the two sides clearly had a misunderstanding, Mr Ang said.
In a statement, Mr Moro said that "getting hit by chunks of ice is a very natural occurrence" on an ice face. "As it stands, no Sherpa has come forward to show any injury."
"The climbers believe that the lead Sherpa felt that his pride had been damaged as the climbers were moving unroped and much faster," the statement added.
When they returned to their tents, Mr Moro said a mob of guides had grouped together to attack them.
"[The guides] became instantly aggressive and not only punched and kicked the climbers, but threw many rocks as well," said Mr Moro.
More than 3,000 people have scaled Mount Everest since it was first conquered by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953.
Straddling Nepal and China, the world's highest mountain has an altitude of 8,848m (29,029ft).
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6679f137c9c312a769f2dcdbf2767d70 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22338101 | Fears grow for abducted Laos campaigner Sombath | Fears grow for abducted Laos campaigner Sombath
It is a case that a decent detective would crack in a week. Sombath Somphone's abduction was caught on camera and took place on a busy road at a police checkpoint.
But more than four months after Laos' leading development worker disappeared, the authorities say they have no leads and yet need no outside help finding him.
It is little wonder that aid workers and diplomats in this small South East Asian nation are fearing the worst.
Mr Sombath's wife Shui-meng Ng last saw her husband in the rear-view mirror of her car.
It was Saturday, 15 December 2012, and the couple were driving home in their respective vehicles along Thadeua Road, which runs parallel to the Mekong River.
Mr Sombath, 61, had been doing some early evening exercise while his Singapore-born wife had attended a meeting in town.
With the day coming to a close, they met up at the small shop Ms Shui-meng runs and decided to head home in convoy.
Despite the absence of traffic, the cars lost contact with each other. When she got home, Ms Shui-meng waited for several hours before heading back out to look for her husband.
Having found no trace of him or his Jeep, she reported him missing the next morning.
On the Monday, having seen little sign of interest from the police, Mr Sombath's family turned detective.
They went to Vientiane's main police station where they requested to be shown CCTV footage of the stretch of road where he had last been seen.
"I was shocked when we saw that he was stopped by the police at a police post." Ms Shui-Meng said.
The footage showed Mr Sombath's Jeep being pulled over shortly after 18:00 and the policeman asking him to get out of the vehicle.
Shortly afterwards, a man arrives on a motorbike and drives Mr Sombath's vehicle away.
Less than seven minutes after he was first stopped, a pickup arrives. Mr Sombath is bundled in without fuss and driven away. It is the last time he was seen alive.
With canny foresight, Mr Sombath's family made their own copy of the CCTV by filming the monitor screen with a mobile phone or digital camera.
The pictures they captured are blurry, but the contents and chronology are clear. They thought it was a breakthrough.
Having installed state-of-the-art cameras all along Thadeua Road, the Lao authorities must have captured the number plates of the pickup and the motorbike.
The traffic policeman at the post, if not directly involved, would also surely be able to provide some information.
Unfortunately for Mr Sombath and his family, the police response has been either embarrassingly inept or wilfully blind.
Despite possessing the original CCTV footage, they declared in a statement that it has given them no information on the number plates of either the motorbike or the pickup.
That footage has not been released to the public and the Lao authorities have rejected all offers of foreign technical assistance to try and enhance it.
A spokesman from the Ministry of Public Security said it was "unnecessary" and that this was Laos' "internal responsibility".
He went on to say that the policeman who stopped Mr Sombath was simply carrying out random checks and could not remember anything unusual taking place that Saturday evening.
For foreign diplomats in Vientiane, it just does not add up. Months of supposedly intense investigation had apparently revealed nothing more than Mr Sombath's family had discovered in two days of amateur sleuthing.
"There seems to be more that could be done," Karen Stewart, the US ambassador in Vientiane said, barely disguising her frustration.
"They could accept offers of technical assistance to work on the video footage. We just don't know who's behind this, but would hope for a more thorough and prompt investigation."
Another diplomat with the benefit of anonymity was more blunt.
"It's pretty clear that some part of the ruling party or government are behind this," he said. "It's hard to watch the CCTV footage and think this is anything other than an organised abduction."
Laos is in name, at least, still a communist country.
On the streets of Vientiane, backpackers happily take pictures of the many red flags bearing the hammer and sickle fluttering alongside the Lao national flag.
But as the country fell a long way behind its rapidly growing neighbours, its leaders changed tack and made some steps to open the economy up.
Though now riddled with corruption, Laos is now more market than Marx. But political change has been much slower.
Laos remains a one-party state and has been dominated by the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) since independence in 1975.
In the absence of an opposition, aid agencies and civil society groups are treated with huge suspicion, and on occasion, outright hostility.
"Civil society is seen as a political adversary not as a partner in development," one international aid worker said. "They associate us with the Arab Spring."
For 30 years, Mr Sombath had successfully navigated Laos' complex internal politics. Returning from university in the US in the 1970s, he initially worked in agricultural development.
Then in 1996, he founded his own organisation PADETC, which encouraged and empowered young people. He won awards and then retired in the middle of 2012, hoping to live life at a slower pace.
Soft-spoken and non-confrontational, Mr Sombath was never an activist or agitator.
But many link his disappearance directly to the role he played organising a meeting of the Asia-Europe People's Forum (AEPF) in Vientiane in October 2012.
The People's Forum was a chance for Lao grassroots organisations to meet and speak with activists and campaigners from around the world.
It was unprecedented by Lao standards.
Mr Sombath was a key part of the organising committee and helped run a regional discussion process that then contributed at the international meeting in Vientiane.
"Never had citizens here been consulted in that way before," a member of the Lao aid community said.
Some excitedly hailed the meeting as a sign that the political space was beginning to open up.
But for some members of the ruling elite in Laos, it was clearly a step too far.
In December, the head of the Swiss NGO Helvetas, Anne Sophie Gindoz, was expelled for "breaking the rules".
Ms Gindoz had just written an email to partners critical of the Lao government and the lack of freedom of speech. She had also been heavily involved in the People's Forum.
"They did what they know best," another Lao aid worker said, on condition of anonymity. "They expelled the head of an international NGO and in the process scared all the local ones."
Ms Gindoz was told to leave Laos on 7 December. Just over a week later, Mr Sombath was stopped at the police checkpoint.
One Western diplomat in Vientiane said they believe Mr Sombath was now caught in a power struggle between conservatives and reformers within the Lao government.
"The Defence Ministry remains the most important ministry in government," he said.
"Along with the Ministry of Public Security they appear to control the real power - and want to resist change at all cost."
Mr Sombath's wife Shui-Meng Ng is now trying desperately to ensure her husband is not forgotten.
When we spoke in Bangkok, she told me she has been given no indication as to whether he is dead or alive.
"I keep waiting. I keep hoping for some news about his whereabouts. It's been very stressful and very draining for everyone," she said.
"So please. I appeal to the government, I appeal to anyone who might know Sombath's whereabouts to let us know where he is."
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8894102ea09bbd7549a5b09f7f82da0e | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22350948 | Viewpoint: Are US-North Korea talks possible? | Viewpoint: Are US-North Korea talks possible?
While North Korean rhetoric appears to be finally tapering off, tensions on the Korean Peninsula persist. In a matter of only a few weeks, the Kim regime has unravelled two of the greatest successes of detente with its adversaries.
Pyongyang announced that it would restart production of plutonium for nuclear weapons at its Yongbyon reactor, whose cooling tower was famously demolished in 2008 as part of its commitment to the six-party talks.
More recently, it has withdrawn from the joint Kaesong Industrial Zone with South Korea.
These developments serve as a reminder that talks with North Korea can yield modest, but desirable outcomes like the establishment of Kaesong.
Dialogue should not be expected to end North Korea's nuclear programme, especially in the near-term. But it may help defuse the current tensions and avoid a return to escalation.
Washington and Pyongyang are now trading conditions for resuming regular official engagement, which would be more than just "talks for talks' sake".
That is, if concerned nations could agree on the subject of, and forum for, discussion. It is here that the greatest divide lies.
On his recent trip to Asia, Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated that Washington is ready to engage with Pyongyang, but only if certain conditions are met.
His offer presumably relates to more regular, official talks than those already quietly and sporadically taking place.
Foremost among his conditions is a demonstration by the North of "seriousness of purpose to go towards denuclearisation".
This could be done by, for instance, ceasing production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or refraining from conducting missile tests.
Though the messenger may be new, Mr Kerry's conditional offer is not.
In theory, the Obama administration has for some time been quietly open to resuming nuclear talks with North Korea if convinced that Pyongyang would come to the table in good faith.
In response to Mr Kerry's statements, North Korea brushed off the subject of denuclearisation and announced its own list of conditions: the United States must apologise for its recent provocations, repeal all UN and unilateral sanctions, withdraw nuclear-capable assets from the region, and abstain from conducting military exercises on the Korean Peninsula.
Both lists of conditions are non-starters, and speak to the underlying, vast gap in opinion on what should be talked about.
A useful framework for understanding the divide are the stalled six-party talks, the series of negotiations that began in 2003 between China, the US, North and South Korea, Japan and Russia, and were abandoned in 2009.
While active, the six-party talks had three multilateral working groups: peaceful energy co-operation; the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula; and peace and security in Northeast Asia.
The subject of the first working group on peaceful energy co-operation is unappetising to the US and its allies, for obvious reasons.
The second, denuclearisation, is of little interest to Pyongyang, which now heavily emphasises nuclear weapons in its national doctrine. Washington needs Pyongyang to discuss denuclearisation much more than the reverse, and until that changes, the North is unlikely to be tempted into talks on this subject.
However, Pyongyang favours keeping the third avenue for dialogue open, though perhaps not with a six-party talks label. From their point of view, a peace treaty is needed to guarantee the absence of an external enemy before the country can safely renounce nuclear weapons.
Washington believes the opposite: fully normalised relations are not possible while the North maintains an active nuclear-weapons programme.
At the moment, none of these topics are palatable to all key countries, and the latest crisis has cemented the difference of opinion.
In January, North Korea's National Defence Commission declared flatly that North Korea would maintain a nuclear deterrent so long as other states possess nuclear weapons - a policy conveniently borrowed from the US and UK.
This position was later bolstered by the Supreme People's Assembly, which declared nuclear weapons to be "the nation's life".
If there was any doubt about North Korea's disinterest in talking about disarmament, it has now been shattered.
The latest conflict may also have hardened Washington's stance against broader peace and security talks.
North Korea's March decision to restart plutonium production and its apparent quest to develop an inter-continental nuclear strike capability may have convinced the Obama administration that dialogue on non-nuclear issues would give the Kim regime precious time to further advance its nuclear and missile programmes.
As Pyongyang slowly creeps closer to a long-range nuclear missile, time is something the US cannot afford.
As a result, the US may feel that anything but denuclearisation talks, with a preceding North Korean demonstration of sincerity, would be unacceptable.
Statements by the US and North Korea also largely avoid the question of whether sustained, official talks should be bilateral or multilateral.
North Korea has long preferred to deal directly with its adversary. The Obama administration, on the other hand, seems wary of getting burned in another bilateral effort.
The failed 2012 "Leap Day Agreement", which traded North Korean nuclear concessions for American food aid, quickly fell apart to Washington's chagrin.
Indeed, for the time being, the US may have locked itself into a primarily multilateral approach to the North Korean problem.
Amid the recent tensions, the US repeatedly declared Beijing the "key" to resolving the stand-off, in hopes of pressuring them to abandon their traditional apathy. Any effort to resolve Korean Peninsula insecurity without the "key" would now therefore seem nonsensical.
It is clear from the latest tensions that the United States and North Korea continue to disagree about what to talk about, and whom to talk about it with.
And despite Mr Kerry's assertion that he will not "be so stuck in the mud that an opportunity to actually get something done is flagrantly wasted", it is unfortunately difficult to foresee anything in the near term that could create common ground.
Regular dialogue with the US and North Korea at the table is far out of reach.
Andrea Berger is a research fellow in nuclear analysis at the Royal United Services Institute. Follow her on Twitter @AndreaRBerger.
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ed47014ff4ee09ad3aff09fc96a891a6 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22370487 | Bangladesh 'slave labour' condemned by Pope | Bangladesh 'slave labour' condemned by Pope
Pope Francis has denounced as "slave labour" the conditions of workers caught in a deadly building collapse in Bangladesh last week.
More than 400 people are confirmed to have died in the collapse of the Rana Plaza building near the capital, Dhaka.
It housed several clothing factories, some supplying Western retailers.
At May Day parades in Dhaka, marchers demanded the death penalty for the building's owner and better conditions for workers.
The Pope said he had been shocked by reports that some of the labourers had been paid just 38 euros ($50) a month.
"Today in the world this slavery is being committed against something beautiful that God has given us - the capacity to create, to work, to have dignity," the Pope said at a private Mass.
"Not paying a fair wage, not giving a job because you are only looking at balance sheets, only looking to make a profit, that goes against God," he was quoted as saying by Vatican radio.
At least 410 people are confirmed to have died and more than 140 are missing following the collapse of the eight-storey building a week ago, police and army officials said. Some 2,500 people were injured.
It was the country's worst industrial disaster.
More than 30 of those killed, whose bodies have not been identified, were buried in a mass funeral on Wednesday.
In Dhaka, an estimated 20,000 people took part in the main May Day march, while separate demonstrations were held in other parts of the capital and elsewhere.
"I want the death penalty for the owner of the building," said one marcher, 18-year-old garment factory worker Mongidul Islam Rana.
"We want regular salaries, raises and absolutely we want better safety in our factories."
Others in Dhaka held banners with the words: "Hang the killers, Hang the factory owners."
Speaking at a rally in the industrial township of Narayanganj, the leader of Bangladesh's main opposition party, Khaleda Zia, alleged that the government was hiding the real casualty figures from the building collapse.
She also claimed that if the army had been given control of the rescue operation earlier, more lives could have been saved.
The European Union has said it is considering "appropriate action" to encourage improvements in working conditions in Bangladeshi factories.
It said its actions might include the use of its trade preference system, which gives Bangladesh duty- and quota-free access to EU markets.
Bangladesh's garment industry makes up almost 80% of the country's annual exports and provides employment to about four million people.
However, it has faced criticism over low pay and limited rights given to workers, and for the often dangerous working conditions in factories.
Both Primark, which has a large presence in the UK, and Canadian company Loblaw had clothing made in the Rana Plaza, and have said they will offer aid to victims and their families.
Rana Plaza owner Mohammed Sohel Rana, a local leader of the youth wing of the ruling Awami League party, is in police custody.
A total of eight people, including factory owners and engineers, have been arrested for alleged negligence.
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c324a81efd114d8daa2391348394d4e8 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22509425 | Vietnam firms involved in 'illegal land grabs' | Vietnam firms involved in 'illegal land grabs'
An environmental group has accused two Vietnamese rubber firms of involvement in massive land grabs in Cambodia and Laos.
In its report, Global Witness said HAGL and Vietnam Rubber Group had been allocated over 280,000 hectares for rubber plantations in the countries.
Residents had been evicted and offered inadequate or no compensation, it said.
It described the companies' operations as leaving "a trail of environmental and social devastation".
Both companies say their operations comply with local laws.
The problem of land grabs has been raised for several years by donors and NGOs in both countries.
Private land ownership was destroyed by the decades of war and revolution during and after the Vietnam War, so most is now considered state-owned. The Cambodian and Lao governments have been encouraging commercial exploitation of land to boost economic growth.
Global Witness
says the alleged land seizures in Laos and Cambodia reflect a global crisis of uncontrolled land exploitation, driven by rising prices for commodities.
HAGL and the Vietnam Rubber Group have denied any involvement in land-grabbing, illegal logging or corrupt activities. Each said in separate statements to the BBC that they believed their investments in rubber and sugar plantations are fully compliant with local laws.
HAGL is a striking Vietnamese business success story. It began as a small furniture factory in the highland town of Pleiku in 1990, not far from the Cambodian border. It then expanded, first into timber and later into hotels and property, and now rubber and sugar plantations.
Its founder and president, Doan Nguyen Duc, is now one of Vietnam's wealthiest men.
The Vietnam Rubber Group is an umbrella organisation for 22 state-owned enterprises.
Both have led an aggressive expansion of Vietnam's rubber production over the past decade, making it the world's fourth largest exporter after Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.
But available land is now hard to find in Vietnam. Cambodia and Laos have some of the last unexploited tracts of suitable land left in South East Asia.
Traditionally, rubber in South East Asia has been cultivated by smallholders, but these two Vietnamese companies mark a shift towards large-scale plantations operated by big corporations.
In its response to the Global Witness report, HAGL said it provided tens of thousands of jobs for local people.
But Global Witness has interviewed Cambodians and Laos who say they were driven off land they were cultivating, and saw their fields bulldozed and then planted with rubber trees for businesses owned or part-owned by the two Vietnamese companies.
It has also accused Deutsche Bank and the IFC, the financial arm of the World Bank, of investing in both companies, and of failing to perform due diligence on their operations in Cambodia and Laos.
Its says five of Cambodia's richest tycoons are the main beneficiaries of the millions of hectares of government land concessions.
Deutsche Bank says it is not directly financing either company. It says it holds shares in HAGL in a fund on behalf of other investors and provides "clerical trustee services to HAGL as it does to thousands of listed companies globally".
The IFC said in a statement that it holds no stakes in Vietnam Rubber Group. It does have an investment in a fund in Vietnam, which holds a stake in HAGL.
There is now a well-documented pattern of land disputes in both rural and urban Cambodia, where poorer residents are evicted from land they may have lived on for many years to make way for development projects. These projects are usually run by wealthy entrepreneurs connected to the ruling party.
The Cambodian security forces have repeatedly been accused of violently suppressing protests against the evictions, even when the evictions appear to be illegal.
The Cambodian courts have imposed prison sentences on protesters, but there have been no convictions of those accused of seizing land.
Last year, Prime Minister Hun Sen announced a moratorium on land concessions for business, but left a loophole which has allowed hundreds of thousands more hectares to be approved for development.
He also announced a project to process land titles for poorer Cambodians, but this has been widely condemned by local human rights groups as ineffective.
The growing concern over the harmful effects of land concessions for rubber in South East Asia echoes earlier criticism of oil palm plantations, which now cover huge areas of what used to be tropical forest in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Update 14 May 2013: This story has been amended to incorporate a response from the Vietnam Rubber Group.
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b7c6020f99069c8f0e6b8db29af6c6a9 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22519384 | Japan WWII 'comfort women' were 'necessary' - Hashimoto | Japan WWII 'comfort women' were 'necessary' - Hashimoto
A prominent Japanese politician has described as "necessary" the system by which women were forced to become prostitutes for World War II troops.
Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto said on Monday that the "comfort women" gave Japanese soldiers a chance "to rest".
On Tuesday, Japanese ministers tried to distance themselves from his remarks.
Some 200,000 women in territories occupied by Japan during WWII are estimated to have been forced to become sex slaves for troops.
Many of the women came from China and South Korea, but also from the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan.
Japan's treatment of its wartime role has been a frequent source of tension with its neighbours, and South Korea expressed "deep disappointment" at Mr Hashimoto's words.
"There is a worldwide recognition... that the issue of comfort women amounts to a war-time rape committed by Japan during its past imperial period in a serious breach of human rights," a South Korean foreign ministry spokesman told news agency AFP.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei expressed shock and indignation at the mayor's comments.
"The conscription of sex slaves was a grave crime committed by the Japanese military," he said. "We are shocked and indignant at the Japanese politician's remarks, as they flagrantly challenge historical justice."
Mr Hashimoto is the co-founder of the nationalist Japanese Restoration Party, which has a small presence in parliament and is not part of the government.
He was the youngest governor in Japanese history before becoming mayor of Osaka, and last year said Japan needed "a dictatorship".
In his latest comments, quoted by Japanese media, he said: "In the circumstances in which bullets are flying like rain and wind, the soldiers are running around at the risk of losing their lives,"
"If you want them to have a rest in such a situation, a comfort women system is necessary. Anyone can understand that."
He acknowledged that the women had been acting "against their will". He also claimed that Japan was not the only country to use the system, though it was responsible for its actions.
He said he backed a 1995 statement by Japan's then-PM Tomiichi Murayama, in which he apologised for war-time actions in Asia.
"It is a result of the tragedy of the war that they became comfort women against their will. The responsibility for the war also lies with Japan. We have to politely offer kind words to [former] comfort women."
On Tuesday Japan's Cabinet Minister Yoshihide Suga declined to comment directly on Mr Hashimoto's remarks but reiterated the government's existing stance on comfort women.
He said the government felt "pains towards people who experienced hardships that are beyond description".
In 1993, Japan issued an apology for the "immeasurable pain and suffering" inflicted on comfort women. In 1995, it also apologised for its war-time aggression.
Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura also expressed concerns over Mr Hashimoto's remarks.
"A series of remarks related to our interpretation of (wartime) history have been already misunderstood," he told reporters. "In that sense, Mr Hashimoto's remark came at a bad time."
Last month, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe angered China and South Korea when he suggested he may no longer stand by the wording of Japan's 1995 apology, saying the definition of "aggression" was hard to establish.
Japanese ministers later sought to play down his remarks, amid anger across the region.
Japan's neighbours also objected to visits in April by several cabinet members and 170 MPs to Japan's Yasukuni shrine, which honours Japan's war dead, including war criminals.
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69c8296ff94ec95aa893d9ac3095e233 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22520600 | Rohingya boats sink off west Burma - many missing | Rohingya boats sink off west Burma - many missing
At least 50 Rohingya Muslims are feared drowned after their boats capsized off western Burma, officials say.
The boats, said to be carrying about 100 passengers, were evacuating people ahead of powerful Cyclone Mahasen.
The vessels sank off Pauktaw township in Rakhine state late on Monday. More than 40 survivors have been found and eight bodies recovered.
Thousands of Rohingya Muslims are living in temporary camps in Rakhine after violence last year.
The UN had called for an urgent evacuation ahead of the storm, warning that many areas where displaced people are now living are in low-lying coastal areas at risk of flooding or tidal surges.
Aid agencies said that the three boats got into trouble after setting out on Monday night.
Only one boat in the convoy had an engine, towing the other two smaller vessels. Reports say the vessels were overcrowded.
Local resident U Than Htun said the boat was crossing the mouth of the Sittwe River on its way to Sittwe, the state capital some 27km (17 miles) away by sea, when it sank.
"There is a refugee camp nearby and when the security heard the news, some soldiers rushed to rescue 30 people," he told the BBC Burmese service.
"One Bengali lady who came ashore was also saved by Thekone villagers and informed the authorities. The villagers also saw about four persons who landed on an island where there is an old light house."
Barbara Manzi, head of the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), told the BBC from Sittwe it appeared the boats "left the camp with the blessing of the authorities before hitting rocks".
Earlier reports suggested that up 200 people were on board, but the UN later revised the number to about 100.
Burmese officials began evacuations this week, after warnings the cyclone might hit neighbouring Bangladesh from Thursday, bringing heavy rain and flooding to western Burma.
This could hit an estimated 140,000 displaced people - mostly Rohingya - who are living in makeshift shelters in Rakhine, aid groups say.
They have been displaced since violent clashes between Rakhine's Muslim and Buddhist communities in June and October 2012.
"The government has been repeatedly warned to make appropriate arrangements for those displaced in Rakhine state," Isabelle Arradon, deputy Asia Pacific director of the rights group Amnesty International, said in a statement on Monday.
"Now thousands of lives are at stake unless targeted action is taken immediately to assist those most at risk."
Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said that if the government failed to evacuate those at risk, "any disaster that results will not be natural but man-made".
But some people have reportedly refused to leave because they fear having nowhere else to go.
"We are very worried about the cyclone... we do not have enough food to eat," a member of the Rohingya community told Agence-France Presse news agency.
"Many people are in trouble. But we have no idea what we should do."
According to Nasa
, Cyclone Mahasen was north-east of Sri Lanka on Monday. It was expected to strengthen as it moved north and hit Burma late in the week, the agency said.
Five years ago, Cyclone Nargis struck Burma's Irrawaddy Delta region, killing at least 140,000 people and leaving three million in urgent need of assistance.
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8eb9542c8dc1c1a13a9a3e2120c8b72a | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22525431 | Dhaka Rana Plaza collapse: Pressure tells on retailers and government | Dhaka Rana Plaza collapse: Pressure tells on retailers and government
Almost simultaneously, Western retailers and the Bangladeshi government have adopted a series of measures to improve conditions for the country's millions of clothing workers, which activists have been demanding for years.
It's a sign of the intense pressure they are under after the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex on 24 April - with most of the 1,100 dead lowly-paid garment workers making cut-price clothes for the West.
Several big names, including Sweden's H&M, the biggest buyer of Bangladeshi-made clothes, have now signed up to a legally-binding code requiring them not just to meet minimum fire and building safety standards but to pay for them.
The UK's Primark and Tesco, and C&A of the Netherlands, have also come on board, before a deadline set for 15 May - although the basis of the code was drawn up more than a year ago.
Until the Rana Plaza disaster hit the headlines, only two firms had been prepared to sign: PVH, the parent of Calvin Klein, and Tchibo, a German retailer. Both companies have already said they'll agree to the new terms.
Many others are still holding back, though, including some British retailers and the US giant Gap, which is reportedly unhappy at the binding terms of the deal, when it says it is already taking its own measures to boost safety at factories it uses.
H&M was under particular pressure to sign from an
online petition organised by Avaaz
, a human rights group, in the aftermath of the deadly collapse. With the blunt title "Crushed to Make Our Clothes", it has so far gathered nearly one million signatures from around the world.
Buoyed by its success, Avaaz says it is now targeting Gap and trying to embarrass others into signing.
At the same time, the Bangladeshi government has also announced plans to make it easier for garment workers to form unions.
The government has also agreed to talks on raising the minimum wage in the clothing industry from its current level of 3,000 Bangladeshi Taka a month (about £25; $38).
It had been stalling on the issue before the disaster, partly encouraged by factory owners - at least of 30 of them also serving MPs in Bangladesh's parliament. Workers' groups say they are pressing for a near tripling in the minimum wage, to around 8,000 Taka per month.
Questions remain, though, about this apparent new willingness to reform
in the beleaguered industry and the Bangladeshi government.
"We had the right to form a union before," says Kalpona Akter, of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker's Solidarity. "But whenever workers tried, factory owners would just harass them and fire them."
A central complaint was that factories were able to target anyone joining a union, using their membership lists, which they automatically saw. The government says it will now amend the law so owners no longer have this right - something activists have been demanding for years.
They also want to see progress in resolving
the case of a garment union official murdered last year
- amid widespread accusations of government complicity. Aminul Islam was active in fighting for garment workers' rights but his body was found dumped outside Dhaka in April 2012 bearing clear signs of torture. But so far no one has been arrested - despite the name of one suspect being widely known.
While
the owner of the Rana Plaza is now awaiting trial
, campaigners ask why there has been no move to even question the owner of the Tazreen factory, where more than 100 workers died in a devastating fire last November. They were making clothes for the US giant Walmart, and C&A.
Walmart is among those who have not signed up to the new safety code. The company had not responded to an emailed request for comment by the time of publication.
But with major names now signing the safety deal, the many Western clothes companies using Bangladesh are looking more divided. There was already friction within this habitually tight-lipped community, because many firms who were using the Rana Plaza complex have yet to admit their association - in contrast to Primark and Canada's Loblaws, which were quick to come out and promise compensation.
Italy's Benetton eventually admitted a link following publication of photographs of its labels in the wreckage and testimony of survivors, though it maintains its subcontractor stopped using the factory a month before the disaster because of poor standards.
The key issue for retailers is whether consumers will be prepared to pay higher prices, which seem inevitable now.
Government officials worry, though, that retailers may desert Bangladesh, looking for cheaper manufacturers to avoid the toxic publicity the country has now attracted.
With its close and many say corrupt ties to the garment industry, critics say the Bangladeshi government made it easy for both factory owners and retailers to resist binding safety measures before the disaster - not doing enough to respond to past calamities like the Tazreen fire.
Bangladesh commerce minister Mohammed Quader admitted in a recent interview that the government didn't do enough to "discourage" the worst operators "because we wanted the jobs".
A lot has changed now - but only after more than 1,000 people, many of them young women, have been crushed to death. The real test will come once the spotlight has moved on.
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74c6ceac7329ed9aed19ebcc1f23f7c5 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22584440 | Pakistan politician Zahra Shahid Hussain killed in Karachi | Pakistan politician Zahra Shahid Hussain killed in Karachi
A senior female Pakistani politician has been shot dead in the southern port city of Karachi.
Zahra Shahid Hussain was the senior vice-president of Pakistan's Movement for Justice party (PTI), led by former international cricketer Imran Khan.
She was killed by gunmen on a motorcycle outside her home in the city's upmarket Defence neighbourhood.
Her murder took place on the eve of a highly-contested partial re-run of last weekend's general election.
The reason for the shooting is unclear.
PTI leader Imran Khan
took to Twitter
to blame Altaf Hussain, the London-based leader of Karachi's dominant MQM party for her murder - a claim the party has strongly denied.
Mr Khan said Mr Hussain had "openly threatened PTI workers and leaders through public broadcasts".
Mr Khan, a former cricketer, said he also held the UK government responsible, as he had already given a warning about the MQM leader's remarks.
The MQM condemned the murder and described Imran Khan's allegations as "immature".
Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, citing police, said the shooting happened during an attempted robbery.
However, our correspondent says that reports of Ms Hussain being shot twice in the head raise suspicions that it was a targeted killing made to look like a robbery.
Local PTI leader Firdous Shamim told AFP news agency that Ms Hussain "was leaving her home for work when three gunmen attacked her. She thought they wanted to snatch her purse and handed it over to them but they killed her".
Ms Hussain was reportedly rushed to hospital but succumbed to her injuries on the way.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari strongly condemned the murder, describing it as a "tragic incident".
Sunday's partial re-run of the vote in Karachi was ordered after Mr Khan's party accused the MQM of widespread vote-rigging and intimidation.
The MQM - which took most of the seats in Karachi - denies any irregularities and is boycotting the vote.
The authorities have decided to deploy troops at 43 polling stations in Karachi's NA-250 constituency where Sunday's vote is taking place. Voting was halted at the polling stations during the 11 May election because of alleged irregularities.
Karachi is torn by regular violence - much of it politically motivated.
Last week's general elections appear to have paved the way for the first transition from one elected government to another in Pakistan - a country prone to military takeovers.
Unofficial results suggest that the Pakistan Muslim League led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will secure a majority in parliament.
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d6bb3ea0cc41bc8fdc7b8a8754498044 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22652210 | Tension over army 'seizure' of Sri Lanka Jaffna land | Tension over army 'seizure' of Sri Lanka Jaffna land
There are growing tensions in northern Sri Lanka as Tamil people try to prevent the Sinhalese-dominated army from taking over their land.
In a new development, villagers have driven out a group of surveyors sent by the authorities.
Thousands more are engaged in court action to try to win back land they were displaced from years ago.
Sri Lanka's army defeated separatist Tamil Tiger rebels after a brutal 26-year war in 2009.
The military says it needs land for security purposes and insists it is reducing its overall presence there.
Opposition parliamentarian and lawyer MA Sumanthiran confirmed reports from Point Pedro, at the island's northernmost tip, that dozens of landowners turned away surveyors sent by the government to inspect land earmarked for a new army barracks.
Land in post-war northern Sri Lanka is a highly contentious issue, pitting local Tamil people against the almost entirely Sinhalese army.
Two thousand people are petitioning the Appeal Court in Colombo to get back land which they fled during the bloody 26-year war. Northerners have staged street demonstrations on the issue.
The powerful military has occupied it for decades and now seeks to gain possession of it. Much of it - about 6,400 acres (26 sq km) - surrounds Jaffna's airport and a harbour which is being developed for the navy.
In a recent article Jaffna-based lawyer and activist Kumaravadivel Guruparan, and a UK-based Tamil doctor, Sivakami Rajamanoharan, described the process as "wholesale militarised seizure" conducted through "dubious" legal means.
They said that as a result "the ethnic demography of the north-east is effectively being re-engineered".
Further south where the final bloody battles of the war were fought, the army says that it needs more land for what they call a "public purpose" - army camps and even army-run holiday resorts.
Human rights campaigners say such moves are keeping vulnerable people, displaced by the war, out of their rightful homes. They accuse the government of trying to "colonise" the Tamil north with Sinhalese.
But the military spokesman, Ruwan Wanigasooriya, described such talk as "absolute rubbish".
He said the land acquisition was "for the security of the people who live there".
"We have gone through 30 years of mayhem. We can't afford a recurrence of conflict," he added.
During the war the Tamil Tigers expelled 100,000 Muslims from the north, while several thousand Sinhalese fled Jaffna in the early years of the war.
Only relatively low numbers have so far returned.
Recently the radical foreign-based website Tamilnet has also reported army seizures of hundreds of acres of Tamil or Muslim-owned land in the ethnically mixed Eastern Province. The reports have not been verified.
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befac95d00bea019a42e477e3005c424 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22656758 | Afghan Taliban battle police in central Kabul | Afghan Taliban battle police in central Kabul
Afghan security forces have fought Taliban insurgents for hours in the centre of Kabul, after a major explosion shook the city.
A Nepali guard and an off-duty policeman were killed, along with a number of militants.
The attack hit a guesthouse used by the International Organization for Migration, one of whose employees was badly injured.
The Taliban told the BBC it was targeting CIA trainers.
The attack began at about 16:00 local time (11:30 GMT) with a car bombing, and it was late evening in Kabul by the time interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said the last of the assailants had been killed.
The militants, who officials said numbered five or six, had been holed up in the area, home to a number of buildings used by foreign workers.
"We are dealing with a well co-ordinated attack," Kabul police chief Gen Ayub Salangi told the BBC as the attack unfolded.
He said seven policemen had been injured.
A Taliban spokesman said the group had targeted CIA trainers instructing Afghans at the National Directorate of Security (NDS) intelligence agency.
The IOM, which is affiliated to the UN, said three of its employees had been injured, one of them seriously burned by a grenade. An employee of the International Labour Organization was also wounded.
It was not clear whether the guesthouse used by the IOM employees was the Taliban's main target.
UN special envoy Jan Kubis strongly condemned the attack, and said all UN staff had been accounted for.
During the assault, Afghan TV Channel One quoted police as saying a group of militants had taken up position inside the nearby headquarters of the Directorate of the Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF).
A hospital run by the NDS is also in the area.
The initial explosion was felt several kilometres away, shattering shop windows and sending a plume of smoke into the sky. There were reports of smaller, subsequent blasts.
Graeme Smith, who works for the think tank Crisis Group and lives in the New City neighbourhood about 1km (0.6 miles) away from the site of the fighting, said he had heard a constant exchange of gunfire for several hours.
"It seems to have been contained, which shows how robust the Afghan forces are in the capital," he said.
"In more rural parts of the country this would have had a much bigger impact."
The Taliban announced a "spring offensive" in April, saying it would target foreign military bases and diplomatic areas.
Last week another Islamist militant group, Hezb-e-Islami, said it had carried out an attack on a military convoy in Kabul in which at least 15 people were killed and dozens injured.
In the last major attack in Kabul before that, a suicide bomber blew himself up near the defence ministry, killing nine people.
Most international troops are scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Afghan forces are due to take responsibility for the security of the whole country in the next few months, for the first time since 1992.
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2344ebbd8159b248b34690e32c5d683c | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22815142 | My day: Maternity nurse Wen Xiaowei | My day: Maternity nurse Wen Xiaowei
Wen Xiaowei, 47, works in China as a yuesao, a maternity nurse who lives with new parents and their babies for the first month after the birth of their child.
I'm from Fushun city in Liaoning province. My husband works in Shandong province as a construction worker.
When I'm working, I wake up at 06:00 because I have a lot to prepare. I need to have a shower and wash vegetables for breakfast.
Sometimes, when the baby cries, I get up at 03:00 or 04:00. But the baby usually wakes up at 07:00. First, I change the baby's diaper and wash the baby gently. I don't wait for the baby to start crying; I take care of problems before they happen.
New parents generally think yuesaos care for newborns like a professional. They know our advice is best. Some have traditions like binding the baby with cloth, but we know it's bad for the baby's growth.
Mothers eat breakfast at 07:30. They need lots of energy to feed the baby, so I prepare their food very early. New mothers usually eat several different kinds of rice porridge. Sometimes I cook porridge with beans and I add an egg and some minced vegetables.
When the new mother breastfeeds the baby, I guide her to the right position. Then I wash the milk bottles and I fetch the sun-dried nappies from the balcony.
At 10:00, the mother needs to eat again. In Beijing, we cook soup with pork bones, pig feet, fish or eggs to help mothers produce more milk.
Then I spend time with the baby and try to communicate with it. You need to understand the baby's needs, so this time is important. Some babies cry when their family members hold them, but when I hold them, they'll stop crying immediately. Babies are soothed by my voice and the way I hold them. I make them feel safe.
When I started working, my youngest child was nine years old. I missed him very much and I cried a lot. The first three years were very tough on me. I made mistakes, like forgetting dirty nappies in the basin.
If my family called me and told me my child was sick, I wouldn't know what to do. Sometimes my relatives wouldn't tell me about things happening at home. I had to organise everything properly at home so I could focus at work.
Now my oldest child is married, so I don't worry about her. My youngest just graduated from high school and he's out making money as well.
I don't have to worry so much about home now, so I can devote myself to this job. I love this job. I can't describe how close I feel to babies. A family hands their new mother and baby to me. I feel responsible for them.
At 11:00, the baby sleeps again and I prepare lunch, sometimes with meat dumplings. I ensure the mothers won't eat the same meals every day.
After the mother finishes eating, she'll keep the baby company. Then I'll eat lunch with the family, and clean the kitchen and the dirty nappies.
After 14:00, the new mother and the baby have a deep sleep. It's very important for the baby to get enough sleep. If it eats well, it will sleep well.
You have to pay attention if the baby has jaundice. Some families won't spend money on hospital treatments, so we help them buy fluorescent lights and put the baby under the light for a certain amount of time. We feel lots of pressure when this happens.
When I'm working I don't sleep well, but in the afternoon I take a short nap. I don't have free time even on weekends for 26 days. After a month, a yuesao is usually unnecessary. I often take a 10-day or half-month break between different customers.
Still I haven't been home for Chinese New Year for six years. Sometimes my mood is really low, since my own children are at home but I'm taking care of others' babies.
After dinner, between 19:30 and 20:00, we give the baby a bath. I massage the baby's body gently too. It's very good for the baby's health. Every yuesao in Beijing knows how to do it.
At night, yuesaos sleep in the same room with the mother and baby. It's more convenient for me to ensure a sound sleep for the new mother. When the mother and baby are fast asleep, I wash up and go to bed as well.
I've done this job for nine years and in that time, I've cared for more than 50 babies. I changed my phone number twice and returned home, but customers still find me. I've worked for doctors and entrepreneurs and I've learned a lot from them.
I've done this for so long, some of the babies I've cared for are already seven years old! When they call me on the phone, I feel very happy and grateful.
Wen Xiaowei was talking to the BBC's Celia Hatton in Beijing
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c15f8370a3289fed2c1e58298ca7cfee | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22860144 | Afghanistan: Deadly explosion at Kabul Supreme Court | Afghanistan: Deadly explosion at Kabul Supreme Court
A suicide bomb attack in Kabul has killed at least 16 people and injured more than 40 others outside the Supreme Court, Afghan police say.
The attacker drove a car packed with explosives at buses that were carrying court staff, including judges.
In a statement sent to the BBC, the Taliban said they carried out the attack, saying it had killed judges who "obey Western powers".
It is the second big attack in Kabul carried out by the group in two days.
On Monday, seven insurgents, including suicide bombers, laid siege to the main airport for four hours before they were killed.
The Taliban appear to be demonstrating that they can still hit high-profile targets in the city, despite a heightened alert in the run-up to a handover of full security control to the Afghan government next month.
Tuesday's attack also underlines the Taliban's readiness to target civilians, particularly court officials, whom they consider an arm of the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
The Supreme Court building is a few hundred metres from the entrance to the US Embassy.
Nato's headquarters are also nearby.
The explosion happened at the height of Kabul's evening rush hour.
The BBC's David Loyn, in Kabul, said many of those injured by the blast were inhabitants of the tightly packed housing estate close by who were hit by flying glass.
Parts of the city's diplomatic area have since been cordoned off.
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6503729778322dc3a3a18fca4f9b6da1 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22920542 | Pakistan violence: Gunmen storm Quetta hospital | Pakistan violence: Gunmen storm Quetta hospital
Gunmen have attacked a hospital in the western Pakistani city of Quetta, hours after an explosion on a bus killed 14 female university students.
Officials say four gunmen were killed during a siege of part of the hospital where the wounded are being treated.
Nurses, hospital security personnel and a senior city official were among the 10 others killed in the stand-off.
An extremist Sunni militant group, Laskar-e-Jhangvi, told the BBC it carried out both attacks.
A man calling describing himself as a spokesman for the group said they were a revenge for an earlier raid by security forces against the group in which a woman and children were killed.
Quetta is the capital of Balochistan province, which has seen a surge in militant violence in recent months.
The latest violence began when a bomb exploded on a bus carrying female students at a university.
"It was an improvised explosive device placed in the women university bus," police chief Zubair Mahmood said.
Later explosions rocked the medical centre where the students were being treated.
Militants armed with grenades were positioned there and exchanged fire with members of the security forces who rushed to the scene.
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said a subsequent siege ended after security forces stormed the building.
Mr Ali Khan said security forces freed 35 people trapped inside the building, killed four of the attackers and arrested another.
Quetta Police Chief Mir Zubair told the BBC that suicide bombers were involved in the attack, with one blowing himself up during the stand-off with security forces.
Mr Zubair said the hospital was a big medical complex and had suggested it could take a few hours to totally clear the area.
Pakistani officials say a senior Quetta official, Abdul Mansoor Khan, who had gone to the hospital to visit the wounded students, was killed in the stand-off.
The violence came hours after militants carried out a rocket attack against a historic home in the Ziarat area of Balochistan, which was used by Pakistan's founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
The house is said to have been severely damaged.
Quetta is the capital of Balochistan province, which has seen a surge in militant violence in recent months.
Some attacks are carried out by separatists and others by Islamists who oppose women's education.
Last month the Taliban killed at least 11 people in an attack on security forces in Quetta.
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f90ec361ad8675f7e9085987535fdb59 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22993910 | Seven people injured in stampede over David Beckham in China | Seven people injured in stampede over David Beckham in China
At least seven people have been hurt in a stampede in China, which happened when the football star David Beckham arrived at Shanghai Tongji University.
Witnesses said about 1,000 fans rushed forward, as former England star Mr Beckham arrived and waved to them.
The retired star was there to meet members of the university team, as an ambassador to the Chinese Super League.
Fans pushed through a police cordon, and students, police and university security guards were injured.
Chu Dan, a Tongji University player, described the situation as "too crazy".
"We didn't expect so many people showing up here. Too many fans of Beckham," he said.
The event was subsequently cancelled and Shanghai police said they would investigate.
A post from David Beckham, on the popular Chinese social media site Weibo, wished the injured speedy recoveries and expresses regret for the cancellation.
The 38-year-old star is in China on a seven-day promotional tour for China's top football league.
He began his new role as "image ambassador" when he announced his retirement from professional football, having won the French league title with his team, Paris Saint-Germain.
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303d8bd5195837b1689a4a23564487c1 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23013087 | Japan's Mount Fuji wins Unesco world heritage status | Japan's Mount Fuji wins Unesco world heritage status
Japan's cone-shaped, snow-topped volcano, Mount Fuji, has been granted World Heritage status, at a Unesco meeting in Cambodia.
The United Nations body selected the mountain as a "cultural" rather than a "natural" heritage site.
Unesco said Mount Fuji had "inspired artists and poets and been the object of pilgrimage for centuries".
Mt Fuji, south-west of Tokyo, is Japan's highest mountain at 3,776m (12,460 ft).
The volcano, which last erupted just over 300 years ago, is visible from the Japanese capital on a clear day.
It is featured prominently in historic Japanese art work, including wood blocks prints.
It is also one of the traditional "Three Holy Mountains" - along with Mount Tate and Mount Haku, both in central Japan.
Unesco listed Italy's Mount Etna as a world heritage site on Friday, saying the 3,300m (10,900 ft) active volcano had "notoriety, scientific importance, and cultural and educational value of global significance".
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f4250c03ba62b6cc6349c60447b7226f | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23027029 | Pakistan's Sharif plans to try Musharraf for treason | Pakistan's Sharif plans to try Musharraf for treason
Pakistan's new government has said it plans to put former military ruler Pervez Musharraf on trial for treason.
"He will have to answer for his guilt before the court," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told parliament.
Mr Musharraf, who returned to Pakistan from self-imposed exile earlier this year, is currently under house arrest.
He is fighting a series of charges relating to his time in power, which began with him ousting Nawaz Sharif in a 1999 military coup.
His spokesperson described the proposed move as "reckless and ill-conceived".
In Pakistan, treason carries with it a penalty of life imprisonment - or death.
There is now little to stop the government putting Mr Musharraf on trial for treason, the BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad reports.
The military will be watching developments closely. If the trial goes ahead, it will be the first time an army chief will have been in the dock for violating the constitution in Pakistan, which has a history of military coups.
The charge being considered against Mr Musharraf dates back to November 2007 when he suspended the constitution and imposed emergency rule.
"Musharraf violated the constitution twice," Mr Sharif told MPs. "He overthrew an elected government in 1999 and put everything into jeopardy. He sacked judges and imprisoned them."
Mr Sharif was reading from a statement that the attorney general submitted to the Supreme Court on Monday, in which the government set out its intention to try the former dictator for treason. Only the state can bring such a charge.
The court had already been hearing petitions from lawyers demanding that the former general be tried for placing senior judges under house arrest.
"Those who aided or abetted holding the constitution in abeyance will also be brought to justice," Attorney General Munir Malik said.
He asked for a month to prepare the charges but the court told him to report back on Thursday. The government says it will consult other parties on its plan.
Mr Musharraf's office released a statement saying that the former president had served his country with "selfless devotion and perseverance".
"The Nawaz Sharif government is demonstrating recklessness in its intention to pursue unwarranted treason charges against former President Musharraf," it added.
The former military ruler arrived in Pakistan earlier this year in high spirits saying he wanted to lead his party into May's elections.
But he was disqualified from standing and ultimately placed under house arrest at his villa in Islamabad. He is accused of:
He has been granted bail in both of these cases.
However, he remains under house arrest because he was refused bail in connection with a charge relating to the assassination of the Baloch tribal leader, Nawab Akbar Bugti, who was killed in a military operation in 2006.
Mr Musharraf has described all the cases brought against him as politically motivated.
After his 1999 coup, Mr Musharraf ruled Pakistan for nine years before being defeated in elections. He left the country to live in self-imposed exile in Dubai and London.
Mr Sharif returned to power last month, winning elections by a landslide.
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e712346222501fc8ce5d4276ae0fd85f | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23109476 | Eight soldiers killed by roadside bomb in south Thailand | Eight soldiers killed by roadside bomb in south Thailand
Eight soldiers have been killed by a roadside bomb in Thailand's restive south, police say, in one of the deadliest attacks on the security forces in recent years.
The "powerful" bomb targeted military vehicles in Krong Pinang district of Yala province, police said.
More than 5,000 people have been killed since a separatist insurgency reignited in the Muslim-majority region in 2004.
Near-daily attacks are continuing despite government talks with rebels.
"It was a very powerful bomb that completely destroyed the truck," police spokesman Colonel Pramote Promin told AFP news agency.
"Ten soldiers were in the truck. Eight died and two were wounded," he said, adding that two villagers had also been injured.
It is the single deadliest attack on Thai security forces in several years.
The attacks in the south continue despite pledges by the government and negotiators for Muslim separatists to try to curb violence over the Ramadan period, beginning next month, in talks earlier in June.
Thailand is a Buddhist-majority country, but Muslims are the majority in the three southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat.
Muslim militants, who are fighting for greater autonomy, are believed to carry out the gun and bomb attacks against security forces and citizens perceived to be government allies or collaborators in the area.
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06f9eedc3be503c49cc6b2b591735748 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23177535 | My day: Fashion designer Nathan Jiang | My day: Fashion designer Nathan Jiang
Fashion designer Nathan Jiang sells patchwork clothes made from second-hand fabric from his boutique in the Chinese capital, Beijing.
I wake up every day around 05:00 and I get dressed. I wear anything that makes me happy. I like a lot of bright colours. Dots are totally my thing.
Then I make coffee for my wife and breakfast for the kids. My kids like really weird things for breakfast. They want a tuna sandwich for breakfast. Or they want a curry. Totally fine with me!
Then we ride bicycles together. I ride my bicycle with my daughter and my son rides his own bike to school now.
After that, at 08:30, I walk my wife to work with her bike. Then I take the bus or I ride my bike from my home in the Wudaokou area to Wudaoying.
Wudaoying is where my store is. It's become a young people's place. If you want to be cool in Beijing, you have to walk through the Wudaoying area.
There are a lot of cheesy girls and boys who carry cameras and take pictures and things. They're really annoying. They see a three-wheeled bike and take a photo, see a cat and take a photo. But, still, if you're in Beijing, you have to know Wudaoying.
I typically stop by my store once a day. I need to check that the layout is correct because my shop girl is not really good with presentation.
Then every day, I go to different places. My schedule is really crazy. Last Wednesday, I got up, got the kids ready, sent my wife to work.
By 09:00, I was waiting for my designer. We took a long-distance bus for an hour and a half to Jinzhaixiang to visit my patchwork project benefitting migrant women.
Originally, I planned to sell second-hand clothes and give the money to rural women's projects. But when I donated the clothes to the migrant workers, they could only resell about 30% of them.
So, I thought: "Well, maybe I can use them to make some new fashions." Then I thought: "Oh, maybe we can use the migrant women for this!"
But they can only sew in a straight lines, so that's why I thought of patchwork. When they finish the patchwork, I give that to the designers. We use all the best Chinese designers and they do whatever they want.
So it's a big circle, from picking through the garbage [to get materials] and cleaning them and ironing them and sewing the patchwork. Then, it's redesigned and everything becomes new.
We walked to the main centre where I'm working. There's a huge, huge pile of clothes and I work with a designer, a fabric designer, we pile the clothes together according to their colour, according to their structure.
A lot of the fabric is really old. I love the stories behind it. I found 100 pounds of clothes to take back.
Then we stopped for lunch. We always go to the same restaurant. Their kitchen is spotless and the food is so cheap.
That Wednesday, I had to rush back to Beijing because I'm starting to work with a Chinese singer, Dadawa. At 14:30, we had a meeting and we talked about design.
I really like working with Dadawa. She really inspires me because she's an artist. Her music is great. Really modern beats with a Chinese traditional background.
My job is pretty much: "Wear your hair down, you shouldn't wear those boots, that editing cut is wrong you shouldn't have that flashing thing on the screen…". I'm a consultant, telling everyone what to do.
Originally, I'm from the northeast. My wife and I married in Liaoning, in Jinzhou. Terry, my wife, was the only young foreigner in Jinzhou at that time and I think I was the first man who married a foreigner in the whole city.
So we moved to Shanghai because Terry's parents thought I married her just for a passport, so I said, fine! We lived in Shanghai for three and half years.
When I was 27, we finally moved to Canada because we decided we'd both go to school again. We went to Alberta for six years and I worked for Telus (a telecommunications company).
I was pretty much a clerk, doing boring data entry for two years while in university. I was very depressed because I could see what my life would be like when I was sixty. I would wear Dockers pants and say hello to everyone in the office while holding my coffee.
So I decided I wanted to do something different and I wanted to move to Beijing, and now, here I am!
On a regular day, I leave work at 16:00. I pick up my daughter from school, then we go home and I start cooking again. I cook a lot of pasta for my kids. They're Canadian so they really like pasta and burgers.
But that day, Dadawa wanted me to meet the rest of her team. We had Vietnamese food. I had pho and two bottles of Yanjing beer.
After dinner, I met with another designer at the Drum Tower. We did the list for a photo shoot the next day, sorting out what her job is and what my job is.
Then I had to go to the Xidan subway station to meet my tailor. We were supposed to meet at 21:30 but she didn't make it until 22:30. So, for an hour, I had to sit outside the subway, smoking and doing emails on my iPhone.
While I was waiting outside, the police stopped me. Remember I still had the suitcases full of clothes from the morning?
So they asked me what I was doing with the suitcases and I told them I'm a designer. Then they asked where my ID was and I told them I didn't have any ID.
Then they got really nervous and I told them I'm Canadian because I'm married to a Canadian. They looked at me as if I was bragging and asked to see my business card.
It took about half an hour, they looked at me and asked questions. I get stopped by policemen quite often. I don't know why.
Finally, I met my tailor. I finally made it back on the subway probably around 23:00. When I got home, my wife was still working. She's finishing her PhD.
Finally we both went to sleep. No time for anything else - haha!
Nathan Jiang was talking to the BBC's Celia Hatton in Beijing
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3ffcff81df50b05f2ed03d19278fb5a2 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23324172 | North Korea 'behind cyber attack' on South websites | North Korea 'behind cyber attack' on South websites
South Korea believes North Korea was behind cyber attacks against several websites last month, officials say.
The attacks, which took place on the anniversary of the Korean War, hit the presidential office website, and several other official and media sites.
Investigators said an IP address used in the attack matched one used in previous hacking attempts by Pyongyang.
The North has also been blamed for cyber attacks on six South Korean banks and broadcasters in March.
"We speculate the hacking was done by North Korea," Park Jae-moon, a director-general at the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, said.
Analysis of "82 malignant codes [collected from the damaged devices] and internet addresses used for the attack, as well as the North Korea's previous hacking patterns," showed that "the hacking methods were the same" as those used in the 20 March cyber attacks, he added.
"[A] North Korean IP [address] was found in passages of the malignant codes and some of the damaged organisations. I can say this is the decisive evidence," Mr Park said.
Almost all the websites and servers affected by the attack had been repaired, he added.
The hackers attempted to steal personal information from the websites, AP news agency reported, citing investigators.
"The cyber attack seriously undermined the country's image by [altering] the websites of symbolic government organisations, such as the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae," the science ministry said in a statement.
Those behind the attack also "caused confusion... by assuming the identity of the hacktivist group Anonymous", the ministry added.
During the 25 June attacks, messages praising North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and claiming that hacking collective Anonymous was responsible were left on the hacked websites.
North Korea has not commented on the hacking accusations.
In the past, it has accused both the South and the US of preventing users from being able to visit its official media sites.
On 20 March, cyber attacks on banks and broadcasters in the South affected 32,000 computers and disrupted banking services.
South Korea blamed that incident - which came at a time of heightened tensions between the two Koreas following Pyongyang's nuclear test on 12 February - on North Korea.
North Korea has also been blamed for previous cyber attacks in 2009 and 2011.
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f39050ec341e122be849289908aeadfb | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23430117 | US and Vietnam leaders discuss trade, rights | US and Vietnam leaders discuss trade, rights
Vietnam's President Truong Tan Sang and US President Barack Obama have met for landmark talks in Washington.
Mr Sang is only the second Vietnamese president to have embarked on a White House visit since the two countries resumed ties in 1995.
The talks on Thursday focused on a trade pact called the Trans-Pacific Partnership and human rights issues.
Relations have been improving between the former foes, amid the US strategic "pivot" to Asia.
"We all recognise the extraordinarily complex history between the US and Vietnam. Step by step we have been able to establish a degree of mutual respect and trust," Mr Obama said.
Human rights activists, however, have criticised the visit, pointing out that Vietnam has been stepping up a crackdowns against government critics.
After the meeting, Mr Obama told reporters that both countries were "committed to the ambitious goal of completing [the Trans-Pacific Partnership] agreement before the end of the year".
The pact "will be an extraordinarily ambitious effort to increase trade, commerce and transparency in terms of commercial relationships throughout the Asian Pacific region," he added.
The two leaders also discussed "the challenges that all of us face when it comes to issues of human rights", Mr Obama said.
"We emphasised how the United States continues to believe that all of us have to respect issues like freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly," he said.
Truong Tan San said: ""We touched upon the war legacy issues including human rights which we still have differences on."
However, he said these issues should not prevent closer links between the two countries, and said he had invited Mr Obama to visit Vietnam.
Correspondents say at least 38 activists, including bloggers, have been arrested for anti-state activities in Vietnam this year.
Truong Tan Sang was elected to the largely ceremonial post of president in July 2011 by parliament.
He is a former mayor and Communist Party chief who was jailed by the US-backed South Vietnamese government in the early 1970s.
The last Vietnamese president who made an official visit to the US was Nguyen Minh Triet in 2007.
The Vietnam war, which lasted from 1955 to 1975, killed an estimated 58,000 US soldiers and three million Vietnamese.
This visit marks an important step in Vietnam-US relations, especially when Vietnam is seeking to safeguard its interests in the South China Sea, says the BBC's Nga Pham in Bangkok.
Vietnamese officials have repeated many times that Hanoi is looking to upgrade the relationship with Washington to a strategic partnership in order to boost confidence and co-operation, our correspondent adds.
Vietnam is embroiled in a dispute with China over islands in the South China Sea known in China as Xisha but the Paracels elsewhere.
Beijing has controlled them since a short war with South Vietnam in 1974.
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71b4dc395ffb935400377b85ab5a13b2 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23759951 | Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif urges dialogue with militants | Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif urges dialogue with militants
Pakistan's PM Nawaz Sharif has called for dialogue with militants to end the violence he says threatens the very survival of the country.
Mr Sharif said he invited "all those elements who have unfortunately adopted the path of extremism" to talk.
But he warned that the government was ready to fight militants "through full use of force" if the insurgents rejected his offer.
Mr Sharif came to power in June with negotiations a part of his agenda.
In a televised address to the nation on Monday, Mr Sharif said: "Wisdom demands that we follow a path where we minimise the loss of innocent lives".
"This policy of reconciliation is not confined just to political parties.
"I take a step forward and invite for dialogue all those elements who have unfortunately adopted the path of extremism."
Mr Sharif, who heads the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), also blamed Pakistan's security services and judiciary for failing to tackle "the militant threat".
The prime minister also said the problem of militancy was linked to Pakistan's foreign policy; adding that the country needed to review its strained relations with Afghanistan.
Mr Sharif's speech was much more about sentiments than specific measures, the BBC's Charles Haviland in Islamabad reports.
But the prime minister does seem to be echoing recent comments by the army chief who said the fight against terrorism was Pakistan's own fight, not just something imposed on it from outside, our correspondent adds.
Earlier this month, government officials said they were preparing a comprehensive security strategy, bringing together delegates from all political parties to try to combat violent extremism.
However, the strategy has not yet been released, and no all-party meeting has been scheduled.
Pakistan has been plagued by the Taliban insurgency, and also sectarian infighting between Sunnis and Shias and a rebellion by Baloch separatists in the south-west.
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f9d0df41c986b8585b3f68fcd5cbe4d0 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23766790 | Afghanistan beat Pakistan 3-0 in Kabul friendly | Afghanistan beat Pakistan 3-0 in Kabul friendly
Afghanistan's footballers have triumphed 3-0 over Pakistan in a friendly match, the first international game played in Kabul in a decade.
The home side dominated the game from the kick-off, going three goals ahead mid-way through the second half to the delight of their rapturous supporters.
It was the first game between the two countries in Kabul for 30 years.
The match was billed as an indication of Afghanistan's return to normality after decades of war.
Hopes were high that it might also help ease political tensions.
The outcome of the game - broadcast live - triggered a wave of post-match delirium in a country bedevilled by decades of war and poverty, sparking rowdy celebrations across the country.
However there were few Pakistani supporters or women fans of either team in the 6,000-capacity crowd at the recently-built Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) stadium.
Afghanistan took the lead in the "friendship match" through striker Sanjar Ahmadi in the 20th minute. Forward Harash Atefi doubled the score 12 minutes later, and midfielder Marouf Mahmoudi made it 3-0 in the 71st minute.
The BBC's Karen Allen in Kabul says the friendly was being seen as a deeply symbolic moment.
Afghan and Pakistani political leaders are due to meet for critical peace talks next week.
Many Afghans saw the match as a sweet victory over an old and bitter adversary.
"I am a huge football fan, and this match was so important for us," Shabir Ahmad, 27, a government employee at the match told AFP news agency.
"There are a lot of rivalries between Afghanistan and Pakistan, even if this match was meant to boost friendship."
AFF Secretary General Sayed Aghazada said that the match showed "that after a very difficult period" Afghanistan "was returning to normality".
"Afghan football has improved in terms of organisation and infrastructure, and we now believe that football can play an even bigger role in our country."
Pakistani officials also expressed optimism that the match would deepen the relationship between the two countries.
Football was not banned during the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, but during their time in power they used the old Ghazi stadium in Kabul as a venue for executions, stonings and mutilations.
One spectator, Ahmadzai Fazeli, 25, told AFP that Taliban insurgents at a roadblock in volatile Wardak province had wished the team every success.
"On the way here the Taliban stopped me. I told them I was going to the football match, and they happily let me pass," he said. "Now I am here feeling very patriotic and happy."
Ranked 139th in the world, Afghanistan had last played at home in 2003 against Turkmenistan.
Pakistan's team is ranked 28 places below Afghanistan and has not played in Kabul since 1977.
Head coach Zavisa Milosavljev told AFP that his aim was to get international exposure for youth players and players "who don't play continually".
"Pakistan also has problems," he said. "We haven't played a single match in Pakistan."
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c9fe7f90160ee195329c8a43edaf2dc5 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23792120 | Maldives girl's 100 lashes sentence overturned | Maldives girl's 100 lashes sentence overturned
A 15-year-old girl who was sentenced to 100 lashes for engaging in premarital sex has had her punishment overturned by a Maldives court.
The High Court ruled on Wednesday that the girl, whose stepfather is on trial for raping her, had been wrongly convicted by a juvenile court of having premarital sex with another man.
Premarital sex is illegal in the Maldives, a popular tourist venue.
The case caused outrage among rights groups who welcomed the latest ruling.
"We are relieved that the girl will be spared this inhumane 'punishment' based on an outrageous conviction, which we hope has also been quashed," said Polly Truscott, Amnesty International's deputy Asia-Pacific director.
"No-one should ever be prosecuted for sex outside marriage in the first place."
Ms Truscott said that flogging amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. She called on the Maldives government to annul all outstanding flogging sentences.
In its ruling the court said the sentence of the lower court was based on a confession that the girl made while she was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. It said that she had been "unfit for trial" after the alleged rape.
The Maldivian government appealed on behalf of the teenager following international outrage in February to punish her with 100 lashes when she reached the age of 18.
The girl - who cannot be named for legal reasons - was only charged after police investigating the rape allegations discovered that she had been having consensual sex with another man.
President Mohamed Waheed said that he was "overjoyed" with the ruling, his spokesman Masood Imad told the AFP news agency on Thursday.
Mr Imad said: "It is the government's policy to protect victims, but we had to do it within the framework of the law."
The case was sent for prosecution after police were called to investigate a dead baby buried on the island of Feydhoo in Shaviyani Atoll, in the north of the country.
Her stepfather was accused of raping her and impregnating her, then killing the baby.
The legal system of the Maldives, an Islamic archipelago with a population of some 400,000, has elements of Islamic law (Sharia) as well as English common law.
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7b8c7dd12c6722cdb45ca6a235e2b039 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23833027 | Body found in Australia crocodile attack | Body found in Australia crocodile attack
Police say they have found the body of a man snatched by a crocodile as he swam in a river in Australia's Northern Territory during a birthday party.
The body of Sean Cole, 26, was found on Monday in the area where he was last seen.
Police say he ignored signs to stay out of the water at a popular camping ground at Mary River, 65 miles (100km) from Darwin, the territory's capital.
The river has one of the highest crocodile populations in the area.
Onlookers watched in horror as the victim was suddenly attacked.
The victim and another man had gone swimming across the river, and were swimming back when the crocodile attacked, police said.
"Several of the group in the party witnessed the male being taken in the jaws of the croc for a period of time, and then he was out of sight," Senior Sergeant Geoff Bahnert was quoted as saying by the AP news agency.
"The Mary River is known worldwide to have the greatest saturation of adult saltwater crocodiles in the world. You don't swim in the Mary River," he added.
At least four crocodiles have been shot in the area following the incident, rangers say, including one believed to be responsible for Mr Cole's attack.
Saltwater crocodiles can grow up 7m (23ft) long and weigh more than a tonne. They are a common feature of Australia's tropical north.
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6ba09e7b5fdd4192f1015baaca71b626 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23839017 | Karzai calls for Pakistan role in Afghan peace process | Karzai calls for Pakistan role in Afghan peace process
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has urged Pakistan "to facilitate peace talks" between his country and the Taliban during a visit to Islamabad.
He said the Pakistani government could provide opportunities for talks between the Afghan High Peace Council and the militants.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said that he wanted to help regional efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.
Mr Karzai has extended his stay to allow talks with Pakistan to continue.
The BBC's Charles Haviland in Islamabad says that his decision is a surprise development as the president seeks Mr Sharif's help in bringing the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table.
Officials say that the fact that Mr Karzai's talks in Islamabad will continue on Tuesday - when he will meet Mr Sharif again - indicates that so far they have gone well and that the two sides have something concrete to talk about.
In their public statements after their talks, both Mr Sharif and Mr Karzai mentioned the problem of militant violence - although Mr Karzai focused much more on it.
Lack of security was the main concern for both neighbouring countries, the president said.
Three times in his brief speech Mr Karzai said that a joint fight against militancy was needed and that he pinned "great hopes" on the re-elected Mr Sharif, who came back to power in June.
Afghanistan believes that Taliban safe havens in Pakistan are the main cause of increased violence in the country.
Elements of Pakistan's intelligence service have long been accused of backing the Afghan Taliban and giving them refuge on Pakistani soil - something Islamabad strongly denies.
Mr Karzai said that he wanted the Pakistani government to play a mediating role with the Taliban, with whom Pakistan has a high degree of influence.
Speaking after the talks, he said that the two countries discussed the "joint fight against extremism and reconciliation and peace-building in Afghanistan with the expectation that the government of Pakistan will facilitate and [provide] help... to the peace process".
"We hope that with this on top of our agenda we can move forward in bringing stability and peace to both countries," the president said.
For his part the Pakistani prime minister said that Pakistan would extend all possible facilities for peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
"I assured President Karzai that we will continue to extend all possible facilitation to the international community's efforts for the realisation of this noble goal," he said.
"Pakistan will also help reinforce regional efforts in support of [the] stabilisation of Afghanistan."
He said Pakistan wanted a neighbour that was "peaceful, stable and united" and that the peace process had to be "inclusive, Afghan-owned and Afghan-led".
The Taliban refuse to talk with Mr Karzai, dismissing him as a US puppet.
One of Mr Karzai's main demands has been the release of high-profile Taliban prisoners held in Pakistan in the hope that this will help jump-start direct talks with insurgents.
He is particularly eager for Taliban's second-in-command,
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar
who was arrested in Karachi in 2010, to be freed.
Sources have told the BBC that in his case the Afghans would like him to be transferred to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.
Mr Karzai's visit came after an attempt to kick start peace talks in the Qatari capital of Doha foundered in June.
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69b1ad1f0801c7ce44c0ed8028999f2c | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23918882 | Fukushima radiation levels '18 times higher' than thought | Fukushima radiation levels '18 times higher' than thought
Radiation levels around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant are 18 times higher than previously thought, Japanese authorities have warned.
Last week the plant's operator reported radioactive water had leaked from a storage tank into the ground.
It now says readings taken near the leaking tank on Saturday showed radiation was high enough to prove lethal within four hours of exposure.
The plant was crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) had originally said the radiation emitted by the leaking water was around 100 millisieverts an hour.
However, the company said the equipment used to make that recording could only read measurements of up to 100 millisieverts.
The new recording, using a more sensitive device, showed a level of 1,800 millisieverts an hour.
The new reading will have direct implications for radiation doses received by workers who spent several days trying to stop the leak last week, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Tokyo.
In addition, Tepco says it has discovered a leak on another pipe emitting radiation levels of 230 millisieverts an hour.
The plant has seen a series of water leaks and power failures.
The 2011 tsunami knocked out cooling systems to the reactors, three of which melted down.
The damage from the tsunami has necessitated the constant pumping of water to cool the reactors.
This is believed to be the fourth major leak from storage tanks at Fukushima since 2011 and the worst so far in terms of volume.
After the latest leak, Japan's nuclear-energy watchdog raised the incident level from one to three on the international scale measuring the severity of atomic accidents, which has a maximum of seven.
Experts have said the scale of water leakage may be worse than officials have admitted.
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de8a966ee2718ab03dda135fa94993fe | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23930633 | Australian election: Ten things | Australian election: Ten things
Australians went to the polls on Saturday to decide the outcome of the race between Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Liberal-National coalition leader Tony Abbott.
Here are 10 highlights and lesser-known facts about the elections.
More than 50 parties were contesting this election - more than double the number in 2010.
A record 1,188 candidates are contesting seats
in the House of Representatives and 529 in the Senate.
Tens of thousands of magnifying glasses were ordered for voting booths in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland to help voters when they are confronted with a metre-long senate ballot paper.
There were a number of fringe parties, but a handful stand out because of their unusual names or policies.
Every Australian citizen (18 years or older) is required by law to vote. If an enrolled citizen fails to vote and is unable to provide a valid reason, a penalty is imposed.
If the penalty is not paid the matter is taken to court, if found guilty a fine of up to A$170 (£100) plus court costs may be imposed.
Elections are always held on a Saturday because traditionally that is the day most people are not at work or church.
Even living in one of the most isolated places in the world - Antarctica - is no excuse.
Despite being 5,500km (3,400 miles) away from the nearest official polling booth in Tasmania, more than 50 scientists and support staff based in Antarctic must send their ballots by ship or via a designated polling officer on site who will phone their vote through.
Media attention has been somewhat diverted from campaign pledges by a peppering of high-profile gaffes, from suppositories to sex appeal.
Mr Abbott has been the prime offender. During a speech to his supporters in Melbourne, he attacked Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's reputation for making decisions without consulting colleagues.
He said: "No one, however smart, however well-educated, however experienced, is the suppository of all wisdom."
Mr Abbott apparently meant to say "repository", but seemed unperturbed by the titters from the crowd.
He also created a media storm by
congratulating one of his candidates on her sex appeal
. The same candidate, Fiona Scott, later made a gaffe of her own, saying that
asylum seekers were contributing to traffic jams
in western Sydney.
Meanwhile, Mr Rudd was
accused of cheating during the first leaders' debate
because he used notes. The prime minister said he had acted in good faith and that no-one had told him otherwise.
''I prefer to be as accurate as I can,'' he said.
Perhaps the
most toe-curling interview
of the 2013 election campaign was the Seven News television one-on-one with the 27-year-old ''poster child'' of the anti-immigration One Nation party.
Stephanie Banister thought Islam was a country and that Jews followed Jesus Christ. She
withdrew as a candidate shortly after the ill-fated interview.
Described as a "curious" interview by Kevin Rudd, would-be Labor lawmaker Lisa Clutterham withdrew her candidacy after conceding on ABC radio that
she had never lived in Melbourne
- where she wanted to contest a seat - and had been a Labor Party member for less than a month.
The Liberal Party's Jaymes Diaz, meanwhile, boasted his party had a six-point plan to stop boats carrying asylum-seekers, but
he couldn't get beyond point one
- that they will stop the boats.
Millions of people cast their ballots across Australia on Saturday - a logistical nightmare in a continent-sized country.
The biggest parliamentary constituency is the Western Australian district of Durack, which is roughly three times the size of France. It covers 1.5 million square kilometres (580,000 sq miles).
By contrast, Wentworth in Sydney's eastern suburbs is the country's smallest and most densely populated electorate, covering just 30 sq km.
Prisoners serving a full-time prison sentence of less than three years can vote in federal elections, under Australian Electoral Commission rules. But those serving longer sentences are not entitled to take part.
Prisoners are served by mobile polling teams, which visit prisons two weeks before the election date, or by post.
In 2006, while in jail,
Vickie Lee Roach fought a High Court case
that overturned an attempt by the John Howard government to remove the vote from all serving prisoners.
In Australia, Rupert
Murdoch dominates the media landscape
, and he has made no secret of the fact that he wants a change of government.
Two of his daily newspapers, the Courier-Mail and Daily Telegraph, are firmly anti-Kevin Rudd.
The Daily Telegraph ran an unequivocal front page headline:
Kick This Mob Out
. It has also
depicted Mr Rudd as Colonel Klink
, a bumbling German PoW commandant from the 1960s comedy Hogan's Heroes.
Days before the polls, meanwhile, Australian commercial TV networks refused to broadcast an
advertisement that criticised News Corporation
.
The ad, paid for with funds raised by the activist group GetUp, shows a man using a copy of the Courier-Mail to pick up dog mess.
"Tell Rupert we'll choose our own government," the actor says.
Mallee in north-west Victoria is preparing for a genuine election battle. For the first time in 20 years, the Liberals will take on the Nationals. Whatever the outcome, however, it remains the safest coalition seat in federal parliament, with a massive swing required for Labor to win it.
Gellibrand in Victoria is the safest Labor seat in the country, if another party wants to win it, they would need a swing of about 24%.
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3ce04e4ea636e1d81f7ac182f0a2c252 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23948089 | China corruption: Ban on officials' mooncakes purchases | China corruption: Ban on officials' mooncakes purchases
China is banning officials from using public funds to buy mooncakes, the pastries offered as gifts during the Mid-Autumn (or Moon) Festival.
The ban is part of President Xi Jinping's drive to beat corruption and restore faith in the ruling Communist Party.
Every violation would be punished, the government statement said.
Mooncakes are traditionally filled with salted egg yolk and sweet lotus paste, and symbolise the moon.
The government statement also banned the use of public money to pay for luxurious feasts and what it called high-end entertainments during the festival period.
Mr Xi has described fighting corruption as a priority, and several high-profile officials have been sacked in recent months.
This year, the festival falls on 19 September.
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ae7d91d9a4096b355be34198c9c7f184 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24044335 | My day: Genealogist Huihan Lie | My day: Genealogist Huihan Lie
Born in Amsterdam to ethnically Chinese parents, Huihan Lie runs the company My China Roots in Beijing, which traces family histories and tries to put them in the context of the time.
The alarm goes at 07:30. That's my girlfriend's fault, because she has to be in the office at 09:00 - for me, a pretty early hour. So we basically wake up at the same time. I guess I get out bed around 08:00, shower, breakfast. Usually muesli.
Between 08:30 and 09:00 I walk to the other side of the apartment to my office.
Every day is quite different, because my business is still in the start-up phase. But in general, I usually get onto the client work as quickly as possible. We have six clients that we're working on now.
Technically, I'm a genealogist, someone who works to trace family histories. However, my company, My China Roots, tries to explore beyond the names and the dates of the past.
A major aim is to bring life to a person's descent by complementing the more traditional genealogical research with a complete picture about the times and environments that shaped that person's ancestors.
How were their ancestors' actions intertwined with major events of world history such as the industrial revolution and China's century of humiliation? But also, how did their ancestors live their daily lives? What were their schools and their weddings like?
And, as my clients are mostly overseas Chinese, why did their ancestors choose to start a completely new life in an unknown world?
I was born in Amsterdam and when I was five, we moved to the countryside. A completely Dutch upbringing. My parents were born in Indonesia but they were raised in Holland.
I came to China out of curiosity and I stayed because of my fascination with developments in society. I'm ethnically Chinese but my family had never been to China. No one at home spoke Chinese growing up, so China was always a very distant, mysterious country to me.
In 2004, when I was 26, I visited China for the first time. I decided to start with a two-month course at the most common university where everyone goes to study Chinese in Beijing. After that, I worked at the European Delegation for a bit.
A couple of years after, I made the decision to stay. I started digging into where my ancestors were from. When did they leave China? Why did they leave? Where did they live on the mainland?
I found out that most of it took place seven generations ago. It was a hobby to feed my own curiosity about my ancestry. That then evolved into other thoughts: if I'm interested and there are no other companies that help people doing their own research, why don't I help others?
For example, one client is American-Chinese, in her mid-30s. Her mum was born in Beijing and they have an extremely complicated family history in China.
Her mum's mother, that's who my client wants to focus on. She was from Guangdong, from Jiangmen, to be precise. It's about 100km from Guangzhou. They were there for many generations.
The grandfather of the maternal grandmother, we're talking around 1900, he was supposed to have close links with the Japanese. He did business with the Japanese. His son, my client's great grandfather, was high up with the opposite side, with the Kuomintang, or the KMT.
In the 1930s, when there was a civil war, the family moved to places like Nanjing, Shanghai and Beijing. Places that played an important role in the fighting that was going on in those days. What I think makes it interesting is this family conflict, the Japanese versus the KMT, father against son.
So in 1949, the KMT, the army general's family, they were obviously in a bit of a difficult position because the communists were winning. The army general and his wife and three of his four kids went to Hong Kong, as many did in those days. However, his oldest daughter, who is my client's mother, was given to her aunt for adoption. So, her aunt and my client's mother went to the US.
Bottom line is that the family got separated. One part of the family went to Hong Kong and my client's mum went to the US. She never heard from her biological siblings or her parents again. In this particular instance, we're still in the middle of finding out why, but it's very common in the first generation of movers.
We've all probably read about these conflicts, the Japanese versus KMT, the KMT and the communists. But to really go into personal stories and see how each of those big events have impacted people like you and me, that's what makes it interesting.
More often than not, people move for unpleasant reasons, like poverty or wars, leading them to prefer not to talk about their history.
If you get the second generation, which is exactly the case here, the daughter is the one who wants to find out about her history, precisely because her mother would never talk about it.
My work really depends on the phase of the project that I'm in. It starts with contact with the client, sitting down with the person who wants to know more about his or her history. It starts with what they already know and what their family knows. Because quite often, the accumulated knowledge within a family is more than people think.
I also ask clients to search for old pictures or old documentation, old passports, old photos with things written on the back.
I ask Chinese clients to search for tombstones because quite often, in Chinese traditions, especially those who went overseas, they often had the name of the original ancestral village written on their tombstone in their new immigration destination.
I would hope to get big packets of documents in the mail from clients, but usually I just get short emails, saying "My aunt doesn't know anything".
Entering the family's names into Baidu (a Chinese search engine) is a couple of minutes' work, so we do that. It doesn't often turn up that much, but we do it anyway. Internet research can give you a broader context about immigration flows and other people that have moved from A to B, but if we want to get specific, then it gets personal and we have to call up people and meet people.
First, we try to locate the village because the ancestral documents in traditional China were maintained by clans and clans lived in villages. That's how villages started, with family clans.
If you know a bit about Chinese immigration history, then very often with the pieces of information that the client gives you can figure out where the village is located.
For example, if you know that the client's family worked for the American Transcontinental Railroads, you know that they probably moved to the US in the 1860s and the biggest part of the people who moved to the west coast at that time came from four counties in Guangdong province.
Then, because we've built up a network, we can call people at the country level or city level overseas associations. They are Chinese-government funded by officially non-government organisations and they tend to be very helpful.
At least, they can tell us, "Okay, if you're looking for a Wang family in a specific part of Fujian province, these are the counties where there are a lot of Wangs." They'll give us telephone numbers or they'll reach out directly to the villages. That's how things start rolling.
We make a lot of phone calls and then at some point, we do have to go there. That's the next step.
Recently, Hai Miao, my colleague, went to Fujian and I went to Guangdong for different types of projects. That phase is the most important one - probably because most information is still kept with older generations.
People who don't use the internet and don't like to give information over the phone. You have to look them in the eye and build trust.
When we get to the area, one of the main things we're looking for is an ancestral temple that often holds a "family book", a book in which the family tree is recorded and a lot of biographies of the main people in the family tree.
We also look for graves and houses that were built with money made overseas. Often the main reason people left China was to earn money to send back to build a house that they one day planned to use. Reality showed that most people stayed in the place where they moved to, but that was the mindset with which people left.
I also spend time writing reports. For example, after my trip to Guangdong for a client, I have to write a report. That takes time because it's not just a report in bullet points, but I'm mixing my findings and putting in a general historical context.
These interim reports sometimes help to give clients' families a little push to help them to remember things. In this case, we're hoping the mother of my client, who is more than 80 years old, will start to remember details. Also, we need to document the information we find and make sure it's not lost, since that's why we're doing this research in the first place.
It's very difficult to say when I actually finish my work day because even when I finish dinner, I usually sit with my laptop and keep working on things. That's the danger when you work for yourself.
The best thing about my job is that every project is its own little jewel. With every project, you find things you weren't expecting to find and the client wasn't expecting to find. Really, every person has their own little quirks and personal stories.
To a large extent, it's also a process that takes place within the client. They discover their roots and their Chinese connections are a lot closer to them than they had previously thought. It's that mix between emotional, psychological, cultural and historical elements that really make me love my job.
Huihan Lie was talking to the BBC's Celia Hatton in Beijing.
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1e69de17b1d06f32037aafe8cb1e2540 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24058708 | North Korea's Yongbyon reactor 'nearing operation' | North Korea's Yongbyon reactor 'nearing operation'
Steam has been seen rising from North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility, suggesting that the reactor has been restarted, a US institute says.
The colour and volume of the steam indicated that the reactor was in or nearing operation, the institute said.
Pyongyang vowed to restart facilities at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex in April, amid high regional tensions.
The reactor can produce plutonium, which North Korea could use to make nuclear weapons.
Analysts believe
North Korea already possesses between four and 10 nuclear weapons, based on plutonium produced at the Yongbyon reactor prior to mid-2007, when the facility was closed down.
The report, which was published on the
38 North website
on Wednesday, was written by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University. The institute uses satellite imagery to monitor developments in North Korea.
The reactor uses steam turbines to generate electricity, and the steam seen in satellite imagery from 31 August indicated that the electrical system was about to come online, the report said.
"The reactor looks like it either is or will within a matter of days be fully operational, and as soon as that happens, it will start producing plutonium," report author Jeffrey Lewis told the BBC.
"They really are putting themselves in a position to increase the amount of material they have for nuclear weapons, which I think gives them a little bit of leverage in negotiations, and adds a sense of urgency on our part," he added.
The five megawatt reactor can produce spent fuel rods that can be made into plutonium, which experts believe North Korea used for its nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. North Korea conducted its third and most recent test in February, but it is not clear whether plutonium or uranium was used.
In a November 2010 report
following a visit to Yongbyon, US scientist Siegfried Hecker said that based on what he saw, he believed North Korea could "resume all plutonium operations within approximately six months" at Yongbyon, then shut down, if so inclined.
Analysts at the Institution for Science and International Security, a think tank, said it would take a considerable amount of time before North Korea could use any new plutonium in nuclear weapons.
"Given that North Korea will likely need two-three years before it discharges irradiated fuel containing plutonium and another six to 12 months to separate the plutonium, there remains time to negotiate a shutdown of the reactor before North Korea can use any of this new plutonium in nuclear weapons," it said
in a report
.
Analysts say the reactor can produce 6kg (13 lbs) of plutonium a year - enough to make one to two nuclear bombs, the BBC's Lucy Williamson in Seoul reports.
Both the US State Department and South Korea's National Intelligence Service have declined to comment directly on the report, saying they do not comment on intelligence matters, AP news agency reported.
North Korea closed the Yongbyon reactor in July 2007 as part of a disarmament-for-aid deal.
The cooling tower at the facility was later destroyed, but then the disarmament deal stalled, partly because the US did not believe Pyongyang was fully disclosing all of its nuclear facilities.
In 2010, North Korea unveiled a uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon to Mr Hecker.
Mr Hecker said that while the facilities appeared to be for electricity generation purposes, it could be readily converted to produce highly-enriched uranium for bombs.
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c01dabec53774fea3c74c4a164b3e947 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24090322 | Japan launches 'affordable' Epsilon space rocket | Japan launches 'affordable' Epsilon space rocket
Japan has launched the first in a new generation of space rockets, hoping the design will make missions more affordable.
The Epsilon rocket is about half the size of Japan's previous generation of space vehicles, and uses artificial intelligence to perform safety checks.
Japan's space agency Jaxa says the Epsilon cost $37m (£23m) to develop, half the cost of its predecessor.
Epsilon launched from south-western Japan in the early afternoon.
Crowds of Japanese gathered to watch the launch, which was also broadcast on the internet.
It was carrying a telescope that is being billed by Jaxa as the world's first space telescope that will remotely observe planets including Venus, Mars and Jupiter from its Earth orbit.
Jaxa said the rocket successfully released the Sprint-A telescope as scheduled, about 1,000km (620 miles) above the Earth's surface.
Epsilon's predecessor, the M-5, was retired in 2006 because of spiralling costs.
Jaxa said the Epsilon was not only cheaper to produce, but also cheaper to launch than the M-5.
Because of its artificial intelligence, the new rocket needs only eight people at the launch site, compared with 150 people for earlier launches.
Japan's other recent space innovations included sending a talking robot to the International Space Station.
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b9e6e7f657c472edaf4d72ccd54d453b | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24202247 | Mandarin rat snake grounds Qantas flight in Sydney | Mandarin rat snake grounds Qantas flight in Sydney
Hundreds of passengers bound for Japan were stranded in Australia overnight after a snake was found on a Qantas plane at Sydney airport.
Staff found the 20cm-long (eight-inch) Mandarin rat snake in the cabin before passengers boarded the Boeing 747 on Sunday.
It is not clear how the snake, which poses no threat to humans, had got on the flight from Singapore.
A replacement flight left for Tokyo on Monday morning.
The 370 stranded passengers spent the night in hotels in Sydney.
The snake - about the width of a pencil - was found near the doorway of the cabin, a Qantas spokeswoman said.
It was taken away by Department of Agriculture officials and later killed to make sure it did not introduce non-native pests or diseases into the country. The plane would be fumigated before returning to service, officials added, in case it was not the only snake on board.
Australia's Agriculture Department said it "was looking into how the snake came to be on the plane, but isn't able to speculate at this time".
The Mandarin rat snake is commonly found in Asia. Adults can grow to more than 1.2m (four feet) long.
This is the second time this year a snake has turned up on a Qantas plane.
In January, a scrub python was discovered on the wing of one of the airline's planes as it flew between the Australian city of Cairns and Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea. The python died during the flight.
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d17ea5434fccbccc987699a19fe4307b | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24361701 | Vietnam dissident Le Quoc Quan jailed over tax evasion | Vietnam dissident Le Quoc Quan jailed over tax evasion
One of Vietnam's best-known dissidents, Le Quoc Quan, has been sentenced to 30 months in jail for tax evasion.
Security was tight outside Hanoi People's Court where Quan appeared and where rights activists have protested against his detention.
Quan, who denied the charges, was arrested last year, accused of attempting to avoid corporate income tax at a company he founded.
His supporters say the trial was politically motivated.
Vietnam's communist rulers have opened up the economy, but suppress political opposition and ban private media. All newspapers and television channels are state-run.
The trial began and ended on Wednesday in the capital, Hanoi.
US-trained lawyer Quan, 41, has strongly maintained his innocence.
He was given a $59,000 (£36,000) fine in addition to his prison sentence for evading corporate income tax of about $30,000 (£18,000) in relation to a consultancy he had formed.
"I have long been denouncing and fighting against corruption, bureaucracy and the stagnation that is doing harm to this country... I'm the victim of political acts,'' he said after the sentence was handed down.
Correspondents say that when the verdict was announced, Quan shouted "I object" before a television feed into the court was cut off.
Hundreds of police and security officers were stationed in the streets around the court on Wednesday.
Many supporters, including the dissident's brother, gathered at a nearby church before attempting to march on the court.
Quan, a Catholic, wrote a popular blog that exposed human rights abuses and other issues not covered by the state media. He was arrested in December.
He was first detained by the Vietnamese authorities for three months in 2007, after he returned from an American government funded-fellowship in Washington.
He was beaten up in August 2012 by men he believed were state agents and, a month later, spoke publicly of threats he and his family were receiving from the authorities.
Human rights groups have accused the Vietnamese government of stepping up a crackdown against bloggers and peaceful activists. They argue that trials in Vietnam do not meet international standards of fairness.
Quan's case has been closely monitored by the US government, which is pressing Vietnam's Communist leaders to loosen their restrictions on supporters of democracy and human rights.
Correspondents say the authorities may have been seeking a compromise so that his sentence was not long enough to upset Washington but sufficient to keep him behind bars.
Three bloggers were given jail sentences of between four and 12 years in September 2012 on charges of spreading anti-government propaganda.
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9a3887c630484c821a908e5d672749d3 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24456910 | Bangladesh ex-minister Abdul Alim jailed for war crimes | Bangladesh ex-minister Abdul Alim jailed for war crimes
A special war crimes tribunal in Bangladesh has handed a life sentence to a former opposition minister.
Abdul Alim, 83, of the Bangladesh National Party was guilty of nine of 17 charges dating back to the country's 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
Six current and former leaders of the main Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, have recently been convicted by the same tribunal.
Dozens of people have died during violent protests against the verdicts.
Last week the tribunal sentenced another senior BNP party member, Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, to death for crimes against humanity.
Alim was spared the death penalty, despite the gravity of his crimes, because of his poor health, Attorney General Mahbubey Alam told reporters.
"He will remain in the prison until his death," he said.
Alim was convicted of involvement in the deaths of 372 Hindus in one of the war's worst atrocities.
Prosecutors said he killed up to 600 people in the north-western Joypurhat district where he headed a branch of a pro-Pakistani militia called Razakar Bahini.
The war crimes tribunal was set up by the Awami League-led government in 2010 and opposition parties have accused it of pursuing a political vendetta against its opponents.
Human rights groups and the BNP have both said that the tribunal fell short of international standards.
Bangladesh government figures estimate more than three million people died in the war of independence. Other researchers put the figure at between 300,000 and 500,000.
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d83a6578634c425e72b19c71438177c4 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24510460 | Vietnam buries national hero Vo Nguyen Giap | Vietnam buries national hero Vo Nguyen Giap
Vietnamese independence hero General Vo Nguyen Giap has been buried after an elaborate two-day state funeral.
The general's body was flown from Hanoi, where it had been lying in state, to his home town in Quang Binh province for burial.
Thousands of people have paid their respects to Gen Giap in Hanoi and at military centres across Vietnam.
Gen Giap was the military commander credited with overseeing the defeat of French and US forces in his country.
He died a week ago at the age of 102.
The burial ceremony was attended by President Truong Tan Sang and other top officials and broadcast live on state television, AP reports.
Thousands of people lined the national highway for hours in Gen Giap's home province of Quang Binh, the BBC's Le Nguyen reports.
Many held portraits, saying they wanted to bid the general farewell.
Vietnam War veteran and local resident Phan Thanh Cong said local people were proud that the general had chosen this location for his final resting place.
"It is our greatest happiness to be close to him," he said.
Workers in Quang Binh had been rushing to finish his tomb, at a temple on a mountainside.
The site was closed to the public until after the funeral.
The general's coffin had been lying in state at the National Funeral Hall in Hanoi, draped in the national flag.
On Sunday, soldiers in white uniforms solemnly removed the flag and carried the red coffin from the hall while other soldiers, bearing a photograph of the general, preceded them.
In a carefully choreographed ceremony, the coffin was then placed on a gun carriage, the flag replaced, and a glass canopy lifted on top of it.
Gen Giap's family, wearing black, stood nearby.
Tens of thousands lined the route to the airport where the coffin was to be flown to Quang Binh.
Once General Giap's coffin had passed, older people brought out faded photographs of their younger selves during the years of struggle, or precious snapshots of encounters with the legendary general, says the BBC's Jonathan Head in Hanoi.
He says many Vietnamese people consider General Giap second only to Ho Chi Minh as a father of the nation.
The son of a rice grower, Vo Nguyen Giap became active in politics in the late 1920s and worked as a journalist before joining Ho Chi Minh's Indochinese Communist Party.
He helped Ho Chi Minh found the Viet Minh and his defeat of French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 effectively ended French colonial rule in the region.
Gen Giap was North Vietnam's defence minister at the time of the Tet Offensive against US forces in 1968, often cited as a key campaign that led to the Americans' withdrawal.
It has been more than 30 years since Gen Giap held any position of power within the Vietnamese Communist Party.
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da34c0a61a5f472c2b3d1de19eceef6e | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24516181 | Malaysia court rules non-Muslims cannot use 'Allah' | Malaysia court rules non-Muslims cannot use 'Allah'
A Malaysian court has ruled that non-Muslims cannot use the word Allah to refer to God, even in their own faiths, overturning a 2009 lower court ruling.
The appeals court said the term Allah must be exclusive to Islam or it could cause public disorder.
People of all faiths use the word Allah in Malay to refer to their Gods.
Christians argue they have used the word, which entered Malay from Arabic, to refer to their God for centuries and that the ruling violates their rights.
One Malaysian Christian woman said the ruling would affect the community greatly.
"If we are prohibited from using the word Allah then we have to re-translate the whole Bible, if it comes to that," Ester Moiji from Sabah state told the BBC.
The 2009 ruling sparked tensions, with churches and mosques attacked.
It came after the government said that a Catholic newspaper, The Herald, could not use the word in its Malay-language edition to describe the Christian God.
The newspaper sued, and a court ruled in their favour in December 2009. The government then launched an appeal.
Upholding the appeal on Monday, chief judge Mohamed Apandi Ali said: "The usage of the word Allah is not an integral part of the faith in Christianity. The usage of the word will cause confusion in the community."
The Herald editor Reverend Lawrence Andrew said he was "disappointed and dismayed", and would appeal against the decision.
"It is a retrograde step in the development of law in relation to the fundamental liberty of religious minorities," he said.
The newspaper's supporters have argued that Malay-language Bibles have used Allah to refer to the Christian God since before Malaysia was formed as a federal state in 1963.
"Allah is a term in the Middle East and in Indonesia it is a term both for Christians and Muslims. You cannot say that in all of the sudden it is not an integral part. Malay language is a language that has many borrowed words, Allah also is a borrowed word."
However, some Muslim groups have said that the Christian use of the word Allah could be used to encourage Muslims to convert to Christianity.
"Allah is not a Malay word. If they [non-Muslims] say they want to use a Malay word they should use Tuhan instead of Allah," Zainul Rijal Abu Bakar, a lawyer representing the government, told the BBC.
Dozens of churches and a few Muslim prayer halls were attacked and burned in the wake of the 2009 ruling, highlighting the intensity of feeling about issues of ethnicity and faith in Malaysia.
Some Malaysians believe the governing Malay-Muslim party is using the case to boost its Islamic credentials among voters, the BBC's Jennifer Pak reports from outside the court in Putrajaya.
Malay Muslims make up almost two-thirds of the country's population, but there are large Hindu and Christian communities.
Prime Minister Najib Razak's coalition won elections in May, but it was the coalition's worst result in more than half a century in power.
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c7884ac76c0a310700c6c38d7a5c4a15 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24621992 | Malaysia 'Allah' court ruling: PM Najib speaks out | Malaysia 'Allah' court ruling: PM Najib speaks out
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has spoken out about a recent court ruling that says non-Muslims cannot use the word Allah to refer to their God.
The controversial ruling said that the term Allah must be exclusive to Islam or it could cause public disorder.
However, Mr Najib said Christians in the states of Sabah and Sarawak could continue to refer to their God as Allah - something disputed by some lawyers.
People of all faiths use the word Allah in Malay to refer to their gods.
The 17 October ruling overturned a 2009 ruling that said that a Catholic newspaper, The Herald, could use the word Allah in its Malay-language edition to describe the Christian God.
The 2009 ruling sparked tensions, with churches and mosques attacked.
"Recently, when the Appeals Court made its decision on the use of the word Allah, it did not at all touch on the practices of Christians in Sabah and Sarawak," Mr Najib said on Monday.
"The 10-point agreement remains," he added, referring to what local media describe as a 2011 agreement that allowed Bibles of all languages to be imported into Malaysia and Bibles to be printed locally in Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak.
In a statement on Sunday, Malaysia's Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail said that while the word Allah could not be used by The Herald, it could continue to be used in Malay-language Bibles.
"The Al-Kitab is the Malay version of the Bible and [is] meant for Christians and use in churches whereas the Herald is a newspaper which is also accessible online and read by Muslims and non-Muslims," he said.
This latest announcement from the government has only confused the country's two million Christians, the BBC's Jennifer Pak in Kuala Lumpur reports.
Some Christians are worried they will face more restrictions in the future, our correspondent adds.
Some legal experts have described the government as back-pedalling over the court decision.
"The statements... were to pacify Christians all over the country that they could practice their faith as guaranteed under the Federal Constitution," lawyer Edmund Bon told news website The Malaysian Insider.
"But they cannot run away from the ruling which had far-reaching implications," Mr Bon added.
The 17 October ruling had dismayed many Christians in Malaysia.
"For centuries the Bahasa Malaysia translation and the Arabic equivalent of one God is the sacred word "Allah", which the Christians have been using peacefully," the Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur Tan Sri Murphy Pakiam said in a statement on Sunday.
"To conclude that the word Allah is not essential to the Christian faith would be a grave denial of the fundamental right of the Bahasa Malaysia speaking Christian community to use this word... this would be tantamount to signalling a form of persecution," he said.
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9b9268f8c0a4668b583fb73a2005fea3 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24622002 | Bangladesh garment plants to get factory safety cash | Bangladesh garment plants to get factory safety cash
Bangladesh and the International Labour Organisation have agreed to launch a $24m (£15m) initiative to improve the conditions of garment workers.
The move comes almost six months after a fire at a factory complex near Dhaka killed more than 1,100 people.
That disaster prompted a range of initiatives to make textile factories safer and to protect workers' rights.
But a textile plant fire earlier this month again highlighted dangerous conditions faced by employees.
At least nine people were killed in the fire at the plant near the capital Dhaka.
Safety standards in Bangladesh's garment factories are notoriously poor and fires are commonplace.
The three-year plan announced on Tuesday is being funded by the British and Dutch governments. It will consolidate earlier factory safety measures, including an accord signed by major European retailers in May.
Experts will conduct safety inspections at more than 1,000 factories as part of the initiative, which will target factories that operate as sub-contractors or produce garments for lesser-known Western retailers that have not signed up to safety accords established since the April disaster.
A factory fire killed more than 100 workers in November.
"We want to bring the number of industrial accidents to a tolerable limit," Labour and Employment Secretary Mikail Shipar told the AFP news agency. "There will be zero tolerance to poor working conditions in our factories."
Sixty percent of Bangladesh's garment exports go to European retailers.
Some estimates suggest that exporting ready-made garments to international clothing retailers is a $22bn (£13.5bn) industry in Bangladesh, accounting for four-fifths of the country's exports.
Clothing makes up around three-quarters of Bangladesh's total exports.
Dozens of international retailers agreed a plan last July to conduct inspections at factories from which their goods were sourced.
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940e8c601f2c181a8676651944c8c0ea | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24672295 | Meet the Australian children fluent in Mandarin | Meet the Australian children fluent in Mandarin
Australia's politicians often talk about the importance of building ties with Asia. Successive governments have promised to increase the number of schools teaching Asian languages, but in fact the number of children in high school learning Asian languages is falling. The BBC's Jon Donnison has been to one of the country's few bilingual schools.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor of her classroom, chewing on the end of her pen, five-year-old Jackie Baldwin is deep in thought.
Blonde haired, with pink spectacles balanced on the tip of her nose, her hand begins to move steadily and confidently across her page, leaving a neat line of Mandarin Chinese characters.
Among them I spot the letters "BBC" in the English alphabet.
"Today the BBC is visiting our school," Jackie says, helping me out with the translation.
She is part of the bilingual English and Chinese immersion programme at Richmond West Primary School in Melbourne.
Like most of the 23 children in her class, Jackie has only been learning Mandarin for a few months but to see her chatting and playing with her friends in a mix of English and Chinese, you would not know it.
"The younger they start learning Chinese as a second language, the easier it is for them to learn," says Kim Lim, an effervescent teacher who has been at the school for around 20 years.
"They are like sponges, socially and mentally they just easily absorb things. Learning a second language comes naturally."
The school is state-funded and is not in a well-off neighbourhood. It has children from 23 different ethnic backgrounds.
Some of them are children from countries in Asia who have been adopted in Australia and brought up speaking English as a first language. They are now getting to grips with Mandarin.
Two days a week, it is total immersion in Chinese, with all classes being taught in the new language.
The school also has a similar, although less extensive, programme in Vietnamese, which it wants to expand.
By the time the children studying Mandarin leave the school after six years, they can expect to be fluent in both reading and writing.
"This school is a treasure," says Dr Jane Orton, director of the Chinese Teacher Training Centre at the University of Melbourne.
"There are kids here, little blonde blue eyes and if I shut my eyes, I wouldn't know they weren't Chinese. It really shows that it can be done and that's what people need to see."
Some of the older children at the school recently got to take part in a field trip to China organised by a group of parents.
The students say they got a good reaction.
"When I went into a couple of two-dollar shops over there and said, 'How much is this?' and 'Thank you', they were like, 'Wow you speak Chinese!'" says Harry Flynn Kitchen, 12.
"They were very surprised," says Georgia Kellet, also 12. "It's not often they get to see a girl with blonde hair talking fluently in Chinese."
If all schools were like this in Australia, you could imagine the country would be well on its way to be multilingual. But Richmond West is very much an exception.
"If you thought this was typical, it's not," says Lloyd Mitchell, the school's principal.
"There would probably be less than 10 schools across the country that are teaching bilingual immersion programmes in an Asian language."
Dr Jane Orton says Asian languages are taught in many primary schools but only for half an hour or so a week, which is nowhere near enough to get a proper grasp of a language.
It means when children move on to high school, there are very high drop out rates for Asian languages because many simply feel they have not progressed or it is too difficult.
The dropout rate at high school for Chinese is around 95%.
And all that is despite the fact that successive Australian governments have made big pledges to try and increase the number of children studying languages.
The former Labor government proposed that every Australian high school child should be given the opportunity to learn an Asian language by 2025.
The current government says 40% of high school children should be learning a foreign language in 10 years' time. The figure is currently only around 12% in the final year of high school.
Some have accused the politicians of empty promises.
"It's nonsense. It's not only unachievable. History has shown that it's not even going to be taken seriously," says Mr Mitchell.
"We put these aspirational goals out there and then we sit back and just hope it happens. These things don't happen by osmosis. The discussion papers are there, the rhetoric is there, but the action is very slim on the ground."
Some have suggested that to reach the 40% target by 2023, it could cost around A$2bn ($1.9bn, £1.2bn).
"It would require targeted spending and investment and vision," says Dr Orton.
"It's going to take longer than three years, the election cycle. But at the moment, I don't see a strategic plan in place to do it."
The children at Richmond West should leave the school on the right track to play a role in what is often called the Asian Century.
But they are a small minority.
Most Australians seem to recognise the economic importance of engaging with Asia.
"The capacity to engage with Asia is so great in terms of business, intellectual property, culture. If we don't seize that opportunity, somebody else will," says Mr Mitchell
"I believe other countries are working harder than we are to achieve those goals. Unless we take some brave action, Australia will miss out."
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342100932cf586fbb6e44e85dcb30f49 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24922492 | Philippine Typhoon Haiyan survivors 'desperate' for aid | Philippine Typhoon Haiyan survivors 'desperate' for aid
Survivors of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines are increasingly desperate for food, water and medical supplies, officials in affected areas say.
The official death toll stands at more than 2,000, though some reports say it could be as high as 10,000.
The UN says more than 11 million people may have been affected and some 673,000 displaced.
On Tuesday, eight people died when a wall collapsed as thousands of survivors mobbed a food warehouse.
Police and soldiers were unable to stop the looters, who took more than 100,000 sacks of rice from the government facility in Alangalang, Leyte, said Rex Estoperez, spokesman for the National Food Authority.
There were also reports on Wednesday of gunshots in the devastated streets of Tacloban, a city of 220,000 on Leyte island which is particularly badly affected.
Typhoon Haiyan - one of the most powerful storms ever recorded on land - hit the coastal Philippine provinces of Leyte and Samar on Friday.
It swept through six central Philippine islands before going on to kill several people in Vietnam and southern China.
Disaster management officials in the Philippines have put the
confirmed death toll there at 2,275
, with another 3,665 injured as of Wednesday. More than 80 people are listed as missing.
But
speaking to CNN
on Tuesday, Philippine President Benigno Aquino said the widely reported estimate that 10,000 people had been killed by the storm - known locally as Yolanda - was inaccurate and may have come from officials facing "emotional trauma".
But he said 29 municipalities had yet to be contacted to establish the number of victims there.
The president also warned that storms like Haiyan were becoming more frequent, and there should be "no debate" that climate change was happening.
He said either the world committed to action on climate change "or let us be prepared to meet disasters".
However, a congressman in Leyte told the BBC he believed the government was giving conservative estimates of the death toll "so as not to cause undue alarm".
"Just viewing the disaster's scope - its magnitude and the areas affected - we believe that the 10,000 figure is more probable," said Martin Romualdez. "As we start cleaning up we are finding more bodies."
The damage to Tacloban was "so massive in scale and so extensive in our areas that we literally would have to rebuild from scratch", he said, calling for greater co-ordination as aid to combat the rising "sense of hopelessness and desperation".
The head of the Philippines Red Cross, Gwendolyn Pang, also said she expected the official death toll to rise.
"Numbers are just coming in. Many of the areas we cannot access," she told Reuters.
Relief operations are being stepped up, but damage to transport links and continuing bad weather have hindered aid distribution.
The BBC's Jonathan Head in Tacloban says residents are becoming angry at the lack of progress and increasing breakdown in security.
Planes are arriving at the airport, but bringing little in and only taking people out, and there is little sign of a co-ordinated relief operation, he says.
But Philippine Interior Minister Mar Roxas told the BBC that relief efforts were on track.
"Our first priorities were, number one, to establish law and order; number two, to bring food and water to the people; and, number three, to recover the cadaver bags," he said.
"[Now] law and order has been stabilised, the supply of food and water is beginning - I'm not saying that we're anywhere near it - [but it] is beginning to be stabilised... and now we are concentrating on recovery of cadavers as well as on the distribution of the food and the relief that is coming in."
On Tuesday the
UN launched an appeal
for $301m (£190m) to help survivors. It has already released $25m to meet immediate needs.
The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says 11.3 million people are in need of vital goods and services, because of factors such as lack of food, healthcare and access to education and livelihoods.
The UK's Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC)
has also launched an appeal.
US and British navy vessels are heading to the Philippines and several nations have pledged millions of dollars in aid.
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96c7e8a57505bf72c12598ffd5eef7ad | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24928138 | Typhoon Haiyan: Philippines defends aid response | Typhoon Haiyan: Philippines defends aid response
The Philippine government says it is facing its biggest ever logistical challenge after Typhoon Haiyan, which affected as many as 11 million people.
Cabinet Secretary Rene Almendras said the government had been overwhelmed by the impact of Haiyan, one of the most powerful storms on record.
The official death toll stands at more than 2,300, but local officials and aid workers say it could rise much higher.
Mr Almendras said the government had responded to the disaster "quite well".
Some residents have expressed anger at the slow speed of the government relief effort.
But the BBC's Jonathan Head in Tacloban, a devastated city of 220,000 on Leyte island, says Wednesday brought the first signs of an organised response.
US military planes have been arriving at Tacloban's ruined airport, delivering World Food Programme supplies, which can be carried by helicopter to outlying regions, and a French-Belgian field hospital has been set up.
Many people have left Tacloban, says our correspondent, but among those left behind there is a growing sense of panic and fear, not just of food running out but of law and order breaking down.
On Tuesday, eight people died when a wall collapsed as thousands of desperate survivors mobbed a food warehouse.
And on Wednesday there were reports of shots being fired in the street and of a teenaged boy being stabbed in the stomach.
With warehouses empty, the main concern for people still in Tacloban was food and water. Some survivors resorted to digging up water pipes for supplies.
On a visit to the city, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said aid was coming in but "the priority has got to be, let's get the food in, let's get the water in".
Health officials warn the worst-affected areas are entering a peak danger period for the spread of infectious diseases.
Mr Almendras told the BBC he believed the administration was "doing quite well" in handling the crisis, especially as it came weeks after a major earthquake in the same region.
"We have never done anything like this before," he said.
Police spokesman Reuben Sindac denied there was a breakdown in law and order in Tacloban, telling the BBC there was a lot of rumour and misinformation spreading among people who were "in a state of shock".
He said security forces were now in control of key installations, preventing looting and ensuring the safety of aid deliveries.
Typhoon Haiyan - one of the most powerful storms ever recorded on land - hit the coastal Philippine provinces of Leyte and Samar on Friday.
It swept through six central Philippine islands before going on to kill several people in Vietnam and southern China.
Disaster management officials in the Philippines have put the
confirmed death toll there at 2,344
, with another 3,804 injured as of 20:00 local time (12:00 GMT). They said 79 people were still missing.
However, a congressman in Leyte told the BBC he believed the government was giving conservative estimates of the death toll "so as not to cause undue alarm".
"Just viewing the disaster's scope - its magnitude and the areas affected - we believe that the 10,000 figure is more probable," said Martin Romualdez.
The head of the Philippines Red Cross, Gwendolyn Pang, also said she expected the official death toll to rise.
Christine Atillo-Villero, a doctor from Cebu, managed to board a flight on a military plane to Tacloban, to reach her family home in San Jose, on the outskirts of the city.
"There were dead people lying around. In our backyard we have, I think, six corpses just lying there," she told Newsday on the BBC World Service.
"People are walking around like zombies just looking for food and water.
"My hometown will never be the same again. About 90% of the city is destroyed - nothing left."
The mayor of Tacloban, Alfred Romualdez said a mass grave had been dug on Tuesday. Bodies were still being processed by the authorities on Wednesday but he was hopeful they could be buried soon.
The Philippines now puts the number affected at just over 8 million, but the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says 11.3 million people are in need of vital goods and services, because of factors such as lack of food, healthcare and access to education and livelihoods.
On Tuesday the
UN launched an appeal
for $301m (£190m) to help survivors. The UK's Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC)
has also launched its own appeal.
, raising £13m ($20m) in its first 24 hours.
US and British navy vessels have been sent to the Philippines and several nations have pledged millions of dollars in aid.
Speaking to CNN
on Tuesday, Philippine President Benigno Aquino warned that storms like Haiyan were becoming more frequent, and there should be "no debate" that climate change was happening.
He said either the world was committed to action on climate change "or let us be prepared to meet disasters".
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said record sea levels this year combined with rising temperatures mean that coastal devastation such as that caused by Haiyan is likely to occur more frequently.
Interim figures released by the WMO show this year is heading towards being among the top ten warmest on record.
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d689b9b55f2df441726c37e895ff49dd | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24950905 | Typhoon Haiyan: Plight of survivors 'bleak' despite aid effort | Typhoon Haiyan: Plight of survivors 'bleak' despite aid effort
Aid workers struggling to help survivors of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines have described the situation as bleak, one week after the storm tore into the country.
A spokesman for Medecins Sans Frontieres said the logistical issues of distributing aid were enormous.
However, correspondents in the ruined city of Tacloban say US military aircraft are beginning to bring in aid.
Philippine officials say the death toll has now risen to 3,621.
Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said this figure was as of Thursday and the actual number was likely to be higher.
The Philippine's
National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council
said that there were a total of 2,360 confirmed deaths, while other reports from the ground put the figure higher than Mr Roxas' tally.
The discrepancy is likely to be due to the widespread devastation, making confirming casualties and collating information difficult.
Typhoon Haiyan was one of the most powerful storms ever recorded on land.
Henry Gray, of Medecins Sans Frontieres, said workers who had visited Guiuan, in eastern Samar, described the situation faced by the 45,000 people there as "bleak".
"What we saw there was that a public hospital had been, basically, destroyed," he said.
Mr Gray added that local officials had asked the charity to support a local private clinic.
"We are moving this as quickly as we possibly can, but the logistical issues are enormous and they shouldn't be underestimated," he said.
The BBC's Andrew Harding, reporting from near Guiuan, says that after earlier problems with looting, some supplies are now getting in.
As a huge international relief operation swung into action, aircraft carrier the USS George Washington and two cruisers arrived in Philippine waters on Thursday.
The carrier is expanding search-and-rescue operations and providing a platform for helicopters to move supplies.
The US military says its support will be on an unprecedented scale, with other US vessels due to arrive in about a week.
Pallets loaded with food and water have been taken from the aircraft carrier to Tacloban, the capital of badly hit Leyte province, and Guiuan.
Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, head of a UN disaster assessment team, said: "There is a danger of focusing on Tacloban."
"We need to get [aid] out to other parts of Leyte and Samar as soon as possible... we'll be here for some time to come."
Many of the dozens of bodies lying in the open since Typhoon Haiyan struck are now being cleared from the streets and buried.
Despite the relief effort, thousands of survivors continued to line up at Tacloban's airport on Thursday trying to leave the city.
A BBC correspondent at the scene said there was still no large-scale food distribution taking place.
But on Friday Mr Roxas, the interior secretary, defended the government's relief efforts.
"In a situation like this, nothing is fast enough," he said. "The need is massive, the need is immediate, and you can't reach everyone."
Mr Roxas, who is overseeing the response, said with roads blocked and infrastructure destroyed it had been hard to get relief supplies out to those in need.
He said he only had eight trucks for the entire city of Tacloban and its population of almost a quarter of a million.
Many countries have pledged help in the shape of financial aid, relief supplies or emergency teams.
The UK government is sending the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, more than £20m ($32m) in aid, a team of medical experts and an RAF transport aircraft.
Japan is also preparing to send up to 1,000 troops as well as naval vessels and aircraft. On Friday, it pledged a $40m (£25m) disaster-relief grant to the Philippines, in addition to an earlier $10m pledge, Japanese media reported.
China - which is engaged in a territorial dispute with the Philippines - is sending 10m yuan ($1.6m; £1m) in relief goods.
Its initial pledge of $200,000 (£120,000) from the government and Chinese Red Cross combined drew criticism in US media, but was also condemned by some Chinese internet users as excessive.
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8a697a81157c1875b68419cd5255424c | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24978926 | Philippine typhoon: Aquino criticises local officials | Philippine typhoon: Aquino criticises local officials
Philippine President Benigno Aquino has criticised authorities in some areas for not being fully prepared for the devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan.
During a visit to the coastal town of Guiuan, he praised local officials for carrying out a proper evacuation, but said it was in contrast to other towns.
Mr Aquino has been criticised for his own government's response.
Meanwhile survivors have attended church services for victims of Hayan, which killed at least 3,974 people.
A further 1,186 are missing, according to the latest official count.
In many places, including the mostly flattened city of Tacloban in Leyte province, Masses were held in half-destroyed and flooded churches.
The international aid effort is starting to have a major impact, with Britain's HMS Daring warship joining the huge relief operation.
The typhoon - which had some of the strongest winds ever recorded on land - also left about 500,000 people homeless.
Guiuan, in Samar province, was the first town hit by the typhoon as it came ashore on 8 November. Mr Aquino said the evacuation ordered by the mayor had limited deaths there to fewer than 100.
But he suggested officials in other places had not been so well prepared.
"As your president, I am not allowed to get angry even if I am already upset," he told reporters. He said that he would have to "stomach" his anger.
He also urged people to show patience. "Our main problem now is feeding 1.4 million people every day. But the government has the resources and we're moving faster."
Mr Aquino also visited Tacloban, and said the government would provide everything people needed.
Earlier Philippine Social Welfare and Development Secretary Corazon Soliman acknowledged that the national relief response had been slow.
"We will double our efforts to distribute relief goods because we've been hearing complaints," she said.
On Sunday, thousands attended church services across the mainly Roman Catholic country.
Many came to give thanks for surviving the storm, while others prayed for their loved ones that died.
"I wish to thank the Lord. We asked for his help for all the people who survived this typhoon to be able to eat and continue a life that is hopefully more blissful," Belen Curila told AFP news agency at a service in Guiuan.
In Tacloban, Father Amadero Alvero led a service for some 500 people in the half-destroyed and flooded Santo Nino church.
"Despite what happened, we still believe in God," he said.
As the morning Masses were held, the international relief effort continued to build.
US helicopters have been dropping food, water and other supplies from the aircraft carrier USS George Washington.
The navy helicopters have been mobbed by hungry villagers, as they deliver desperately needed aid to remote areas.
However the United Nations said people were still going hungry in mountainous regions.
"I remain concerned about the health and well-being of the millions of men, women and children who are still in desperate need," UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said in a statement.
Britain's HMS Daring - which is now is off the coast of Cebu City - is the latest vessel to join the relief effort.
Its crew is now preparing to despatch aid to the Panay Island, in the far west of Cebu.
Another British ship - the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious - is on its way to the Philippines.
On Saturday Britain has announced it will give an extra £30m ($50m) in emergency aid, bringing UK assistance to £50m. The DEC said donations it had collected from the public had reached £33m.
About 11 million people have been affected by Typhoon Haiyan, according to UN estimates.
It was one of the most powerful storms ever recorded on land, with winds exceeding 320km/h (200 mph) unleashing massive waves.
Health experts have warned that the worst-affected areas are entering a peak danger period for the spread of infectious diseases.
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9188cb5f27d97ea0618e66b02cf36b6c | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25013393 | Gold bars worth $1.1m found in plane toilet in India | Gold bars worth $1.1m found in plane toilet in India
A stash of 24 gold bars worth more than $1.1m has been discovered in the toilet compartment of a commercial plane in eastern India.
Cleaners found the haul in two bags on board a Jet Airways flight at Kolkata airport, officials said.
India is one of the world's main gold consumers and imports are seen as a major contributor to the country's account deficit.
It recently raised duty on imports of gold jewellery to 15% from 10%.
It was the third increase this year as the government attempts to curb demand for the precious metal, which many Indians traditionally hoard in the belief it will bring financial security.
The plane on which the 1kg (2.2lb) gold bars were found on Tuesday had reportedly come from Bangkok, local media reported, before making stops in India.
"The cleaning staff of the airport were going though their routine duties and found two bags in the toilets of the plane," airport director BP Mishra told AFP news agency.
He was quoted as saying that no arrest had been made in connection with the find, though OneIndia News said a
suspect was being questioned
.
The gold has been valued at between 70m and 90m rupees (up to $1.4m or £890,000).
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63c9e123fc9b66014ee0a002aaad85ea | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25050493 | Shinzo Abe: China new air defence zone move 'dangerous' | Shinzo Abe: China new air defence zone move 'dangerous'
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has described China's move to create a new "air defence identification zone" over disputed waters as "dangerous".
China's action had "no validity whatsoever on Japan", Mr Abe added.
China has voiced anger at Japanese and US objections to the new air zone, and lodged complaints with their embassies.
The zone covers disputed islands that are claimed and controlled by Japan. China says aircraft entering the zone must obey its rules.
Mr Abe told parliament on Monday that the zone "can invite an unexpected occurrence and it is a very dangerous thing as well".
"We demand China revoke any measures that could infringe upon the freedom of flight in international airspace,'' he added.
US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has called the move a "destabilising attempt to alter the status quo in the region".
"This unilateral action increases the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculations," Mr Hagel said
in a statement
.
"This announcement by the People's Republic of China will not in any way change how the United States conducts military operations in the region," he added.
Japan described China's move as an "escalation" on Saturday, after China announced the new zone.
On Sunday, Yang Yujun, a spokesman for China's Ministry of National Defence, said Japan's reaction was "absolutely groundless and unacceptable".
"We strongly require the Japanese side to stop all moves that undermine China's territorial sovereignty as well as irresponsible remarks that misguide international opinions and create regional tensions," Mr Yang said.
He also demanded that the US "earnestly respect China's national security [and] stop making irresponsible remarks for China's setup of the East China Sea Air Defence Identification Zone".
South Korea said it found it "regretful" that China's new zone partly overlapped with its own military air zone, and covered Ieodo, a submerged rock claimed by Seoul.
"I'd like to say once again that we have unchanging territorial control over Ieodo," Kim Min-seok, a South Korean defence ministry spokesman, said on Monday.
Taiwan also claims the Japan-controlled disputed islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. Taiwan said that it would "defend its sovereignty over the archipelago."
China said the air defence zone came into effect from 10:00 local time (02:00GMT) on Saturday.
Aircraft in the zone must report a flight plan, "maintain two-way radio communications" and "respond in a timely and accurate manner" to identification inquiries, China's Defence Ministry said.
Aircraft that did not follow such rules would be subject to "defensive emergency measures", the ministry added.
The disputed islands in the East China Sea have been a source of tension between China and Japan for decades.
In 2012, the Japanese government bought three of the islands from their private Japanese owner, sparking mass protests in Chinese cities.
Since then, Chinese ships have repeatedly sailed in and out of what Japan says are its territorial waters.
In January, Japan said a Chinese frigate put a radar lock on a Japanese navy ship near the islands. China insists its ship was only using ordinary surveillance radar.
In September, Japan said it would shoot down unmanned aircraft in Japanese airspace after an unmanned Chinese drone flew close to the disputed islands.
China said that any attempt by Japan to shoot down Chinese aircraft would constitute "an act of war".
Since China's President Xi Jinping took power a year ago, Beijing has become more assertive in its territorial claims in the region, leading to rising tensions with many of its neighbours, the BBC's Martin Patience in Beijing reports.
The US has warned that a small incident or miscalculation in the East China Sea could escalate rapidly into a far wider and more serious crisis.
China is also engaged in territorial disputes with several South East Asian countries, including Vietnam and the Philippines. The disputes centre around ocean areas and two island chains in the South China Sea.
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a7b8f3565549b8734be8e4f1d3acb6ff | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25051606 | Typhoon Haiyan death toll rises over 5,000 | Typhoon Haiyan death toll rises over 5,000
The death toll from Typhoon Haiyan has risen above 5,000, officials in the Philippines say, two weeks after the devastating storm hit the country.
The country's National Disaster Agency says that 5,209 people are now known to have lost their lives, with many more still missing.
That makes Haiyan, known as Yolanda in the Philippines, the deadliest natural disaster in the country's history.
Floods in the Ormoc region in 1991 killed 5,101 people.
Haiyan was one of the most powerful typhoons ever recorded.
Winds of up to 270km/h hit the central Philippines when it made landfall on 8 November.
Parts of low-lying islands were completely flattened.
Eduardo del Rosario, executive director of the Philippines' National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, said that more than four million people were displaced by the storm.
Over a million houses were damaged.
Many residents in the worst hit areas are still without proper shelter as they try to rebuild their homes.
Many residents in the worst hit areas are still without proper shelter as they try to rebuild their homes.
Mr del Rosario told the Associated Press news agency he believed the worst was over.
"In the first week we can say we were in the emergency room," he told the agency.
"This second week we are now in the ICU [intensive care unit], still critical but stabilised."
He said he believed that the number of dead reported in the city of Tacloban was likely to go up.
The capital of Leyte province has reported 1,725 deaths.
More than 1,600 people are missing across the affected region.
Most of the dead had been buried in mass graves, and many bodies were unidentified, Mr del Rosario said.
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692c5e5f32ceb67e87d217968d55f961 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25235293 | Jailed Bin Laden doctor Shakil Afridi refuses to stay silent | Jailed Bin Laden doctor Shakil Afridi refuses to stay silent
The Pakistani doctor who is accused of helping the American Central Intelligence Agency track down former al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, says he is being denied his right to a fair trial.
"I am the first individual in Pakistan to have been denied permission to meet my lawyers, which is my basic legal right," he says in a hand-written letter he was able to smuggle out to his lawyers from his prison cell this week.
"What kind of a court, what kind of justice is this?"
This is his first contact with his lawyers in 15 months. It is also his first communication with the outside world since September 2012, when he spoke to Fox News from his prison cell by a smuggled phone.
His lawyers say they are living in a communication vacuum.
"We are strategising our defence by just anticipating what our client may want, we have no permission to consult him on specific issues," says Qamar Nadeem, one of Dr Afridi's two regular legal counsels.
Besides, a very small portion of the legal proceedings against him is available in writing, says Wasim Ahmad Shah, a Peshawar-based journalist who covers legal affairs for Dawn newspaper.
"Most legal proceedings in the current phase of the case are based on verbal exchanges between lawyers and court officials, and may or may not signify actual developments in the case," he says.
"This ambiguity appears deliberate."
From the start, Dr Afridi's case has carried the undertones of realpolitik instead of a legal battle.
He was arrested in May 2011 for what many ex-military defence analysts considered to be his role in organising a hepatitis vaccination campaign that aimed at procuring DNA samples from residents of a compound where Bin Laden was subsequently found.
But a year later, Dr Afridi was given 33 years in jail for a totally different offence - that of collaborating with a banned militant group operating in his native Khyber tribal region.
Few believed the credibility of that verdict, because he had actually been kidnapped by the Lashkar-e-Islam group for performing "questionable" surgeries in his private clinic in Bara, a town in Khyber region.
Locals say he paid a hefty ransom to the group to secure his release,.
Also, instead of the country's mainstream judicial system, his case was taken to an administrative court functioning under a special law governing the tribal areas, called the Frontier Crime Regulations (FCR).
These courts are presided over by officials of the tribal administration, operate behind closed doors and do not necessarily follow standard legal procedures.
It is also not clear exactly when he was handed over to the Khyber administration by the ISI intelligence service that initially arrested him on 23 May 2011.
In his Fox News interview, Dr Afridi claimed he had been kept at an ISI lockup in Islamabad for almost a year.
This would mean he never attended the hearings of the court, and was simply handed the sentence, which came exactly one year after his arrest, on 23 May 2012.
A temporary reprieve of sorts came in August this year when his sentence was overturned on procedural grounds and his case sent to a more senior administration official for retrial.
But last month a woman brought a murder charge against him, saying her son died after a 2005 surgery performed on him by Dr Afridi at his Bara clinic.
This has again raised eyebrows in Pakistan because hospital casualties normally fall under clauses pertaining to negligence, not murder, and relatives of a patient routinely give their consent in writing before surgeries are performed.
So what's going on with Dr Afridi?
Independent analysts are unanimous that he has served as a convenient scapegoat for the Pakistani military, which had come under severe domestic criticism for failing to prevent the American raid that killed Bin Laden.
But charging him for what he did - help lead the US to the most wanted man in the world - could cast aspersions on Pakistan's role as an ally in the war against militants.
And such a move could also preclude the possibility of Pakistan using Dr Afridi in a face-saving deal with the US at some point in the future.
But while the authorities continue to beat around the bush, Dr Afridi has refused to lie low.
He created ripples in September last year when he gave an interview to Fox News. The episode caused a blanket ban on his meetings with relatives and lawyers and cost some prison guards their jobs.
He has now smuggled out a letter to his lawyers.
"I don't know what's happening in my case," he writes. "I don't know on what grounds the commissioner suspended my sentence. But I'm happy with you [lawyers]. If you stay resolute, success is near, God willing."
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5b114e46035652ce1eccf43bc060c70a | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25620543 | Afghanistan girl wearing suicide vest detained | Afghanistan girl wearing suicide vest detained
A young Afghan girl has been detained wearing a suicide vest in southern Afghanistan, officials say.
She was held on Sunday night in Helmand province, as she tried to carry out an attack on border police, an interior ministry spokesman told the BBC.
The girl, reported to be as young as eight and thought to be the sister of a prominent Taliban commander, is said to be in a state of shock and confusion.
Police told the BBC she was encouraged to carry out the attack by her brother.
According to interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi, one of the Afghan soldiers spotted the girl wearing a suicide jacket.
But she could not operate the button to detonate the suicide vest or she was arrested before she could carry the attack, the BBC's Bilal Sarwary reports from the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The girl has now been transferred to the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah.
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871da93b346e8c2d57f69e2376fdc609 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25663992 | Aitzaz Hasan: Tributes to Pakistan teenager killed when he stopped a bomber | Aitzaz Hasan: Tributes to Pakistan teenager killed when he stopped a bomber
Tributes have been pouring in for a Pakistani teenager who was killed on Monday when he tackled a suicide bomber targeting his school in the Hangu area.
Aitzaz Hasan, 15, was with friends outside school when they spotted a man wearing a suicide vest.
Despite the pleas of his fellow students, he decided to confront and capture the bomber who then detonated his vest, his cousin told the BBC.
Aitzaz is being hailed as a hero in an outpouring of praise on social media.
There have even been calls for him to receive the army's highest honour awarded to those who have sacrificed their life for their country, though it is unclear if he would be qualified to receive it as a civilian.
"We the citizens believe that State of Pk must award Nishan-i-Haider to Pk's brave son Shaheed Aitezaz," journalist Nasim Zehra
tweeted on Thursday.
The incident took place on Monday in Ibrahimzai, a Shia-dominated region of Hangu, in north-western Pakistan. There were almost 2,000 students in attendance at the time of the attack, media reports say.
"My cousin sacrificed his life saving his school and hundreds of students and school fellows," his cousin Mudassar Hassan Bangish told the BBC's Aleem Maqbool.
"The suicide bomber wanted to destroy the school and school students. It was my cousin who stopped him from this...destruction."
He then described the sequence of events as related to him by witnesses at the school.
Aitzaz's friends had urged him not to confront the suicide bomber but he ignored their pleas and decided to confront the man with the intention of halting him.
"So he told them 'I'm going to stop him. He is going to school to kill my friends'. He wanted to capture this suicide bomber. He wanted to stop [him]. Meanwhile the suicide bomber blasted himself which resulted in the death of my cousin," Mr Bangish said.
He described Aitzaz as "brave" and a good student. "He always used to say 'I am always ready for my country'."
His family insist that rather than focus on the sorrow brought about by his death, they want to focus on their pride in his actions.
"He is a shahid [martyr]. A shahid of his whole nation," he said.
His family have also spoken of Aitzaz's actions in
Pakistan's Express Tribune newspaper.
"My son made his mother cry, but saved hundreds of mothers from crying for their children," Mujahid Ali, Aitzaz's father is quoted as saying.
According to Mr Bangish, people in the area would like to see the government give Aitzaz an award to recognise his bravery, and compared him with celebrated Pakistani education campaigner Malala Yousafzai - a comparison being echoed across social media.
On Twitter, users are paying tribute to Aitzaz using the hashtags #onemillionaitzaz and #AitzazBraveheart echoing the language used online around figures such as Malala and the Delhi rape victim, whose death galvanised Indian public opinion and prompted changes in rape laws there.
Former Pakistani ambassador to the US Sherry Rehman
tweeted:
"Hangu's shaheed Aitzaz Hasan is #Pakistan's pride. Give him a medal at least. Another young one with heartstopping courage #AitzazBraveheart."
Hangu is close to Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal regions, which have a strong Taliban and al-Qaeda presence and the area is also known for sectarian violence against Shia Muslims.
Mr Bangish said the region's residents are "patriotic people" but have to contend with difficult conditions.
He he added that in order to cope with such conditions and tackle the "fights and blast ... needs courage like Aitzaz has. We salute his bravery".
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700ce3a05c9dd4ee5270ce84c4989b03 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25772063 | Indonesia condemns Australian navy waters violations | Indonesia condemns Australian navy waters violations
Indonesia has condemned Australian naval incursions into its waters as a "violation of its sovereignty".
Australia has apologised to Indonesia, saying its navy vessels "inadvertently" made the incursions during operations to stop asylum seekers.
Indonesia has asked Australia to suspend these operations until the incidents have been clarified.
The row comes amid reports Australia's navy have been pushing boats carrying asylum-seekers back to Indonesia.
At a press conference, Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said the violations, which had occurred several times, had not been sanctioned by the government.
Australia took its "shared commitment with Indonesia to mutually respect the sovereignty of each nation very, very seriously", he said, adding that the foreign minister would offer an "unqualified apology".
Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, who leads operations to prevent boats carrying asylum seekers arriving in Australia, blamed the violations on "positional errors".
"We have never intended for our assets to operate or to enter the sovereign territory of another nation," he said.
Indonesia said in a statement on Friday that it "deplores and rejects the violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity by Australian vessels".
It would "intensify its maritime patrols in areas where violations of its sovereignty and territorial integrity are at risk", it added.
"Indonesia demands that such [asylum] operations conducted by the Australian government that led to this incident be suspended until further clarification is received."
The Australian government has been under scrutiny over asylum policy in recent days amid reports of boats being turned back to Indonesia.
Indonesia serves as a transit point for people-smugglers, who ferry people to Christmas Island, the closest part of Australian territory, on rickety boats. The number of boats rose sharply in 2012 and the beginning of 2013, and dozens of people have died making the journey.
When Prime Minister Tony Abbott's Liberal-National Coalition ousted Labor last year, it initiated Operation Sovereign Borders, giving the military control over the response to people-smugglers, and vowed to stop the boats.
In recent days multiple reports have emerged in Australian and Indonesian media of boats carrying asylum seekers being towed back to Indonesian waters by Australian navy vessels.
It has also been reported that Australia has bought lifeboats for the purpose of transporting asylum seekers back to Indonesia.
The government has refused to comment on these reports, citing operational sensitivities. But it did deny a report that an Australian navy vessel had fired shots into the air as it intercepted an asylum boat.
Earlier this month the Indonesian foreign minister spoke out on the alleged push-back policy.
"Let me once again put on record that Indonesia rejects Australia's policy to turn back the boats because such a policy is not actually conducive to a comprehensive solution," Marty Natalegawa said.
Ties between Australia and Indonesia remain strained in the wake of spying revelations in documents leaked by fugitive US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
Last week, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR)
said it was seeking details from Canberra
on the recent reports of push-backs.
"Any such approach would raise significant issues and potentially place Australia in breach of its obligations under the [1951] Refugee Convention and other international law obligations," UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards said.
The UN and rights groups have also strongly criticised conditions at Australia's offshore asylum processing camps, on the Pacific island of Nauru and on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island.
Earlier this week the Australian government said its asylum policies were working, with no new boat arrivals for over three weeks.
Asylum is a sensitive issue in Australia, despite the relatively small numbers involved.
UNHCR's Asylum Trends 2012 report
said Australia received only 3% of global asylum applications in 2012.
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a9f958b6e60ab2c06e9ae4506635083e | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25942191 | Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh's search for catharsis | Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh's search for catharsis
Rithy Panh, the 50-something filmmaker and survivor of the Cambodian killing fields, likes to watch war films. The sounds of bombs exploding and guns firing offer a mindless release from his day job: making documentaries that try to extract meaning from the Khmer Rouge era, which left him an orphan.
"I need noise, I need planes, bombs, I cannot understand the story but the noise makes me wake up," he said in his Phnom Penh office on the first floor of the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Centre, the film preservation institution he runs.
His latest attempt at examining the Khmer Rouge era may be his most celebrated yet. The Missing Picture, a documentary that recounts his own experiences in Pol Pot's Cambodia using static clay figurines, has been nominated for an Academy Award in the foreign language film category. It is the first time that a Cambodian film has made it this far.
The announcement comes at a difficult time in the country's history. Late 2013 was marked by demonstrations over a disputed election and conditions in the garment industry. By the time the news came on 16 January that Cambodia was going to the Oscars, at least six people had been killed in the unrest and dozens had been sent to jail. Opposition lawmakers continue to boycott the National Assembly.
After a terrible few months, "sometimes a project like that, coming at this stage, it's good for everybody", Mr Panh said. "If we have something [win], it's very, very great for Cambodia, but the fact that we are there is already great."
His film, which won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival last year, is up against works from Italy, the Palestinian territories, Denmark and Belgium.
Cedric Eloy, the chief executive officer of the Cambodian Film Commission, said the nomination was a sign that the country was ready to "play on a global level".
While The Missing Picture is receiving the most sought-after audience imaginable, the rest of Cambodia's film industry is also thriving.
Throughout 2013, film festivals handed out awards to several locally-produced projects, including Red Wedding, a stark account produced by Mr Panh of forced marriage under the communist regime, and A River Changes Course, a documentary that reveals the human cost of Cambodia's rapid development.
Closer to home, Sok Visal's heist-comedy Gems on the Run set the standard for local productions, and country's first-ever zombie film was released.
In December, an agreement was signed with the French government making co-productions easier, which paved the way for Régis Wargnier (director of the 1992 French film Indochine) to start filming an adaptation of the Khmer Rouge memoir, The Gate.
"For the first time, features that are produced entirely or partly with Cambodia will reach the international market," Mr Eloy said, adding that local technical expertise had grown.
"In 2009 when we started, there were about 40 experienced film crew members, and there are over 160 now. It's still not enough but it's a good progression."
Mr Panh was born in Phnom Penh to a middle-class family. His father was an under-secretary to various ministers. He lived a comfortable life, snacking on tamarinds from the gardens of the National Museum, where his sister worked as deputy director.
But when he was 13, the Maoist Khmer Rouge regime swept to power, emptied the cities and forced the population to labour in the countryside. Nearly two million died or were executed.
Mr Panh survived, but his parents and siblings did not. After the regime fell in 1979, he fled to France, a refuge he calls his "second mother". It was there that he developed a passion for filmmaking.
In the years that followed, he directed and produced dozens of films, many set in Cambodia. In S-21: The Khmer Killing Machine, named after Tuol Sleng, the school-turned-prison where thousands of people lost their lives, he persuaded former guards to return to the site and re-enact their crimes.
The Missing Picture is Mr Panh's attempt to finally tackle his own story through film.
It moves between archival video footage and shots of clay figures, who seem all the more grave by their frozen immobility.
He came up with the idea for the figures after accidentally discovering one of the men on his set design team could sculpt brilliantly with clay.
Mr Panh's brother, a musician, disappeared after the evacuation of Phnom Penh. In the film, a little clay figure with spiky hair floats onto the screen, clutching an electric guitar as the narrator explains he was too rock 'n' roll for the Khmer Rouge.
Youk Chhang, the executive director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, a non-governmental organisation which has collected the country's most extensive archive of Khmer Rouge material, said of the clay: "It's something that Cambodia looks at as a toy, but [Mr Panh] gives it a soul."
Mr Chhang, who helped in the production of S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, added: "We want to move forward but [the film] reminds us we have to remember the past. Genocide is part of us."
As for the young filmmakers of the present, they hope the success of The Missing Picture will raise the profile of Cambodian cinema.
Kavich Neang, a 26-year-old documentary director who credits "Uncle Panh" as his mentor, said: "For me, for my generation, [the nomination] is something that gives us hope for the future."
Filmmakers in Cambodia still face obstacles. Politically sensitive topics are rarely covered. When Mr Neang told his parents he was making documentaries, they asked: "You're not afraid to die?"
Mr Panh, who has mentored several up-and-coming directors, said he was hopeful that the country would see another great era of arts, like the '60s, when Khmer-language rock 'n' roll ruled the airwaves and some of Phnom Penh's finest buildings were constructed.
"I would like this period to come again, when architecture can meet dance, can meet cinema, can meet books," he said.
The title of his new documentary alludes to the enormous loss that Cambodia has suffered, a loss for which no award or cinematic triumph can compensate. As with his previous work, Mr Panh said that making The Missing Picture has not been cathartic.
"Before, I had a little hope that, film after film, I would feel better. But film after film, I sleep less and less, and I think I will die with this feeling of something bad inside me - guilty, or something."
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638e409540cf54d84718bc354c7f5db8 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26224510 | Thailand police and protesters clash fatally in Bangkok | Thailand police and protesters clash fatally in Bangkok
At least four people have been killed and dozens injured in violence that erupted as Thai police began clearing protest sites in the capital, Bangkok.
Police were trying to retake official sites that have been blocked by demonstrators since late last year.
Meanwhile, Thailand's anti-corruption body said it would file charges against Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra over a controversial rice subsidy scheme.
Thailand has been embroiled in anti-government protests since November.
One of the dead was a police officer - one of about 15,000 that authorities say were involved. Several more were seriously hurt by a grenade apparently thrown by protesters. Police also claimed they were targeted by snipers.
Police too fired live rounds during the operation, which they say successfully reclaimed the first of five sites from protesters, nearly 200 of whom have been arrested.
Demonstrators have occupied official sites over the past few months, calling on the government to step down. The government has announced that it intends to retake all the besieged buildings this week.
The prime minister's office, Government House, has been a focal point for the demonstrators. Thousands gathered outside the building on Monday, cementing the gates shut in a bid to stop officials returning to work.
Early on Tuesday, police started negotiations with the protesters, who over the past few days have come in large numbers to defend protest areas. Violence then erupted near Democracy Monument in central Bangkok.
The Erawan Medical Center, which monitors hospitals, said that more than 60 people were injured.
Elsewhere, police reclaimed the besieged Ministry of Energy, with about 100 protesters arrested.
Until now, police had been reluctant to use force against the protesters, allowing demonstrators to enter government buildings in a bid to defuse tensions.
Also on Tuesday, Thailand's official anti-corruption commission said it would charge Ms Yingluck with improperly handling the government's rice subsidy scheme.
Ms Yingluck proceeded with the scheme despite warnings it was prone to corruption and could cause losses, the National Anti-Corruption Commission said in a statement.
The programme saw the government buying farmers' crops for the past two years at prices up to 50% higher than world prices.
The prime minister had been summoned to hear charges on 27 February, the commission added. Reports say she could potentially be impeached and removed from official duties.
Ms Yingluck leads a government that won elections in 2011 with broad support from rural areas.
The anti-government protesters want her to step down, and her government to be replaced by an unelected "people's council" to reform the political system.
They allege that money politics have corrupted Thailand's democracy and that Ms Yingluck is controlled by her brother, ousted leader Thaksin Shinawatra.
In response to the protests, Ms Yingluck called snap elections on 2 February, which her government was widely expected to win.
However, the polls were boycotted by the opposition and voting was disrupted by protesters at about 10% of polling stations, meaning by-elections are needed before a government can be formed.
The government is also unable to pay the rice farmers until a new parliament has convened.
On Monday, hundreds of rice farmers gathered in Bangkok, protesting against late payments.
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c0c8a506b75fa3add37ce1635584647c | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26252563 | North and South Koreans hold rare family reunions | North and South Koreans hold rare family reunions
Hundreds of North and South Korean relatives are seeing each other for the first time in decades, at a reunion for families separated by the Korean War.
More than 100 mostly elderly South Koreans arrived in the North on Thursday for the event.
The reunions, which come after North Korea called for better relations between the two sides, will take place from 20 to 25 February.
They come ahead of planned US-South Korea drills, which begin on Monday.
North Korea had earlier threatened to cancel the reunions if the military exercises went ahead.
On Thursday, 82 elderly South Koreans, accompanied by 58 family members, left for North Korea by bus.
More than a dozen of them were in wheelchairs, and two travelled in ambulances as they needed medical attention, AFP news agency reported.
They carried gifts, including clothing, medicine and food for their relatives.
They met their North Korea relatives at an emotional event in the North's Mount Kumgang resort on Thursday afternoon. The families are also scheduled to have dinner together.
Around 180 North Koreans attended the reunion, reports said.
One of those selected for the reunions was South Korean Lee Du-young, who is in his late 70s.
"It's hard for people to understand what it's like when you've been separated so long," he told the BBC before he left for the North.
"But it's a true miracle; I'm so elated. All that was missing in my life was my brother, and now that I can see him again, I'd have no regrets whatsoever if I were to die tomorrow."
He said that as well as warm clothing, he would buy his brother chocolate biscuits because he heard they were sought-after treats in North Korea.
The reunions are brief events. Families from both sides meet for a number of hours, before eventually returning to their respective homes.
Only 100 or so relatives are chosen to take part each time. South Korea uses a lottery system to help determine who is to be included.
The process in North Korea, on the other hand, is more opaque, with critics saying Pyongyang plays politics with the families involved.
North Korea has in the past cancelled the reunions after the South took actions it opposed - most recently in September.
The South Korean relatives were briefed before the reunions and were told not to talk about politics.
Many people were separated from their relatives by the division of the Korean peninsula after the 1950-1953 war.
The Korean War ended in a ceasefire, not a peace treaty, and there are no direct means of communication for most North and South Koreans.
About 72,000 South Koreans are on a waiting list to join the family reunion events. Nearly half of them are over 80.
The reunions are the only legal way for families separated by the division of the country to see each other, the BBC's Lucy Williamson reports from the southern side of the Korean border.
They are a small but significant sign of better relations between the two Koreas, but for many of those not chosen this time, the benefits they offer are slow to arrive, our correspondent adds.
In 2010, the programme was suspended after the North's shelling of a South Korean border island.
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311dfe856cd1be7ef944d84839fdeb1c | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26503141?utm=EchoboxAI | Missing Malaysia plane MH370: What we know | Missing Malaysia plane MH370: What we know
The missing Malaysia Airlines plane, flight MH370, had 239 people on board and was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March 2014 when air traffic control staff lost contact with it.
The search for the plane eventually focused on a 120,000 sq km area of seabed about 2,000km off the coast of Perth in the southern Indian Ocean. It has now been suspended with no trace of the aircraft found there, and is likely to remain the world's greatest aviation mystery.
This is what we know.
Watch the video below to find out about the jet's last known movements.
00:41, 8 March 2014
(16:41 GMT, 7 March)
:
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 departed from Kuala Lumpur International Airport and was due to arrive in Beijing at 06:30 (22:30 GMT).
Malaysia Airlines says the plane lost contact less than an hour after take-off. No distress signal or message was sent.
01:07
: The plane sent its last ACARS transmission - a service that allows computers aboard the plane to "talk" to computers on the ground. Some time afterwards, it was silenced and the expected 01:37 transmission was not sent.
01:19
: The last communication between the plane and Malaysian air traffic control took place about 12 minutes later. At first, the airline said initial investigations revealed the co-pilot had said "All right, good night".
However,
Malaysian authorities later confirmed the last words heard from the plane
, spoken either by the pilot or co-pilot, were in fact "Good night Malaysian three seven zero".
A few minutes later, the plane's transponder, which communicates with ground radar, was shut down as the aircraft crossed from Malaysian air traffic control into Vietnamese airspace over the South China Sea.
01:21
: The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said the plane failed to check in as scheduled with air traffic control in Ho Chi Minh City.
02:15
: Malaysian military radar plotted Flight MH370 at a point south of Phuket island in the Strait of Malacca, west of its last known location. Thai military radar logs also confirmed that the plane turned west and then north over the Andaman sea.
In maps accompanying its 1 May report, the Malaysian government revised the time to be
02:22
and
put the position further west
.
02:28
(18:28 GMT, 7 March): After the loss of radar, a satellite above the Indian Ocean picked up data from the plane in the form of seven automatic "handshakes" between the aircraft and a ground station. The first was at 02:28 local time.
08:11
: (00:11 GMT, 8 March) The last full handshake was at 08:11. This information, disclosed a week after the plane's disappearance, suggested the jet was in one of two flight corridors, one stretching north between Thailand and Kazakhstan, the other south between Indonesia and the southern Indian Ocean.
08:19:
However, there is some evidence of a further "partial handshake" at this time between the plane and a ground station. This was a request from the aircraft to log on. Investigators say this is consistent with the plane's satellite communication equipment powering up after an outage -
such as after an interruption to its electrical supply.
09:15:
This would have been the next scheduled automatic contact between the ground station and the plane, but there was no response from the aircraft.
The plane's planned route would have taken it north-eastwards, over Cambodia and Vietnam, and the initial search focused on the South China Sea, south of Vietnam's Ca Mau peninsula.
But evidence from a military radar, revealed later, suggested the plane had suddenly changed from its northerly course to head west. So
the search, involving dozens of ships and planes,
then switched to the sea west of Malaysia.
Further evidence revealed on 15 March 2014 by the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak suggested the jet was
deliberately diverted by someone on board about an hour after take-off.
After MH370's last communication with a satellite was disclosed, a week after the plane's disappearance, the search was expanded dramatically to nearly three million square miles - about 1.5% of the surface of the Earth.
However, from 16 March, tracking data released by the Malaysian authorities appeared to confirm that the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean, south west of Australia, with possible locations refined following further satellite analysis.
There were a few false positives along the way. In early April 2015,
Australian and Chinese vessels using underwater listening equipment
detected ultrasonic signals, which officials believed could be from the plane's "black box" flight recorders. The pings appeared to be the most promising lead so far, and were used to define the area of a sea-floor search, conducted by the Bluefin-21 submersible robot.
Nothing was found and it was only in December 2015 that Australian officials said they had refined the search area and were confident they were looking in the right area for the plane.
In the end, an Australian-led search using underwater drones and sonar equipment deployed from specialist ships loaned by various nations combed a vast 120,000km area of the Southern Indian Ocean - but turned up nothing.
In December 2016 investigators admitted the plane was unlikely to be in that search area and recommended
searching further north.
Experts identified a new area of approximately 25,000 sq km to the north of the current search area that had the "highest probability" of containing the wreckage. This was the last area the plane could possibly be located, given current evidence, the report said.
But Australia ruled out continuing the search beyond its scheduled end.
Although the underwater search turned up nothing, it was along a coastline thousands of miles away that clues began to wash up on beaches.
On 29 July 2015, a 2m-long (6ft) piece of plane debris was
found by volunteers
cleaning a beach in St Andre, on the north-eastern coast of Reunion.
MH370: The key pieces of debris
On 5 August, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that investigators had "conclusively confirmed" the debris was from the missing plane, a finding confirmed by
French officials
.
However, officials said this did not affect their search plans, as the debris had been carried to Reunion by ocean currents.
It was the first of more than 20 pieces of possible debris found by members of the public, on the African coast and islands in the Indian Ocean.
In November 2016, a report found the recovered wing flaps from the plane
were not in the landing position when the plane went down
in the Indian Ocean.
It was a significant finding that helped investigators say with more certainty that the flight most likely made a rapid and uncontrolled descent into the Indian Ocean.
So some bereaved families of those on board the flight are determined to keep the hunt for these clues going.
The 12 crew members were all Malaysian, led by pilots Captain Zaharie Ahmed Shah, 53, and 27-year-old co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid.
There were
227 passengers
, including 153 Chinese and 38 Malaysians, according to
the manifest
. Seven were children.
Other passengers came from Iran, the US, Canada, Indonesia, Australia, India, France, New Zealand, Ukraine, Russia, Taiwan and the Netherlands.
Two Iranian men were found to be travelling on false passports. But further investigation revealed 19-year-old Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad and Delavar Seyed Mohammadreza, 29, were headed for Europe via Beijing, and had no apparent links to terrorist groups.
Among the Chinese nationals was a delegation of 19 prominent artists, who had attended an exhibition in Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysia Airlines said there were four passengers who checked in for the flight but did not show up at the airport.
The family members of those on board were informed in person, by phone and by text message on 24 March that the plane had been lost.
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25080127db37877e90f3db5f42017195 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27133865 | Pakistan army eyes Taliban talks with unease | Pakistan army eyes Taliban talks with unease
From the moment it was founded in 2007, the Pakistani Taliban have proved to be a formidable force.
Their suicide bombers have killed tens of thousands in cities and at the height of its power, in 2008, they controlled huge swathes of territory in the north-west and were even threatening the city of Peshawar.
"The government was in trouble. There were Taliban everywhere," says Gen Khalid Rabbani, who commands the 156,000 troops currently deployed to suppress the insurgency.
At one point the government even considered shifting the provincial administration in Peshawar to a safer place.
When jihadists took control of the Swat Valley and started beheading local opponents, the Taliban's advances made international headlines. The Taliban was just 100km (60 miles) from the capital Islamabad.
Then, after long periods of hesitation and attempted ceasefires, the army eventually took decisive action. In 2009, it evicted the Taliban from Swat and restored the writ of the state there.
It was the start of a long, bloody campaign that has so far cost the lives of more than 5,000 Pakistani soldiers. Today, the Taliban has been pushed back to the point that it has control of just one tribal area - North Waziristan, and part of another, Khyber.
But the Pakistani Taliban remains a formidable force. It has an estimated 25,000 fighters and can still mount attacks and conduct assassinations in Pakistan's major cities.
The question of why the army has failed to mount an offensive in the remaining redoubt of North Waziristan is highly controversial.
Critics of the army believe that it is trying to protect Afghan Taliban fighters who use North Waziristan as a sanctuary. The Pakistani security establishment sees the Afghan Taliban as a strategic asset that can counter growing Indian influence in Afghanistan.
The high levels of distrust between the governments in Kabul and Islamabad have resulted in the Pakistani Taliban leadership sheltering in Afghanistan while the Afghan Taliban leadership shelters in Pakistan.
While the militants can move freely across the border between the two countries, the American, Afghan and Pakistani armies cannot. It is a situation the two Taliban movements have exploited to the full.
The army defends its failure to tackle North Waziristan on the grounds that it needs the government to provide political leadership and to carry public opinion by backing any military campaign.
But the government is pursuing a different track: rather than confronting the Taliban, it is engaging the militant movement in a dialogue process.
If the talks do not break down, there are two possible outcomes from the dialogue. The first is what the Taliban fear most - that some of the militants agree to stop fighting in return for prisoner releases and "compensation" by the government.
The army would then fight the remaining Taliban irreconcilables. The army hopes that, in those circumstances, the Pakistani public would support a military campaign against the Taliban groups that would have been seen to turn down a chance to reach a negotiated compromise.
Because of the rivalries within the Taliban movement the plan might work.
After the November 2013 death of the then Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud in a drone strike, the organisation selected a jihadi from Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, as his successor.
It was the first time since its creation that the Pakistani Taliban was not being led by a member of the Mehsud tribe, and some Mehsuds are unhappy being under Fazlullah's leadership.
The government believes if it can split the Mehsuds the Taliban will be considerably weakened.
The second potential outcome of the talks is that the Taliban agree to stop sending suicide bombers to Pakistan's cites and in return the government allows the movement to conduct its activities in the tribal areas without state interference.
"The main [Taliban] demand is the restoration of the previous situation," says Major Amir, a former ISI intelligence officer and confidante of Nawaz Sharif, who is closely involved in the dialogue process.
Previously, he explains, the army was not present in the tribal areas and the Taliban might agree to a permanent ceasefire if the soldiers were withdrawn.
But having sacrificed so many lives fighting the Taliban, the army is in no mood to throw those gains away at the negotiating table.
"There can be just one deal: accept the constitution, accept the writ of the government and be a peaceful citizen. That is the deal," says General Nadeem Raza, General Officer Commanding in the South Waziristan tribal area.
Over the last two years the army has undertaken a massive development programme in the tribal areas.
With US, Saudi and UAE money, army engineers have built roads, irrigation systems and electricity systems.
The effort has been so intensive that, in many respects, the tribal area of South Waziristan, generally perceived as backward and remote, now has better infrastructure than many other parts of Pakistan.
The army will be very reluctant to hand over all these improvements to the Taliban.
Rather, it hopes that the huge disruption caused by the fighting in recent years, which has forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, will encourage a process whereby the traditional social structures in the tribal areas break down and the tribal people become better integrated into the rest of Pakistan.
But some supporters of the dialogue process believe the army itself is the cause of the problems and argue that the Taliban insurgency will soon fade away of its own accord.
"The army has no idea," says the opposition politician, Imran Khan. "The military is not a solution. Once the Americans leave the region, jihad is over."
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11c09c8ba1bcd626601381743e13fa5f | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27169405 | Obama in landmark Malaysia visit | Obama in landmark Malaysia visit
US President Barack Obama has arrived in Malaysia - the first serving American leader to visit the predominantly-Muslim nation since 1966.
The visit signals closer bilateral relations after decades of uneasy ties.
Mr Obama is expected to seek closer trade relations with Malaysia to dilute China's influence in the region.
The US has already provided Kuala Lumpur with military assistance, most recently in the search for the missing Malaysian airline.
Mr Obama landed at Malaysia's Air Force base in Subang on Saturday evening local time.
The US president has already visited Japan and South Korea as part of a four-nation tour of Asia.
Ahead of the visit, Malaysia's government controlled newspapers printed the American flag on their front pages, along with the words "Welcome, Mr President," the BBC's Jennifer Pak in Kuala Lumpur reports.
But some analysts say it has taken Mr Obama too long to visit the country, especially since he lived in the region as a child.
American presidents had stayed away because of years of anti-Western rhetoric under former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad, but current Prime Minister Najib Razak wants Washington to recognise Malaysia as a global player, our correspondent adds.
In his turn, Mr Obama wants Kuala Lumpur to sign a free trade deal with 10 other nations - the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Ben Rhodes, Mr Obama's deputy national security adviser, said relations between the US and Malaysia had blossomed in recent years.
Malaysia has become a "pivotal state"' in the Obama administration's push to strengthen ties throughout the fast-growing and strategically important region, the Associated Press quoted Mr Rhodes as saying.
However, some Malay Muslims claim that the US-led trade deal will reduce their economic privileges over other ethnic groups in the country.
Mr Obama arrived in Malaysia from South Korea and will finish his Asian tour in the Philippines on 29 April.
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b516627b917a21242caff7a70970557a | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27319433 | Pakistan 'blasphemy lawyer' shot dead in Multan office | Pakistan 'blasphemy lawyer' shot dead in Multan office
Gunmen in the Pakistani city of Multan have shot dead a lawyer defending a university lecturer accused of blasphemy, police and officials say.
Police said that Rashid Rehman was sitting in his office when he was shot. Two of his assistants were injured.
Allegations of blasphemy against Islam are taken very seriously in Pakistan.
Critics argue that blasphemy laws are frequently misused to settle personal scores and that members of minority groups are often unfairly targeted.
Senior police official Zulfiqar Ali told AFP news agency that Mr Rehman died amid "indiscriminate firing" in his office on Wednesday evening.
He said he and his two injured colleagues were rushed to hospital where doctors pronounced him dead upon arrival.
Mr Rehman was defending Junaid Hafeez, a lecturer at Bahauddin Zakariya University accused by hardline student groups of making derogatory remarks against the Prophet Muhammad in March last year.
An official at the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) told AFP that for a year no lawyer was prepared to take up the case because of fear of reprisals from extremist religious groups.
Mr Rehman, a rights activist and co-ordinator of the HRCP, decided to defend Mr Hafeez despite reportedly receiving death threats.
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8251401c0157605c68b61692aadb4c90 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27338112 | Can Vietnamese comics win readers' hearts? | Can Vietnamese comics win readers' hearts?
A boy held captive in wooden stocks stares straight ahead, his gaze piercing. In the background, a woman sits on a hammock fanning herself.
The arresting image graces the cover of a new Vietnamese comic entitled Long Than Tuong - The Dragon General.
The image would not be out of place in a European or American graphic novel, but here in communist Vietnam, where the comic book industry is still in its infancy, it is highly unusual.
The comic tells the story of a military leader who fought off a Mongol invasion in the 13th Century.
One of its creators, 28-year-old Nguyen Thanh Phong, says he wants to give readers a slice of life in a historical setting, rather than the fantasy or action storylines aimed at children.
"We want something that relates to our life," he said.
More artists like Mr Phong are putting pencil to paper and producing locally made comics.
But it is proving a challenge in a comic book scene that has traditionally been dominated by Japanese manga and is still overwhelmingly seen as targeted towards children.
In South East Asia, "everyone grows up reading Archie, Asterix, Tin Tin and Lao Fu Zi, but the majority don't go on to read other comics after that", said award-winning Singapore-based comic artist Sonny Liew, editor of the first anthology of South East Asian Comic Art,
Liquid City
.
"There's still a tendency to see comics in genre terms, superheroes and comics for kids, rather than as a mature medium," he said.
Most locally produced comics in the region, including Vietnam, are also of lower quality than imports, which can be easily pirated and sold at cheap prices.
"Part of it is an infrastructural issue; the lack of editorial support, or studios where creators can learn their craft," Mr Liew said. "Compared with, say, Japan, where experienced editors and creators can help guide younger ones."
On top of that, Vietnam's comic artists historically have faced "crippling challenges" including war deprivations and rigid Communist Party controls, according to writer John A Lent in
South East Asian Cartoon Art: History, Trends and Problems
.
Although comic art flourished under the US-backed South in the 1960s, reunification under the communist government in 1975 heralded a new era of strict censorship of the arts. The country was also desperately poor.
"Some of them [comic artists] continued after the war but there was no market," said Vietnamese artist and illustrator,
Huu Do Chi
, who has written about the history of comic art in Vietnam.
"Everyone came down to the problem of what to eat, where to live, so… no time for entertainment."
That began to change in the late 1980s after a series of economic reforms opened Vietnam to the world. But the few Vietnamese comics that emerged at this time were quickly eclipsed by the arrival of manga series Doraemon in 1992.
Both Mr Chi and Mr Phong are part of what Mr Phong calls the "manga generation", who grew up on Doraemon.
Mr Chi, who publishes under the pen name But Chi - pencil in Vietnamese - is about to publish a comic art collection in the US, which he plans to release later in Vietnam.
"I don't think people are ready to spend some money to buy an original book in Vietnam yet," he said. But he believes Mr Phong's project will help change things.
Mr Phong and school friend Nguyen Khanh Duong first published the story of Long Than Tuong in a series for a local magazine in 2004, but after 18 editions the publisher axed the series because of financial problems.
This time, Mr Phong is targeting a different audience. He believes people like himself, who grew up with comics, are now ready to read something more mature.
"Ten years ago we aimed for readers aged from maybe 13, 14 onwards, but not older than 20," he said. "But now we want to aim for older readers."
But censorship is still a problem, one to which he is no stranger. In 2011 Mr Phong made international headlines with his illustrated book of Vietnamese slang phrases entitled "Killer with a soft head", which was subsequently banned for its "offensive" language.
Raising money via crowdfunding will avoid the need for a permit - and therefore problems with the censors - but Mr Phong says the team might use a publisher later on to help with distribution.
It seems unlikely that a comic about a patriarchal hero from history will raise eyebrows from authorities, but that depends on what he and his team do with the story. His reputation certainly invites high expectations.
"I think Phong's crowdfunding project will be a very good start for a new era. Now not only in comics but illustrations, picture books, many other kinds of comic art," said artist Huu Do Chi.
"We have very good artists and they will be published in the years to come, even this year. We will have a garden in spring, the flowers are just coming up."
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efb41e54ce596d0ca687a92e497c0811 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27439456 | Indian election: Narendra Modi hails 'landmark' win | Indian election: Narendra Modi hails 'landmark' win
Incoming Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has hailed a "landmark" election victory by his BJP party.
Thanking supporters in his own constituency in his home state of Gujarat, Mr Modi said they had written a new chapter in the country's history.
Results show
the BJP won the biggest victory by any party for 30 years, gaining a majority in parliament and trouncing the outgoing Congress Party.
The controversial leader campaigned on promises to revive the economy.
However, many Indians still have profound concerns over Mr Modi because of claims he did little to stop communal riots in Gujarat in 2002 when he was first minister in the state.
At least 1,000 people died, most of them Muslims.
Mr Modi has always denied the allegations over he was never charged.
With votes still being counted, the BJP has won more than the 272 seats needed for a parliamentary majority.
With its allies, the party could get more than 330 seats.
"India has won, good days are about to come," Mr Modi tweeted as it became clear that the BJP had triumphed.
The tweet became the most retweeted in India's history.
The prime minister-elect told his supporters the victory was no ordinary one.
"In the 60-year history of Indian independence, I have never seen this in the Indian media, what you have done in our country," Mr Modi said, as supporters shouted "Modi, Modi, Modi".
He said he would rule for all Indians.
"Real government doesn't belong to a community. It belongs to the entire country," he said.
"The real government will belong from Kashmir on top to Kanya Kumari [on India's southern tip] - that is a real government."
Several world leaders have congratulated Mr Modi on his victory.
US President Barack Obama phoned the prime minister-elect and said the US "looks forward to working with India to continue to build a strong partnership between our democracies", National Security Adviser Susan Rice wrote on Twitter.
Earlier UK Prime Minister David Cameron spoke to Mr Modi.
He received invitations to Washington and London, despite being persona non grata in both capitals following the 2002 riots in Gujarat.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif commended the BJP's "impressive victory" in the election.
The election result will be a crushing blow to the Congress party, which is led by the Nehru-Gandhi family and has dominated Indian politics since independence.
It is only expected to win 44 seats.
The election reflects voter anger with Congress, which has been mired in serious corruption scandals and whose leadership has been considered ineffective in recent years, analysts say.
Accepting defeat, Congress President Sonia Gandhi said: "We humbly respect the verdict of the people."
Share prices rallied to new highs on BJP promises of economic revival.
More than 500 million people voted in what is the world's biggest exercise in democracy.
Voter turnout in the mammoth nine-phase general election was a record 66.38%, beating the previous 1984 poll record.
India election
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4f72d534826d56005a9b9e0f8d796e0d | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27572726 | Thai coup: Leader Gen Prayuth receives royal endorsement | Thai coup: Leader Gen Prayuth receives royal endorsement
Thailand's military leader has received royal endorsement at a ceremony in the capital, Bangkok, after taking power in a coup last week.
Army chief Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha was formally appointed to run the nation at the army headquarters.
The 86-year-old monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, did not attend the ceremony.
The military seized power in the South East Asian nation last week, saying it planned to return stability to Thailand after months of unrest.
The move followed six months of political deadlock as protesters tried to oust the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. At least 28 people were killed and several hundred injured over the course of the protests.
But the coup - which removed an elected government - has drawn widespread international criticism.
Small anti-coup protests took place in Bangkok over the weekend, despite a military ban on gatherings of more than five people.
Experts have also warned that the coup is unlikely to heal divisions in a nation in which politics have become highly polarised.
Gen Prayuth, dressed in white military uniform, received the royal endorsement on Monday morning.
"To restore peace and order in the country and for sake of unity, the king appointed Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha as head of the National Council of Peace and Order to run the country," the royal command seen by AFP news agency said.
The monarchy is highly respected and royal endorsement is seen as key to legitimising the takeover.
Speaking afterwards, Gen Prayuth said the most important thing was "to keep peace and order in the country''.
Elections would take place as soon as possible, he said, but gave no timeframe. He also said he would have no choice but to use force if protests continued.
The ruling junta is expected to set up a national legislative assembly that will draw up a temporary constitution with a new prime minister.
Since taking power the military has summoned and detained dozens of key political figures, including Ms Yingluck. Journalists and academics are also among those who have been called in.
Jonathan Head, BBC News, Bangkok
No coup in Thailand has succeeded without the blessing of King Bhumibol Adulyadej - there have been 12 during his 64 years on the throne. So this ceremony was very important for General Prayuth - until this morning he had only had an acknowledgement that the king had been informed of his coup.
He is now the official ruler of Thailand - but big questions remain over how he and his generals will run a country whose once fast-growing economy has faltered during seven months of political unrest.
Already there have been small but vocal protests against the coup in Bangkok; there is likely to be stronger opposition in the north and north-east of the country, where support for the ousted government is still high.
The military says it will strictly enforce the ban on demonstrations. Using force against them, though, risks stirring more public anger, but tolerating them might embolden the military's opponents.
Suthep Thaugsuban, who has been leading the protests against the government, has since been released by the military. However, he is still facing charges.
Meanwhile, it was not immediately clear where Ms Yingluck was being held.
Tight controls have also been placed on the media.
The current deadlock dates from 2006, when the military ousted Ms Yingluck's brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, in a coup.
Mr Thaksin and Ms Yingluck have strong support in rural areas, propelling them to successive election victories.
But they are bitterly opposed by many in the middle class and urban elite, who formed the heart of the protest movement that began working to oust Ms Yingluck in November 2013.
|
bf9f74d217a0bf5ec65f695a4c375534 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27654428 | Thailand troops deployed to prevent anti-coup protest | Thailand troops deployed to prevent anti-coup protest
Thousands of police and soldiers have been deployed around the Thai capital, Bangkok, to try to prevent anti-coup protesters from gathering.
Parts of the city centre have been blocked off to traffic, and train stations are closed.
Activists have been using social media to call for a nationwide protest.
The Thai army seized power on 22 May and detained senior politicians for several days, saying stability had to be restored after months of unrest.
Demonstrations against the coup have taken place almost daily in Bangkok, despite a ban by the military authorities on political gatherings of five or more people.
Bangkok's commercial heart was almost deserted on Sunday, after the army sealed it off to stop what was expected to be a large show of defiance, reports the BBC's Jonathan Head in the city.
Deputy police chief Somyot Poompanmoung told Reuters that 5,700 police and soldiers were being sent to areas of the city, including shopping centres where previous rallies have sprung up.
"It's a business centre and we need to protectively avoid any damage if authorities need to break up a gathering," he said.
The coup leaders have repeatedly warned that they will take tough action against anyone opposing their authority.
So far there have been only minor scuffles between troops and protesters, although a number of alleged protest leaders have been arrested, our correspondent says.
Army chief Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha
announced on Friday that elections
would not be held for more than a year, to allow time for political reconciliation and reform.
Thailand's military stepped in after six months of political deadlock as protesters tried to oust the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.
At least 28 people were killed and several hundred injured during the unrest.
Since taking power the military has summoned and detained dozens of politicians, including Ms Yingluck, as well as journalists and academics.
The current deadlock dates from 2006, when the military ousted Ms Yingluck's brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, in a coup.
Both have strong support in rural and northern areas, propelling them to successive election wins.
However, many in the middle class and urban elite, who comprise the heart of the anti-government movement that began in November 2013, oppose them bitterly.
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99c91cdccfc8193b6b305a91c22af47a | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27669393 | Japan begins building Fukushima ice wall | Japan begins building Fukushima ice wall
The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has begun work on a large underground ice wall to isolate toxic water it has produced.
The 1.5km (0.9 mile) wall will be made by inserting 1,550 pipes into the ground. Coolant circulating in the pipes will freeze the surrounding soil.
Some experts have expressed concerns over whether the project will work.
The plant experienced several leaks of radioactive water since being crippled by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
Last week, the Nuclear Regulation Authority agreed that plant operator Tepco could begin construction work on the frozen wall.
The government-funded ice wall is intended to stop nearby groundwater from seeping into the plant and mixing with contaminated water inside.
"We plan to end all the construction work in March 2015 before starting trial operations," a Tepco official said, adding that the ice wall could be operational months after construction.
The 2011 disaster knocked out cooling systems to the nuclear plant's reactors, three of which melted down.
Water is now being pumped in to cool the reactors, but storing the resultant large quantities of radioactive water has proved a challenge for Tepco.
The operator has also struggled to safely store groundwater that has mixed with the radioactive water and become contaminated.
Last month, Tepco began releasing groundwater into the sea after checking its radiation levels.
This is the latest and most ambitious plan to isolate and contain the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Tokyo reports.
Nothing on this scale has ever been tried before, and keeping the ground frozen in an area with summer temperatures close to 40C may be very hard, our correspondent adds.
Some experts, including an American adviser assisting Japan with Fukushima clean-up efforts, have expressed doubts over whether the wall will work.
|
9be79013b67ed4816f43b78ebe304f29 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27761956 | Israel and Australia: New best mates? | Israel and Australia: New best mates?
Australia has a lot of best friends. Sometimes it's
Japan
. Sometimes it's
Indonesia
. Sometimes it's
China
.
Now, though, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thinks he might have found a new best mate Down Under.
After a quick call to congratulate the new President of Egypt Abdul Fattah al-Sisi on his election victory, which many regard as far from democratic, Mr Netanyahu singled out Australia for high praise at his weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday.
It came after Australia last week stepped into the always-combustible territory of Middle Eastern linguistics, and seemingly changed its position regarding whether East Jerusalem is "occupied".
Last week the Australian Attorney General George Brandis
issued a statement
saying: "The description of East Jerusalem as 'Occupied East Jerusalem' is a term freighted with pejorative implications which is neither appropriate nor useful."
The statement was made in consultation with the Australian Foreign Ministry, after Mr Brandis had been challenged in parliament over his failure to refer to East Jerusalem as occupied.
Mr Netanyahu was
quick to offer his appreciation
of Australia saying the remarks had taken "courage" and calling it "refreshing given the chorus of hypocrisy and ignorance".
The Israeli Prime Minister's spokespeople
took to the twittersphere
to reiterate the thank you message.
Others though were not best pleased.
The Palestinian Authority reportedly summoned Australia's representative to explain the change in position.
The Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al Maliki
called it
a "radical change in Australia's position on Palestine".
Independent Australian Senator Nick Xenophon said it was "an extraordinary and reckless departure from the bipartisan approach of the last 47 years".
"Even Israel's strongest ally, the United States, does not hold this position," he added.
Jerusalem is at the heart of the Middle East's most intractable conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
The Old City in East Jerusalem contains some of the holiest sites of Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
Israel captured East Jerusalem along with Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula during the 1967 Six Day Arab Israeli war.
East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel taking full control.
The Sinai was returned to Egypt under a piece deal signed in 1979.
Almost the entire international community, including the United States, does not recognise Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem
The United Nations and the International Court of Justice regard East Jerusalem as occupied territory.
President Obama
has called for
the ending of "the occupation, which began in 1967". Although in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly he did not specify if he was referring to East Jerusalem.
The United States, European Union and the United Nations all believe a future Palestinian state should be based around the pre-1967 borders.
The Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be their future capital.
Israel regards a "United Jerusalem" as its capital although most countries do not accept this and have their embassies based in Tel Aviv.
Australia has not said whether it will move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
So Australia is seemingly going out on a limb.
The country has long been regarded as a strong supporter of Israel.
Along with Israel, Australia was one of only 14 out of 194 UN members to oppose Palestine becoming a member of Unesco, the United Nations education, and scientific and cultural organisation in 2011.
Australia abstained from the vote in 2012 that saw Palestine become a "non-member observer state". Forty other UN members abstained. 138 voted in favour and 9 voted against.
Australia's support for Israel is contentious here.
The former Labor Foreign Minister Bob Carr has
recently said
that extreme right-wing Israeli lobbyists here had an extraordinary influence on Australian policy in the Middle East under former Prime Minister Julia Gillard that he regarded as "very unhealthy."
Mr Carr's comments were strongly criticised by the Israeli government and some of the country's supporters.
Why Australia has chosen now to change its position is not clear.
It's possible Mr Brandis was speaking off the cuff or out of turn, but the clarifying statement suggests not.
The country has a relatively small Jewish population of about 100,000 (0.4% of the total).
The Arab population is much larger: roughly 300,000 people, mostly of Lebanese origin, but including around 7,000 Palestinians.
Israel's critics will say the change on policy shows the influence of the lobby group Mr Carr talked about.
The US Secretary of State John Kerry said
continued expansion of Jewish settlements
in East Jerusalem and the West Bank was one of the primary reasons for the collapse of recent peace talks.
Israel has been warned it is currently facing increasing international isolation.
That's why the Israeli government will value the fact that it still has a friend in Australia.
|
2876e46ee8d14b4d68757cbfe28e508e | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27828432 | How rape and violence returned India to the headlines | How rape and violence returned India to the headlines
"We're doing all we can," protested the police officer, pinching his nose uncomfortably as he leaned closer to the crowd.
But sitting back with their arms folded, his audience of men and women from the village of Rajpur Milakh in Uttar Pradesh didn't seem convinced.
That morning, the teenage daughter of one of the families listening had been found hanging from a tree, and her brother claimed she had been raped.
It's the latest in a string of similar incidents that have provoked both outrage and renewed soul-searching over the prevalence of violence against women in India.
First came the gruesome news of two teenage girls being
found hanging from a mango tree
, after allegedly being gang raped.
Then a woman in her 40s was found hanging elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh. Several other alleged gang rapes have been reported in the state in the same period.
India is again being battered by negative headlines, just 18 months after nationwide protests over the gang rape and murder of a Delhi student, which badly dented its international image and had a knock-on effect on tourist numbers.
The new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is promising a "zero tolerance" approach to crimes against women - but many Indians are asking whether their country has a particular problem with violence against women.
India hardly looks unique though, at a time when campaigners have launched a global campaign against rape as a weapon of war.
And some say the current media focus on crimes against women here gives a distorted picture.
That's been the defensive line of the authorities in Uttar Pradesh, who have been accused of allowing law and order to collapse.
The state's beleaguered chief minister Akhilesh Yadav attracted ridicule though when he hit back at female journalists by saying: "You're safe aren't you."
Critics of the media have also seized on questions that have emerged over some recent horror stories.
But there's no escaping the basic fact that several women have been found hanged - and the alternative explanations look just as bad.
In the most recent case in Rajpur Mikhal, police are investigating the possibility that it was an "honour killing", and not a rape as her brother initially claimed.
He is now a potential suspect, according to the Indian media.
Fellow villagers gave the BBC a similar account, saying she had been punished for transgressing social codes by allegedly being seen with a man from another caste.
Despite being outlawed long ago, honour killings are still common - especially in deprived states like Uttar Pradesh, where caste hierarchies remain strong.
And caste is often a factor in sexual violence, argues human rights lawyer Vrinda Grover, with higher-caste men targeting women from lower castes.
"People don't want to talk about it because caste is supposed to be receding as an issue," she says.
Part of the answer, she adds, is better enforcement of the law, to end what she calls a "culture of impunity" - but also for politicians to take a tougher line on sexual violence.
But instead, they often present a far more discordant message.
There is almost a script now to each new horrific revelation. First come the details, then the outrage from campaigners - and then a pushback from some political figures, which in effect minimise the crime.
"Boys will be boys, they make mistakes" said Mulayam Singh Yadav, leader of the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh and the father of the chief minister, i
n an election speech criticising tougher penalties on rape.
Others have blamed women for sexual attacks, criticising them for wearing allegedly provocative clothing.
At the moment, it is the vast state of Uttar Pradesh - home to some 200 million people - that is feeling the pressure most.
People in Rajpur Mikhal said they were surprised to see the police making the effort to talk to them, even if they were unconvinced by their message.
But the incidence of rape and other sexual crimes is actually higher in other states, according to government figures.
"Violence against women is rampant across India," says Ms Grover.
A recent UN inquiry echoed that, saying the problem was "systematic". The government angrily dismissed the
report as "simplistic"
.
Indian officials often express frustration that rape has come to dominate the country's international image, arguing that other countries' record is just as bad, if not worse.
But if more women are found hanged, the pressure will only grow.
|
fd5f62068583cb5f5b7ae7f3533e5907 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27976775 | Dismay in Australia as journalists are jailed in Egypt | Dismay in Australia as journalists are jailed in Egypt
In Australia, the jail sentences handed down to al-Jazeera's journalists have been greeted with shock and dismay.
For his parents Juris and Lois in Queensland, their six-month nightmare continues.
Peter Greste has been one of Australia's most decorated and high-profile foreign correspondents.
Along with two colleagues he now faces many years in jail. The three men have been found guilty by an Egyptian court of spreading false news and supporting the banned Muslim Brotherhood Islamist group.
It's a blow to the Australian government who had lobbied hard on Peter Greste's behalf.
Their pleas and pressure, as well as those of just about everyone else, appear to have fallen on deaf ears.
"We are deeply shocked and dismayed," said Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, adding that she was "appalled by the severity" of the sentences.
It's a far cry from the relative confidence the Prime Minister Tony Abbott had shown earlier when talking about the outcome.
The government here will now have to decide what to do next.
The hope will be that the verdict in Egypt will set up the country's new President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi to step in and issue a pardon.
But Ms Bishop said she understood that before any pardon could be issued, a full appeal process would have to be gone through.
She said she would be urging the Egyptian president to act sooner than that.
Thousands of people have been detained without fair trial in Egypt since the new government came to power.
Australia's journalistic community have been especially shocked by the verdict.
ABC America's correspondent Hamish Macdonald, an Australian native, tweeted: "Reason journalists feel so strongly about #AJTrial in Egypt is we all know this could be any one of us."
Ms Bishop said Peter Greste had been in "the wrong place at the wrong time".
In fact he was in the right place, at the right time, doing his job, covering an important story.
|
1c1719164c4d8e7ecce623c4bdc4c427 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-28086002 | Japan cabinet approves landmark military change | Japan cabinet approves landmark military change
Japan's cabinet has approved a landmark change in security policy, paving the way for its military to fight overseas.
Under its constitution, Japan is barred from using force to resolve conflicts except in cases of self-defence.
But a reinterpretation of the law will now allow "collective self-defence" - using force to defend allies under attack.
PM Shinzo Abe has been pushing hard for the move, arguing Japan needs to adapt to a changing security environment.
"No matter what the circumstances, I will protect Japanese people's lives and peaceful existence," he told journalists after the change was approved.
The decision must be passed by parliament, which the ruling bloc controls. But by reinterpreting rather than revising the constitution, Mr Abe avoids the need for a public referendum.
The US - with whom Japan has a decades-old security alliance - will welcome the move, but it will anger China, with whom Japan's ties are already very strained.
The decision is also highly controversial in a nation where post-war pacifist identify is firmly entrenched.
On Sunday a man set himself on fire in central Tokyo to protest against the change.
Mr Abe first endorsed the move in May, after a panel of his advisers released a report recommending changes to defence laws.
Japan adopted its pacifist constitution after its surrender in World War Two. Since then, its troops have not engaged in combat, although small numbers have taken part in UN peace-keeping operations.
It has long held the view that under international law, it has the right to collective self-defence, but - until today - said it could not exercise that right because of constitutional limits.
Mr Abe emphasised that the change would not lead to involvement in foreign wars.
"There is a misunderstanding that Japan will be involved in war in an effort to defend a foreign country, but this is out of the question," he told the press conference.
"It will be strictly a defensive measure to defend our people. We will not resort to the use of force in order to defend foreign forces."
On Monday, thousands of people joined a protest in Tokyo to oppose the change.
Critics of Mr Abe fear that this move is the first step to a more permanent revision or removal of the war-renouncing Article 9 of the constitution.
"I thought that if we don't stop the Abe government now then it won't be possible to recover," Etsuo Nakashima, 32, told Reuters news agency.
But others believe that the constitution is a post-war relic imposed on Japan by the US that restricts it from engaging in the normal activities of a modern nation.
China - with whom Japan is currently engaged in a bitter territorial dispute - says it opposes the change, accusing Japan of "remilitarising" under Mr Abe.
Foreign Ministry spokesman
Hong Lei said
that the new policy "raises doubts about Japan's approach to peaceful development", and accused Japan of "hyping the China threat".
"We urge Japan to sincerely respect the rightful concerns of neighbouring Asian countries, diligently solve any related issues, and not affect China's rights and the stability of the region," he said.
South Korea has also raised objections, saying it will "not tolerate" the move which it said was made without South Korea's agreement.
The foreign ministry also urged Japan to ensure regional peace and stability.
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