NewsTrust - Asia - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

Japanese Voters Oust Conservative Party, PM-Elect Hatoyama Critical of US "Market Fundamentalism"

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Steven Clemons, Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous - Sep. 01 (News Report) - In Japan, voters have ousted the right-leaning Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, after fifty-five years of nearly uninterrupted governance. In elections on Sunday, the populist Democratic Party of Japan captured a record 308 of the 480 seats in the lower house of parliament. Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama, who is expected to become Japan’s new prime minister, has questioned the role of the 50,000 American troops deployed throughout Japan and, in a recent New York Times op-ed, blamed the global financial meltdown in part on what he called US “market fundamentalism.”

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Campers for Peace

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

flypmedia.com - By Tara Kyle - Jul. 29 (Special Report) - A summer camp famous for bringing Israeli and Palestinian teens together takes on the conflicts of South Asia.

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The new old

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

himalmag.com - By Aditya Adhikari - Jul. 27 (News Report) - The 4 May resignation of Pushpa Kamal Dahal (‘Prachanda’) from the prime-ministership ushered in a period of high spirits in Nepal, even jubilation, among the Nepali Congress, the centrist Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) and other political forces in Nepal opposing the Maoists. These parties (the Congress in particular) had entered a period of despondency and demoralisation following their poor showings at the Constituent Assembly elections in April 2008. During the nine months the Maoists were in government, this had developed into a frustrated helplessness bordering on rage.

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Web crackdowns spread

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By David L. Stern - Jul. 21 (News Report) - With less than six months until it takes over the chairmanship of one of Europe’s flagship human rights organizations, Kazakhstan has thumbed its nose to Western governments and introduced a draconian internet law.

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North Korea Food Aid Slashed | OneWorld.net (U.S.)

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

OneWorld - Jul. 08 (News Report) - Due to a lack of funds, the United Nations is cutting back an emergency food aid program in North Korea, where an estimated 9 million people may go hungry due to cereal shortages this year.

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Cambodia's Fearless Heroine

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Gail Sheehy - Jun. 28 (Special Report) - The Prime Minister calls her a “hustler” and a “gangster,” but Mo Sochua is a savior of women sold into sex slavery—and willing to go to prison if that’s what it takes to help them. The smile of Mo Sochua is gentle. It’s the sweet Cambodian smile, as deceptive as her birth country. The Cambodia of the headlines is a great success story: “Democracy Sprung from Bones of the Killing Fields,” or “Five Top Khmer Rouge Leaders on Trial.” But scratch the surface, says Sochua, the most outspoken human rights activist in the Parliament, and you will see Cambodia “fast regressing to a soft dictatorship.”

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Realigning Pakistan's Security Forces

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Jayshree Bajoria - Jun. 18 (News Analysis) - Growing militancy inside Pakistan has spotlighted the inability of the country's security forces to fight domestic insurgency. Militants have been expanding their reach: Large swaths of territory in northwestern Pakistan are out of government control; extremist groups across the country are working together; and suicide bombings frequently rock major cities like Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad. In May, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani described the fight against terrorism (AP) as a "war of the country's survival." The United States sees Pakistani cooperation to defeating its militants as crucial to winning the war in neighboring Afghanistan. The Obama administration, through its Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, is now focused on strengthening Pakistan's counterinsurgency capabilities, and it is pushing for increased assistance for equipment and training for Pakistani forces. But some analysts say Pakistani authorities, especially in the military, don't see the need to convert to a counterinsurgency force and continue to view India as the country's primary threat. Questions of continuing links between some militant groups and Pakistan's security forces--the army, the Frontier Corps, and the military intelligence agency known as the ISI--remain.

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BBC - Newsnight: Susan Watts: No noble gas from North Korea blast

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

bbc.co.uk - By Susan Watts - Jun. 11 (News Report) - But there was one thing everybody in the room wanted to know. Had the network of sensors picked up radionuclides from the North Korean explosion two weeks ago? Seismologists here today say they are comfortable that explosion was a nuclear test, but detecting radionuclide evidence in the form of radioactive gas is the "smoking gun". And the big news here is that they have not found that signal.

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Reporters' families seek mercy, N.Korea makes threats

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

news.asiaone.com - Jun. 09 (News Report) - Relatives of two U.S. journalists sentenced to 12 years hard labor in North Korea called on the reclusive state to show compassion, while Pyongyang threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend itself.

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Indonesia: Jailed For Complaining

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Carolina Rumuat - May. 31 (News Report) - The case of Prita Mulyasari, a mother of two, is currently the hot topic among Indonesian bloggers. She wrote an online complaint letter [id] against a private hospital in Tangerang, one of Jakarta's suburban areas, and now she is being charged for violating chapter 27 verse 3 of the Information and Electronic Transaction Law (UU ITE) [id]. Prita shared her experience of being maltreated by the hospital on a mailing-list. The hospital took legal action against her. That online complaint may result into six years jail term and maximum fine of 1 billion Rupiah (nearly US$ 98,000).

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Crisis Guide: The Korean Peninsula

Tue, 26 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - May. 26 (Special Report) - The Korean crisis has drawn the region into ongoing multilateral discussions—Six-Party Talks—and tensions over how to handle the Kim Jong-Il regime. In 2003, the nations represented here began holding the Six-Party Talks with the goal of controlling North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. But abrupt policy shifts by the United States, disagreements among the six countries involved, and most of all North Korea's provocative conduct have made progress toward an agreement difficult to sustain.

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North Korean blast smaller than thought

Tue, 26 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

news.asiaone.com - May. 26 (News Report) - The yield is about four kilotonnes equivalent of TNT, with an uncertainty range from three to eight kilotonnes," Martin Kalinowski, a professor at the Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker Centre for Science and Peace Research (ZNF), at the University of Hamburg, told AFP.

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Ecologists: Draining, Burning Peat Bogs In SE Asia Puts More Greenhouse Gas Emissions In Air Than Fossil Fuel Emissions From Major Polluting Countries

Fri, 22 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

allheadlinenews.com - By Linda Young - May. 22 (Special Report) - Draining peat bogs to burn the matter for fuel or to create farms and plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei is not only harming the environment by contributing to global warming, but the practice poses a threat to water resources as well, experts say. Dutch non-profit Wetlands International estimates CO2 emissions from drained or burned Indonesian peatlands at about two billion tons annually. Not only is that equal to about 10 percent of the emissions being spewed out from burning coal, oil and natural gas, but drained or burned Malaysian peat bogs are putting out a similar amount of CO2 as well.

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Biotech firms outsource to Asia

Mon, 18 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Tom Abate - May. 18 (Special Report) - The global financial crisis has hurt biotechnology, an industry in which it can take a billion dollars and 10 years to create a marketable medicine. But a survey of worldwide industry trends suggests that the funding shortage hitting North American and European market leaders could benefit emerging biotech clusters in Singapore, India and China.

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Scorched Earth

Mon, 18 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Business Mirror - By Imelda V. Abaño - May. 18 (Special Report) - People in the coastal communities in the Philippines, for instance, have no concept of global warming—but are faced with repeated floods, storms and rising waters that threaten their daily lives. How much does the average Filipino know about climate change? The story of people in the coastal communities gives an indication. The words “climate change” are unheard of to many people in coastal communities—most of them having lived without electricity or television, and can’t read. “It gets warmer every year, there are more storms and the monsoon doesn’t come on time,” observes 39-year-old Joseph Lalata, a fisherman from the coastal community of Barangay Bolasi in San Fabian, Pangasinan. “I don’t know what is happening but the fish catch are dwindling and the water level in front of the houses in our village rises a little every year.”

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Can Japanese scientists save a species, and that tasty sashimi on your plate?

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Justin McCurry - Apr. 27 (News Report) - TOKYO — The next time you dine at a Japanese restaurant, try to steer clear of the tuna sashimi. If you're unable to resist the temptation — and, let's face it how many of us can? — make sure you savor every last slice. In just a few years, it may have disappeared from the menu for good. While Japan is often cast as the villain of the piece for its voracious consumption of bluefin, it may also offer the key to the species’ survival, thanks to a team of researchers working out of a laboratory in Tokyo.

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Summit mess sets back Asian fight vs crisis

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Inquirer.net - By Martin Abbugao - Apr. 12 (News Report) - The dramatic cancellation of an Asian summit after rampaging Thai protesters stormed the venue has set back a regional effort to tackle the global economic crisis, analysts said. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was to have hosted two days of talks with the leaders of China, Japan, South Korea and other allies in the biggest international gathering since the G20 summit in London this month. But the 16-nation meeting was aborted Saturday when anti-government protesters broke through cordons of troops and riot police -- forcing presidents, prime ministers and a monarch to be evacuated by helicopter from the rooftop.

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Mining Exploration in Vietnam: China's New Strategy of Expansionism

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New America Media - By Thi Lam - Apr. 12 (News Analysis) - In November 2007, Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung reportedly approved China's large-scale project to mine aluminum ore, or bauxite, in the Central Highlands in exchange for financial aid. The decision of the communist party triggered a torrent of criticisms and objections from scientists, intellectuals, military and religious leaders.

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Welcome to Pipelineistan

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Pepe Escobar - Mar. 26 (Special Report) - The SCO has expanded its aims and scope since 2001. Today, Iran, India, and Pakistan enjoy "observer status" in an organization that increasingly aims to control and protect not just regional energy supplies, but Pipelineistan in every direction. This is, of course, the role the Washington ruling elite would like NATO to play across Eurasia. Given that Russia and China expect the SCO to play a similar role across Asia, clashes of various sorts are inevitable.

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Thailand: The war you've never heard of

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Patrick Winn - Mar. 13 (Special Report) - Each week in Thailand’s deep south, new blood is spilled in the name of a forgotten Muslim sultanate. This guerilla war seems worlds away from Bangkok and Thailand’s neon-soaked coastal playgrounds. But it has ground Thailand’s military to a halt.

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McDreaming in Thailand

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

GlobalPost - By Patrick Winn - Feb. 25 (News Analysis) - How much would you pay to flip burgers and bag fries in the US? Each summer, well-heeled Bangkok college students seeking “foreign work experience” pay agencies thousands for fast food jobs in suburban America.

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From Burma's Mountains to Carolina's Piedmont

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Project Report - By Eileen Mignoni - Jan. 07 (Special Report) - The Karen are an ethnic minority group from Myanmar. The Karen, and much of the world, know their homeland as Burma. Beginning in 1984, the military dictatorship has been systematically eradicating the Karen minority. Some of the Karen have bonded together into the Karen National Union, with a military branch called the Karen National Liberation Army dedicated to battling Myanmar's military and fighting for an independent Karen state.

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Undocumented Asian Students Face Stigma

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New America Media - By Beleza Chan - Oct. 14 (Special Report) - A recent report by the University of California Office of the President revealed that 40 to 44 percent of undocumented students in the UC system are Asian. This is definitely not “a Mexican thing,” which is how one undocumented student characterized the Asian community’s dismissive views towards undocumented immigration.

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Burma: Suu Kyi shows no to UN envoy

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Op Ed News - By Ashin Mettacara - Aug. 23 (News Report) - Aung San Suu Kyi shows no to UN envoy

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South Asia Awaits Another Secret War

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By J. Sri Raman - Jul. 19 (Special Report) - The Kabul blast of July 7, which targeted India's embassy and took a heavy toll of human lives, may trigger yet another secret South Asian war.

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