X-MAS BAN IN CHINA SCHOOLS, WARNS OVER WESTERN CULTURE
A Chinese city has banned schools from holding Christmas
events, state media reported on Thursday, highlighting official suspicions
about the increasingly popular festival because of its foreign origins.
China's Christian population, currently estimated at around 60 million, is rapidly growing and Christmas is increasingly marked in the country ruled by the officially atheist Communist Party.
But the government education bureau in Wenzhou, an eastern
Chinese coastal city sometimes called "China's Jerusalem" because of
its large Christian population, banned schools from holding
"Christmas-related" events, the Global Times reported.
Local officials "hope schools can pay more attention to Chinese traditional festivals instead of Western traditions", said the tabloid, which has close ties to the Communist Party.
The ban came as a university in central China required students to watch a documentary
about Chinese sage Confucius instead of
celebrating Christmas.
Interest in Christmas has grown in China as an occasion for shopping, with marketeers using everything from saxophones and Smurfs to steam trains to get consumers to open their wallets.
But authorities in Wenzhou this year launched a demolition campaign aimed at local churches, with more than 400 forced to remove visible crosses and some completely destroyed.
China's Communist party periodically issues broadsides
against "Western cultural infiltration" amid growing consumption of
foreign movies, music and other goods.
China's Christian population, currently estimated at around 60 million, is rapidly growing and Christmas is increasingly marked in the country ruled by the officially atheist Communist Party.
But the government education bureau in Wenzhou, an eastern
Chinese coastal city sometimes called "China's Jerusalem" because of
its large Christian population, banned schools from holding
"Christmas-related" events, the Global Times reported.Local officials "hope schools can pay more attention to Chinese traditional festivals instead of Western traditions", said the tabloid, which has close ties to the Communist Party.
The ban came as a university in central China required students to watch a documentary
about Chinese sage Confucius instead of
celebrating Christmas. Interest in Christmas has grown in China as an occasion for shopping, with marketeers using everything from saxophones and Smurfs to steam trains to get consumers to open their wallets.
But authorities in Wenzhou this year launched a demolition campaign aimed at local churches, with more than 400 forced to remove visible crosses and some completely destroyed.
- "Be good sons and daughters of your country, stand against kitsch Western holidays," a banner on the campus of Northwest University in the ancient city of Xi'an said, according to photographs posted online.
- "Resist the expansion of Western culture," read another.
- A university spokesman told the state-run Guangming Daily that the school appealed to the students to pay more attention to Chinese traditional culture, and not to "idolise foreign festivals".
- The newspaper added: "Each year Christmas brings debate, with one side saying that the festival can bring a lot of new fun things, and another side saying that we should not fawn over foreign things and overlook Chinese traditional festivals."
China's Communist party periodically issues broadsides
against "Western cultural infiltration" amid growing consumption of
foreign movies, music and other goods.
The microblog of the ruling party mouthpiece, the People's
daily, displayed pictures of around 10 university students in the central
province of Hunan holding an anti-Christmas street protest.
"Resist Christmas," read banners held up by the
students, who wore traditional Chinese outfits. "Chinese people should not
celebrate
foreign festivals."
Source: AFP
60 FOREIGN TOURISTS STRANDED BY FLOODS IN MALAYSIA NATIONAL PARK
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KUALA LUMPUR - 60 foreign tourists are among almost
100 people stranded at a resort in a Malaysian national park lashed by its
heaviest rainfall in more than four decades, staff said on Wednesday, and
authorities are sending boats and a helicopter to rescue them.About 84 guests, including travellers from Canada, Britain, Australia and Romania, and 10 staff members at the Mutiara Taman Negara Resort, in the East Coast state of Pahang, were marooned after riverbanks overflowed, a resort official told Reuters.
The local fire and rescue department was sending boats and
looking for a safe spot for a helicopter to land, he said.The park, a popular ecotourism destination spanning 434,300 hectares (1,075,000 acres) of tropical rainforest, has recorded its highest rainfall since 1971, following major floods on the country's east coast, state news agency Bernama said.
Residents were warned to avoid coastal areas and river mouths as tides were expected to reach their peak over the next two nights, Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times said.
Eastern peninsular Malaysia is regularly hit by flooding during the annual Northeast Monsoon. This year nearly 60,000 people have been evacuated due to the floods, mostly from the east coast, according to the latest figures.
Source: Bernama.
BANGLADESH EX-MINISTER SENTENCE TO HANG
DHAKA, Bangladesh - A former government minister will be
hang on Tuesday (today) by Bangladesh’s war crimes court for rape and genocide
during the 1971 independence struggle against Pakistan.
Syed Mohammad Kaiser became the 15th person to be convicted
of atrocities by the International Crimes Tribunal, which found him guilty of
heading a militia that rounded up and killed some 150 people in the nine-month
conflict.
The 73-year-old, who uses a wheelchair, did not react as the
judge read out the verdict and said he would be “hanged by the neck until his
death”.Lawyers for Kaiser, a former minister with the Jatiya Party which forms part of Bangladesh’s ruling coalition, have rejected the charges and say they will appeal.
The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina created the International Crimes Tribunal, a domestic court, in 2010.
- It has mostly focused on the trials of the leaders of the largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, although a former minister of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party has also been sentenced to hang.
- Prosecutors said Kaiser had raised a pro-Pakistani militia that carried out a series of murders, rapes and looting.
Judge Obaidul Hassan said the prosecution proved “beyond
reasonable doubt” that Kaiser had established the militia, which created a
“reign of terror”. Prosecutor Mohammad Ali told AFP that Kaiser led his militia
and Pakistani forces to attack 22 villages in the Brahmanbaria area
near the border with India on November 15, 1971,“At least 108 unarmed Hindu civilians were killed. Scores of their houses were looted and set on fire,” he said.
Source: AFP
MALAYSIA AND CHINA HOLD FIRST EVER JOINT MILITARY EXERCISE
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - The Malaysian Armed Forces and
China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) began their first-ever bilateral
military exercise yesterday to mark 40 years of diplomatic relations between
the two countries. The joint exercises will develop into something that is more current. Basically it will be non-war related operations.
The five-day tabletop exercise at the Armed Forces' Joint Warfare Centre (Pesama) saw 20 officers from Malaysia combining their expertise with PLA's 21-men delegation to develop a common framework for humanitarian and disaster relief operations.
The exercise, opened by Armed Forces chief Jen Tan Sri
Zulkifeli Mohd Zin, will be the start of many joint drills that is expected to
culminate in a field tactical exercise next year. According to Zulkifeli the main objective is to enhance cooperation between the two armed forces, especially in disaster relief operations, and to a certain extent, on counter-hijacking in the open seas.
- The PLA team was led by Operations Department deputy director-general, Senior Captain (Navy) Jiang Ke.
- Senior Capt Jiang added that the tabletop exercise was a historic moment for both militaries as it symbolises the expansion of Malaysia and China's defence cooperation.
Source: Agency
LIFE INSIDE BUCHAREST ROMANIA’S UNDERGROUND TUNNELS
Beneath the streets of the capital city, an entire
generation of children who stubbornly stay beyond the reach of society and call the sewer system home.They live amid lice, fleas and used drug syringes scattered on the floor.
Most of them have are HIV-positive, and many have Tuberculosis and hepatitis.
All this despite the government's offers of rehab.
Source: Agency
MALAYSIA’S WILDLIFE LOSES BATTLE AGAINST EXTINCTION
From 'microjewel' snails to the magnificent Tok Belang, the
past year marks another sad chapter in the tale of our country's vanishing
biodiversity.Among the many subplots of humanity's great symphonic rise to power and domination here on Earth is the pathetic wheeze that represents the depletion of the planet's biodiversity.
While extinction of species is more or less expected in the
grand narrative of evolution, there's something truly disturbing about the natural
world's recent decline.As revealed in Elizabeth Kolbert's latest book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, humanity has become the biggest driver of what some scientists are calling the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid.
- It's the first time in Earth's history that a single organism has managed to overwhelm the ecology to such a degree that we're not just making it hostile to other creatures but also ourselves.
'Microjewels'
This mass extinction was brought close to home when the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List - a list that
tracks threatened species across the planet - was updated this year.
In its evaluation of 76,199 species, which represents only about 4 per cent of 1.8 million species known to science, it's deemed that 2,413 are under threat. Meanwhile, 28 were added to the list of extinct species.
Sadly, a tiny, rare snail named Plectostoma sciaphilum that was endemic to Malaysia was among the 28.
Part of a family of snails that scientists have called "microjewels" for their delicately formed shells and minute size, Plectosoma sciaphilum used to live on the side of Bukit Pancing, a 300m limestone hill in Pahang.
The snail apparently found its ecological niche on the hill, living and evolving there in relative isolation for millennia.
Then, between 2003 and 2007, YTL Cement arrived with TNT and excavators and levelled the entire hill. Since the snail can be found nowhere else but on Bukit Pancing - the hill is now a lake - it's assumed that, like the dodo and the West African black rhino, Plectostoma sciaphilum is gone forever.
The fight is now on to save fellow snail Charopa lafargei, which can be found only on Gunung Kanthan in Perak, currently being quarried by Lafarge.
Despite pleas from environmental groups to save the limestone hill - it's also home to a trapdoor spider, Liphistius kanthan, also found nowhere else - half of it is already gone.
The snails' plight brings up an important point about our knowledge of species under threat. Most of the time we don't even know that they're there.
A lot of animals look alike at first glance, but DNA testing reveals them to be distinct species or sub-species unique to a specific area. And they're also not easy to count.
In its evaluation of 76,199 species, which represents only about 4 per cent of 1.8 million species known to science, it's deemed that 2,413 are under threat. Meanwhile, 28 were added to the list of extinct species.
Sadly, a tiny, rare snail named Plectostoma sciaphilum that was endemic to Malaysia was among the 28.
Part of a family of snails that scientists have called "microjewels" for their delicately formed shells and minute size, Plectosoma sciaphilum used to live on the side of Bukit Pancing, a 300m limestone hill in Pahang.
The snail apparently found its ecological niche on the hill, living and evolving there in relative isolation for millennia.
Then, between 2003 and 2007, YTL Cement arrived with TNT and excavators and levelled the entire hill. Since the snail can be found nowhere else but on Bukit Pancing - the hill is now a lake - it's assumed that, like the dodo and the West African black rhino, Plectostoma sciaphilum is gone forever.
The fight is now on to save fellow snail Charopa lafargei, which can be found only on Gunung Kanthan in Perak, currently being quarried by Lafarge.
Despite pleas from environmental groups to save the limestone hill - it's also home to a trapdoor spider, Liphistius kanthan, also found nowhere else - half of it is already gone.
The snails' plight brings up an important point about our knowledge of species under threat. Most of the time we don't even know that they're there.
A lot of animals look alike at first glance, but DNA testing reveals them to be distinct species or sub-species unique to a specific area. And they're also not easy to count.
Tok Belang and Sang Kancil
Ask any Malaysian what the national animal is and most will
tell you - correctly - that it's the Malayan tiger, the smallest of the six
remaining sub-species of one of the world's most beautiful cats and completely endemic
to the Malay Peninsula.
And yet when news came out in September that the Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris jacksoni) had drastically dropped in numbers - from an estimated 500 in 2007, to current estimates of between 250 and 340 individuals, down from an estimated 3,000 in the 1950s - hardly anyone seem surprised.
And yet when news came out in September that the Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris jacksoni) had drastically dropped in numbers - from an estimated 500 in 2007, to current estimates of between 250 and 340 individuals, down from an estimated 3,000 in the 1950s - hardly anyone seem surprised.
Source: AsiaOne, The Star
EBOLA DEATH TOLL CLIMBS TO 7,373
GENEVA - More than 7,370 people have now died from the Ebola
virus, almost all of them in west Africa, the World Health Organization said
Saturday.The UN health agency reported that as of December 16, there had been 19,031 cases of infection from the deadly virus in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, of which 7,373 people had died.
The death toll in other countries remained the same: six in Mali, one in the United States, and eight in Nigeria.
Spain and Senegal, which have both been declared free from Ebola, meanwhile counted one case each, but no deaths.
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone, which overtook Liberia as the nation with the
most infections, counted 8,759 cases and 2,477 deaths on December 16.
The previous toll stood at 8,356 cases and 2,085 deaths.
LiberiaThe previous toll stood at 8,356 cases and 2,085 deaths.
Liberia, long the hardest-hit country, has meanwhile seen a
clear decrease in transmission over the past month.
The latest WHO tally saw the country with 7,819 cases and 3,346 deaths, up from the 7,797 infections and 3,290 deaths recorded in the previous update.
The latest WHO tally saw the country with 7,819 cases and 3,346 deaths, up from the 7,797 infections and 3,290 deaths recorded in the previous update.
Guinea
In Guinea, where the outbreak started a year ago, 2,453
Ebola cases and 1,550 deaths were recorded as of December 16.
The previous totals showed the country with 2,416 Ebola cases and 1,525 deaths.
The previous totals showed the country with 2,416 Ebola cases and 1,525 deaths.
Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses known to man, is spread
only through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person
showing symptoms such as fever or vomiting.People caring for the sick or handling the bodies of people infected Ebola are especially exposed.
WHO’s latest figures show a total of 649 healthcare workers were known to have contracted the virus, and 365 of them had died.
Source: AFP.
MALAYSIAN KELANTAN STATE FLOODS WORST IN DECADE
KOTA BARU, Kelantan, Malaysia - Authorities said the floods
in Kelantan are the worst of the past decade after rain fell continuously for
more than 12 hours Saturday, swelling the number of flood victims at relief
centres state-wide to almost 20,000.
"I was told this is the worst flood season over a ten
year period. Luckily the authorities are ready to serve the 20,000 people
seeking refuge at the relief centers" said Local Government, Housing,
Health and 
Environment Committee chairman Datuk Abdul Fattah Mahmood.
Environment Committee chairman Datuk Abdul Fattah Mahmood.
The official Kelantan flood portal at
ebanjir.kelantan.gov.my reported that Pasir Mas, especially Rantau Panjang
town, had been crippled by floods since Wednesday.
A total of 11,184 people from 3,831 families have taken
refuge at 37 relief centres as at 3pm on Saturday, up by more than 3,000 people
from the day before.
Abdul Fattah said although there were 4,336 people from the
various agencies on the ground assisting flood victims, there were a few
grouses regarding the supply of food and other amenities.
He added that the authorities were doing their best to help
the victims.
"There is enough food for flood victims but there have
been complaints where food was slow to reach the victims.
- "I have not seen so many evacuees at centres before, and food had to be airlifted to and dropped off at inaccessible areas. This situation is far from over as there will be continuous rain next week," he said.
Source: AsiaOne
AFGHAN CIVILIAN CASUALTIES ‘HIT RECORD HIGH’
Civilian casualties in Afghanistan have hit a record high this year, a UN report has said, highlighting worsening violence as US-led troops leave after more than a decade of fighting the Taliban.
Casualties jumped 19 percent by the end of November compared to the year before, with 3,188 civilians killed and 6,429 injured, the United Nation's Mission's for Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a report published on Friday.
"Civilian casualties are particularly tragic and very prominent part, even benchmark, of the horror of the violence that ordinary Afghans face," said Nicholas Haysom, the top UN envoy in Afghanistan.
The report warned that civilian casualties were expected to exceed 10,000 by the end of the year, making it the deadliest year for noncombatants since the organisation began issuing its authoritative reports in 2009.
Compared to 2013, this year also saw a 33 percent rise in casualties among children and a 12 percent increase among women, according to the report.
While ground fighting between troops and rebel groups and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) remained leading causes of deaths and injuries, the Taliban were accountable for 75 percent of all civilian casualties, the report said.
As US-led NATO troops prepare to wrap up their 13-year combat mission, casualties among Afghan security forces have also increased, with more than 4,600 killed in the first 10 months of this year.
After NATO's combat operations end on December 31, a follow-up mission of about 12,500 US-led NATO troops will stay on in Afghanistan to train and support the local security forces now responsible for fighting the Taliban.
Source: Al Jazeera
Compared to 2013, this year also saw a 33 percent rise in casualties among children and a 12 percent increase among women, according to the report.While ground fighting between troops and rebel groups and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) remained leading causes of deaths and injuries, the Taliban were accountable for 75 percent of all civilian casualties, the report said.
As US-led NATO troops prepare to wrap up their 13-year combat mission, casualties among Afghan security forces have also increased, with more than 4,600 killed in the first 10 months of this year.After NATO's combat operations end on December 31, a follow-up mission of about 12,500 US-led NATO troops will stay on in Afghanistan to train and support the local security forces now responsible for fighting the Taliban.
Source: Al Jazeera
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