Asia

Gangjeong on Jeju Island, a pristine Unesco-designated ecological reserve where elderly Korean women sea divers, haenyo, continue to forage for seafood. It is also the site of a fierce resistance movement by villagers who oppose the construction of a South Korean naval base on the island that will become part of the US missile defense system ‘to contain China’.

Negotiators from Vietnam and China have reached consensus to resolve their maritime dispute in the East Sea, according official. Spokesperson for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry Nguyen Phuong Nga confirmed the positive result of talks held between representatives of both governments to overcome recent tensions.

‘Pakistan’s government should immediately end widespread disappearances of suspected militants and activists by the military, intelligence agencies, and the paramilitary Frontier Corps in the southwestern province of Balochistan.’

Extremists would have the best chance to take possession of Pakistani nuclear weapons following the breakdown of the South Asian state’s government, the U.S. Congressional Research Service concluded in a report in July, 2011.

An icon of Mui Wo village on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island has ‘gone to the further shore’ and his popular product, Sweet Tao Fu (J. Tofu) or Soy Custard, will be sorely missed by so many people – local and visitors alike – Mok Kau Moon, aged 79, died 11 July, 2011, after only one night in hospital.There is no one to take up his business.

Tragically, a night before she arrived home for a brief family reunion before starting another contract as a domestic worker in Hong Kong, Florence “Dom-an” Macagne Manegdeg’s husband “Pepe” was assassinated. The perpetrator was alleged to be a military man. That was November 28, 2005, in the tobacco fields of San Esteban, Ilocos Sur, Northern Philippines.

In spite of U.S-led military invasion since 2001 to bring “enduring freedom” and democracy, about 50 women die in childbirth each day in Afghanistan; one in three is physically or sexually abused, and the average life expectancy of women is 44 year.

When you don’t acknowledge China’s stupendous achievements, what you find is a country that has little to show and still far to go. When you don’t see the political foundations of economic policies that freed the vast majority of dirt poor and backward Chinese from awesome feudal inequalities, it is taken to be the success of capitalist impulses alone.

Shek Kwu Chau is a restricted access island near Cheung Chau Island, off Hong Kong, reserved for volunteer drug rehabilitation affairs, but now figuring in a government zoning plan that would have a massive incinerator built 10 metres from its wonderful rocky shores to the destruction of its special wildlife features and in-shore fishing. Nearby islanders are protesting.

Malaysia will investigate claims of police brutality following the death of a demonstrator in a mass street protest for electoral reform, a senior minister said Monday. Riot police fired tear gas and water cannon and arrested more than 1,600 people to end a rally to demand electoral changes on Saturday, drawing intense criticism from human rights groups.