Brunei’s small underground LGBT community has expressed shock and dismay over Brunei’s plan to bring in the punishment of death by stoning for adultery and gay sex. The laws were scheduled to be introduced on Wednesday in the tiny south-east Asian kingdom ruled by the all-powerful Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. The new punishments, which also include amputation of hands and feet for thieves,… Read more »
Authorities are considering banning tourists from Komodo, the island home of the ancient Komodo dragon, to allow for conservation efforts amid concerns over animal-smuggling. The island, in Manggarai Barat, Indonesia, is a major tourist destination, with many making the trip to see the lizard which has a venomous bite, can grow up to three metres long and weigh more than 150kg. Authorities… Read more »
BEIJING (BLOOMBERG) – China’s central bank had an odd warning on Thursday (April 4): Please don’t burn fake yuan notes. On Friday, millions of Chinese will celebrate Qing Ming Festival, the tomb-sweeping holiday, holding memorials for deceased relatives. Part of the tradition involves burning fake money and paper models of goods in the belief that one’s ancestors will get to… Read more »
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Ethiopian investigators said on Thursday that the pilots of a doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight repeatedly followed procedures recommended by Boeing but were still unable to recover before the plane dived into the ground last month. The crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10 followed the unrecoverable nose-dive almost five months earlier of another jet of the… Read more »
BEIJING (CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) – Thirty people were confirmed killed while fighting a forest fire that broke out last Saturday (March 30) in the Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture in China’s Sichuan province, the Ministry of Emergency Management said in a statement on Monday (April 1). The bodies of the victims were all recovered, including 27 firefighters and three locals, said the ministry, whose… Read more »
HONG KONG (BLOOMBERG) – Millennials snapped up US$28 million (S$38 million) worth of art inspired by the Simpsons television show, along with skateboarding shoes and cans of spray paint, at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong as a new generation of collectors comes of age. “The auction room suddenly got a lot hipper with all these cool millennial buyers in hoodies,”… Read more »
SEOUL (DPA) – South Korea has begun excavating the remains of missing soldiers from the Korean War on the border between the two Koreas, without the involvement of North Korea, local media reported on Monday (April 1). The two countries had agreed to start the excavation work together, but no one from North Korea showed up at the agreed site… Read more »
BEIJING (AFP) – China announced on Monday (April 1) that it would add fentanyl analogues to its controlled substance list from May 1, following United States pleas for Beijing to crack down on the drug fuelling a deadly opioid crisis. China is suspected of being the main source of the narcotic, which is 50 times stronger than heroin and has caused… Read more »