Myanmar police have seized more than US$5 million worth of methamphetamine pills in the north of violence-racked Rakhine state this month, an officer said Sunday.
Millions of the caffeine-laced meth tablets were intercepted in Maungdaw district, the centre of an army-led crackdown that has driven more than half a million Rohingya Muslims to flee across the border into Bangladesh in just two months.
Myanmar troops poured into the area in late August to launch a counteroffensive against Rohingya…
Philippine President Duterte says he will shoot criminals himself, calls police officers ‘apes’
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte says he will shoot criminals himself, while warning he may bring police back to the front lines of his deadly war on drugs.
Duterte made the comments late on Friday following his announcement on October 11 to withdraw the police from his anti-drugs war after they were accused of rights abuses in killing thousands of people while following his orders to eradicate illegal drugs in society.
He replaced them with the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA),…
Mystery of ‘silk king’ Jim Thompson’s disappearance finally solved, filmmakers claim
A new documentary is set to stir fresh debate over one of Asia’s most enduring mysteries: what happened to Jim Thompson, Thailand’s legendary silk king.
The former American intelligence officer turned textile tycoon went for a walk in the Malaysian jungle 50 years ago and never returned. Despite a massive search, no trace of Thompson was ever found. One of the most prominent Westerners in Asia simply vanished.
Theories abound: he was killed by a tiger; he got lost and perished in…
GDPR: scope of rules on profiling not confined to solely automated processing, data watchdog says
Laws that place restrictions on the ‘profiling’ of individuals do not just apply to data processing completed entirely automatically, EU data protection authorities have said.
Supreme Court: local authority ‘vicariously liable’ for abuse of child in foster care
A local authority has been held vicariously liable for the abuse of a woman by two sets of foster parents she was placed with as a child, despite not being negligent in its selection or supervision of the foster parents.
Off-grid power growth ‘to attract new business players’ to sub-Saharan Africa
Off-grid generating capacity across the power sector in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is predicted to almost triple in 2022 to 3,000 megawatts, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Asia in 3 minutes: If Kim dies, don’t ask CIA; if he fires a missile, read manga
If Kim Jong-un suddenly dies, don’t ask me: CIA chief Pompeo
The US Central Intelligence Agency thinks North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is a rational actor who is focused on staying in power and “waking up in his own bed” each day. But if Kim should suddenly not show up for work, there is no point asking US spy chief Mike Pompeo about it. “If Kim Jong-un should vanish, given the history of the CIA, I’m just not going to talk about it,” he said at a defence…
Oxford college removes Aung San Suu Kyi from common room name
Undergraduates at the Oxford college where Aung San Suu Kyi studied have voted to remove the de facto leader of Myanmar’s name from the title of their junior common room because of her response to the Rohingya humanitarian crisis.
In a vote on Thursday evening, students at St Hugh’s college at the University of Oxford resolved to eliminate the name of the 1991 Nobel peace laureate from the Aung San Suu Kyi junior common room with immediate effect.
The motion criticised the “…
Insurers welcome calls to delay introduction of Insurance Distribution Directive
Trade bodies for UK and EU insurers have welcomed calls by a European parliamentary committee to delay the introduction of the Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD) until October 2018, almost eight months later than planned.
‘Jack Bauer’ versus ‘Macron’: the colourful candidates clashing in Japan’s election
From an opposition leader nicknamed “Jack Bauer” to a gaffe-prone finance minister who used Adolf Hitler as an example when talking about leaving a political legacy, there are some colourful characters competing in Japan’s election.
Yukio Edano
Edano, a former trade minister and leader of the new centre-left Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, won fame as chief cabinet secretary during the country’s 2011 tsunami disaster, briefing reporters every day, often at odd…