Global News Journal

from Environment Forum:

Backyard tigers

Would you keep a tiger as a pet?

A puppy-sized tiger cub can be bought in the United States for as little as $200, and there are probably about 5,000 such backyard tigers across the country, about the same number of privately owned tigers in China, according to World Wildlife Fund.

That is far greater than the approximately 3,200 wild tigers worldwide, compared to the estimated 100,000 wild tigers a century ago. The growing number of these animals in captivity poses a threat to the species in the wild, WWF reports.

"People don't realize when they buy a $200 tiger cub that it grows into a full-grown tiger, which means a huge enclosure and costs about $5000 a year just to feed," says Leigh Henry, an animal conservation expert at WWF. "So you end up with a lot of unwanted animals that are very poorly regulated."

These unwanted animals are a potent lure to poachers, who can use parts and products from these backyard tigers to sell on the lucrative black market. Because many of these beasts are untraceable -- it can be tougher to adopt a dog from a U.S. animal shelter than to sell a privately owned tiger -- many wind up in Asia, where tiger parts and products are used in traditional medicine.

The trade in these unwanted privately owned tigers can threaten wild tigers by feeding the market, Henry says.

Wild tigers are preferred for traditional medicine, but poached privately owned tigers are much cheaper. As long as any tigers are filtering into this market, wild ones are under pressure -- and not just from poachers, according to Henry. Their natural habitat is being destroyed by logging and agriculture, and humans are moving into areas where tigers used to live.

Acronym soup swamps Malaysia reform drive

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak says he has embarked on a series of radical economic reforms. In reality it feels as if he has unleashed a barrage of incomprehensible acronyms on the unsuspecting public of this Southeast Asian nation.

The charge for economic reform is being led by the snappily named PEMANDU. As well as being the Malay word for “driver” it stands for the government’s Performance Management and Delivery Unit.

PEMANDU is in charge of formulating and implementing NKRAs (National Key Result Areas), MKRAs (Ministerial Key Result Areas) and getting “Big Results Fast”, according to its website, although it singularly failed to win political backing for a radical revamp of Malaysia’s costly subsidy regime.

It is also helping to formulate the 10th Malaysia Plan, 10MP for those in the know, a communist-era sounding 5-year plan that aims to help lift this middle income country to developed nation status by 2020.

PEMANDU is part of the GTP, the Government Transformation Programme, which also involves the SITF (Special Implementation Task Force). Throw in the NKEAs (National Key Economic Areas), another thinktank known as the EPU (Economic Planning Unit) and you haven’t reached the end of the alphabet spaghetti dreamed up by Malaysia’s civil servants…. There’s still the ETP. the NEP (sometimes good, sometimes bad) and the NEM (New Economic Model).  

To be fair to Malaysia, it is not the only country in the world that is wallowing in economic acronyms, the U.S. gave the world TARP, a $700 billion bank bailout programme, and the even more mind-numbing ABCP MMMFLF   (don’t ask), but it is fair to ask what Malaysians have got from all of this.

from Environment Forum:

Crustaceans rule!

Ever wondered what kinds of wildlife dominate the world's seas and oceans? Now there's an answer, at least in terms of the number of species in different categories. It's not fish. It's not mammals. It's crustaceans!

A mammoth Census of Marine Life has revealed that nearly one-fifth, or 19 percent, of all the marine species known to humans are crustaceans -- crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill, barnacles and others far too numerous to mention here. The census didn't count the actual numbers of animals beneath the waves -- that would have been impossible -- but it did count up the number of species in 25 marine areas. The aim is to set down a biodiversity baseline for future use.

It took 360 scientists to figure this out. Their findings were posted on Monday in PLoS ONE, an open-source peer-reviewed online scientific journal. An even more fulsome list will be out in October.

For now, there's plenty of data to chew on: of the 25 marine areas around the world that were examined, Australian and Japanese waters were the most biodiverse, with nearly 33,000 species in each of these locations. The oceans off China, the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico round out the top five most biodiverse marine regions.

After crustaceans, mollusks (like squid, octopus, clams, snails and slugs) rank second in terms of the number of species found in these regions, with 17 percent. Fish, including sharks, make up 12 percent of species. After that, it's one-celled micro-organisms at 10 percent; algae and other plant-like organisms at 10 percent; segmented worms at 7 percent; sea anemones, corals and jellyfish, 5 percent; flatworms, 3 percent; starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars and sea cucumbers, 3 percent; sponges, 3 percent; mat or "moss animals," 2 percent; sea squirts, 1 percent.

The rest are lumped together as "other vertibrates" -- including whales, sea lions, seals sea birds, turtles and walruses -- at 5 percent, and "other invertibrates" at 2 percent. So some of the best-known of marine creatures make up only a tiny part of the seas' biodiversity.

The Mediterranean has the most invasive species, creatures that aren't native, most of which arrived through the Suez Canal from the Red Sea. Most "cosmopolitan" of species -- those that appear in more than one marine region -- are microscopic plants and animals at the tiny end, and seabirds and marine mammals at the large end of the scale.

‘Stop me before I bet again in Singapore’

A performer holds over-sized deck cards in front of the Resorts World Sentosa casino Feb. 14 (REUTERS/Pablo Sanchez)

At least 264 people in Singapore have asked to be put on a list that would prevent them from entering the city state’s newly opened casino. Except for nine housewives and 19 unemployed people, the rest had jobs and probably families that they did not want to hurt with a gambling problem. Family members who think a relative might have a gambling problem can also apply to have them banned.

 The $4.7 billion Resorts World Sentosa opened on Feb. 14, Valentines Day and the first day of the Chinese New Year, which was considered auspicious. It is the first of two casinos resorts (and a Universal Studios theme park) that is meant to help transform Singapore from a manufacturing and shipping center to a global hub city built on financial services and a playground for wealthy visitors. This is quite a change for a country often called the “nanny state” because of its many prescriptions and prohibitions, famously for instance, banning chewing gum for its irksome tendency to land up on sidewalks and onto people’s shoes.

For decades Singapore had banned gambling as well, noting a Chinese proclivity towards gambling and its often attendant ruinations on families. But the ban didn’t stop folks from taking a bus across the Singapore Strait to neighbouring Malaysia, which sports a hilltop casino in the Genting Highlands.

The government has taken a number of precautions, besides the voluntary exclusion list, to help people hedge their gambling habits. An on-site counselling service is available for problem gamblers, who can also set gaming limits for themselves with the house. You won’t find ATM machines in the casinos. But the biggest discoruagement is the US$70 entry fee for Singaporeans and permanent residents. The high rollers won’t be bothered, but it will be a strong deterrent to the chap who wanders in with just a a couple of hundred dollars in his pocket.

The precautions don’t seem to be hurting business much. Within a week of opening the Resorts World casino had already attracted 128,000 visitors.

Singapore hopes casinos will generate spin-offs like luxury services and increased business for private bankers in a city which many say is fast becoming Asia’s premier wealth management center.

For Rudd, now it’s personal

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd may be a shoo-in to return to office late next year, but this week his reputation as a transformative leader will be on the line.

The Senate will vote whether Australia will cut its carbon output through an emissions trading system, or ETS. The debate is being closely watched overseas, particularly in the United States where lawmakers are debating their own proposals. The carbon trading scheme was a key promise of Rudd’s 2007 election campaign and he wants the ETS laws passed before December’s global climate talks in Copenhagen.

As political commentator Peter Hartcher says, defeat for Rudd would mean his claim to be a leader “for the future” would face a serious challenge. Rudd is an internationalist, and sets his standards beyond the domestic realm. The former diplomat who speaks Mandarin has laid out a plan to win Australia a temporary seat at the U.N. Security Council, has secured Australia a position as a lead negotiator for a new climate pact at Copenhagen next month, and has been actively pursuing a deeper Australian role in Asian diplomatic circles with his push for an Asia Pacific community.

For Rudd, this week’s vote on the ETS is more than just domestic politics, this is something with global ramifications. And for a man seeking to burnish his internationalist image, this makes it personal.

from The Great Debate UK:

Shining a light on China’s secret “Black Jails”

- Phelim Kine is an Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch. The opinions expressed are her own. -

When 15-year-old Wang Xiaomei made the long trip from Gansu province to Beijing last year, she hoped to find justice for her family. Instead, she met with abuse.

First, Wang was abducted by plainclothes Gansu officials, who imprisoned her incommunicado for two months in a “black jail”—an illegal detention facility.

Two days before her September 13, 2008 release, Wang’s captors beat her so badly they knocked out one of her teeth. Wang’s victimizers have never been brought to justice.

Worse still, Wang’s experience—which stands in stark contrast to the Chinese government’s claims of fealty to the rule of law—is not unique. A new Human Rights Watch report released today, “An Alleyway in Hell: China’s Abusive ‘Black Jails',” exposes the routine and severe human rights abuses perpetrated against detainees in these secret facilities.

Our research shows that Wang is just one of estimated thousands of people abducted off the streets of Chinese cities and held incommunicado for weeks or months. Inside these unlawful, secret detention facilities detainees are beaten, sexually abused, deprived of food, sleep and medical care, and subject to theft, extortion and intimidation at the hands of their guards.

And, as Wang’s case shows, children aren’t spared the dangers and indignities of black jail detention. These facilities exist outside of China’s official prison system, and are often located in state-owned hotels, nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals.

Pusan International Film Festival unveils line up

The Pusan International Film Festival opens its 14th edition with “Good Morning President”, a movie taking a warm-hearted look at the ruthless and cold-blooded world of South Korean politics.

The festival is Asia largest and runs from October 8-16 in the South Korean port city of Busan. Organisers on Tuesday unveiled the line-up for the festival where 355 films from 70 countries will be screened, including 98 that will be world premieres.

The festival has its red carpet where several of South Korea’s and Asia’s biggest stars parade before the cameras but it pales in comparison to the glamorous showings in Cannes or Venice. What the Pusan fest does best is celebrate and promote Asian films. It is also one of the biggest film markets in the region where producers from, say, Malaysia can pick up distribution deals in Japan.

Influential Bollywood director and producer Yash Chopra will be honoured as filmmaker of the year at the festival, which is considered one of the top cinema honours in Asia.

The festival will have a special programme celebrating Hong Kong’s Johnnie To, called “The Hood in the City”, while French director Jean-Jacques Beineix will heads the jury for the New Currents award that honours new Asian directors.

Is Malaysia’s net clampdown at odds with knowledge economy?

The opposition wants to cut the sale of alcohol in a state that it rules and now the government wants to restrict Internet access .

Malaysia is a multicultural country of 27 million people in Southeast Asia. It has a majority Muslim population that of course is not allowed to drink by religion. Yet clearly some do as shown by the sentencing to caning for a young woman handed down recently

(Photo: Prime Minister Najib Razak leaving the National Mosque as he prepared to mark his first 100 days in office in July. Reuters/Bazuki Muhammad)

Proposals by the Pan Malaysian Islamic Party, which wants an Islamic state, could effectively end the sale of alcohol in the country’s richest state, Selangor, which is next to the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Its rules would penalise not only Muslims that consumed alcohol, but also for example Muslim shop assistants in say Tesco’s who could be fined if they sold alcohol.

This is coming from a country whose most celebrated film maker, PJ Ramlee, made movies featuring alcohol, smoking and night clubs as well as cross-racial relationships and whose first premier Tunku Abdul Rahman, a Muslim of course and a member of one of Malaysia’s royal families, was fond of  whisky. 

And the Internet? If you want to find out anything in Malaysia, you need to read the net. The country’s newspapers, largely owned by the political parties that have run this country for 51 years and which need to be licensed annually, feed their readers a steady diet of pro-government propaganda.

Sex education again in Malaysia, thanks to the courts

By Niluksi Koswanage

Gay Austrian fashionista Bruno will not be making an appearance on Malaysia’s screens this summer for fear of corrupting this mostly-Muslim nation’s youth.

But Malaysia’s parents will still not have it easy as the country’s opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim  is again on trial for sodomy in a re-run of a 14-month case that in 1998 generated endless sexually explicit headlines and questions from curious children.

Photo: Anwar enters Kuala Lumpur courtoom with wife Wan Aziza Wasn Ismail for his sodomy trial on July 15/ Reuters (Zainal Abd Halim)

I was a teenager then when the former deputy prime minister was first found guilty of sodomy and corruption in a marathon trial that featured graphic descriptions of anal penetration, faithfully reported in lurid detail by this country’s government-owned press and on prime-time TV.

(Photo: Anwar arrives in court on July 15, Reuters/

Back to the future in Malaysia with Anwar sodomy trial II

By Barani Krishnan

A decade ago, Malaysia’s former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim was on trial for sodomy and corruption in a trial that exposed the seamy side of Malaysian justice and the anxieties of a young country grappling with a crushing financial crisis and civil unrest.

Anwar is Malaysia’s best known political figure, courted in the U.S. and Europe and probably the only man who can topple the government that has led this Southeast Asian country for the past 51 years.

Anwar vowed in a recent interview to fight what he says are trumped up charges.

The 14 months I spent covering the 1998 trials saw Anwar accused of sodomy with three men and having sex with a woman over a period of years. This case is simpler, there is just one accuser. All homosexual acts are illegal in this mainly Muslim country and sex outside marriage is illegal for Muslims.

The first trial was gruelling. Lines began as early as four in the morning as people tried to get into the court that could seat less than 200. Most of the spectators were ordinary people, but there was a sprinkling of dignitaries and businessmen who had known Anwar when he was in office.

There was a separate media queue and again a fight to get in line as dozens of reporters from local and international outlets jockeyed for space. Ringing the court were hundreds of riot police, backed by watercannon, waiting for trouble in a country where there were daily protests at the time, often involving tens of thousands of people.