• East Asia

    Major news in Japan on May 30

    Top news in <NHK>: Annan urges Assad to immediately stop violence news@theasian.asia

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  • UN tells NK to release South Korean family

    The United Nations has requested North Korea to release and compensate a South Korean family held in the Stalinist state for 25 years, confirming it is a case of arbitrary detention, activists said Tuesday. It was the U.N.’s most specific statement over Shin Sook-ja, a 70-year-old South Korean woman —…

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  • Corruption and growth

    Transparency to help tackle unemployment Korea was placed 43rd of 183 countries in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released by Transparency International (TI), the world’s largest anti-corruption watchdog, late last year. The ranking represented a drop of four notches from that of a year ago with the index being 5.4…

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  • Politics

    China’s crackdown on defectors driven by separatism fears

    China’s deep-seated concerns regarding the separatist movement of ethnic minority groups is seen as the key reason behind a recent crackdown on immigrants in the Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture. The northeastern city is home to the largest number of ethnic Koreans in China. “Separatist protests by Tibetans and Uyghurs in Xinjiang,…

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  • West Asia

    Syrian refugees in Lebanon

    Syrian refugees who fled their houses from Bab Dreib neighborhood in Homs province, walk at an under construction home which they took with their families temporarily, at the Lebanese-Syrian border town of Arssal, eastern Lebanon, Tuesday, May 29, 2012. Thousands of Syrian refugees who fled the violence in their country…

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  • Business

    Blizzard probed over Diablo 3

    The government has launched an investigation into Blizzard Entertainment over allegations that the American computer gamemaker has refused to refund Koreans who purchased its latest real-time role-playing game Diablo 3. The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said the firm is suspected of having violated the country’s law on electronic commerce and…

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  • Column

    Chidren of sex workers dream of bright future

    *Editor’s note: This is a follow-up of the earlier story by the writer about the children of prostitutes working at the Kandapara brothel in Bangladesh, who are being sheltered and educated at a nearby children’s home.  Tales of deprived children of Quisbari Payel , a ten-year-old  girl, is crying inside while playing  the…

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  • Politics

    Scholars prefer FTA to TPP for East Asian countries

    Scholars of South Korea, Japan and China exchange talks under the theme of Nuclear Security and Regional Community in the second East Asian Community Forum held at the International Studies Hall in Korea University on May 26, 2012. The scholars of South Korea and Japan expressed opinion that the Trans-Pacific Partnership…

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  • Indonesia boosts sanitation facilities

    JAKARTA, May 29 (Xinhua) — The Indonesian Public Work Ministry has started projects of building sanitation infrastructure in some parts of the country as an effort to boost the level of sanitation in Indonesia, senior official of the ministry said here on Tuesday. The projects included the waste water processing…

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  • Dissolution of assembly throws Nepal into chaos

    KATHMANDU – Tiny Himalayan country Nepal has plunged into another round of political crisis following the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly Sunday midnight (May 29).  The first ever CA elected originally for two years in 2008 to draft a new constitution expired four years after without promulgating the new constitution. Prime…

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