About 60 people demonstrate outside Singapore Trade Office in Taipei; call for Amos Yee’s release

About 60 people demonstrated outside the Singapore Trade Office in Taipei on Friday morning, calling for teenage blogger Amos Yee to be freed.

One driver explains how he is helping to rip off Uber in China

James Li was unhappy with his pay as a security guard in Shanghai, so he started driving on weekends for Uber Technologies Inc. He’s almost tripled his pay - in part by scamming the company.

5 things you might not know about Buddhism

There are around 488 million Buddhists in the world - or about 7 per cent of the global population - making it the fourth largest religion in the world, according to the Pew Research Center (2012). Buddhism began in Asia, and the vast majority of all Buddhists (nearly 99 per cent) still live in the Asia Pacific region. Only two other regions – North America (3.9 million) and Europe (1.3 million) – have more than 1 million Buddhists.

Yahoo

Pakistan privacy activists slam alleged Internet hacking by British intelligence as unethical

Pakistani rights campaigners have urged Islamabad to take action to protect the privacy of its citizens after leaked top-secret documents appeared to show British intelligence had gained access to almost all the country’s Internet users.

Law firm in Dallas Buyers Club action accused of bullying tactics

Lawyers representing film studio had used threats of criminal proceedings to advance civil claims, says NGO

Dutchman Dino Petrus Johannes van Deijzen jailed three weeks for attacking cabby

Another white trash giving the same lame excuse that he acted out of character for the assault.

Housing glut to worsen before tapering from 2017: UOB report

Singapore’s housing glut will worsen in the near future as more public and private units come on stream and only start to ease from 2017, with the government potentially reviewing property cooling measures, a report by UOB Global Economics and Markets Research said.

Meili Snow Mountain

Meili Snow Mountain (梅里雪山) on Yunnan's border with Tibet has many names, and depending on who is viewing its awe-inspiring grandeur, represents many different things. Soaring to heights of over six kilometers above sea level, the massif is as mysterious as it is immense.

GoKunming

The women seeking rich older men to pay their university fees

"It's been euphemistically referred to as "mutually beneficial, transactional dating" but is the growing world of "sugar daddy" relationships just a sanitised term for sex work?

BBC

Asian Migrants Say Australia Paid Smugglers to Turn Back

Australia is committing bribery.

Almost 200 academics sign petition urging Abe to apologise for Japan’s wartime past

Japanese academics have urged Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to renew apologies for the country’s imperialist past and offer to compensate victims of its wartime brothel system, in the latest intervention from educationalists.

When Americans Ruled Beijing

The Americans, like all other allied nations, were also heavily engaged in looting and pillaging. A U.S. diplomat, Herbert G. Squiers, filled several railroad cars with loot. Assaults on civilians were also not uncommon.  For example, Stephen Dwyer, a U.S. Marine, forced his way into a Chinese home wielding a bludgeon to “brutally assault and strike a Chinese child of tender years… driving it from its home and thereby hastening its death.” He then went on to rape the two women living in the house.

The Diplomat

Japan emperor's WWII 'remorse' a prod to Abe

Link

Qigong gaining popularity as a healing tool in the West

Qigong is a thousand-year-old discipline that integrates physical postures, breathing techniques and focused intention to heal the body and mind. Some of its therapeutic benefits, scientifically proven in China, are now being studied and promoted in the West.

Link

Asia wants positive US-China ties: Singapore's PM Lee

Every country in Asia hopes that the relationship between the United States and China will be positive, and no one wants to have to pick sides between the two giants, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Friday.

Heirs of the ‘Secret War’ in Laos

It marks the treachery of the United States government, which went into an unknown country, waged years of war, and then dropped everything in a moment’s notice.

Today, most Americans know nothing about the Secret War. A classified operation, C.I.A. officials easily terminated the effort when everything went awry. It was a disposable war, intended to look like it never happened.

Japanese academics urge 'comfort women' reckoning

Japanese academics have called on the conservative government to face up to its responsibility over "comfort women", echoing an open letter from leading foreign scholars urging an honest accounting for wartime wrongdoing.

Link

4 Reasons Why China Is No Threat to South China Sea Commerce

US diplomacy is not served by exaggerating or inventing military threats, such as threats to commercial shipping.

The Diplomat

NSA planned hack of Google app store to plant spyware on phones

The US National Security Agency (NSA) developed plans to hack into data links to app stores operated by Google and Samsung to plant spyware on smartphones, a media report said Thursday.

Abe’s Japan Cannot Apologize for the Pacific War

Yasukuni Shrine will continue to compromise any apology that Japan’s leaders can offer.

Link

Strangled by Ivy

The first part of my advice squarely parallels what William Deresiewicz, former professor at Yale University, mainly wants to convey in his book released last year, Excellent Sheep. In it, he argues Ivy-League students lack imagination, avoid risk, and are more likely to conform. Those who get into Harvard are indeed excellent and driven, but the system also makes them "anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose." The madness of credentialism as well as lust for prestige and success drive students to head "meekly in the same direction, great at what they're doing but with no idea why they're doing it."

Link

Abe’s refusal to offer apology diminishes Japan

China and South Korea’s ire over Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s speech to the US Congress is to be expected, given that he chose to gloss over Japan’s war of aggression in East Asia during World War II.

The rise of China's sugar daddies and a 'broker for gold diggers'

More than 100,000 men join website hooking up the mature and affluent with younger partners

Japan academics call on Tokyo to face history

A group of nearly 200 academics, including Pulitzer Prize winners, has published an open letter calling on Japan to face up to its World War II crimes, including its system of sex slavery.

Link

Letter

Free Parking in Singapore

11 Car Parks in Singapore You Didn’t Know Had Free Parking

Link

Does Australia have double standards for Bali Nine duo?

BBC

China 'seriously concerned' at New Zealand hack attempt report

China's Foreign Ministry expressed serious concern on Monday after a newspaper reported that New Zealand and U.S. intelligence services planned to hack into a data link between Chinese government buildings in Auckland.

Reuters

New Zealand PM happy to talk to China about spy claims

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key on Monday invited Chinese officials to quiz him about reports that Wellington worked with US intelligence on a plan to hack Chinese diplomatic communications.

Link

Revealed: the team behind China’s Operation Fox Hunt against graft suspects hiding abroad

Man leading hunt for corrupt officials overseas reveals the qualities that make his team tick

Former Filipino nurse charged with sedition and giving false info to police

Filipino Ed Mundsel Bello Ello, who was sacked by Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH), faces two charges of publishing a seditious comment on his Facebook account and three of lying to the police.

If Only—To The Memory Of Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015)

Catherine Lim

US stance against China-led bank 'embarrassing': ex-Goldmans exec

Washington's opposition to a new China-led development bank is "embarrassing" and "idiotic", a former top Goldman Sachs executive said on Thursday, as an increasing number of US allies embrace the institution.

APF

Vietnam legacy has lessons for anti-Americanism today

The relative decline of the United States and the perceived shift in the global balance of power with the rise of the Middle Kingdom are new factors at play.

China’s influence set to climb as US thwarted on new infrastructure bank

Seven decades after the end of World War II, the international economic architecture crafted by the US faces its biggest shakeup yet, with China establishing new channels for influence to match its ambitions.

How Lee Kuan Yew’s political legacies have rubbed off on China

Communist Party inspired by Singapore’s late leader, citing the city-state’s stability, clean government, smooth transitions of power and rule of law

AIIB: Washington loses campaign against Beijing

'What was he thinking?' is the kind of rhetorical question we would direct at, for example, the lazy high-school student who ended up plagiarising the historical narrative posted on the website of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and submitted it as a class paper on race relations in America. It was a silly idea that didn't make a lot of sense, and it wasn't going to work.

US needs to adapt to an engaged China

As Asians imagine a world without Lee Kuan Yew, I can’t help wondering what that diplomatic giant, with strong opinions on many things, would have made of the US’s lead-booted diplomacy over China’s new infrastructure bank?

Hostility From U.S. as China Lures Allies to New Bank

“But there is a strain in Washington that if the U.S. is not in the lead, then the U.S. should not be part of it,” he said.

Egg on Washington’s face in bank farce

Even as Washington is busy denouncing Britain for becoming a founding member of a new China-led development bank, key allies are ready to jump ship.

New Zealand spies on China, other Asian nations: Snowden papers

Electronic surveillance by New Zealand’s government extends from China, its biggest trading partner, to Antarctica and is shared with the United States and other international allies, according to documents released on Wednesday.

Hu Jintao’s weak grip on China’s army inspired President Xi Jinping’s military shake-up

President’s predecessor ‘isolated’ by deputies who acted as proxies for Jiang Zemin

German graffiti vandals ordered jailed, caned in Singapore

A Singapore court on Thursday sentenced two young German men to nine months in prison and three strokes of the cane for spray-painting a metro train in the city-state, which enforces hardline rules on vandalism.

AFP

New Zealand spying on Pacific allies for 'Five Eyes' and NSA

New Zealand is spying indiscriminately on its allies in the Pacific region and sharing the information with the US and the other “Five Eyes” alliance states, according to documents from the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The Guardian

Singapore Porsche Club, former member in legal spat

An executive, whose company is suing the Porsche Club for copyright infringement, is now taking the same exclusive car club to court for terminating his membership.

Public corruption in China: Then and now

China has waged a campaign against public corruption for the past two years and there is no sign of abatement. At first, there was speculation it was a cover for a power struggle and therefore would be short-lived. Increasingly, it appears to be a means of forging a new social contract for the post-Deng era.

Film-maker files police report against MP Lam Pin Min

He accuses Lam Pin Min of making racially seditious comments online

Japan Crown Prince urges WW2 past not be forgotten as memories fade

Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito has made a call to remember Japan's wartime past and the horrors of World War Two - remarks that come as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seeks to recast his country's wartime history in a less apologetic tone.

Reuters

Paris Metro CCTV shows Chelsea fans sought by police

Images of three men being sought by police in connection with an incident of alleged racism by Chelsea fans on the Paris Metro on Tuesday evening have been released.

BBC

NSA helped British steal cell phone codes

Britain’s electronic spying agency, in cooperation with the U.S. National Security Agency, hacked into the networks of a Dutch company to steal codes that allow both governments to seamlessly eavesdrop on mobile phones worldwide, according to the documents given to journalists by Edward Snowden.

The Guardian

Chelsea racist fans in Paris

In the video, a member of the French public is repeatedly seen to be pushed off a Metro train by fans while trying to board because he’s black, with the fans responsible chanting: “We’re racist, we’re racist, and that’s the way we like it, we like it, we like it.”

British white trash Benjamin Maybury charged with punching and abusing teen driver

Briton Alan Benjamin Maybury, 33, allegedly punched polytechnic student Lum Kwok Weng, 19, in his face causing mild swelling and a small superficial cut. He is also accused of using abusive words by shouting expletives at the teen.

Russian researchers expose breakthrough U.S. spying program

The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.

Reuters

A taste of Yunnan in Thailand

The tiny northern town of Mae Salong bears a distinctive Chinese past - and present

The numbers game: mathematicians and NSA

Snowden’s revelations unsettled many mathematicians - but not enough to sever ties with NSA

China ‘not ready to win wars’, says US report

Corruption, poor-quality personnel and outdated command structure among problems faced by the PLA, according to a study commissioned by a US congressional committee

Beijing and US poised to join forces in hunt for rich Chinese fugitives

Senior US officials will meet in August with their Chinese counterparts to discuss the possibility of repatriating Chinese officials who have fled to America with billions of dollars of allegedly stolen government assets, according to a State Department official.

US historians protest against Japan’s attempt to censor US publisher’s textbook over sex slaves

A group of American history scholars have protested against Japan’s attempts to pressure US publisher McGraw-Hill that references World War II sex slaves, saying no government should have the right to “censor history”.

Beijing cracks down at home to slow visits to overseas casinos

Crackdown on junket organisers in China is aimed at slowing trips by VIP players to Asian casinos beyond already embattled Macau

Chinese scars endure 70 years after Unit 731 liberation

AFP

‘Soft’ Repression: The Struggle for Democracy in Singapore

Opposition politicians face some daunting obstacles in Singaporean politics.

The palace of shame that makes China angry

There is a deep, unhealed historical wound in the UK's relations with China - a wound that most British people know nothing about, but which causes China great pain. It stems from the destruction in 1860 of the country's most beautiful palace.

BBC

Investors in gold buyback scheme alarmed by firm’s silence

More than 20 investors who put around $7 million into a gold buyback scheme run by local firm Suisse International are now worried that they cannot get their money back.

America: Australia's Dangerous Ally

Australia should not embrace America, writes its former prime minister, but preserve itself from Washington’s reckless overreach.

The National Interest

UK spy agency GCHQ intercepted emails of journalists from top international media

The British surveillance agency GCHQ’s bulk surveillance of electronic communications has scooped up emails to and from journalists working for some of the US and UK’s largest media organisations, analysis of documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

Singapore empty homes may climb to highest since 1998 on curbs

Shameless Japan wants to rewrite history

McGraw-Hill Education rejected a request by the Japanese government to change passages in a history textbook about women who were forced to serve in Japanese military brothels during World War II.

“Scholars are aligned behind the historical fact of ‘comfort women,’ and we unequivocally stand behind the writing, research and presentation of our authors,” it said.

WSJ

Guardian

Pope Francis says freedom of speech has limits

The pontiff said religions had to be treated with respect, so that people's faiths were not insulted or ridiculed.

To illustrate his point, he told journalists that his assistant could expect a punch if he cursed his mother.

BBC

Red House Seafood at East Coast to go

White trash cyclist Jason Blair Unger charged with throwing bike at car after honking incident

British Chinese people say racism against them is 'ignored'

BBC

US base remains sore point for Cubans

Guantanamo Bay military base seen as symbol of US imperialism

Jack Ma appreciates Tai Chi

Jack Ma is a big fan of Tai Chi, and has previously applied it to his business approach. He said he appreciated the essence of Tai Chi culture, which can be summarized in three words. The first is "calm": no matter what happens, remain calm; "follow", as in follow the flow after knowing one's own strength; and "abandon", to abandon your burden in life.

MH370 hacked and shot down by US Military according to former airline CEO

It was shot down by the US Air Force. This is the conclusion from another former airline boss who has alleged of conspiracy in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) Flight MH370.
He said MH370 was hacked and shot down by US Military by mistake.

Link

Insider's guide to Singapore: Where to eat and drink

From bustling food markets to a secluded tropical hideaway, restaurateur Loh Lik Peng takes us on a weekend of epicurean delights

Link

Chinese military conducts full test of long-range missile ‘which can hit any part of US’

China last week launched its most comprehensive test of its latest-generation intercontinental ballistic missile, the DF-41, which can hit anywhere in the US, according to an American media website.

Homing in on an age-old tradition, rich Chinese send pigeon prices soaring

As the price flew skywards, an audience of middle-aged Chinese men erupted into cheers before the auctioneer slammed his hammer down at a record-breaking 2 million yuan – US$320,000.

Governments red-faced over ‘black site’ expose

US Senate report on CIA torture scheme sparks denials

Americans Involved in Torture Can Be Prosecuted Abroad

The United States is obliged by international law to investigate its citizens suspected of engaging in torture, but even if it does not, Americans who ordered or carried out torture can be prosecuted abroad, by legal bodies including the International Criminal Court, legal experts say.

New York Times

CIA tortured, misled, U.S. report finds, drawing calls for action

Reuters

Three foreign white trash in trouble for attacking cabbies

Myanmar mine workers search for jade, find misery

Drugs, violence & graft mar jade industry amid insatiable China demand for the gem.

Eyeing a taxi licence?

Only Singaporeans aged 30 and above can drive taxis here.

Deleted Xinhua report gives rare insight into China corruption

By stating corruption is a systemic problem, article contradicted party line that it is all down to individual moral weaknesses

America’s shameful Chinese Exclusion Act now largely forgotten

Chinese Exclusion Act passed by US Congress in 1882 stayed on the books until 1943, while Australia and Canada had similar laws

Hong Kong occupiers are losing the high ground

Michael Chugani says the conduct of some Occupy protesters in Mong Kok is a good indication of why support for the movement is waning

Scientists in Yunnan unlock secrets of ‘magical’ microbe-killing plant

Pleasant-tasting relative of Sichuan pepper, long known to tribal doctors, shows promise as a safe, effective killer of dangerous microbes

Australia MPs Want Fines for Illegal Home Buying as Prices Soar

Bloomberg

Is Harvard unfair to Asian-Americans?

For reasons both legal and moral, the onus is on the schools to make their admission criteria more transparent - not to use them as fig leaves for excluding some students simply because they happen to be Asian.

How China's shadowy agency is working to absorb Taiwan

Reuters

China, Russia and the Sinatra doctrine

For centuries, European navies roamed the world’s seas - to explore, to trade, to establish empires and to wage war.

Police probe political funding of mining magnate Clive Palmer

Australian police are investigating allegations about the misuse of A$12 million ($10.5 million) in Chinese funds during the 2013 political campaign of mining magnate Clive Palmer, The Australian newspaper reported on Monday.
Reuters

Market players welcome LTA regulation of third-party taxi apps

Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) on Friday introduced a basic regulatory framework for third-party taxi-booking apps, in the latest move by a government to regulate such services that observers said have disrupted the taxi industry globally.

Philippines banning Hong Kong journalists is petty and vindictive

The Philippines has tried hard to end its diplomatic row with Hong Kong after the 2010 hostage killings in Manila. But by banning nine Hong Kong journalists from entering the country to cover next year’s Apec summit, it will only rekindle resentment and likely retaliation from Hong Kong. It is an appalling and unwise move.

Top 5 hotel buffets in Singapore

SoShiok

WWII Celebration Plans by Putin and Xi to Score Points

Russia-China agreement to jointly observe war's 70th anniversary in 2015 aims to warn Japan against historical revision and could create difficulties for US-Japan alliance.

Don’t give Japan a free pass on its shameful past

Like “Holocaust fatigue”, many people thought the “comfort women” issue was ancient history, cynically dug up by Beijing to beat Japan whenever it wanted. That may be so. But just because you distrust China doesn’t mean Japan should get a free pass on rewriting its shameful past.

Rule of law in China? Still a long way to go

President Xi Jinping has announced a far- reaching plan to bolster the rule of law in China, but his efforts could be compromised by the tacit proclamation that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) remains above the law.

White trash James George Palin road rage won't be tolerated

A district judge made it clear that road hooliganism must never be tolerated, in condemning the conduct of a motorcyclist, James George Palin who traumatised a couple in a road rage case.

Top 10 beach destinations for your year-end holiday

Link

The sweet life of expats in China won’t last

And we would long for bygone days when there was an A-yi who arranged your underwear drawer and a man who came in twice a week to water your plants.