MANILA – Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Friday warned that Southeast Asian countries needed to ensure their economic growth was inclusive, or risk marginalised

opulations turning to violent extremism or even overturning political systems.

Speaking at an event for entrepreneurs during the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Manila, Najib said the region was posting strong growth that could see ASEAN become the world’s fourth-largest economy, but that growth needed to be equitable.

“We do not want our citizens to be marginalised in the age of extremism and radicalisation,” he said.

“We know that those who see no hope in their own societies are more prone to the siren calls of terrorists who can and exploit their vulnerability and fill them with their lies.”

Read also: ASEAN security measures forgot portable toilets for guards

Islamist extremism is expected to be high on the agenda during this week’s meetings, with fears for Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines about piracy and the rising threat of Islamic State.

Of particular concern is the ease in which militants can acquire weapons, seek refuge with existing rebel groups and move between the many islands between the three countries.

Najib lauded the success of ASEAN, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, in expanding its collective GDP to about $2.7 trillion now, from $87 billion four decades ago.

ASEAN has 10 members: Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

He warned that economic disparity was dangerous at a political level too, fuelling anger and populism that was causing problem in Western Europe.

“The neglected underclass of those who felt left behind by economic growth, prosperity and globalisation can overturn elections and political systems,” he said.

Read also: Philippines mobilising 40,000 to provide security for ASEAN summit

Economists frequently point out huge income gaps among the 620 million people of Southeast Asia, a region that has one of the world’s largest concentrations of billionaires, according to Forbes Magazine.

Najib said awareness of ASEAN needed to be better promoted among its citizens to “make it feel real, relevant and tangible”. Trade integration was lagging, he said, with too many trade tariffs still in existence.

Their removal, and harmonised customs standards, needed to be “vigorously pursued”, he said.

Philippines Vice President Leni Robredo echoed Najib’s call for leaders to pay more attention to their poor.

“For many years, many thought income inequality was alright. But the voiceless and the powerless are now raring to be heard, and with technology and social media, their frustrations are being felt on a global scale,” she said in a speech.

“They are rejecting globalisation, democracy, traditional media.”

A group of sacked Olympus executives has been ordered to pay more than half a billion dollars in damages for a massive accounting fraud that badly damaged Japan’s corporate governance image.

The Tokyo District Court ruled on Thursday that ex-company president Tsuyoshi Kikukawa and five others must pay the company a total of some 58.8 billion yen (S$739 million), the camera and medical equipment maker said.

The men were key figures in a complicated fraud to hide about $1.7 billion (S$2.4 billion) in losses using outsized consulting fees and buying unrelated companies.

While one of the six has since died, his family could still be on the hook for his share of the damages, according to the company.

The cover-up was later exposed by Olympus’s then chief executive Michael Woodford in late 2011, turning its first foreign CEO into a high-profile whistleblower.

Two years later, Kikukawa and two others — ex-vice president Hisashi Mori and auditor Hideo Yamada — were criminally charged and received suspended sentences of up to three-years. They did not go to jail.

Olympus and its shareholders launched the civil case against a total of 16 executives, but the court on Thursday found only six of them liable for damages.

The court found Kikukawa, Mori and Yamada the most culpable in the fraud, but it was not immediately clear how much each defendant would end up paying.

“We can’t comment more now as they could appeal the case to a higher court,” a company spokesman said.

Woodford was abruptly sacked after he raised concerns about the firm’s accounting. The company initially denied wrongdoing.

It later admitted to the fraud and sacked Kikukawa and other executives as Japanese, British and US authorities launched probes into the affair.

KATHMANDU – A Taiwanese trekker is recovering in hospital after rescuers found him and his dead girlfriend on a mountainside in Nepal where they were stranded for 47 days, surviving on only water and salt after their food ran out.

Liu Chen-chun, 18, died just three days before the rescue team located the couple in northwest Nepal, but her boyfriend managed to survive despite losing 30 kilos (66 pounds) during the ordeal.

A severely malnourished Liang Sheng-yueh, 20, was being treated in hospital in Kathmandu, where he was airlifted after being rescued from the remote region.

Rescuers said the pair followed a river downstream in the hope of finding a village after getting lost.

But they became stuck when they reached the edge of a waterfall and were unable climb back up.

“They had a drop of about 100 metres on one side and a steep uphill on the other. They were trapped,” said Madhav Basnet who found them.

Speaking haltingly and in broken English as he sipped hot soup, Liang told AFP on Wednesday it had been “very cold” on the mountain, and difficult to sleep.

Basnet said that it was snowing heavily in the region when the couple reached the cliff and they had to shelter under a rock because they couldn’t put up their tent on the uneven ground.

They survived on potatoes and noodles until their food ran out, leaving them with nothing more than salt and water.

Rescuers headed to the isolated area after they saw crows hovering above and found them lying down.

“The area was so deep and narrow that it was impossible for a helicopter to land,” Basnet said.

The team used a long line to airlift them out and bring them to Kathmandu.

Doctors treating Liang said that as well as his extreme weight loss, maggots had infested his right leg, but that he was recovering and regaining strength.

The families of the trekkers alerted authorities when they didn’t get in touch as scheduled on March 10.

Liang’s father travelled to Nepal after the couple went missing and chartered a helicopter to search for them.

‘Dream adventure’

Chou Chiang-chieh, a friend of the pair, said they were biking from India to Nepal on a “dream adventure”.

“She (Lui) fought to survive in the Himalayas for so long and I am really sad she didn’t make it, it’s such a pity, she’s like a family to me,” said Chou.

Another high school friend posted a tribute to Liu, remembering her as a “happy child” always seeking new places to go.

“I believe you will also live well on the other side,” Corn Huang, who said she lived with Liu for a year during high school, posted on Facebook.

The couple had been hiking at about 3,000 metres (9,842 feet) without a guide.

Tour operators have been pushing for guides to be mandatory if trekkers go above a certain altitude to ensure their safety, said Ang Tsering Sherpa, the head of Nepal’s mountaineering association.

“Even popular routes can be tricky to navigate for new trekkers if there is snow or any other disturbances,” he told AFP.

In 2014, a snowstorm killed about 40 people in the popular Annapurna circuit, with many blaming the high toll on the lack of information for solo trekkers.

About 30 per cent of some 100,000 trekkers who visit Nepal every year do so without a registered guide, according to the Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal.

Association president Chandra Prasad Risal said accidents could be avoided if guides were used.

“We hope this serves as a wake-up call to authorities,” he said.

Seoul on Friday brushed aside US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that it should pay for a $1 billion (S$1.4 billion) missile defence system the two allies are installing in South Korea to guard against threats from the North.

The first parts of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system have already been delivered to a former golf course in the South — infuriating China — at a time of heightened tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes.

Top US officials have said THAAD will be operational “within days”.

“I informed South Korea it would be appropriate if they paid. It’s a billion-dollar system,” Trump was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency. “It’s phenomenal, shoots missiles right out of the sky.”

Read also: US moves THAAD to South Korean site as North Korea boasts fire power

The two countries have been in a security alliance since the 1950-53 Korean war, and more than 28,000 US troops are stationed in the South.

Seoul retorted that under the Status of Forces Agreement that governs the US military presence in the country, the South would provide the THAAD site and infrastructure while the US would pay to deploy and operate it.

“There is no change to this basic position,” South Korea’s defence ministry said in a statement.

Read also: THAAD fallout may halve number of Chinese tourists to Korea

The row comes with tensions high on the Korean peninsula following a series of missile launches by the North and warnings from the Trump administration that military action was an “option on the table”.

But earlier this week it said it would seek stronger sanctions against Pyongyang and held open the possibility of negotiations, with US Pacific Command chief Admiral Harry Harris saying it wanted to bring leader Kim Jong-Un “to his senses, not to his knees”.

The White House also wants China to do more to rein in the North, but Beijing has been infuriated by the THAAD deployment, which it fears weaken its own ballistic capabilities and says upsets the regional security balance.

Social media commentators were derisive. “So he wants to start a war with North Korea and he wants South Korea to pay for it,” wrote one Twitter poster.

What do a medicinal pot, a metal basin and a bucket have in common?

They’ve all been used to hold a cup (or more) of coffee at Starbucks outlets across China. And not for free, unlike what social media sites might have you believe.

It started off as a simple experiment by a Chinese blogger, who goes by the pseudonym of Zha Bao. When he first found out Starbucks China is offering customers a 3 yuan (S$0.60) discount for bringing their own cups for the whole month of April, he and a group of friends took it upon themselves to find out if the discount applied regardless of container size.

They started with a small teapot, which the barista said would only hold half a tall iced latte. The other half was poured into a paper cup for them to take away.

Next came a vinegar bottle and a Chinese medicinal pot, much to the increased bafflement of the barista and Starbucks crew.

The vinegar bottle was painstakingly filled with a Venti iced lemon tea, while the Chinese medicinal pot was filled with three venti matcha frappucinos and was topped off with five cups worth of whipped cream, wrote the blogger.

Then, Zha Bao brought out a metal basin, which he asked to be filled with latte. The barista and crew, now already familiar with the blogger’s antics, had to figure out how many cups the metal basin could contain, and even managed to add latte art on top of it all.

Despite the challenging size, the staff still delivered – with eight venti lattes and 19 additional shots of espresso. And yes, he still had to pay. The beverage cost a whopping 327 yuan (S$66).

But Zha Bao had one last trick up his sleeve. He handed an empty water dispenser container to the Starbucks staff, and asked that they fill the large tumbler to the brim with Americano coffee. It is unknown how many cups of Americano were used to fill the container, but one Grande cup… was hardly enough.

After seeing the antics of Zha Bao and his friends, more images began circulating on Chinese social media, supposedly of other customers who began bringing odd-shaped containers to Starbucks outlets in China. In the photos, customers holding bowls and pails can be seen.

Photos from the original stunt later went viral when certain websites alleged that free-loading customers had brought along the large-sized containers to store free coffee, as part of Starbucks’ Earth Day giveaway on April 22.

However, China’s state media Xinhua news agency warned that all was not as it seems. It reported that the free coffees were being given away to those who brought their own mugs, and were venti-sized (355ml), regardless of the size of the container. And apparently, no Starbucks staff members interviewed saw customers bringing in anything out of the ordinary that day.

pariel@sph.com.sg

A woman was killed when an SUV rammed into her in the basement carpark of a shopping centre in Beijing.

The victim was a security guard in the building, Beijing News reported.

CCTV footage shows her trying to run away from the oncoming vehicle, but she was not fast enough.

She was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.

After ramming into the security guard, the vehicle then smashed through the wall of an office.

Three men were in the office at the time of the accident on Wednesday (April 26).

One escaped unscathed, while the other two sustained minor head injuries, according to Beijing News.

The driver of the SUV is suspected to have accidentally stepped on the accelerator pedal when she meant to brake, the report said.

huizhen@sph.com.sg