SCANPAN: Warehouse sale up to 80% OFF (27 – 28 Aug)
Scanpan: Warehouse Sale – Up to 80% Off from 27 – 28 Aug 2016
Scanpan will be having a Warehouse Sale this weekend on 27 (Sat) & 28 (Sun) August 2016, 10am – 5pm. Enjoy up to 80% off for display units!
TOKYO – Foreign ministers from Japan, China and South Korea kicked off a two-day meeting in Tokyo on Tuesday with their countries at odds over territorial disputes, a US missile defence system and perennial regional problem North Korea.
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, China’s Wang Yi and South Korea’s Yun Byung-Se met for dinner at a Tokyo hotel ahead of the start of formal talks on Wednesday.
The three shook hands and smiled for cameras without making any remarks before starting their meal.
The talks are the first since March of last year and come ahead of the Group of 20 summit in China early next month.
“It is extremely important for the foreign ministers of the three countries that play major roles in the region to gather together and exchange opinions frankly,” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters earlier.
The meeting comes as Sino-Japanese tensions over a territorial dispute have spiked this month, while China and South Korea have sparred over the planned deployment in the latter country of a US anti-missile system.
The Tokyo-Seoul relationship is also prone to periodic tension due to the legacy of Japan’s wartime aggression.
Japan and China are locked in a long-running dispute over uninhabited islets, called the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China, in the East China Sea, with tensions over them a frequent hindrance to closer ties.
Tokyo has lodged more than than two dozen protests through diplomatic channels since August 5, saying there have been about the same number of intrusions by Chinese vessels into its territorial waters.
“We will deliver Japan’s thinking directly and clearly,” a foreign ministry official said regarding the dispute with China. “It is important for us to send our message firmly.” The visit by China’s Wang marks the first by a Chinese foreign minister to Japan since Xi Jinping became president in March 2013.
Separately, China has complained about the planned deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea, arguing the missile shield goes against its own national security interests and warning it will heighten regional tension.
South Korea, wary of offending China, had wavered, but went ahead in the face of North Korea’s continued missile development.
North Korea, meanwhile, is likely to be a key topic at the meeting, though finding common ground will be difficult Japan and South Korea regularly condemn Pyongyang for its nuclear and missile development, and feel frustrated by what they see as a lack of pressure on the country by China, seen as its economic lifeline.
Bilateral meetings between Kishida and his Chinese and South Korean counterparts are also scheduled.
The three-way meeting is expected to be followed later this year by a summit. The leaders met in November last year in South Korea.
SINGAPORE – A 32-year-old woman believed to have thrown flower pots, wooden planks, marble tiles and other items out from the bedroom window of her Hougang flat was arrested on Tuesday (Aug 23).
Police received several reports between July and August this…
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Police arrested the suspect after receiving several reports of items being thrown from Block 694, Hougang Street 61 between July and August this year.
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Family and friends paid their respects to former president S R Nathan at his family home in Ceylon Road on Tuesday (Aug 23) morning.
Mr Nathan, 92, died at the Singapore General Hospital on Monday (Aug 22) night after being…
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ZURICH – Russia has lost its appeal against its ban from next month’s Rio Paralympics because of a state-sponsored doping programme, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), sports highest tribunal, said on Tuesday.
The decision to exclude Russia’s entire Paralympics team, initially made on Aug. 7 by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), means at least 250 Russian competitors are set to miss the Sept. 7-18 event.
CAS said its panel found the IPC “did not violate any procedural rule in dealing with the disciplinary process” which led to Russia’s suspension from the event.
It added that the ruling was “proportionate in the circumstances” and that the Russian Paralympic Committee “did not file any evidence contradicting the facts on which the IPC decision was based”.
The IPC had gone further than the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which stopped short of a blanket ban on Russia at this month’s Rio Olympics, leaving the decision instead in the hands of international sports federations.
The imbroglio centres on a report for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that found the Russian government and the FSB security service had over years covered up hundreds of doping cases across the majority of Olympic sports, as well as Paralympic events.
Russia has said that the IPC’s decision is politically motivated and will punish dozens of innocent athletes.
TOKYO – Japanese whalers on Tuesday celebrated what they described as a court victory in the US to end years of high seas clashes with anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, which immediately vowed to fight on.
The arch enemies have waged a legal and public relations battle as Sea Shepherd has sought to disrupt an annual whale hunt in the Antarctic that Japan defends as scientific research.
However, the settlement between the US-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Japan’s whaling body is unlikely to end the dispute as operations in Antarctic waters are mostly carried out by Sea Shepherd Australia, which does not come under the ruling.
On Tuesday, the Institute of Cetacean Research and Kyodo Senpaku – key players in Japan’s whaling industry – announced a legal settlement that would bar the US group from attacking whaling ships or funding such activities.
The parties involved “successfully resolved the dispute through mediated negotiations earlier this month”, it said.
But Sea Shepherd played down any suggestion of a global agreement, saying the settlement only applied to its US arm and that other branches, including its Australian office, would keep fighting.
“The ruling in the US courts affects ONLY our US entity,” the group’s global chief executive Alex Cornelissen said in a statement.
“Sea Shepherd Global and all other entities around the world, other than the USA, will continue to oppose the illegal Japanese whaling in the Antarctic,” it added.
The whaling institute insisted the settlement would act as a deterrent to “some extent” by choking off funding by the group’s US arm.
The announcement comes after a US court issued a preliminary injunction against Sea Shepherd in late 2012, ordering it to steer clear of the whaling ships.
Last year, the group agreed to pay $2.55 million to Japanese whalers for breaching the earlier court order.
Japan initiated the legal battle after several hunts in which the anti-whaling activists pursued the fleet for months in the icy waters near Antarctica, seeking to stop the slaughter.
Activists harassed whalers with paint and stink bombs, rammed their ships, and snared ship propellers with ropes.
Japan claims it conducts vital scientific research using a loophole in an international whaling ban, but makes no secret that the mammals ultimately end up on dinner plates.
It was forced to call off the 2014-2015 hunt after the United Nations’ top court, the International Court of Justice, ruled in 2014 that its annual mission to the Antarctic was a commercial hunt masquerading as science.
The hunt resumed at the end of 2015, with the fleet returning to Japan in March of this year after having killed more than 300 of the mammals.
BANGKOK – A Thai military court accepted a case on Tuesday against eight people charged with ridiculing junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha on Facebook, extending a crackdown against dissent after Thais voted earlier this month to accept a military-backed charter.
The outcome of the Aug 7 referendum bolstered the credibility of the military government, say analysts, but the overwhelming vote in favour of the new constitution was unsurprising given the curbs on free speech ahead of the vote.
Campaigning for or against the constitution was banned, though major political parties and other groups, had criticised the charter. They said the charter enshrined the military’s influential role in Thailand and would constrict democracy even though it paves the way for an election by the end of 2017.
Angered by a Facebook page titled ‘We Love General Prayuth’, that parodied the junta leader, the military arrested the eight defendants in a series of raids on April 27 in the capital Bangkok and the northeastern province of Khon Kaen.
They were charged with sedition, an offence which carries a sentence of up to seven years in jail, and with violating a law covering computer crimes.
Winyat Chatmontree, a lawyer for the eight, said he has posted bail of 200,000 baht ($5,777.01) for each detainee, which the court approved. “The military court accepted the case against the eight administrators of the ‘We Love General Prayuth’,” he said. “The court approved bail. They will be temporarily released. Probably this evening,” said Winyat.
All eight deny the charges against them.
The junta clamped down on dissent after seizing power from an elected civilian government more than two years ago.
More than 900 people, including activists, journalists and politicians, have been summoned by the military for so-called’attitude adjustment’ sessions lasting anything between a few hours to one week, according to iLaw, a legal monitoring group.
Two of the suspects, Natthika Worathaiyawich and Harit Mahaton, face additional charges for posting commentary considered offensive to Thailand’s monarchy. “I have said all along that I am not guilty and that I will fight this case,” Natthika told Reuters. “I am not worried.”
SEOUL – North Korea has been laying fresh landmines on its side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) with South Korea, the UN Command said Tuesday, following a spate of high-profile defections.
Military personnel were seen planting mines on the North’s side of a river crossing known as the Bridge of No Return – close to the border truce village of Panmunjom, a spokesman for the UN Command, which oversees the Korean War armistice, told AFP.
In a statement the UN Command “strongly” condemned the Korean People’s Army (KPA) activity.
“The presence of any device or munition on or near the bridge seriously jeopardises the safety of people on both sides,” it said.
The statement added that thousands of visitors – often school-aged children – take part in tours to the DMZ.
Despite its name, the DMZ separating the two Koreas is one of the world’s most heavily militarised frontiers, bristling with watchtowers and landmines.
It acts as a buffer zone, stretching two kilometres on either side of the actual frontier line.
Because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty, the two Koreas remain technically at war.
The UN Command declined to “speculate” on why the KPA was engaged in laying fresh mines. But South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency cited a military source as saying it may be an attempt to prevent front-line troops from defecting.
Cross-border Korean tensions are currently running high, with North Korea on Monday threatening nuclear strikes as South Korea and the United States began a large-scale military exercise which Pyongyang views as a provocative rehearsal for invasion.
The North has also been rocked by a series of defections, most recently that of its deputy ambassador to Britain who fled to the South in a major propaganda victory for Seoul.
Yonhap said the South Korean military was using banks of loudspeakers along the border to crow about the defection.
In August last year South Korea accused North Korea of planting landmines that maimed two soldiers on border patrol.
DENPASAR, Indonesia – Indonesian police said Tuesday that a Briton flew into a rage and repeatedly hit a Bali police officer over the head with a beer bottle after accusing him of being a “fake cop”.
Traffic policeman Wayan Sudarsa was found dead last week with wounds to his head and neck on a popular beach in the south of the Indonesian resort island.
Briton David Taylor and his Australian girlfriend Sara Connor were arrested and have been named as suspects, a step in the Indonesian legal system meaning investigators believe they have enough evidence to consider filing charges.
Taylor, a DJ, admitted in questioning Monday to having a fight with Sudarsa on the beach after accusing him of stealing Connor’s bag. He hit the officer with bottles, binoculars and a phone after being pushed, according to his defence lawyer.
Giving his account of how the fight began, Hadi Purnomo, police chief in the Balinese capital Denpasar, said Taylor had “searched the victim, accused him of being a thief, and called him a fake cop even though he was wearing a uniform”.
Taylor got “mad” and they started to fight on the beach, with the Briton repeatedly hitting the policeman’s head with a bottle until it broke, Purnomo said.
“David was hitting violently, in a rage, with the bottle,” said the police chief.
Connor, a mother from New South Wales, has maintained her innocence, saying she only sought to separate the fighting men.
However Purnomo said Tuesday he believed that she had taken part in the killing.
A day after the policeman’s body was found, the couple checked out of their hotel and burned their clothes, the police chief said.
They had initially tried to deny any confrontation with Sudarsa and had offered a series of confusing and contradictory accounts of what had happened, he said.
They could face up to 15 years in jail if found guilty of murder.
Bali, a pocket of Hinduism in Muslim-majority Indonesia, is a popular tourist destination known for its tropical climate and palm-fringed beaches.
Petty crime is common but murders are rare.
