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Turkey protests Army may be deployedThe presence of soldiers on the streets would mark a major escalation of a crisis that has raged for nearly three weeks and has posed the biggest challenge yet to the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Islamic-rooted
ISTANBUL: Turkey warned on Monday that it may bring in the army to help quell nationwide anti-government protests, after a weekend of heavy clashes between riot police and demonstrators sent tensions ...
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911 operator stays on call for 8 hours saves stroke victim
elderly New York woman , who was having a stroke, by staying on the line for eight hours straight so that rescuers could locate her. Joann Hilman-Payne , a fire department of New York dispatcher took a call from Mary Thomas at 1pm last Monday and stayed on the line for eight trying to find her address. After several failed leads, Thomas was traced around 8:30pm via her cellphone signal. She is ...
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Iran nuclear programme advances despite sanctions IAEA chief
VIENNA: Iran is making "steady progress" in expanding its nuclear programme and international sanctions do not seem to be slowing it down, the UN nuclear agency chief said on Monday. Yukiya Amano's comments underlined the difficult challenges facing world powers in seeking to persuade the Islamic state to scale back nuclear activities they suspect could be used to make atomic ...
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‘Tipsy’ Briton survives fall from 15th floor in NZ
In a miraculous save, a young British man, who was slightly "tipsy" , has survived a fall from the 15th floor of a building in New ...
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Asia’s richest man to buy Dutch waste firm for $1.26 billion
Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd, controlled by Asia’s richest man Li Ka-shing, said it will buy Dutch waste processing firm RAV Water Treatment I B.V. for 943.68 million euros ($1.26 billion), in an overseas expansion drive that has targeted infrastructure assets offering steady recurring income. Li’s business empire, which spans property, telecoms, ports and retailing, has been seeking ...
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German carmakers lose HK market share after tax break ends
German car brands are losing market share in Hong Kong as a weaker yen and a new emissions rule that has squeezed European cars out of a tax incentive scheme since April have made their Japanese rivals more competitive. The market share held by BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi fell to 11.2 per cent, 11.5 per cent, and 7.1 per cent, respectively, last month from 16 per cent, 14.4 per cent and 8.3 ...
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Yuan clearing beats volume in HK dollars
The average daily turnover of yuan interbank settlements handled by Hong Kong’s yuan clearing platform surpassed settlements in Hong Kong dollars last month, the head of the city’s de facto central bank said. Norman Chan Tak-lam, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, said in an interview in New York last week that the robust growth of yuan cleared by the Real Time ...
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Hardworking HK face more new challenges
Rees’ side aim to finish as top Asians in Moscow before heading to Colombia for World Games Jamie Hood returns to a Hong Kong team which will face the pressure of finishing as the top Asian side at the Rugby World Cup Sevens in Moscow, their final challenge in a long and gruelling season – but the break will be shortlived. The World Cup Sevens from June 28-30 at the Luzhniki ...
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Britain plugs loophole in HK drivers’ licence agreement
More than 200 Hong Kong drivers have been barred from obtaining a British licence without taking a test, after Britain tightened requirements for a reciprocal arrangement that allows for direct exchange of licences. Under an agreement between Hong Kong and Britain, a driver who holds a licence in one place can normally obtain a licence from the other without further examination. But British ...
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Tighten law to prevent snooping HK legislators urge
Tighten law to prevent snooping, Hong Kong legislators urge Lawmakers call for action because the city’s surveillance ordinance regulates only activities conducted by law enforcement agencies Hong Kong needs to tighten its laws on invasion of privacy and covert surveillance because grey areas in the legislation fail to offer people proper protection against snooping, say lawmakers. ...
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HKers ‘don’t want Snowden extradited to US’
Half of Hong Kongers believe the city’s government should not extradite former US spy Edward Snowden, according to a poll published on Sunday a day after hundreds protested in his support. The poll in the Sunday Morning Post found 49.9 percent of respondents thought Snowden, who has dropped out of sight in the city after exposing vast US surveillance programmes, should not be sent back ...
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Snowden poses stress test for H.K.’s ties with China
Edward Snowden has exposed not only US cyber-espionage but also political fault lines in Hong Kong that are deepening as the territory, a proud bastion of free speech and protest, chafes under Chinese rule. In retreating to Hong Kong and vowing to fight any extradition attempt, the former CIA analyst is testing its civil liberties and will set a landmark on whether the city can govern itself ...
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HK consumers angry after being sold complex insurance product ILAS
In February last year, Leung Chung-yan, 27, had some potentially cancerous masses removed from her breasts. The kindergarten teacher did not have medical insurance to cover the operation and had to borrow money from her family to pay the bill. Worried that she would have to undergo more operations – her aunt was losing a long battle with breast cancer – she decided she better save ...
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Taiwan China to add another 13 cities to FIT list
Taiwan and China have reached an agreement to add another 13 Chinese cities to the free independent traveler (FIT) programme for Chinese tourists, the Tourism Bureau said yesterday. Currently, the programme only applies to Chinese travelling from Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen, Tianjin, Chongqing, Nanjin, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Jinan, Xian, Fuzhou and Shenzhen. The bureau said that under ...
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First book on Taiwan’s modern military history published
The book entitled The 50 Years’ Military History of Taiwan Region (1949-2006), a key military scientific research subject of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), was recently published by the PLA Publishing House. The book was completed by a research subject group led by Jiang Tingyu, an expert in military history, and composed of experts from the Military Museum of the ...
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Mainland to continue Taiwan policies top official
Top political advisor Yu Zhengsheng on Sunday promised that the Chinese mainland will continue ';correct policies'; to consolidate peaceful mainland-Taiwan ties, while welcoming former pro-independence Taiwanese to visit the mainland. Yu, chair of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, made the remarks in a keynote speech at the fifth ...
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US says N. Korea talks must be ‘real’
The United States on Sunday welcomed North Korea’s proposal for high-level negotiations but said it must first curb its nuclear programme and would not be able to talk its way out of global sanctions. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said negotiations have always been the administration’s ';preferred outcome'; but that such talks would have to be ...
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Huaan’s China Gold ETF Seeks $400 Million After Bullion Slumps
Huaan Asset Management Co. aims to attract as much as $400 million in initial funding for one of China’s first two gold exchange-traded funds as a drop in prices attracts buyers in the second-biggest consumer of bullion. The product, to be listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, will track the performance of spot contracts on the city’s gold bourse, Xu Yiyi, the fund manager who ...
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China’s overnight money rate tumbles but longer-term funding still tight
China’s overnight funding rate fell to its lowest level in two weeks on Monday, as a severe liquidity strain afflicting the money market eased, but longer-term rates remained at historically high levels due a sharp decline in foreign capital inflows. The weighted-average, one-day bond repurchase rate dropped to 4.73 percent on Monday morning, down from 7.03 percent on Friday. The drop ...
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China to launch pilot carbon market
China’s economic growth has come on the back of unparalleled coal use, unbreathable air and the unenviable title of being the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter. So as it prepares to launch its first pilot carbon market on Tuesday, there is intense speculation about the scheme’s likely impact, both domestically and whether it boosts China’s support for a binding ...
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Fitch says China credit bubble unprecedented in modern world history
The agency said the scale of credit was so extreme that the country would find it very hard to grow its way out of the excesses as in past episodes, implying tougher times ahead. ';The credit-driven growth model is clearly falling apart. This could feed into a massive over-capacity problem, and potentially into a Japanese-style deflation,'; said Charlene Chu, the agency’s ...
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China lifts off past Europe in space travel
China’s advancing technological prowess has reached the point where is has overtaken Europe in the fields of space research and travel. Germany is also finding ways to assist the Asian nation’s missions. China’s latest space mission to dock with an orbiting space station began this week as three astronauts blasted into orbit on a 15-day mission. Once docked, the three aboard ...
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China’s Great Uprooting Moving 250 Million Into Cities
China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next dozen years – a transformative event that could set off a new wave of growth or saddle the country with problems for generations to come. The government, often by fiat, is replacing small rural homes with high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and ...
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More Japan firms venture here
If you’ve noticed more Japanese apparel and merchandise in malls here, or spied more logos of famous Japanese game makers, you’re not imagining things. More Japanese companies are setting up shop here. They include boutique JRunway, which opened last November at Plaza Singapura. The store is said to be the first Japanese multi-label boutique in South-east Asia, and is a joint ...
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Japan’s Venture Republic Invests in Indonesian’s Telunjuk
Indonesia-based price comparison site Telunjuk has landed an undisclosed round of funding from Japan-based Venture Republic, which marks the firms’s first deal in Indonesia. The investment is the latest in a series of e-commerce funding deals in Indonesia in recent times, which have included C2C marketplace Tokopedia’s latest round announced last week and GREE and Sony’s ...
South East Asia Digest
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Southeast Asia's growing prominence in world trade
Southeast Asia has been, for many centuries, a major part of world trade and the recent recession has not hampered this position as the region is recovering much faster than many more developed countries.
Southeast Asia, although geographically large, covering an area of around 5 million square miles, is comparatively small economically in relation to the number of people that inhabit the area. The Southeast Asian region is home to over 500 million people and yet the region’s GDP is just US$1.5 trillion, or around US$2,500 per person annually. Read more
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