A bluefin tuna, with a weight of 405 kg, was sold for about 36,500,000 yen (about 320,000 US dollar) in the year-opener auction. This year’s top per kilogram price, for a smaller tuna, was 1,419 US dollar per kilogram, paid by Kiyoshi Kimura, who runs the Sushi Zanmai chain sushi restaurant.

Tuna fish brokers check the quality of a bluefin tuna in the final year-opening auction at Tsukiji Market in Tokyo, Japan, 05 January 2018. A bluefin tuna, with a weight of 405 kg, was sold for about 36,500,000 yen (about 320,000 US dollar) in the year-opener auction. //EPA-EFE PHOTO

 Tuna fish brokers check the quality of bluefin tuna in the final year-opening auction at Tsukiji Market in Tokyo, Japan, 05 January 2018.//EPA-EFE PHOTO

A market official calls for bidding on frozen bluefin tuna in the final year-opening auction at Tsukiji Market in Tokyo, Japan, 05 January 2018. A bluefin tuna, with a weight of 405 kg, was sold for about 36,500,000 yen (about 320,000 US dollar) in the year-opener auction. // EPA-EFE PHOTO

Tuna fish brokers check the quality of frozen bluefin tuna in the final year-opening auction at Tsukiji Market in Tokyo, Japan, 05 January 2018. // EPA-EFE PHOTO

“Hopefully, ASITA [the Association of Indonesian Tour and Travel Agencies], travel agents and tourism players can display this guidebook in hotels and airports as well as other places [deemed appropriate],” said the consulate general’s deputy consul, Chen Wei in Denpasar, Bali, on Friday as quoted bytempo.co.

The 29-page Mandarin-language guidebook features more information than previous editions, including information on Bali, immigration, currency, accident prevention and insurance. It also includes the operating hours of banks and restaurants, transportation, hospitals, tips during a natural disaster emergency, regulations, customs and excise, important office contact numbers, languages, tourist attractions, as well as Bali’s cultures and customs.

The consulate has printed around 30,000 copies of the guidebook to be distributed for free at its office located on Jl. Tukad Badung in Renon, Denpasar.

Chen said the number of Chinese tourists to Bali continued to increase, from only 400,000 in 2014 to 600,000, 980,000 and 1.37 million in 2015, 2016 and by October 2017, respectively.

He added that the guidebook was expected to be able to boost tourism in Bali and prevent problems for Chinese tourists.

Bali Tourism Agency head Anak Agung Yuniarta Putra said Chinese tourists made up the majority of tourist arrivals to the island last year, followed by Australia, India, Japan and the United Kingdom.

“Hopefully this guidebook is useful to tourists from China,” said Yuniarta.

Publishers responded to a cease-and-desist letter from Trump by moving forward by four days the release of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” — an expose by author and political muckraker Michael Wolff that quotes key Trump aides expressing serious doubt about his fitness for office.

“I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist,” Trump tweeted Thursday.

“Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!” Trump wrote — a possible reference to Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist, or Steve Rubin, the publisher of Wolff’s book.

The book — which paints Trump as mentally unstable and far out of his depth — includes extensive quotes from Bannon, who also received a “cease and desist” order from Trump’s attorneys.

“Your publication of the false/baseless statements about Mr. Trump gives rise to, among other claims, defamation by libel, defamation by libel per se, false light invasion of privacy, tortious interference with contractual relations, and inducement of breach of contract,” Trump’s lawyers said in the letter to Wolff.

In the book, excerpts of which were published this week, Bannon is quoted accusing Trump’s eldest son Don Jr of “treasonous” contacts with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, and saying the president’s daughter Ivanka, who imagines running for president one day, is “dumb as a brick.”

– Criticism from aides –

But it is Trump himself who is cast in the most unfavorable light by a series of his top aides.

The book claims that for “Steve Mnuchin and Reince Priebus, the president was an ‘idiot.’ For Gary Cohn, he was ‘dumb as shit.’ For H.R. McMaster, he was a ‘dope.’ The list went on.”

White House issued a scorched-earth dismissal of the book, its author and his sources.

“I don’t think (Americans) really care about some trash that an author that no one had ever heard of until today, or a fired employee, wants to peddle,” said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, calling the book “complete fantasy.”

Behind the scenes, though, Trump has been enraged by the betrayal by Bannon — a man who engineered the New York real estate mogul’s link to the nationalist far right and helped create a pro-Trump media ecosystem.

“He called me a great man last night. He obviously changed his tune pretty quick,” Trump said in the White House’s Roosevelt Room Thursday.

Sanders suggested that Bannon’s employer, Breitbart News, should consider firing him.

    – Russia allegations –

He wasn’t fired, but Bannon’s main financial backer is formally cutting ties with him, The Washington Post reported.

“I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected,” the newspaper quoted billionaire conservative donor Rebekah Mercer as saying.

Her family has had no contact with Bannon for months, nor has it given money to support his political agenda, “nor do we support his recent actions and statements,” she was quoted as saying.

Bannon, who left the White House in August, is also quoted in the book as saying that the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election will focus on money laundering.

The investigation by Mueller, a former FBI director, is looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to help get him elected — a charge the president has repeatedly and vehemently denied.

Russia-related allegations in the book also ensnare Don Junior, who took a meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June 2016 after an intermediary promised material that would incriminate Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and then campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended the meeting at Trump Tower in New York.

– Disbelief over victory –

“The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor — with no lawyers,” Bannon was quoted as saying in the book.

“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately,” he said.

Wolff’s book — which he says is based on interviews with Trump, his senior aides and others — makes a litany of shocking claims, including Trump’s belief that he installed Mohammed bin Salman as Saudi Arabia’s crown prince.

“We’ve put our man on top,” Trump is said to have claimed to friends.

The book also claims that Trump considered appointing a friend to the Supreme Court vacancy filled by Neil Gorsuch, eats food from McDonald’s because he believes it to be safe from poison, and that his team did not believe he was capable of winning the election.

“Shortly after 8 p.m. on Election Night, when the unexpected trend — Trump might actually win — seemed confirmed, Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears — and not of joy,” it said.//AFP

The authorities also warned foreign tour operators to partner with local counterparts in arranging package tour programmes in Laos; if not they will face measures.

The warning came after a report emerged that some foreign tour operators brought in tour groups including those from China and Thailand without cooperating with local tour operators, which violates the relevant regulations.

The report also suggested that some foreign tour operators did not use Lao tour guides, which also breaches the regulations, according to the report distributed at a recent meeting of the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism.

Some foreign operators were found purchasing just two or three-day packages from local tour operators, but their stays were actually longer than the specified package.

“They [the foreign tour operators] organised tours for the rest of their stay themselves,” Deputy Director General of the Tourism Management Department, Mr Xaysombath Bounnaphon said.

Mr Xaysombath added that such extension of their stay by the foreign tour group without acknowledgement from local tour operators violated the relevant regulations.

Local tour operators called for the government’s relevant sectors to take thorough action to regulate the issue as well as some tour groups not using Lao tour guides.

The operators said if these issues remained unaddressed, Laos would benefit little from the tourism industry.

Vice President of the Lao Association of Travel Agents, Mr Saleum Khamphengvong said Laos was suffering from a shortage of tour guides capable of speaking languages including Chinese and Korean, therefore tour operators had to employ foreign tour guides.

“To some extent, it is our problem that we cannot provide tour guides capable of speaking the languages of particular countries,” he said.

Mr Xaysombath admitted that Laos has insufficient tour guides capable of speaking Chinese, Korean, Spanish and Italian.

“Although a number of Lao students have graduated from China, many of them have not worked as tour guides,” he said.

To maximise the benefits from the tourism industry, the deputy director underlined the need for Laos to draw up a long-term plan to train sufficient tour guides to provide services for foreign visitors, especially those from targeted countries which are a major source of foreign tourist arrivals.

Laos has targeted high-end tourists from many countries including Europe, China, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

To attract more high-end tourists, especially from China and maximise the benefits, Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, Prof. Dr Bosengkham Vongdara told the National Assembly recently that Laos needs to draw up a comprehensive tourism marketing plan.

The plan would also include measures to ensure that foreign tour operators partner with local counterparts in arranging package tours in the country, while fully utilising Lao tour guides.

    Secretary-general Lim Jock Hoi, a veteran Bruneian diplomat, pointed to a tropical storm that battered the southern Philippines last month leaving at least 240 dead and tens of thousands displaced.

Also in December, a tropical cyclone pounded Indonesia’s main island of Java and killed at least 41 people, with tens of thousands forced from their homes by severe flooding and landslides.

“Our region is disaster-prone,” Lim said at his inauguration ceremony at Asean’s Secretariat in Jakarta.

“This underscores the need to strengthen Asean cooperation in disaster management and humanitarian assistance.”

The 10-member group has tended to focus much of its endeavours on regional diplomacy and economic growth.

Lim takes over from Vietnam’s Le Luong Minh who said Friday that the organisation’s main challenge is to bring it “closer to its people”.

Lim said that Asean must be “more proactive” and “improve (its) capabilities” in disaster-relief efforts.

“It is therefore incumbent upon us all to enhance the resilience of our communities through disaster risk reduction interventions, climate change adaptation strategies, as well as conservation and sustainable management of biodiversity and natural resources,” he added.

The Asean secretary-general serves a non-renewable term of five years with the post rotating among member states.//AFP

Actor Thomas Grant Gustin, 27, better known as Barry Allen a.k.a. Flash the superhero, was in Sabah recently to undergo a traditional Kadazan wedding ceremony with his fianc้e Andrea Thoma, 29, a physical therapist who is halfKadazan.

It was previously reported that the couple returned to the United States on Dec 28 after touring Sabah.

To the glee of Malaysian fans, Gustin finally shared photos of his holiday that included an island getaway and plenty of quality time with friends and family.

“I met so many people this passed (sic) week. New friends, new family and a bunch of random people that apparently watch Flash over in Malaysia,” he said.

In a series of photos, the happy couple was seen relaxing at Gaya Island Resort in Kota Kinabalu where they dined by the beach and participated in a cooking lesson.

In a separate post, they were seen visiting Thoma’s village, where they tasted roasted wild boar and shopped along Gaya Street.

Gustin and Thoma both looked blissful in a selfie shot dressed in traditional Kadazan costume.

“I will never forget this trip. I love my ‘spiritual wife’ and her family and I can’t wait to marry her for real this year,” he said. The couple plans to formally marry in the United States sometime this year.