Several thousand Buddhist protesters had gathered for a ceremony in Mrauk U, an ancient temple complex that has so far remained unscathed by the military’s crackdown on the region’s minority Rohingya Muslim community.

It was not immediately clear why the rally descended into violence.

But the clashes came on the same day as a repatriation agreement was signed between Myanmar and Bangladesh to start the return of some 655,000 Rohingya refugees from squalid camps back over the border.

A police spokesman blamed the crowd for “starting the violence” after barging into a district administrative office and hoisting the Rakhine State flag.

“Security forces asked them to disperse and fired warning shots with rubber bullets… but they didn’t stop, so police had to use real bullets,” Myanmar police spokesman Colonel Myo Soe told AFP.

“Seven people were killed and 13 injured during last night’s violence in Mrauk U,” he said adding more than 20 police were wounded by sling shots and stones hurled by the crowd.

Mrauk U lies only a few dozen kilometres from the epicentre of violence that saw Rohingya driven in their hundreds of thousands into Bangladesh last August.

Rakhine state is bisected by divisions and communal hatreds.

Poor and marginalised, the ethnic Rakhine have a long-standing emnity with the Bamar-majority Burmese state.

The previous fiscal year’s sales for the period were $404 million, said Khin Maung Lwin, assistant permanent secretary of the Ministry of Commerce.

However, sales at the most recent gems and jade emporium were not included in the latest tally, he said, adding, “Yet, the list has not come to us.”

The “54th Myanmar Gems and Jade Emporium” was held from August 2 to 11 last year, fetching sales of 6,561 jade lots including one of €12 million (Bt469 million), along with 326 lots of gems.

The country mines jade on a commercial scale in the Lonekhin and Hpakant regions, along with ruby in the Mogok and Mongshu regions and sapphire and other kinds of precious stones in Moetok.

“My grandfather was illiterate, but he thought about everything,” said Joey Lim Keong Yew, the eldest grandson of the late Lim Goh Tong, founder of the international casino-based conglomerate Genting Group, whose remains occupy the prime spot in the memorial park.

“That he would want to have a legacy that would not include all of his family members is unthinkable,” the 39-year-old businessman told The Sunday Times.

The late Lim’s legacy is now at the centre of a bitter intergenerational court battle in Malaysia over ownership and the financial allocations to family members from the multi-billion-dollar global corporate empire.

The empire boasts assets such as Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore, casinos in the United States, luxury liners in Europe, ski resorts in China, plantation holdings in Malaysia and offshore oil and gas fields across South-east Asia.

Keong Yew, together with his younger brother Keong Hoe and sister Seok Leng, are suing their uncles – Genting chairman and chief executive Lim Kok Thay and Datuk Lim Chee Wah – over a family trust that their grandfather had created for their late father Lim Tee Keong, the eldest of the Genting patriarch’s six children.

The dispute over the trust, one of several created as corporate vehicles for the family inheritance, has spawned other legal battles.

They include challenges to the validity of a will Tee Keong allegedly prepared before he died and a thumb-printed power of attorney that the late matriarch of the Genting clan, Madam Lee Kim Hua, is claimed to have authorised for a token sum of RM10.

Separately, Kok Thay is facing a suit from his sister Lim Siew Kim over the beneficial interest in a block of Genting stock.

The family feud that began four years ago has far-reaching ramifications for the Genting Group, which has publicly listed entities in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Australia and the Nasdaq exchange in the US.

The unfolding courtroom drama is bringing into public glare the opaque ownership structures and elaborate trust entities that bind the domestic and international business holdings of one of Asia’s wealthiest and intensely private families.

Bankers and lawyers said the legal battle could lead to challenges to Kok Thay’s control over the Genting Group.

How the Genting patriarch divided the family inheritance among the trust entities is not known.

But the stakes are huge.

The Genting Group has a combined market capitalisation of more than RM135bil (S$45bil) and the family is estimated to control close to 45% of the group.

“This whole business with the courts is going to be very lengthy and messy,” said a senior partner of a Malaysian law firm, which has relations with the group going back many years.

Because of the group’s financial heft and its clout over professionals that offer services to Genting, the lawyer, like several bankers and investment analysts that track the group, refused to be identified for fear of being cut off from future business opportunities.

Kok Thay’s office referred requests for comment for this article to Mr Gerard Lim, the general manager of Kien Huat Realty, a family-controlled private investment vehicle that owns commanding stakes in the Genting Group.

Lim (no relation to the Genting Lim clan) declined to comment on grounds that the matter is before the courts.

The Genting Group is clearly aware that the deepening family dispute is causing investor skittishness.

In a statement to the Malaysian stock exchange late last year, Genting said that legal opinions obtained by the group show that the 65-year-old Kok Thay has “reasonable grounds” to believe that he has direct control of 42.62% of Genting shares through his direct holdings and control over private entities.

These include Kien Huat Realty and Parkview Management, which control the family’s holdings in the group through an elaborate and complex network of trust entities and nominee concerns.

The Genting empire that the late Lim Goh Tong built is easily one of corporate Malaysia’s most storied rags-to-riches sagas.

He left China’s Fujian province in 1937 at 19 to find work in Malaysia and was soon trading second-hand heavy machinery in the construction sector, a business that helped him secure the seed capital for his big gamble.

In the mid-1960s, he convinced the Malaysian government to award him rights to build a hilltop resort and a casino to attract locals and foreign tourists.

The hotel and casino opened its doors in 1971 and since then, the Lim empire has been raking in the profits.

The group has also broadened its horizons, venturing overseas through an aggressive investment strategy and forging collaborations with brand names such as Universal Studios, Twentieth Century Fox and Hard Rock Cafe.

But like many successful Asian business families, the touchy question of wealth distribution in Genting after Lim Goh Tong’s death in October 2007 is turning out to be both complex and ugly.

Trouble

Unlike his other siblings, who were more reserved, Tee Keong, the eldest of Lim Goh Tong’s six children, fancied himself as somewhat of a bon vivant, according to several Malaysian businessmen who knew him well.

He was given positions within the Genting Group, but the businesses he presided over did not perform well. He also became estranged from his first wife, left their family home and got involved with another woman, with whom he had two children.

In early 2003, Tee Keong was declared bankrupt due to his failure to repay debts of more than RM200mil owed to two stockbroking companies, including TA Securities, for losses he suffered in share trading.

The bankruptcy forced patriarch Lim Goh Tong to change a carefully designed inheritance structure he had created around a clutch of trust entities for each of his children and their families.

Each trust was controlled separately and, according to court documents reviewed by The Sunday Times, control of the entity known as the Tee Keong Family Trust was transferred to his brothers, Kok Thay and Chee Wah, after Tee Keong’s bankruptcy.

Despite the bankruptcy and the change in control of the trust entity, Tee Keong and his family were never deprived of the comforts they were long accustomed to.

His children received comfortable allowances during their studies overseas.

Tee Keong himself continued to live well and was regularly seen in public being driven by a chauffeur in a Bentley sedan bearing the number plate TK18, court documents claim.

Tee Keong was diagnosed with cancer in February 2014 and died two months later. From then on, the family affairs at the Genting household became contentious.

According to court documents, his sons Keong Yew and Keong Hoe discovered that they had been struck off the family trust and a will their father executed a month before he died also excluded them from any family inheritance.

The will, which named Kok Thay and Chee Wah as sole trustees, also assigned a collective 20 per cent interest to Keong Yew and Keong Hoe’s mother, Agnes Tan Bee Gaik, and their sister Seok Leng.

The remaining 80% was left to the son and daughter Tee Keong fathered with his mistress.

The will, which Keong Yew and Keong Hoe are claiming in court was executed under “suspicious circumstances”, is now at the heart of the clutch of court challenges over the Genting empire.

The brothers want the Malaysian courts to invalidate their father’s will, which they insist was executed without his knowledge because of the advanced stage of his terminal illness.

For their part, Kok Thay and Chee Wah have rejected the allegations and insisted in court affidavits that the claims made by the nephews are “highly irresponsible accusations”.

    A mezzanine floor at the tower in the sprawling city’s business district crashed to the ground shortly before lunchtime Monday, injuring 73 people, police said. There were no deaths.

Dramatic CCTV footage showed a group of about 40 visiting students on a balcony section plunge as the floor gave way with a cascade of glass, metal and other material showering the ground floor where several others were walking.

National police spokesman Setyo Wasisto said the investigation team is hoping to gather crucial evidence by the end of Tuesday, though the results of the probe will not be known for several weeks.

Investigators will look at building material quality and the site’s structural integrity, said Mushanif Mukti, a top official at the Association of Construction Safety and Health Experts.

“It needs to be examined to see whether it is structural fatigue or it’s a weight issue,” he said.

Jakarta’s governor Anies Baswedan has ordered an inspection of the complex, which was last checked in May last year.

Officials have described the collapse as an accident and not the result of an explosion  the tower was bombed by Islamist militants in 2000.

“If they (investigators) are done today, everything can be cleaned up and the…scene can be reopened,” Wasisto told AFP.

“Some tenants are a bit cautious even though building management said it’s safe. They are also going to check the other mezzanine floor today.”

Broken bones

Most of the injuries were broken bones, Wasisto said, adding that none was lifethreatening.

“We have questioned a few witnesses…(including) security officers, students, friends of those injured and employees who work there. It’s ongoing,” he said.

A dozen people have so far been released from the hospital.

Enforcement of Indonesian safety standards can be spotty.

In October, a deadly blaze ripped through a fireworks factory on the outskirts of Jakarta, killing 48 workers in one of the country’s worst industrial accidents in recent memory.

Police said the fire was caused by sparks from welding equipment.

At the exchange, the damaged area remained closed off Tuesday but trading carried on as usual.

The bourse held a moment of silence to honour those injured.

After the accident, which happened in one of the two 1990sbuilt towers in the stock exchange complex, the lobby was filled with debris and toppledover plants near a Starbucks outlet.

Hundreds of panicked employees were evacuated from the building, which also houses the local office of the World Bank.

Television images showed chaotic scenes as victims were taken to hospital or lay on the ground outside the tower complex.//AFP

Mina Marasigan, NDRRMC spokesperson, said classes remain suspended in areas where classrooms have been used as evacuation centers.

Alert Level 3 is still in effect over Mayon Volcano, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said. This means “that it is currently in a relatively high level of unrest as magma is at the crater and hazardous eruption is possible within weeks or days.”

“A total of nine (9) episodes of tremor, four (4) of which accompanied short-duration lava fountaining, and 75 lava collapse events, corresponding to rockfall along the front and margins of advancing lava and short pyroclastic flows downriver of Miisi Gully within the permanent danger zone, were recorded by Mayon’s seismic network,” Phivolcs said.

Residents were advised to be vigilant, and to refrain from entering the six kilometer-radius permanent danger zone (PDZ); and seven-kilometer extended danger zone on the southern flanks of the mountain due to the danger of rock falls, landslides, and sudden explosions or dome collapse that may generate hazardous volcanic flows

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said Duterte called him “for the first time “on Monday night to relay that he had nothing to do with the SEC’s decision.

“Hindi tootoo ‘yan. Wala akong kinalaman diyan sa Rappler na ‘yan ha,” Roque quoted Duterte.

“The President has nothing to do with it. It’s by individuals who were not his appointees,” he added, citing that most of the officials of the SEC were appointees of former president Benigno Aquino III.

Rappler CEO Maria Ressa on Tuesday refuted the claim of the Duterte administration that it had nothing to do with the SEC ruling.

In a press briefing in Malacañang, Roque said Duterte “found it unfair” that Ressa was crying out for violation of press freedom.

“The President found it unfair for Maria Ressa to claim violation freedom of the press when according to him, Rappler has been very active [in] criticizing individuals for violating the Constitution and the laws of the land and it turns out it is by itself violating the Constitution,” he said.

The Palace official said the government has not suppressed press freedom against Rappler contrary to the allegations of the administration’s critics.

“We would like to deny first and foremost that the state has not infringed on freedom of the press of Rappler or any of its reporters. Truth is, the reporter of Rappler is still in our press briefing, she has not been prevented from exercising her profession as a journalist. None of the individuals behind Rappler will be prevented from performing their duties as journalist,” he said.

“There is no affront of freedom of the press because there is no censorship,” he added.

Roque said the ruling of SEC simply meant that “no one is exempt from complying from the laws of the land, even Rappler and even the media.”

Pramrudee Tiede said she had been forced to explain that her sister, Premruthai Juseng, 26, who had worked as a flight attendant in Qatar and had a history of depression, took her own life by hanging herself in an airline’s dormitory late December.

Pramrudee, whose nickname is “Nice”, earlier had told a reporter in a telephone interview that she wanted to keep the affair private, mainly to protect her mother’s feelings.

However, her father, Hiabbu Koh, 74, told the media that he believed Premruthai, whose nickname was “Ice”, had been murdered in her room in Qatar and called on the Thai Foreign Ministry to help investigate the cause of her death.

He said his daughter looked happy when she talked to him in Line message chats. “We talked to each other everyday. She was very happy after she became a flight attendant, the job she had dreamed about for a long time.”

Pramrudee wrote on Facebook that initially she had not wanted to say anything about her sister, who was resting in peace, but she decided to go public to protect her, her mother and the Thai Embassy in Doha.

“My father’s interview with the press was groundless. Ice was not murdered, but she had suffered from depression, resulting in her deciding to take her own life.”

Pramruedee, who is based in Berlin, said she had been alerted about the tragedy by the Thai Embassy in Doha and then she had told her mother, who was in Bangkok. Hiabbu had been separated from her mother for years.

She and her mother then travelled to Doha, she said, where Thai diplomats and the airline’s staff brought them to see her sister’s body.

Police also gave them a letter written by Premruthai, she said, the details of which she would not reveal. However, a source said Premruthai had written down private information concerning her bank accounts.

“Before the day she died, she wrote to me via Whatsapp, saying “I love you sister Nice. Tell mom also.”

Doha police concluded the cause of the death was asphyxiation by hanging.

The two women spent seven days in Doha arranging for Premruthai’s body to be transported to Thailand and during their stay the Thai Embassy and the airline firm took good care of them and helped facilitate the process despite language barriers, Pramrudee said.

“The airline also provided support for our expenses during our stay and procedures to bring her home,” Pramrudee wrote.

She also wrote that she wanted to apologise to everybody that may have been caused trouble because of her father’s allegations.

Meanwhile, Hiabbu yesterday met Foreign Ministry Consular Affairs director-general Chatree Atjananun and his deputy Pattarat Hongthong to seek information about the death of his daughter.

After a two-hour meeting, the father said he still did not believe that his daughter had committed suicide and had submitted a petition for the department to prove the real cause of death.

“My eldest daughter [Premrudee] can write whatever she wants, that’s her right. I have not yet seen the suicide note she mentioned, but what the officials told me was that it was about the location of her belongings and assets,” he said.

The death certificate mentioned only that she had died from asphyxiation and did not contain details about her having been hanged, Hiabbu said.

Premruthai was dead so it was not right to blame depression, he added.

Chatree had promised to make more inquires about the cause of death, Hiabbu said, adding that he wanted Qatari authorities to be direct in handling the case.

However, he said he was worried that if the investigation concluded that Premruthai had killed herself, he would be unable to come to terms with the conclusion.

Dramatic CCTV footage showed a group of some 40 visiting students on a balcony section plunge as the floor gave way with a cascade of glass, metal and other material crashing onto the ground floor where several others were walking.

A Jakarta police spokesman said the collapse was an accident and not the result of an explosion.

National police spokesman Setyo Wasisto told AFP 75 people had been injured. There were no reports of deaths so far.

Television images showed chaotic scenes as victims were taken to hospital or lay on the ground outside the tower complex in the centre of the sprawling city’s business district.

“I saw many people bleeding,” student Rizki Noviandi, who was taking part in a competition at the exchange building, told Metro TV.

“So many people were carried out of the building and were left on the grass outside… until the ambulances arrived.”

The lobby was filled with debris and toppled-over plants near a Starbucks coffee outlet, as hundreds of building employees were evacuated from the complex which was bombed by Islamist militants in 2000.

At least 10 people were killed and dozens injured by a car bomb in that attack.

“Our search and rescue teams, the police, doctors, the firefighters are all still working,” Wasisto said.

“They are cleaning the debris and also searching for other possible injuries,” he added.

Those hurt mostly sustained injuries to their legs and arms, including broken bones, a spokesman for one local hospital said.

Jakarta police spokesman Argo Yuwono added: “The accident happened at the first floor… It’s a floor where many employees are passing by.”

– ‘Panicking’ –

The collapse took place in one of two towers in the complex.

“There was a sound, like something had fallen off a building structure, for about 20 seconds. Everyone was panicking and people were immediately being evacuated,” Amailia Putri Hasniawati, a journalist based at the exchange, told AFP.

It was not immediately clear what caused the accident at the tower in Sudirman district, which was built in 1995.

“Material degradation could be the cause,” construction expert Iswandi Imran told local TV.

“It could be corrosion or anything which slowly degrades the strength of the structure so it cannot take the weight any longer. But all that has to be investigated.”

Despite the chaos Monday, trading continued as usual in the afternoon session with the main index closing 0.2 percent higher.

The accident happened shortly after noon local time (0500 GMT) while the market was on its lunchtime break.

“There was a loud banging so people who were inside immediately ran outside of the building,” said Metro TV journalist Marlia Zein.

The local office of the World Bank is housed on the 12th floor of the complex, according to its website.

Reports at the time of the 2000 bombing said one of the men responsible was a member of the Free Aceh Movement, a separatist group which had been fighting for a free Islamic state in Aceh province since the mid-seventies.

Some 200 cars were also damaged in the blast in an underground parking lot.//AFP