The city-state’s media regulator said the film, “Radiance of Resistance”, had a “skewed narrative” and could cause divisions among its ethnically diverse population.

Most of Singapore’s 5.6 million inhabitants are ethnic Chinese but it is also home to substantial Muslim Malay and Indian minorities, as well as many expatriates. It has strict laws against anything seen as provoking disharmony.

The film was due to be shown Thursday at the Singapore Palestinian Film Festival, which showcases works by Palestinian filmmakers and artists and has been running since 2016.

Four other films will still be screened at the festival, according to its website.

The banned work looked at the lives of two young girls presented as the new faces of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli military occupation.

One of the girls, 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi, has been hailed as a hero by Palestinians who see her as bravely standing up to Israel’s occupation but Israelis accuse her family of using her as a pawn in staged provocations.

She was charged in an Israeli military court Monday with several offences, including assault, after a video of her kicking and slapping two Israeli soldiers in the West Bank went viral.

The charges relate to the events in the video but also five other incidents.

“In holding up the girls as role models to be emulated in an ongoing conflict, the film incites activists to continue their resistance against the alleged oppressors,” Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority said on its website.

“The skewed narrative of the film is inflammatory and has the potential to cause disharmony amongst the different races and religions in Singapore.”

Film festival organiser Adela Foo told AFP she respected the decision and would not appeal.

“Naturally, I am a little sad and disappointed,” said Foo, a 23-year-old student. A film was also banned at the 2016 edition of the festival, she said.

Singapore and Israel have a friendly relationship, unlike some of the city-state’s Muslim-majority neighbours who have no diplomatic ties with the country.//AFP

Surakiart was chosen by Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi last year to offer advice on the implementation of the report by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan to end the crisis.

Annan had submitted his final report on the Rakhine crisis in August last year, around the time a militant group had attacked security outposts in the state.

The attack prompted a tough reaction from the Myanmar military, which killed more than a hundred of people. More than 600,000 people fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, accusing the military of perpetrating atrocities.

The international community, including the UN, accused Myanmar authorities of mishandling the situation and its “clearance operation” was seen as an attempt at ethnic cleansing to force the Muslim Rohingya out of the country.

Surakiart on Wednesday discussed the situation and his work with Mark Field, Britain’s Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

Field was in Bangkok on Wednesday and held discussions with Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on bilateral ties between Thailand and UK.

The UK minister, who oversees Asia Pacific affairs, emphasised the importance of repatriation of the Rohingya to Rakhine state and believed they must have the right to Myanmar citizenship as well as necessary humanitarian assistance, Surakiart revealed.

“Citizenship for displaced persons is important but it would take time to verify their nationality,” Surakiart said, adding, “the experience of many Asean countries on the matter would be useful.”

The international community should provide assistance on education for displaced persons as well as in the Myanmar language so as to enable them to assimilate in the society, said Surakiart, who refrained from using any particular name for the group referred to as “Bengalis” by Myanmar authorities.

Surakiart also briefed Field on his working process and procedure and that there would be a meeting of the advisory board in Nya Pyi Taw late this month.

“The key problem is that there is a big gap between Myanmar’s and the international community’s interpretation of the situation and the problems in Rakhine state, which may create obstacles in making concerted efforts to help those who need immediate assistance,” he said.

A major task for the advisory board is to bridge the gap in order to mobilise cooperation to solve the problems, he said.

According to NASA, a supermoon is a full moon that is at its closest point to Earth in its orbit. The final episode will be the second full moon in a month. Called a blue moon, the phenomenon is said to happen every two and a half years on average.

“With the total eclipse, it’ll be a royal spectacle indeed: a ‘super blue blood’ Moon,” stated the organization on its website, explaining that the Moon will lose its brightness and take on an eerie, fainter-than-normal glow, giving it the name “blood moon.”

Featuring a total lunar eclipse, the supermoon is viewable from western North America across the Pacific to Eastern Asia.

“The lunar eclipse on January 31 will be visible during moonset. Folks in the Eastern United States, where the eclipse will be partial, will have to get up in the morning to see it,” said NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center research scientist Noah Petro, adding that it would be another great the opportunity to watch the moon.

Paul, who gained notoriety on social media and has a popular video blog or “vlog” on YouTube, filmed the video in Aokigahara, which is known as “the Japanese Suicide Forest” because of its reputation.

According to media reports, the video showing a man who had hanged himself, received six million views before being removed amid a firestorm of outrage on Twitter.

Adding to the anger were outtakes of the video — which remained in circulation on Twitter — in which Paul is seen laughing and joking about the incident.

“When my brother found my sister’s body, he screamed with horror & confusion & grief & tried to save her,” actress Anna Akana tweeted.

“You do not walk into a suicide forest with a camera and claim mental health awareness.”

Another Twitter user wrote, “I’m truly sickened by this Logan Paul situation. i lost my brother to suicide… my brother took his own life by hanging himself… how insensitive and sick can you be to film someone in that state.”

In his apology, Paul said he had posted the video in a mistaken effort to draw attention to the problem of depression and suicide.

“It’s easy to get caught up in the moment without fully weighing the possible ramifications,” he said in the statement.

“I’m often reminded of how big a reach I truly have & with great power comes great responsibility… for the first time in my life I’m regretful to say I handled that power incorrectly. It won’t happen again.”

Google-owned YouTube indicated the video was removed because it violated the terms of services of the video-sharing platform.

“Our hearts go out to the family of the person featured in the video,” a Google statement said.

The statement added that YouTube prohibits “violent or gory content posted in a shocking, sensational or disrespectful manner” and that such content is allowed only “when supported by appropriate educational or documentary information.”//AFP

The 34-year-old posted a photo of herself with a wedding ring on Weibo in China, where she has a loyal fanbase, and said in a statement in Chinese: “I, Sola Aoi, am married.”

She said she had been worried that her announcement would hurt her popularity, but did not want to lie, Apple Daily reported.

“I want to get married,” she said. “I want children. I want my own family. He isn’t a handsome guy and he has no money, but he’s accepted my previous job.”

In a statement in Japanese on her official blog, she introduced her husband, Apple Daily said.

He is Japanese DJ NON and she posted two photos of them drinking.

Angry comments flooded Twitter after Paul, who gained notoriety on social media and has a popular video blog or “vlog”, apologised for the footage, which was reportedly viewed six million times.

The video shows Paul discovering a body in Aokigahara, a dense woodland at the foot of Mount Fuji known as “the Japanese Suicide Forest”, in a country that has long struggled with some of the highest suicide rates in the developed world.

As news of the video and apology was reported in Japan Wednesday, social media erupted with indignation over the film, which showed a man who had hanged himself.

“It is insane to show to the world the body of someone who died after being depressed. Shame on you,” said one Twitter user @j_rivoluzione.

Others objected to Paul’s appearance in a novelty hat, while outtakes showing the US internet celebrity laughing and joking about the incident also stirred anger.

“It’s good to raise awareness but you can do it without filming a person who committed suicide,” @spiffymiffy1 said.

“It looks like he did it for self-satisfaction. Suicide and depression are serious issues. There’s nothing funny about them.”

In his apology, Paul said he had posted the video in a mistaken effort to draw attention to the problem of depression and suicide.

“It’s easy to get caught up in the moment without fully weighing the possible ramifications,” he said in his statement.

Actress Anna Akana was among many in the US and elsewhere to hit out at Paul.

“When my brother found my sister’s body, he screamed with horror & confusion & grief & tried to save her,” she tweeted.

“You do not walk into a suicide forest with a camera and claim mental health awareness.”

Japan has the highest suicide rate of any Group of Seven industrialised nation, with more than 20,000 people taking their own lives each year.

Aokigahara, located 100 kilometers (63 miles) west of Tokyo, has become such a well-known place for desperate people to kill themselves that authorities have put up signs among the trees urging people with self destructive thoughts to contact a suicide prevention group.

“Life is a precious thing… Think again about your parents, siblings and children,” the signs say.

Suicides in Japan have fallen since their peak of 34,427 in 2003, with 21,897 taking their own lives in 2016.

Google-owned YouTube indicated the video was removed because it violated the video-sharing platform’s terms of service.

“Our hearts go out to the family of the person featured in the video,” a Google statement said.

The statement added that YouTube prohibits “violent or gory content posted in a shocking, sensational or disrespectful manner” and that such content is allowed only “when supported by appropriate educational or documentary information.”

Trump launched the highly personal missive on Twitter hours after his ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley described proposed dialogue between the two Koreas as a “band-aid” and said Washington would never accept a nuclear-armed Pyongyang.

Trump said: “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’

“Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

The tweet was in reference to Kim’s annual New Year address in which he warned he has a “nuclear button” on his table, but sweetened his remarks by expressing an interest in dialogue and taking part in the Pyeongchang Games next month.

South Korea has responded positively to Kim’s overture, suggesting January 9 as a date for rare talks aimed at easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

But the US questioned whether talks could be taken seriously.

North Korea has rattled the international community in recent months with multiple missile launches and its sixth and most powerful nuclear test — purportedly of a hydrogen bomb.

It has shrugged off a raft of new sanctions and heightened rhetoric from Washington as it drives forward with its weapons program, which it says is for defense against US aggression.

Pyongyang claims it needs nuclear weapons to protect itself from a hostile Washington and has striven to create a warhead capable of targeting the US mainland with an atomic warhead.

Personal insults

Earlier, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-In welcomed Kim’s comments as a “positive response” to Seoul’s hopes that the Pyeongchang Olympics would be a “groundbreaking opportunity for peace”

The South’s unification minister Cho Myoung-Gyon told a press conference Tuesday that Seoul was “reiterating our willingness to hold talks with the North at any time and place in any form.”

“We hope that the South and North can sit face to face and discuss the participation of the North Korean delegation at the Pyeongchang Games as well as other issues of mutual interest for the improvement of inter-Korean ties,” he added.

The Koreas, divided by a Demilitarized Zone since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, last held high-level talks in 2015 to try to ease tensions.

But Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, told reporters Washington could not take the talks seriously “if they don’t do something to ban all nuclear weapons in North Korea.”

She said: “We consider this to be a very reckless regime. We don’t think we need a band-aid and we don’t think we need to smile and take a picture.

“We think we need to have them stop nuclear weapons and they need to stop it now,” she said, warning: “We will never accept a nuclear North Korea.”

Trump’s tweet was also the latest in a series of personal insults the two leaders have traded since the US president took office a year ago.

Trump has mocked Kim as “fat” and a “little rocket man.” Kim, for his part has described Trump as a “mentally deranged US dotard.”

 The youngest forum, the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC), will call its second summit meeting next Wednesday in Phnom Penh to endorse a five-year action plan (2018-2022) regarding its cooperation projects.

Its participants – six counties in the Mekong basin comprising China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam – have all been involved in many cooperation schemes over the past decades.

In 1992, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) sponsored the six countries to form the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) to jointly develop infrastructure to facilitate economic linkages in the basin. In that context, leaders of the six governments will have their sixth summit on March 6 in Hanoi to look at cooperation plans.

And on April 5, government leaders from the lower Mekong comprising Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam will gather for their third summit in Cambodia’s Siem Reap to consider working plans for river utilisation and water resource management.

Later on, Thailand will host the eighth summit of the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS), which bring the leaders of five countries also including Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam together to discuss cooperation plans and projects. The exact date for the ACMECS summit has not yet been fixed.

However, so many cooperation frameworks in the Mekong region raise questions among observers about overlaps in terms of membership, cooperation sectors and functions.

While China, which is very active in promoting cooperation schemes in the basin, has said the new LMC initiative will not replace other forums, a Chinese academic has expressed doubts if the summit meetings of so many schemes were necessary since they are overlapping.

The LMC as an umbrella scheme for region identifies three pillars of cooperation: Politics and security; economics and sustainable development; and society, culture and people-to-people exchanges.

The GMS covers all six countries but focuses on infrastructure development as well as sectoral economic cooperation. Many sectors overlap with other schemes.

In addition, the LMC also has five key priorities: Connectivity, productivity capacity, cross-border economic cooperation, water resources, agriculture and poverty reduction.

While the ADB has sponsored the GMS since its beginning in 1992, China became a key player leading the GMS since its first summit in 2002. It was also Beijing that gave birth to the LMC in 2015 and pushed forward the cooperation scheme actively.

However, China gives more importance to the LMC since the scheme covers all dimensions of cooperation in the region including security.

Professor Su Hao, from China Foreign Affairs University, said Beijing could utilise the LMC to help neighbouring countries fix their internal security problems, such as Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis.

If all issues could be discussed in the LMC in the future, some overlapping functions in the GMS such as the leaders’ summit might not be necessary, he said in Beijing recently.

However, a Bangkok-based analyst, who wanted to remain anonymous, said countries in the other five Mekong countries should play more active roles in pushing agendas in cooperation schemes for their own interests, rather than playing along with China’s influence.

Downstream countries in the MRC framework should work harder to influence China and Myanmar to sign the 1995 Mekong Agreement, enabling the MRC to effectively regulate water utilisation and environmental concerns in the Mekong River, said the former diplomat.

China enjoys utilisation of the Mekong for hydropower and navigation projects but prefers the less binding status of dialogue partner in the MRC when comes to commitments to jointly take responsibility of environmental and social impacts.

Under the 1995 pact, the countries in the lower Mekong – Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam – need to go through a prior consultation process before projects to utilise water resources in the river begin.

China’s eight hydropower dams – and others in the pipeline – are not subject to the same process since Beijing is not a member of the MRC.

The 3rd MRC Summit in Siem Reap, one of the most significant political events, which takes place every four years, has the state theme of “joint efforts and partnerships towards achievement of the sustainable development goals in the Mekong”, according to an MRC statement.

This year, the MRC remained committed to continue building and strengthening new and existing partnerships, including with the LMC, Asean, and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, it said.

Vanalyn Png, 22, had been in intensive care at a local hospital suffering from broken arms and internal bleeding in her head and abdomen, according to her brother Jervis.

“The doctor tried hard, but they couldn’t save her. Vanalyn fought the battle bravely and she lost… She’s now in a better place,” he said in a Facebook post.

Png was a passenger on the motorbike driven by fellow Singaporean Ng Yong Sing, 27.

Ng died when the pair was thrown into a three-metre deep drain in the southern Phatthalung province, according to reports.

A local rescue group, Rescue Phatthalung, said the accident had occurred at 1.20pm on Sunday. The Singapore-registered motorcycle is believed to have skidded on a wet road.

Png, 24, and his sister Vanessa Png, 25, told The Straits Times at their Woodlands flat that their sister was a vocal and affable person who enjoyed sports, once helming the Singapore Polytechnic marathon team and captaining the basketball team in secondary school.

Both Ng and Png were employees at the Select Group food and beverage chain, they added.

Ng was a business development executive who had recently received a scholarship from the company, while Png started as a marketer less than six months ago.

The two had left for Malaysia on Saturday and were due to return to Singapore on Tuesday.

But Png’s siblings said their sister had not told the family that she was heading to Thailand. They were also not told that she was travelling with Ng or doing so on a motorcycle.

“If she had told us, we would have discouraged her from riding a motorcycle there. We were under the impression that she was taking a bus with friends,” said Png, describing his sister as an independent spirit.

The motorcycle, a Honda CB400 Super Four, is believed to have belonged to Ng.

Ng, whom the Pngs described as outgoing and just as talkative as their sister, had visited their family three times in the past year on a similar motorcycle.

The parents from both families are heading to Thailand to retrieve the bodies, said Png.

The Straits Times understands that the Singapore Embassy in Bangkok is helping both families.

This was the fourth reported case last month (December) of a fatal traffic incident involving Singaporeans in a foreign country.

On Dec 22, a car crash in the United States killed 22-year-old Singapore Armed Forces scholarship holder Justin Yeo Jun Xi and his parents. His 19-year-old sister Justlyn Yeo Jing Hui survived.

A day earlier, interior designer Koh Yuan Ling died while travelling in South Africa with her sister, who has since been discharged from hospital.

On Dec 11, Seow Kai Yuan was killed in an accident in New Zealand on State Highway 6 on the west coast of the South Island.

The order signed in June restricted the noisy explosives to community fireworks displays in an attempt to curb the bloody merrymaking that leaves scores of Filipinos dead or injured each year.

The Philippines is mainly Catholic but the violent New Year festivities draw on ancient superstitions and Chinese traditions, with people firing guns and setting off powerful fireworks in the belief the bangs will drive away bad spirits.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque said 191 people were hurt during the 2018 revelry — down 77 percent compared to the average over the past five years — but added his department might recommend a total firecracker ban to ensure zero casualties.

“We are relatively pleased — relative because there are still injuries but pleased because of the substantial reduction in fireworks-related injuries,” Duque told reporters as he thanked Duterte for issuing the order.

Asked how to further minimise injuries, Duque said: “I think the end goal really is to ban fireworks completely.”

Duterte, 72, won elections in mid-2016 vowing to strictly enforce law and order measures. He has also waged an unprecedented drug war which has claimed thousands of lives and led rights groups to warn he may be orchestrating crimes against humanity.

The president’s June order stated that firecrackers may only be used in areas approved by local governments and under the supervision of trained and licensed people.

Duque said most of this year’s injuries occurred on the streets of the capital Manila, with illegal matchstick-sized “piccolo” firecrackers remaining the top cause.

Among those hurt was an 11-month-old baby, he added.

Duterte in 2016 said firecracker-related injuries were a “very serious public health issue”, adding he was concerned about children, who make up most of the victims.

As Davao mayor, he signed in 2002 an ordinance that banned the manufacture, sale, distribution, possession and use of firecrackers in the city.

Duterte’s spokesman said on Monday that the president might consider adopting a total firecracker ban nationwide.

“He might but there may be a need to amend the law,” Harry Roque told AFP.//AFP