The city-state is home to many open-air food courts where vendors, known as “hawkers”, serve dishes such as chicken and rice, noodles and meat skewers at relatively cheap prices.

Some hawkers have even been awarded Michelin stars by the culinary bible, which has had a Singapore edition since 2016.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced last week that Singapore will nominate its hawker culture to UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage, describing the city-state’s food centres as “community dining rooms” which form part of the country’s identity.

But the move sparked anger in Malaysia, whose citizens have long claimed their own street food — which shares many similarities with Singapore’s — is far superior to anything in their tiny neighbour.

Malaysian celebrity chef Redzuawan Ismail, commonly known as Chef Wan, told AFP he thought Singapore’s UN bid was “rubbish”.

“When you talk about hawkers, Singapore is not the only one to have hawker culture… Why (do you) need to go to UNESCO to patent? Is yours so special?” added the chef, who once appeared on a show with late American celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain.

Another well-known local chef, Ismail Ahmad, insisted that his country was a street food “paradise” and it should be Malaysia that was applying for UN recognition.

“Even the Singaporean people come to Malaysia and enjoy our stalls,” he said.

But Singaporeans have dismissed the anger in Malaysia, insisting a UNESCO listing is about more than just food.

“It is about the street food culture heritage that bonds people together and is supported by the government and industry, because it is about the community,” acclaimed Singaporean food critic K.F. Seetoh was quoted as saying in the city-state’s New Paper newspaper.

“If you have it, flaunt it.”

The countries have had testy relations since Singapore became an independent state in 1965 after being ejected from a brief union with Malaysia, but rows about food tend to get particularly heated.

Singapore plans to submit its nomination to UNESCO in March, and an announcement on whether the bid has been successful is expected in 2020.

The 18-nation Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) will hold its annual summit in Nauru from September 3-6, with delegates meeting just a few kilometres from the camp dubbed “Australia’s Guantanamo”.

It houses asylum-seekers who have tried to reach Australia by boat and are processed in remote facilities on Nauru and Papua New Guinea under Canberra’s hardline immigration policies.

Australia says offshore processing is necessary to deter illegal boat arrivals and prevent deaths at sea on the treacherous journey.

Amnesty, along with the 80 other non-government organisations, released an open letter calling on PIF leaders to act and end “a stain on the region”.

“Pacific island leaders cannot ignore this issue any longer and need to ensure that it is at the very top of the forum’s agenda,” Amnesty’s Pacific researcher Roshika Deo said.

“This is a desperate situation that requires urgent action. Regional leaders must show that they will not stand by while the Australian government’s abusive policies continue to risk more lives.”

The rights groups said asylum-seekers on Nauru and PNG’s Manus Island were subjected to “cruel and degrading treatment” that must stop.

“(There are) widespread reports of violence against refugees in Papua New Guinea and violence and sexual harassment of women and children on Nauru,” the letter said.

There are currently more than 200 people in the Nauru facility, according to the Refugee Council of Australia, including dozens of children.

Rights advocates say they are suffering mental health issues under the strain of indefinite detention, with reports of despondent children harming themselves.

However, the Canberra-bankrolled facility has been an economic lifeline for Nauru, which has an area of only 21 square kilometres (eight square miles) and has depleted its only natural resource, phosphate.

The Nauru government has imposed strict conditions on media covering the PIF summit, threatening to revoke journalists’ visas if they capture images of the camps or asylum-seekers.

It has also limited the number of reporters attending and barred Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC, after taking exception to its coverage.

The government in London will now make the final decision on whether David Roach, a Canadian citizen, will be sent to the city-state to face justice, Singapore’s attorney-general’s office and interior ministry said in a statement.

Roach is wanted in Singapore for allegedly stealing Sg$30,000 ($22,000) from a Standard Chartered bank branch in 2016 after strolling in and presenting a threatening note.

He fled to Bangkok, where he was jailed on charges related to bringing the stolen cash into Thailand but authorities refused to send him to Singapore as the countries do not have an extradition treaty.

After his release, he was detained in January at London’s Heathrow Airport while in transit en route to Canada, and Singapore requested that he be deported to the city-state. Singapore and Britain have an extradition treaty.

The British court decided on Wednesday “that the requirements for Singapore’s extradition request under UK law have been met”, said the attorney-general’s office and interior ministry.

In a bid to get their extradition request approved, Singapore had agreed to a demand from London that Roach would not face corporal punishment if convicted.

Flogging with a heavy rattan cane, a legacy of British colonial rule, is a common punishment in Singapore, with convicted bank robbers facing a minimum penalty of six strokes, as well as at least two years in jail.

But Britain abolished caning as a punishment for criminals decades ago, and refuses to extradite anyone to a country where the punishment exists.

Roach is wanted in Singapore on one count of robbery and one count of money laundering.

Bank robberies are extremely rare in Singapore, whose zero-tolerance approach to crime has made it one of Asia’s safest cities.

Hendro collapsed after pounding the Indonesian capital’s smoggy streets for more than four-and-a-half hours in 31 Celsius (88 Fahrenheit) heat to finish last, in the Asian Games’ slowest 50km (31 miles) walk for nearly three decades.

The air quality index in central Jakarta hit 163 on Thursday morning. A reading of more than 150 is considered a health threat to the general population.

After being doused in ice water by medics Hendro, 28, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, was carried to the medical centre shouting incoherently with pain.

“The race was so difficult — the hot weather, humidity, and not just the humidity but the pollution,” he said after recovering. “Racing here is not easy. This is Indonesia.”

“This is a miracle for me I can finish. This is a miracle,” he added.

Hayato Katsuki of Japan took gold with 4:03:30 — 23 minutes slower than the last Asian Games — with a well-judged race, after making holes in his vest to improve ventilation.

Fellow Japanese Satoshi Maruo set the pace for much of the way but fell back in the final 10km, ending 10 minutes behind the winner and out of the medals.

China’s Wang Qin took silver, and Joo Hyun-myeong of South Korea bronze.

‘#WeBreatheTheSameAir’ 

“It was just so hot. The walkers in front went fast at the beginning but I paced myself as I knew they would slow,” said Katsuki. “I was prepared. I made cuts in my vest to help the air flow.”

The winning time was the slowest since the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing. Three racers did not finish.

Hendro’s efforts drew the biggest cheers from the home crowd, applauding his brave effort as he persevered long after any medal chance had vanished, to finish in 4:32:20.

As well as finding it hard to breathe, he was battling an old ligament injury in his right knee.

“It was so painful,” he said. “I was thinking — I must finish. This is my first time in the 50km. I didn’t want to make my coach disappointed.

“I’m so proud of the fans… they came here to support me.”

But Hendro also called for future races to be shifted away from hazy Jakarta to elsewhere in Indonesia’s Java island.

“There are no trees here, all buildings,” he said. “In the low altitude, pollution and humidity, it is difficult for all Asians,” he said.

Two athletes were disqualified for illegal steps, while China’s Wang Riu retired.

Jakarta’s air pollution came under fire earlier in the Games when activists unfurled a giant banner showing a person wearing a gas mask and the message “#WeBreatheTheSameAir”.

It was no surprise then when their homing pigeons scooped the first four places in the race and total prize money of more than one million yuan ($150,000).

But the pigeons’ rapid times soon raised suspicions and Shanghai race organisers turned the men in when the scale of the ruse emerged, the state-run Legal Daily reported.

The two men, surnamed Gong and Zhang, attempted to conceal their crime by killing the birds and giving up the prize money, the state newspaper said.

But it was too late and a Shanghai court handed the duo suspended sentences of three years for fraud.

The court also fined Gong 30,000 yuan and Zhang 20,000 yuan, Legal Daily said, adding that they also broke competition rules by using older pigeons instead of one-year-olds.

The two men went to great lengths to beat the opposition in the race in April 2017 from the city of Shangqiu in the province of Henan to Shanghai on China’s east coast, a distance of about 750 kilometres (450 miles).

Gong and Zhang began their nefarious plan a year in advance, raising the pigeons at two feeding points, in Henan and Shanghai, to familiarise the birds with the locations.

After handing the pigeons over to organisers in Henan, rather than flying straight to Shanghai, the birds went to the feeding point elsewhere in the province.

There, they were concealed in milk cartons for the bullet-train ride to Shanghai, where they were released to the finish line and first place.

Gong and Zhang will not serve jail time unless they commit more wrongdoing — forgoing the prize money saved them from time behind bars.

Pigeon racing is popular among older people in China and Shanghai is considered the modern-day home of the sport.

Speeds vary depending on distance, but racing pigeons can fly about 150 kilometres per hour — fast, but not as fast as a bullet train.

Aug 30, 2018-All delegates from six countries have arrived in Kathmandu to take part in the fourth Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) summit in Kathmandu.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed and Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha arrived in Kathmandu on Thursday.

Modi’s Indian Air Force’s special plane landed at the Tribhuvan International Airport at around 8:50 am. Bangladesh’s national flag carrier special plane landed at around 9:25 am. Chan landed on a special Thai Airways chartered aircraft at 10 am. Domestic and international flights to and from the airport were halted for the VVIPs arrival.

Defense Minister Ishwor Pokharel and officials from the Foreign Ministry welcomed the three prime ministers at the airport.

Police also stopped vehicles from plying on the road to allow motorcades of two premiers to pass to Soaltee Hotel where the summit is taking place.

Traffic police has implemented odd-even number plate rule but completely took vehicles off the road to allow movement of VVIPs taking part in the summit leaving commuters at the receiving end.

The Nobel Peace prize winner’s attempts to excuse it were “deeply regrettable”, Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, the outgoing UN human rights chief, said in an interview with BBC.

“She was in a position to do something,” Hussein, the United Nation high commissioner for human rights, further told BBC, “She could have stayed quiet – or even better, she could have resigned.”

“There was no need for her to be the spokesperson of the Burmese military,” BBC today quoted him as saying.

Also read: Rohingya crisis: The other face of today’s humanity

“She could have said look, you know, I am prepared to be the nominal leader of the country but not under these conditions,” Hussein added.

Hussein ‘s comments come a day after the release of an independent United Nations investigation into human rights abuses carried out against Rohingyas.

The UN has found that the Myanmar military had planned the Rohingya genocide long before the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked the country’s security personnel, a justification put forward by Myanmar for the violent crackdown on the ethnic minority.

UN Secretary General António Guterres on Tuesday called for ensuring accountability for the “horrendous persecution” of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and said there could be no excuse for delaying the search for dignified solutions that would allow Rohingyas to return home in safety and dignity.

Fatalities have been reported, but the number remains in question.

Win Myat Aye, Union Minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, told The Nation on Thursday that the situation was under control in the flooded townships of Swa and Yedashe.

“Things are going really well with our relief and resettlement efforts,” he said. “Repairs to Swa Chaung Bridge and the dam spillway are nearly complete. Normal movement has resumed on the Yangon-Mandalay Expressway.

“We managed a smooth evacuation of flood victims to emergency camps in Taungoo district, giving them food and shelter in cooperation with regional authorities and different organisations.”

Myat Aye said 63,421 people were affected and there were “some casualties” that still needed to be verified.

“We cannot say yet exactly how many people died. We’ve had reports that some people are missing and we are urgently searching for those people,” he said.

He believes there were no more than 10 fatalities, noting that two people reported missing were found alive on Wednesday evening.

Built in 2004, the Swa Chaung Dam mainly holds water from Swa Creek. Its capacity is 216,350 acre-feet. The water is channelled to irrigate more than 20,000 acres of farmland, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation.

Kyaw Lin, deputy minister for construction, said skilled ministry engineers worked through the night to repair the bridge and he was confident that all necessary repairs would be completed within 24 hours of the accident.

Police Colonel Aung Ko Oo of Myanmar Traffic Police said all types of vehicles were using the bridge again on Thursday. It was reopened at about 3.30pm Wednesday following more than nine hours of repair work, he said.

Kyaw Moe Oo, deputy director of Yangon-Mandalay Expressway Maintenance and Administration Team, confirmed the police colonel’s assurance of safe passage on the expressway.

“All transportation has returned to normal and repairs are underway on the old highway and things will be normal there again very soon,” he said.

Aung Kyaw Min, director of military-backed Shwe Man Thu Highway Express, said the company had no need to cancel any bus trips to Central and Upper Myanmar using the expressway.

“Yesterday there were only a few passengers on all the routes because people dared not go there. We refunded their ticket money and subsidised the fares of those who wanted to ride with us as planned,” he said.

Aung Kyaw Min said the expressway was vital for transportation and logistics services between Mandalay, Nay Pyi Taw, Taungoo, Magwe, Meikhtila, Taunggyi, Myingyan, Bagan, Nyaung Oo, Monywa, Sagaing and Pyin Oo Lwin. Blockages anywhere on the expressway can result in unavoidable delays, he said.

Kyaw Soe Lin, an assistant general manager of Myanma Railways, said no trains were running to Central or Upper Myanmar except on the Yangon-Taungoo and Mandalay-Pyinmana routes because infrastructure including track foundations had been damaged, particularly in Yedashe Township.

He said the other routes would remain closed until Friday.

“We don’t need to worry about further flooding now that it’s stopped raining cats and dogs,” he said.

The ministers agreed to approve projects, at least in principle, following a detailed study by the Asian Development Bank. The member states are developing BIMSTEC Transport Connectivity Master Plan, with a goal to complete it by the end of September 2018, Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali told the Post.

“Several multilateral donor agencies are interested to put money in this master plan,” Gyawali said. “We have received interest from ADB, World Bank and other multilateral agencies to push these projects.”

The ADB study included transportation and cross-border facilitation, multimodal transport and logistics,

infrastructure development, aviation, maritime transport, human resources development, as well as communication linkages and networking.

The BIMSTEC Transport Infrastructure and Logistic Study (BTILS) was updated by the ADB in 2014. Out of 167 projects, the study has prioritized 66 projects.

During the ministerial meeting, Gyawali stressed on the need to deepen, rather than proliferate, areas of cooperation among the member states, and called on his counterparts to focus on connectivity, trade, tourism, energy, and agriculture.

Wednesday’s meeting also underlined the establishment of BIMSTEC Permanent Secretariat in Bangladesh; BIMSTEC Cultural Industries Observatory (BCIO) in Bhutan; and BIMSTEC Centre for Weather and Climate (BCWC) in India as some of the key achievements in institutional development.

Representatives from the member states also endorsed the text of draft Summit Declaration and recommended that to the heads of state for approval.

In line with the BIMSTEC practice, the foreign minister of Nepal handed over the chairmanship of the BIMSTEC ministerial meeting to the state minister for foreign affairs of Sri Lanka, where the 17th ministerial meeting will be held next year.

At the ASEAN-Korea Business Forum in Singapore, Manoj Menon, the Asia-Pacific managing director of Frost and Sullivan, talked about the region’s significant market potential and said he saw a growing number of global enterprises putting the ASEAN market at the center of their marketing strategies.

The region, he said, would witness demographic changes, including rapid urbanization, which would increase demand for greater mobility options and for health care services. He also pointed to the sports, tourism and entertainment markets as areas with significant growth potential.

ASEAN’s population of 640 million spends $1 billion every year on health care services and the market is experiencing steep growth, said Moon Se-young, vice director of the Korea Bio-Economy Research Center.

“To tackle problems with growing demand for health care for both South Korea and ASEAN, it is important to establish digital health infrastructure and promote exchanges of human resources to ensure that people get equal treatment,” he said.

Menon and Moon were among the speakers at the forum, jointly hosted by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Singapore Business Federation on the occasion of the ASEAN-Korea Economic Ministers Meeting.

The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry is the secretariat of the ASEAN-Korea Business Council, launched in 2015, the first civil organization to facilitate economic cooperation between Korea and the 10 ASEAN nations. Singapore is the council’s chair.

Calling ASEAN “a strong economic partner for South Korea,” Kim Jun-dong, executive vice chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, also highlighted the Moon Jae-in administration’s “New Southern Policy,” which he expects to strengthen bilateral ties in the near future. The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, as secretariat of the council, will seek more partnerships for companies on both sides and will also promote exchanges among entrepreneurs, he said.

The Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity 2025 will bring more investment in the infrastructure, logistics and digital innovation sectors in the ASEAN region and will bring both sides closer economically, said Ahn Young-jip, Korea’s ambassador to Singapore. The master plan, which the leaders of the ASEAN countries adopted in 2016, focuses on five strategic areas: sustainable infrastructure, digital innovation, seamless logistics, regulatory excellence, and population mobility.

Under the New Southern Policy, the Moon administration expects to hit the $200 billion mark in trade between Korea and the ASEAN countries by 2020 and to triple its assistance to the region, the ambassador added.

The forum also featured keynote speaker Aladdin D. Rillo, deputy secretary-general of the ASEAN Economic Community, and Thomas Choo, a partner with Clyde & Co., who spoke on legal issues that tend to arise for Korean companies doing business in the ASEAN region, according to organizers.