“We will not stand by as this symbol of freedom and opportunity goes dark,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a tweet Sunday, announcing that the state had found funds to keep the iconic landmark open.

Shutting the surrounding park “jeopardizes an economic driver for the state of New York,” said Cuomo, a Democrat.

“This park is a symbol of New York and our values. And her message has never been as important as it is today,” he said, alluding to the budget battle in Washington, where Democrats were seeking protection for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants before agreeing to Republican proposals to extend funding for the government.

As a result of the budget impasse, many government services including the Statue of Liberty have been closed since Saturday.

Speaking to reporters from the southern tip of Manhattan Island with the Statue of Liberty in the background, Cuomo explained that the state will provide the $65,000 it takes each day to pay the federal workers who keep the park open.

The statue on Liberty Island, as well as the related museum on nearby Ellis Island, where arriving immigrants were once processed, annually welcome about 4.5 million visitors. Most come by boat from Manhattan.

 – Tourists caught unaware –

On Saturday hundreds of tourists were caught unaware, even if tour companies quickly offered boat tours, or reimbursement, as a salve.

The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France to the United States in 1886 to honor the centenary of US independence 10 years earlier.

It is among the hundreds of parks, battlefields, recreation areas and monuments managed by the National Park Service.

After Democrats and the majority Republicans in Congress missed a Friday deadline to pass a new federal budget, most “non-essential” government services and programs were ordered to close.

Some of the best-known parks have been kept open, including the Grand Canyon in Arizona and Yellowstone National Park. But most are operating with skeleton staff, meaning many stores, restaurants and even restrooms are closed.

In an unusual move, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose department oversees the parks service, said on Twitter that he had personally helped welcome visitors to the World War II memorial on the National Mall in Washington.

During the last government shutdown, a 16-day standoff in 2013, the memorial was closed. That prompted a group of military veterans, some of them in wheelchairs or hobbling on canes, to force their way in.

It was an embarrassment the White House of President Donald Trump has vowed to avoid.//AFP

The noontime explosion sent superheated lava, molten rocks and steam cascading down Mount Mayon’s slopes and shrouded nearby villages in darkness, said Renato Solidum, chief of the Philippine Institute of Seismology and Volcanology (Phivolcs), and other officials.

In a bulletin issued at 1 pm, Phivolcs raised the alert level to 4 on a scale of 5, which means an explosive eruption is possible within hours or days.

A danger zone around Mayon was expanded to 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the crater.

“If the eruption is vertical, it’s possible pyroclastic flows or pyroclastic density currents may cascade down in all directions,” Solidum told a news conference, warning villagers and tourists not to venture into the no-go zones and airplanes to stay safely away from the crater and ash-laden winds.

More than 27,000 villagers have fled since Mayon started acting up more than a week ago.

The volcano had started showing increased activity or unrest since Jan.14.

Mayon is in coconut-growing Albay province, about 340 kilometers (210 miles) southeast of Manila. With its near-perfect cone, it is popular with climbers and tourists but has erupted about 50 times in the last 500 years, sometimes violently.

In 2013, an ash eruption killed five climbers who had ventured near the summit despite warnings. Mayon’s first recorded eruption was in 1616 and the most destructive, in 1814, killed 1,200 people and buried the town of Cagsawa in volcanic mud.

The Philippines lies in the so-called “Ring of Fire,” a line of seismic faults surrounding the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes and volcanic activity are common.

In 1991, Mount Pinatubo in the northern Philippines exploded in one of the biggest volcanic eruptions of the 20th century, killing about 800 people.

The media professionals will be in Bangkok for the 19th General Assembly of the Confederation of Asean Journalists (CAJ), one of the oldest and most active regional media organisations.

The CAJ was founded in 1975 to forge cooperation among journalists in the region. The Confederation of Thai Journalists (CTJ), an umbrella organisation of Thai media associations, will host the assembly.

Industry Minister Uttama Savayana plans to address the assembly on Friday at the Emerald Hotel, addressing how the media needs to adjust to cope with the digital challenges in the socalled “Age of 4.0”.

Thepchai Yong, CTJ president, said media play a very important role in creating better understanding and bridging the diversity among member countries of the Asean community.

“The assembly will be an important occasion for CAJ to reemphasise its objective of promoting a healthy, free and responsible press as being crucial to national development,” said Thepchai.

At the assembly, Cambodia will officially become the latest member of the CAJ, while Myanmar will attend as an observer.

“So we can say that the spirit of Asean will be in full display at the 19th General Assembly, “said Thepchai, adding that Thailand would take over the presidency of the CAJ from Vietnam at the assembly.

Asean delegates will also pay a courtesy call on Deputy Prime Minister Wisanu Kruengam at Government House on Thursday.

Thepchai said the assembly was supported by several government and private organisations, including the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), the Tourism and Sports Ministry, Thailand’s Culture Ministry, AirAsia, Bangkok Airways, the KANN show, Nong Nooch Botanical Garden and Resort, SCB, King Power, DTAC, PTT, SCG and Akra Co.

Legazpi City – The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) raised Alert Level 4 over Mayon volcano after it belched out a 10-kilometer high ash column at 12:45 p.m. on Monday.

On a bulletin issued at 1 p.m., Phivolcs raised the alert level from 3 (increased tendency to hazardous eruption) to 4 (hazardous eruption imminent).

Phivolcs volcanologist Paul Alanis said eruption “may happen in hours.”

“The danger zone is extended to 8 kilometers all around the volcano,” Phivolcs chief Renato Solidum said in a phone interview. Evacuation of residents within the additional kilometer radius was immediately instigated by local government units.

The volcano had started showing increased activity or unrest since January 14.

And like any CNY celebration, the young ones can’t wait to receive ‘angpows’ or red packets, while others ponder what the year will bring in terms of their career, health and relationships.

The colour Red features prominently every CNY as Red symbolises ‘ong’ or luck that many believers would love to have more of, especially if the previous year was not too kind to them.

But… do you know Red is not the only auspicious colour during CNY? Purple is a good alternative too.

Mak Ling Ling advises those with zodiacs conflicting with Tai Sui to wear festive colours of Purple or Red.

According to Hong Kong Fengshui Master Mak Ling Ling, those born under the Dog, Dragon, Goat, Cow and Rooster zodiacs are in conflict with Tai-sui – The Grand Duke of Jupiter, a celestial force that ‘influences’ people’s destiny and fortunes – this year.

This will increase the likelihood of minor injuries, health issues and gossip mongering, so Mak suggests wearing festive colours of Purple or Red to ward off such misfortunes and strengthen one’s health.

Furthermore, Purple – a symbol of nobility, wealth, power and ambition – is often used to harness good energy, or ‘qi’, that brings prosperity into our lives. It is also associated with spiritual enlightenment which can calm our emotions and help keep us grounded.

According to another Fengshui consultant Professor Joe Choo, Red may not necessarily be good for everyone, especially for those born in the summer months of May, June and July, as it adds ‘heat’ to the already hot summer. This may cause the temperament and health of those born in those months to ‘worsen’.

As such, wearing Purple may weaken the power of the fire and calm our emotions and improve our overall well-being.

The Rabbit, Tiger, and Horse zodiacs will face good fortune in 2018, while the Dog, Dragon, Goat, Cow and Rooster zodiacs may face some challenges in the year ahead.

For those born in the year of the Dog (1970, 1982, 1994 and 2006), thus, in conflict with Tai-sui, there is another way to mitigate the possibility of minor injuries, health issues and unsavoury rumours besides wearing Purple.

Choo suggests placing a piece of white or clear crystal or living plant facing East (82.5 – 97.5 degree) in your bedroom at any time after the winter solstice of 2017 (Dec 22) to minimise unpleasant events like falling sick regularly, getting into arguments and collecting driving summonses.

In general, 2018 will be kind to those born in the year of the Rabbit (1974), Tiger (1975) and Horse (1978) as they will be showered with good fortune and career advancement.

Meanwhile, for those whose zodiac is in conflict with Tai-sui, heeding the advice given by Mak and Choo could well alleviate the negative effects and usher in a happier and healthier new year.

Of course, one should always remain positive and look at the bright side no matter what your zodiac sign or lucky colour is because, in many cases, you are in charge of your own destiny.

So, relax and enjoy a cool refreshing Ribena made with the natural fruity goodness of New Zealand blackcurrants any time, and look forward to this year’s CNY celebration with great optimism.

Gong Xi Fa Chai.

This article is brought to you by Ribena. 

“Runaway inequality has created a world where 62 people own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population — a figure that has fallen from 388 just five years ago,” the anti-poverty agency said in its reported published ahead of the annual gathering of the world’s financial and political elites in Davos.

The report, entitled “An Economy for the 1%”, states that women are disproportionately affected by the global inequality.

“One of the other key trends behind rising inequality set out in Oxfam International’s report is the falling share of national income going to workers in almost all developed and most developing countries… The majority of low paid workers around the world are women.”

Although world leaders have increasingly talked about the need to tackle inequality “the gap between the richest and the rest has widened dramatically in the past 12 months,” Oxfam said.

Oxfam’s prediction, made ahead of last year’s Davos meeting, that the richest one percent would soon own more than the rest of us, “actually came true in 2015,” it added.

While the number of people living in extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2010, the average annual income of the poorest 10 percent has risen by less than $3-a-year in the past quarter of a century, a increase in individuals’ income of less than one cent a year, the report said.

‘Few dozen super-rich people’

More than 40 heads of state and government will attend the Davos forum which begins late Tuesday and will end on January 23.

Those heading to the Swiss resort town for the high-level annual gathering also include 2,500 “leaders from business and society”, the WEF said in an earlier statement.

Describing the theme — the Fourth Industrial Revolution — WEF founder Klaus Shwab has said it “refers to the fusion of technologies across the physical, digital and biological worlds which is creating entirely new capabilities and dramatic impacts on political, social and economic systems.”

Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanima, who will also attend Davos having co-chaired last year’s event, said: “It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the world’s population owns no more than a few dozen super-rich people who could fit onto one bus.”

World leaders’ concerns about the escalating inequality crisis have “so far not translated into concrete action — the world has become a much more unequal place and the trend is accelerating,” she warned.

End tax-havens era

As a priority, Oxfam is calling for an end to the era of tax havens which has seen the increasing use of offshore centres to avoid paying taxes.

“This has denied governments valuable resources needed to tackle poverty and inequality,” the report said.

As much as 30 percent of all African financial wealth is estimated to be held offshore, it added, costing an estimated $14 billion in lost tax revenues every year.

Getting hold of the proper level of taxes will be “vital” if world leaders are to meet their goal, set last September, of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030.

Byanima challenged those attending the Davos meeting “to play their part in ending the era of tax havens, which is fuelling economic inequality and preventing hundreds of millions of people lifting themselves out of poverty”.

Of the 62 people said to hold as much wealth as the poorest 50 percent, Oxfam said that 53 are men and just nine are female, highlighting that women are ill-represented even at the highest levels.

The headline Davos guests include British Prime Minister David Cameron, US Vice President Joe Biden, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and newly-elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

President Mauricio Marci of Argentina, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Alexis Tsipars, the Greek prime minister, are also due to attend.

Oxfam said it had calculated the wealth of the richest 62 people using Forbes’ billionaires list.

The telecom executive hid behind a pillar as six heavily-armed attackers stormed the luxury hotel and began spraying terrified guests and staff with bullets.

At least 18 people were killed, including 14 foreigners — “several” of whom were Ukrainian — in the 12-hour ordeal as the attackers engaged in an fierce gunfight with Afghan security forces.

“I saw people who were enjoying themselves a second ago screaming and fleeing like crazy, and some of them falling down, hit by bullets,” Tayeb told AFP on Sunday, hours after his traumatic experience ended.

One colleague, who had been stuck on the fifth floor of the six-storey building throughout the attack, told Tayeb that some areas of the hotel resembled a butcher’s shop with blood everywhere.

The attackers were eventually killed.

Tayeb, a regional director for Afghan Telecom in the western city of Herat, was staying at the hilltop hotel — not part of the global InterContinental chain — with dozens of industry colleagues from around the country ahead of an annual conference due to begin on Sunday.

The gunmen shot at people who had been enjoying dinner in one of the hotel restaurants before breaking into guest rooms and taking dozens of hostages including foreigners, witnesses said.

Tayeb and a few friends managed to escape to the hotel’s outdoor pool area where they hid, listening to the horrifying attack metres away.

“I could repeatedly hear blasts one after another, hand grenades, they used many grenades,” he said, his voice heavy with exhaustion.

“We contacted security officials who arrived an hour later and as we were being escorted out I saw five or six bodies outside the hotel.

“The second, third and fifth floors were on fire — the fifth floor was engulfed in flames.”

Once he was a safe distance from the hotel, Tayeb called his colleagues still trapped inside the burning building.

“Some were crying that they would die of smoke inhalation,” he said.

Dramatic television footage from Afghanistan’s Tolo News showed people trapped on balconies at the top of the building climbing down bedsheets to escape, with at least one losing his grip and falling.

Security staff fled

A witness told AFP that the hotel’s security team fled “without a fight”, leaving guests to their fate.

“They didn’t attack. They didn’t do anything to them. They had no experience,” said the 24-year-old man, a hotel employee who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity.

He ran from the hotel with some of them, he said. “I was asking them, where should I go?”

An interior ministry spokesman has confirmed to AFP that the hotel’s security had been taken over by a private company just three weeks earlier. No hotel official was immediately able to comment.

As he waited for news of his colleagues, Tayeb updated his Facebook status to thank his friends for their prayers.

“Staying alive in this country is a mere coincidence,” he wrote, before making another plea.

“More than a 100 of my colleagues and friends are caught between life and death. Please pray for them.”

It was too late for one of them: the interior ministry confirmed at least one person involved in the conference was among the dead.

Nearly 9,000 people died when a 7.8-magnitude quake struck in April 2015, destroying more than half a million homes.

Only one in ten of those homes has been rebuilt as the third anniversary of the disaster looms and Nepal faces a $1.2 billion shortfall in reconstruction funds, the World Bank said.

“The gap has decreased” through this loan, said Kamran Akbar, a disaster risk management specialist at the global financial lender.

“We understand that there is still a requirement but there are also others who are supporting Nepal,” he told AFP.

Kathmandu estimated the recovery bill from the devastating quake at $6.7 billion but costs quickly spiralled.

The government has faced mounting criticism over the slow pace of reconstruction.

Political wrangling meant Nepalis who lost everything waited nearly a year before receiving their first instalment of a promised housing grant.

In September 2016 the government increased the housing grant by 50 percent, sending costs soaring.

The National Reconstruction Authority is currently distributing the second tranche of three payments.

International donors pledged $4.1 billion for reconstruction after the quake — the strongest to hit Nepal in 80 years — and the World Bank approved a $200 million loan at the time.

The deal Sunday also includes $80 million for a livestock project and another $60 million credit for vocational training.

“These three agreements are important for Nepal because they boost job creation, including for many women,” said Qimiao Fan, World Bank country director for Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, in a statement.

Long before China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Asean planned in 1995 to build a railway from Singapore to Kunming, the capital of China’s Yunnan province. The grouping spent time and money exploring the possibility, but the project was never implemented until China took action years ago as its own rail industry incorporated world-class technology.

China now has 126,000 kilometres of rail across the country, including 25,000km of high-speed rail. Its main operator, China Railway, has 2.1 million employees with total assets of 7 trillion yuan (Bt34.6 trillion) and 1 trillion yuan revenues per annum.

China’s railway length is one-tenth of the world’s total, but it accommodates 25 per cent of the world’s railway traffic volume, according to the International Railway Organisation.

China’s 25,000km of high-speed rail makes up 60 per cent of the world’s total network of that kind. The country operates 5,000 high-speed trains transporting more than 5 million passengers per day. “We rank the first in the world in terms of high-speed train operations,” said Yang Zhongmin, chairman of China Railway International.

Chinese rail technology is now globally competitive as the state-owned enterprise China Railway is playing a leading role in 50 rail projects in 40 countries around the world, with Asean the main target, he said.

The country’s two related goals are to complete the trans-Asian railway with the potential to develop high-speed networks in each country.

The first 350kph high-speed train for Asean countries has already been initiated in Indonesia for the 142km Jakarta-Bandung route. Construction is expected to begin early this year.

For the dream of the trans-Asian railway, the 440km standard gauge rail in Laos was begun in late December 2016. Construction is expected to be complete by 2021.

After five years of negotiation, the high-speed train project in Thailand is taking shape. Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha presided over the ground-breaking of the first phase of Thailand-China high-speed rail project, linking Bangkok and Nakhon Ratchasima, in December last year.

The second phase will be extended to Nong Khai, which would complete the link to the Lao network expected by 2022. “By that time, we will complete the railway corridor from China through Laos to Thailand. It is the middle route of the trans-Asian railway, that was proposed some 20 years ago,” Yang said.

While Asean has not chosen a clear route to link Singapore to Kunming, Beijing has made it clear that it wants to develop three major routes: an eastern route via Vietnam, a middle route via Laos, and a western route through Myanmar before connecting to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

In the meantime, China is speeding up construction in its territory. For the eastern route, it has already built a standard gauge railway to the border between China and Vietnam. For the middle route, construction of the railway line from Kunming to Mohan at the border with Laos has begun and is supposed to open in 2020. For the western route, construction from Kunming to Ruili started several years ago and the section will be open in 2025.

China’s section could be completed in five or six years, but Yang said he could not predict the overall timeline since the development of the railway was closely linked to socio-economic development of other countries and their ability to raise funds.

For the middle route of the trans-Asian railway, the section in Laos has already begun and Thailand’s section is on the way. Malaysia and Singapore have plans to build a high-speed railway link from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore. For the eastern route, the only problem is in Cambodia – the planned 200km portion in that country is the missing link.

For the western route, Myanmar is planning a section in its territory and considering a future link to Bangkok.

While upgrading the existing rail could make the trans-Asian railway become a reality sooner, different rail gauges in some countries, including Thailand and Cambodia, could cause inconvenience and incur ongoing high operational costs, Yang said.

For the new rail link, Thailand and Laos decided to use standard gauge to fulfil what is expected to be the busiest route in the region, he said. However, while the Thailand-China train would have a maximum operational speed of 250kph, Laos’s trains could not move faster than 150kph.

Yang said technical standards in Laos and Thailand were the same but they were in different construction phases.