Following his arrival in Vientiane on Sunday, Kerry yesterday met with Thongloun, who is also Deputy Prime Minister, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The ministry said in a press release that both sides discussed ways to deepen bilateral ties and cooperation between Laos and the US, as well as multilateral issues.

Agendas tabled at the talks covered the areas of further bilateral cooperation to clear unexploded ordnance (UXO) dropped on Laos during the Indochinese war.

They also discussed Laos-US engagement in areas including health care, nutrition, education, drug supervision and control, economics and trade and environmental protection as well as cooperation to continue searching for the remains of US soldiers missing in action in Laos.

In the area of multilateral cooperation, the Lao ministry said both sides further discussed the ‘LowerMekong Initiative’ cooperation framework.

The US has provided financial aid to Laos amounting to more than US$45 million a year. The US Embassy to Laos said Secretary Kerry highlighted the US commitment to partnering with Laos to improve nutrition across the country, including through the recently announced construction of the Lao-American Nutrition Institute in Vientiane.

Shortly after his talks with Thongloun, Secretary Kerry called on Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong at the Government Office to discuss preparations for the US-Asean Sunnylands Summit, which will be jointly hosted by the United States and Laos, as 2016 Asean Chair, in California next month.

This unprecedented gathering – the first hosted by the United States with Asean leaders – builds on the deep partnership that the United States has forged with Asean since 2009, the US Embassy said.

The Lao ministry said Kerry’s visit also prepared for the planned visit to Laos by US president Barack Obama later this year to attend the Asean-US Summit.

Following the official meetings, Secretary Kerry visited Pha That Luang (That Luang Stupa), the national symbol of Laos, where he learned about Lao history and culture. Kerry is the second Secretary of State to have visited Laos since the establishment of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic in 1975. Then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made a one-day official trip to Laos in 2012.

Still, rights groups say, the outgoing government has fallen short of releasing all political prisoners and continues to arrest and charge people on political grounds.

“The government has released all 101 political prisoners who were supposed to be released starting last week.

“Most of them protested against the government, including the Letpadaung copper mine, land grabs and other cases,” said Bo Kyi, joint secretary of political prisoner watchdog Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Thein Sein’s administration had released 1,235 political prisoners since 2011, Bo Kyi said. But 409 political prisoners were still on trial and 84 remained behind bars.

Notable among those in the amnesty was Phillip Blackwood, a New Zealand man who was sentenced to two and a half years in jail along with two Myanmar colleagues for using a psychedelic image of Buddha to promote a party at a Yangon bar.

Myanmar’s incarceration of more than 2,000 journalists, activists, politicians and even comedians during decades of military rule was a key factor behind Western sanctions.

Friday’s release came just before a new parliament dominated by Aung San Suu Kyi‘s National League for Democracy sits for the first time on Feb 1.

The NLD won a resounding victory in the November election, trouncing the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) that took power in 2011 following 49 years of military rule.

But as some prisoners were walking free on Friday, Patrick Khum Jaa Lee, an NGO worker, was sentenced to six months imprisonment for a Facebook post deemed insulting to the military.

“President Thein Sein has an opportunity to make this right before his administration ends,” said Matthew Smith, executive director at the NGO Fortify Rights, in a statement yesterday.

– REUTERS

The Mingala wholesale market fire occurred due to the poorly installed electrical wire and fire alert system. The markets department under the YCDC bears the primary responsibility for the fire,” he said.

Weather-related deaths were reported in Japan and Taiwan, with hundreds of flights cancelled across the region, tens of thousands of holidaymakers stranded in South Korea, and freezing conditions in sub-tropical Hong Kong causing mayhem on its tallest peak.

While the cold snap is by no means on the scale of the weather now affecting the snow-bound eastern United States, such temperatures are a novelty for many residents of the region.

In Bangkok, a city that rarely sees the thermometre dip below 20-25 degrees Celsius (68-77 Fahrenheit), temperatures dropped to around 16 degrees late Sunday.

It left Bangkokians, whose normal attire generally includes flip-flops and shorts, digging through their closets for jackets and jumpers.

Thip Panyangam, a 51-year-old motorcycle taxi driver in Bangkok, welcomed the unusual drop in temperature.

He told AFP: “Whoa! The weather is superb. It’s been many years since I’ve experienced this cold. I feel happy, refreshed and relaxed. When it gets too hot, I get a headache.”

In Japan five people died and more than 100 were injured Sunday as record-breaking heavy snowfall and low temperatures hit the country’s western and central regions and rare snow fell in subtropical areas, officials and local media said.

The small subtropical island of Amami observed snow for the first time since 1901, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

In China, 24 weather stations around the country recorded all-time low temperatures between Friday and Sunday.

At Eergu’Na in Inner Mongolia, the temperature on Saturday hit a record low of -46.8 degrees.

– 90,000 stranded –

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The southern city of Guangzhou saw rare sleet, the first in 60 years, in its downtown area, the provincial meteorological station announced on Sunday.

In Hong Kong, primary schools and kindergartens were closed Monday after temperatures plunged to a 60-year low.

A 100-kilometre ultra-marathon race was abandoned as competitors crossing the city’s tallest peak, Tai Mo Shan, slipped on icy slopes buffeted by freezing winds.

The peak became the scene of “carnage”, as one race official described it, as hundreds of curious “frost-chasing” citizens became stranded, with dozens stricken with hypothermia and hapless firemen called in to rescue them filmed slipping and sliding on the icy roads.

Close to 90,000 people were stranded on the South Korean resort island of Jeju on Monday after the biggest snowfall in three decades shut the airport for the third straight day.

Taipei registered a low of 4 degrees over the weekend, the coldest in 44 years, with the Taiwan media reporting 90 deaths due to the cold weather, and rare snowfall drawing enthusiastic crowds to Yangmingshan National Park.

In Vietnam, temperatures in Hanoi dropped to six degrees at night over the weekend, which state-run media said was the coldest weather the country has experienced for two decades.

Mountainous areas in the country’s north, including the popular tourist town of Sapa, experienced light snow. Some primary schools were closed in the capital Monday, officials said.

AFP

Sections of the national road 4D from O Quy Ho Pass (Sa Pa District) to Tam Duong District (Lai Chau Province) have been blanketed with snow and a centimetre of ice, posing danger to traffic.

Snow was also seen in higher-altitude areas, including Khau Pha Pass in Mu Cang Chai district, Suoi Giang Commune in Van Chan and Hat Luu and Tram Tau communes in Tram Tau District.

In Ha Noi, the highest temperature yesterday was forecast at 7 to 10 degrees C. Snow has also been seen in Ba Vi District, which is about 50km from Ha Noi.

The cold spell has expanded as far south as the central localities, bringing rain to most areas along the central coast.

Snowy peaks

Snowfall began after the temperature plummeted overnight, with thick ice and frost appearing on Phja Oac peak in the northern mountainous province of Cao Bang.

The temperature was recorded at negative 7 degrees Celsius on Saturday morning on the wintry white mountain peak.

The rare appearance of snow attracted some tourists who came to see the winter frost, but it also negatively impacted the locals’ activities.

According to Chairman of the Thanh Cong commune’s People’s Committee Ban Van Son, severe frost has damaging consequences to agricultural production, and it also poses health risks.

Authorities have urged locals to take several measures to cope with the cold weather.

Mong ethnic minority families in Sa Pa have taken measures to protect their cattle and crops from damage caused by the cold snap.

The cold front moving from the northern region may also reduce temperatures in HCM City and neighbouring provinces to as low as 17-18 degrees Celsius this weekend and early next week.

The ongoing cold snap has also triggered strong sea gusts, posing serious hazards to boats.

The Tonkin Gulf and sea off central and southern provinces and the entire East Sea, including the waters around Vietnam’s Truong Sa (Spratly) and Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelagoes, have witnessed rough seas and fierce winds.

The cold snap, expected to last until Wednesday, has also greatly affected localities in the central region, causing temperatures to drop to 10.4 and 12.4 degrees Celsius in Vinh City, the heart of Nghe An Province, and Ha Tinh Province, respectively.

The tag shows potential buyers the chick was bred in captivity. It’s an important symbol, which shows it was not trapped in the wild and smuggled, an illegal trade which sees birds packed in their thousands in shipping crates or stuffed in plastic bottles before being sold in giant avian markets in Indonesia’s major cities.

The hatchling was born at Megananda Daryono’s vast aviary in Bogor, a city on the island of Java, where he runs a breeding programme that is a sustainable alternative to the roaring trade in birds caught in the wild.

“I realised the birds being caught in the forest would one day be gone for good,” Daryono told AFP at the site, now a cornucopia of exotic macaws, brilliant parrots and vulnerable songbirds.

He is among a small number trying to turn the tide in a country where once-common bird species are being driven to the brink of extinction, as an obsession for bird-keeping and even avian singing contests fuels unprecedented demand.

The jungles of the archipelago are home to 131 threatened bird species, according to wildlife trade watchdog Traffic, more than any other country except Brazil. There are a dizzying array of exotic species, from the Sumatran Laughingthrush, to the Chattering Lory and the Black-winged Myna.

At an emergency meeting convened in Singapore to discuss the crisis last year, wildlife experts declared Indonesia’s rampant bird trade more of a threat to many native species than habitat loss, and called for urgent intervention to stop the plunder.

“The scale is massive. It involves millions and millions of birds every year,” Traffic’s Chris Shepherd told AFP.

“It’s just really reaching a point now, a critical point, where it’s now or never for a lot of these species.”

Caged birds have been kept as pets for centuries in Indonesia but the evolution of songbird contests from small, localised events to a nationwide craze known as “chirping mania” is in particular blamed for the rapid dwindling of songbirds in the wild.

There are entire fan clubs dedicated to certain species of canaries, “chirping” organisations boasting thousands of members, and champions who go on tour across the archipelago to compete for big prize money – and glory – at national gala events.

It’s serious business, as one champion Johan explained at a recent contest in central Jakarta, as men screamed, whistled and clucked at their birds, encouraging them to keep singing as stony-faced judges awarded points for melody, duration and volume.

“This isn’t a beauty pageant, it’s a chirping contest. It’s chirping mania,” Johan, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told AFP.

“The song is the only thing that matters,” he added, his champion yellow canary – one of just 50 birds he personally owns – perched nearby in an ornate wooden cage.

Calls from some quarters for these popular contests to be banned or heavily regulated have met stiff resistance, with many defending them as uniquely Indonesian and blaming the trade – not the competitions themselves – for the crisis unfolding in jungles far away.

However efforts are being made to distance the contests from the illegal trade and unsightly bird markets like Pramuka – an overcrowded, filthy emporium in Jakarta known to sell critically-endangered and vulnerable birds.

The Indonesian Bird Society (PBI), which sanctions and judges one major songbird league, has pledged to phase out all wild birds and replace them entirely with songbirds bred in captivity. So far three species must be captive-bred and bear the tell-tale ring to compete in PBI contests, with a fourth to be added next year.

But former PBI chairman Made Sri Prana, who helped usher in the regulations, said a full transition would take time and outside PBI-sanctioned contests, “there’s no real obligations” for other songbird associations to follow suit.

Capturing any native birds from the wild – whether they are protected or not – is illegal in Indonesia but law enforcement is lax, with fines and jail terms rarely handed out to traffickers or vendors at big markets, Shepherd said.

But there are some positive signs. There are now estimated to be hundreds of breeding programmes like Daryono’s across the country, and authorities have made a number of high-profile seizures of illegally caught birds.

In addition, conservationists working with the government hope in 2016 to update the list of birds protected under Indonesian law, which is many years out of date.

Raising public awareness is a longer game. Indonesian President Joko Widodo tried to do just that this month when he released 200 caged birds into the wild – but was criticised when it emerged the animals had been bought in Pramuka, a symbol of the country’s illegal wildlife trade.

Ria Saryanthi from Burung Indonesia, a local conservation group working for better protection of birds, said it would take time to alter old habits: “You cannot change people’s minds easily.”

According to participants, prior to the start of the national plan for foreign language learning, English was an optional subject at the primary level, so there were no regulations to include English teachers in schools’ payrolls.

Currently, Vietnam has 21,430 primary English teachers, less than a third of whom are employed full time. The four-lesson target will require approximately 7,766 more teachers in the workforce.

Another problem is the low quality of teaching staff. By July 2015, only 31.37 per cent of overall primary English teachers across the nation satisfied language standards.

Inadequate training facilities and the overlapping of training sessions have also added to the issue.

To handle these drawbacks, representatives from the ministry and educational establishments put forth a series of measures.

They suggested one teacher be able to teach at several schools in the same area, and incompetent staff should be let go.

They also proposed providing proper wages and incentives for contracted teachers, among other solutions.

Another video called on Katibah’s “brothers” from Somalia’s Al-Shabaab, a militant group aligned with the Al-Qaeda, to join the group in the “real front-line in Syria”.

In the video, which lasts more than a minute, Katibah’s Malaysian militants can clearly be seen speaking in Bahasa Malaysia, urging their compatriots from Al-Shabaab to join the ISIS and its so-called jihad or holy war.

The video shows Katibah member Abdul Halid Dari urging them to pledge their allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and join the “real” fight in Syria as fellow militant Mohd Nizam Arifin looks on.

Abdul Halid also quotes Prophet Muhammad’s teachings to convince fighters in Somalia to join ISIS.

Bukit Aman Special Branch Counter-Terrorism Division head, Senior Asst Comm Datuk Ayob Khan, said the threat and direct challenge to the government reflected Katibah’s brazen stance.

“It further proves that IS, especially the Katibah group, views our country as secular, and as such makes the government and the people as its targets. This is no doubt in retaliation against our security forces’ actions against them,” he told The Star on Sunday (Jan 24).

He said the counter-terrorism division would be more vigilant as attacks could occur at any time, adding that reliable intelligence was the key to prevent attacks from taking place in the country.

“We have to be constantly on our toes and cannot afford to let our guard down,” he said.

On the video addressed to the Somalians, SAC Ayob Khan said although it had subtitles in Arabic, the fact that Abdul Halid spoke in Malay led intelligence agencies to suspect there were also Malaysians in Al-Shabaab.

“This is certainly a new development resulting in more involvement of Malaysians in terror groups,” he said.

Both videos were posted on an ISIS-sanctioned website, signifying Katibah’s increasing recognition within the terror group.

“Prior to this, we only saw videos posted on Facebook or other social media sites but this particular video is a clear indication that Katibah is among the major foreign factions in IS,” said SAC Ayob Khan.

He said the video was also the first clear indication that there were Malaysians or at least Malay-speaking militants in Al-Shabaab.

“It is certainly alarming if true. Why would the militants speak Bahasa Malaysia if they were not calling out to their fellow countrymen?” he asked.

It is believed that Katibah has more than 200 fighters from Malaysia and Indonesia, who are highly sought after for “specialised missions”, including serving as snipers and becoming suicide bombers.

Katibah first came under the radar of intelligence agencies two years ago when it was called Majmu’ah al Arkhabiliy.

According to Indonesian police, Muhammad Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian Katibah fighter, was behind the recent bomb blasts and gun attacks in Jakarta.