China and Taiwan in landmark deal

Taiwan and China signed a series of landmark agreements on Sunday laying the groundwork for a flood of financial services investment to flow across the Taiwan Strait for the first time in six decades.

The agreements mark the latest sign of warming ties between the former Cold War adversaries under the year-old administration of Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, who ran for office promising to improve the economy through closer ties with the mainland.

The centrepiece of the latest round of cross-strait negotiations, the third since Ma took office, is an agreement setting up a regulatory framework for financial services firms on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to invest and do business in each others' markets, according to a statement issued by Taiwan's negotiator, the semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation.

The two sides also agreed to gradually establish a clearing system between the Taiwan dollar and China's currency, the Yuan, and to set up scheduled flights across the Taiwan Strait, replacing the current system of chartered flights.

(Reporting by Lin Miao-jung and Doug Young; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

THE ORIGIN OF AIDS - 43:49

This documentary profiles the highly controversial theory that HIV is a Simian Virus which mutated to infect humans when we unknowingly vaccinated millions of Africans with contaminated polio vaccine. The short version - HIV is a human-created pandemic. Serious charges for sure. If you've never heard this theory, watch this video and you'll want to know more for sure.

Current TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee face jail in North Korea

From The Times
Mike Harvey in San Francisco

In a state "guest house" on the outskirts of Pyongyang, Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been held for more than a month: valuable pawns in an growing international nuclear stand-off.

Hanging over the heads of the American journalists is the possibility of a show trial and ten years in a notoriously harsh North Korean prison camp. The outside world knows little about how they are holding up — because North Korea is not saying and the United States, while trying to free them through diplomacy, has tried to impose a blanket of silence.

The signs, though, are not good for the employees of Current TV, a web-based television channel founded by Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, because their future appears bound up in the widening rift between Pyongyang and much of the rest of the world over its recent missile launch. The reclusive regime of Kim Jong Il has halted all talks and expelled international experts monitoring its nuclear activities after the United Nations condemned its decision to fire a rocket over Japan.

Ms Ling, 32, a Chinese-American, has reported on drug wars in Mexico and native tribes in Brazil and is the younger sister of Lisa Ling, an award-winning TV journalist. Her father, Doug Ling, told reporters that he brought up his daughters as a single father and that both of them were sometimes "too adventurous" in covering news around the world. "I worry quite a bit. But I'm not losing any sleep over it," he said. "Because I'm more or less used to it."

Euna Lee, a Korean-American videographer, joined Current TV in 2005 after attending the prestigious Academy of Art University in San Francisco. The pair were accompanied on their trip to the region by a cameraman and an executive producer, both of whom managed to avoid capture.

The team, hoping to interview defectors from North Korea, began with a series of meetings in Seoul before flying to the Chinese city of Yanji, on the North Korean border. They were warned not to leave Chinese soil but ventured across the frozen Tumen river anyway. Exact details of their capture vary, with some accounts indicating that they were arrested by North Korean troops after refusing to stop filming, and others suggesting that they were pursued across the ice and back on to Chinese soil before being taken into custody.

Either way, within 24 hours Ms Ling and Ms Lee were taken in separate vehicles to Pyongyang for questioning. A week later it was announced that they would be put on trial.

Conviction for illegal entry carries up to three years in prison; the more serious crimes of espionage or "hostility toward North Korean people" are punishable by five to ten years.

The US State Department has said that it is making every diplomatic effort to free the two women and Mr Gore is said to have contacted Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, to ask for her assistance. The US has no embassy in North Korea but a representative of the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang is said to have seen the journalists at the end of last month.

Koh Yu Hwan, a professor at Dongguk University in Seoul, said that Pyongyang was unlikely to release the journalists soon. Having two Americans was like having a "piece of rice cake rolling in for free", he said.

"They're going to make maximum use of this for multiple purposes. Rather than a trial by a criminal code, it will be a political trial."

Thailand protesters besiege ASEAN summit site

Thousands seeking the resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva converge on the hotel where Asian leaders are meeting

By Charles McDermid
April 11, 2009

Reporting from Pattaya, Thailand -- Thousands of anti-government protesters temporarily blocked access to the site of a key summit early today, delaying a meeting between top Asian leaders.

Facing off with riot police and military troops, the protesters, who are seeking the ouster of Thailand's prime minister, disrupted a meeting between delegates from South Korea, Japan and China.

 

It was the second day of disruptions at the meeting of the Assn. of Southeast Asian governments. On Friday, after a tense hours-long standoff, protesters broke through razor-wire barricades and a wall of riot police and military troops.

Hundreds in red shirts pushed past the police and raced to the entrance of the posh seaside hotel hosting the regional leaders, some of whom were already inside.

At the steps of the hotel, the protesters, who numbered more than 2,000, threatened to occupy the building if they could not deliver a letter of demands to a summit delegate -- anyone from another country. The breach came minutes after an official had assured reporters that the situation was under control.

After delivering the letter demanding Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's resignation, the protesters retreated down the road just as the first drops of a monsoon rain began to fall.

"Our conditions are simple. Abhisit must go. This government must go," a protest leader told reporters.

As the protesters backed off Friday, ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said he gave a "deep sigh of relief."

"This is a feature of democracy. We thank the protesters for showing maximum restraint," he said.

Leaders from six other nations, including China and Japan, are attending the summit in Pattaya, about 90 miles southeast of Bangkok, the capital. Foreign ministers of member nations began meeting Friday.

The protesters, known as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship, or the UDD, are supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. They allege that Abhisit came to power undemocratically and they demand that his 4-month-old coalition government be dissolved.

"The prime minister came to power with assistance from the army. It was a 'silent coup'!" shouted a protest leader with a megaphone from atop a truck outside the hotel.

The UDD, known as the "red shirts," is also pushing for the prosecution of the leaders of a rival yellow-shirted protest group that occupied Bangkok's Government House and overran its two international airports last year in its successful campaign to oust two Thaksin-linked governments.

"We have broken no laws. No government places have been overrun," UDD spokesman Sean Boonprapong said.

Demonstrations began outside the hotel with protesters chanting anti-government slogans and taunting Abhisit. The 44-year-old Oxford-educated economist was selected prime minister by the parliament after his party came in second in elections late last year.

The opposition's latest attempt to discredit and topple the government follows a wave of crippling protests in Bangkok that have frozen the city center and thrust the image-conscious country back into international scrutiny.

On Thursday, UDD lawmaker Jatuporn Prompon declared that red-shirted supporters would not allow the summit to commence. "We have run out of peaceful measures," he told a crowd of supporters.

In turn, the government assured the public that the summit, delayed from December because of the earlier unrest, would proceed no matter what the UDD did. About 8,000 police officers and troops were deployed to Pattaya, known for its beach resorts and bars.

Since Wednesday, more than 100,000 red shirts have been rallying and marching in Bangkok; at one point hundreds surrounded the home of Privy Councilor Prem Tinsulanonda, a retired general who they say was behind the 2006 coup that ousted Thaksin.

Thaksin says the UDD is a "people's revolution" pitting democracy against an "aristocracy."

Two days earlier, UDD members attacked Abhisit while his vehicle was stopped at a traffic light in Pattaya, smashing the rear window and pummeling his driver and bodyguards.

"This is not the game, they cannot play like this," said Abhisit, who has rejected the calls to resign. "If they are sincere the government is open to political reform."

Thaksin, a former policeman who became a billionaire telecom tycoon, has been in hiding since he was ousted in the bloodless military coup and received a two-year jail sentence on corruption charges. Still, he has a strong support base, especially among the rural poor, mostly in the north, because of his populist policies.

McDermid is a special correspondent.

Indonesia, Thailand Asia's 'most corrupt'

BahtandSold

 A survey of business executives has reported that Indonesia and Thailand are perceived as Asia's most corrupt economies.

According to the survey by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, last year's most corrupt country, the Philippines, has made a marked improvement.

Singapore and Hong Kong retain their top two rankings as the region's least corrupt economies. however there are concerns about private-sector fraud.

Despite the negative perception of Indonesia, the consultancy notes there has been headway in fighting the problem under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

But it says the absolute scores show corruption in the public and private sectors is still very high.

The March results are based on more than 1,700 responses from 14 Asian economies plus Australia and the United States.

Betelnut Girls (檳榔西施, Binlang Xi Shi)

Betelnut girls (檳榔西施, Binlang Xi Shi) are a unique part of Taiwan culture. They sit in brightly-decorated glass booths wearing skimpy outfits, and sell cigarettes, drinks and betelnut to passing drivers. It's a controversial trade but not actually illegal. The question of whether the girls are exploited is open to debate – certainly their own perception is mostly that they are doing a job like any other, and the less they choose to wear, the more they sell. For more info, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betel_nut_beauty .

Betel Nut Girls of Taiwan

Betel Nut Girls are one of Taiwan's distinctive features. Born at the beginning of the 1990s, their popularity grew out of a number of social trends: vanishing jobs for unskilled females in Taiwan's factories, the embrace of "traditional" Taiwanese culture that celebrated betel nut, and competition for customers for the island's 100,000 betel nut stands. According to one researcher, about 60,000 of the stands feature an underdressed babe. Keep in mind that the nuts have to be processed -- slit open and a mixture of flavorings inserted -- a repetitive fine motor task well suited to young, unskilled women, so that the use of young women is probably inevitable in any case. As for myself, I have no idea why barely clad women selling stimulants along public roadways is so interesting. I offer this page purely as a visual database about this important facet of the culture and economy of Taiwan.