Why association of southeast asia asa failed

It was a 38-year wait - but the hard work paid off for Christina Tham at the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in the Philippines this week.Tham first represented Singapore at the SEA Games - a regional Olympic-style event - in 1981, winning silver in swimming at the age of 12.Now aged 50, she returned to the games and finally went one better.Tham won not one, but two gold medals in underwater hockey - a sport making its debut in the games."I never thought I would be back [at the] SEA Games and winning golds and scoring goals," she said. "I never thought I could perform at this level again."Tham got into swimming aged seven, when her father had a near-miss while canoeing on a lake during a family trip to Malaysia.Her father, who was in his late 40s, could not swim and initially resisted wearing a life jacket - but relented on her mother's insistence. "I remember I was in another canoe across the lake when I heard a loud shrill," Tham told the BBC. "I saw my dad floating on the water, held up … [Read more...] about SEA Games: Athlete finally wins gold – 38 years after debut

Over the past few days, one man has emerged as the international face of the North Korean regime: Ri Yong-ho. As the brickbats continued to fly between Washington and Pyongyang at the weekend, the North Korean foreign minister threatened to upstage his country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, with a mixture of trademark rhetoric and humour at the UN general assembly in New York. Ri took to the podium to deliver a fiery speech on behalf of Kim, who has not set foot outside of North Korea since he became leader in late 2011. In a rebuke to Donald Trump’s threat to “totally destroy” North Korea if it attacked the US or its allies, he told the hall that it was now “all the more inevitable” that the regime’s rockets would “visit” the US mainland. Borrowing the US president’s own words, Ri added that it was the Trump, not Kim, who was on a suicide mission. In a brief encounter with journalists on his arrival in New York last week, Ri … [Read more...] about Ri Yong-ho: the North Korean diplomat who ridicules Donald Trump

Jacinda Ardern has said she will do all she can to stop a man accused of killing 51 Muslim worshippers from spreading his message of hate at his trial, and hopes artificial intelligence will one day stop such attacks from being broadcast online. Ardern said in an interview with the Associated Press that she thought Brenton Tarrant, who has been charged with 51 counts of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder and one count of terrorism over the 15 March attack, would try to use his trial starting in June to promote his views. “It’s clear that a part of this individual’s motivation is creating a platform for himself. I think that’s absolutely clear,” she said. “And I think every opportunity we can to deprive the alleged terrorist of that should be utilised.” Ardern said she was limited in what she could do but was encouraged by the pledge of New Zealand’s major media outlets to avoid promoting white supremacist ideology when covering the … [Read more...] about Jacinda Ardern says Christchurch trial should not be platform for hate

A series of earthquakes in North Korea have sparked fears the country may have conducted another nuclear weapons test, although experts said the tremors were natural. Speculation around further testing came as US air force bombers flew east of North Korea on Saturday in ‘demonstration of US resolve’, said Pentagon officials. China was first to announce the seismic events and said the larger 3.4 magnitude quake was a “suspected explosion”. However, an official at South Korea’s meteorological agency said its initial analysis of the tremor, which it put at magnitude 3.0, showed it was a natural quake and other experts doubted the temblors were related to a weapons test. The intense scrutiny of any earthquakes in North Korea highlight rising tensions in the region as Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un engage in an escalating war of words. North Korea’s foreign minister suggested a nuclear test over the Pacific Ocean would be an appropriate response to … [Read more...] about US bombers fly near North Korea amid fears about further nuclear tests

After weeks of tension over North Korea’s pursuit of a nuclear capability, the latest verbal exchanges between Washington and Pyongyang evoke a time, more than six decades ago, when the regime was at the mercy of conventional weapons. Every North Korean schoolchild is taught, erroneously, that the US started the Korean war; but they also learn, correctly, that their nemesis was responsible for laying waste to dozens of towns and cities from the air during the 1950-53 conflict, a fact rarely reported in the US media at the time. The carpet-bombing of North Korea has been all but forgotten in the US, but not in North Korea, where the regime exploits every opportunity to remind its people – in schools and museums, and via the state media – that the US is still the aggressor. Donald Trump reinforced that narrative this week when, having heard the North’s foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, make a highly provocative speech at the UN general assembly, he tweeted: “If … [Read more...] about Why are North Korea’s leaders specifically threatening US bombers?