Asia This Week

Its The Year of the Mouse

Al-Qaeda to the rescue for Bush’s legacy

By M K Bhadrakumar

The Cassandra-like foretelling by American opinion makers almost uniformly makes out that Pakistan may not survive. True, it is hard to be optimistic. Setting right these disjointed times is way past the capacity of the present US administration.

The only silver lining seems to be that in an year’s time another team will move into the White House and a clean break becomes possible. Even ardent specialists in the US security community admit as much. A commentator for Stratfor, a think-tank closely linked to the security establishment, says, “In this endgame, all that the Americans want is the status quo in Pakistan. It is all they can get. And given the way US luck is running, they might not even get that.”

Thanks to George Bush one of his legacies will be Al-Qeada’s continued existence and his inept pronouncements that they are Super Terrorists responsible for all things evil.

Tokyo rated Asia’s most important metropolis

LONDON (Kyodo) Tokyo is the most important city in Asia thanks to its economic and cultural might, according to a recent survey that ranked it far ahead of its regional rivals.

Tokyo was also ranked as the world’s fourth most important city in the survey conducted by the Independent newspaper’s Traveller supplement.

London took the title of “capital of the world,” followed by New York and then Paris in third place.

A team of researchers evaluated 60 cities on data derived from 14 criteria, to find the world’s most influential cities.

Its important because of Harajuku, Shinjuku, Akihabara and crazy dental assistances.

What Koreans Really Think About Ethnic Homogeneity

Korea is rapidly becoming a multicultural and multiethnic society now the number of foreigners living in the country exceeded 1 million as of Aug. 24 or 2 percent of the registered population (49.13 million). A survey on international marriages by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family released Wednesday suggests that the growing number of foreign residents has changed the attitude of South Koreans, who in the past took pride in their ethnic homogeneity.

The latest attitude survey was conducted of 1,000 male and female adults over 19 from across the country. Some 72.6 percent of the respondents said there was no reason to stick to ethnic homogeneity. So did 64.8 percent of those in their 50s or older. Only 26.7 percent of the respondents said, ethnic homogeneity was “a proud legacy that we should hand down to our descendants.” The confidence level was 95 percent with a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

Hog farmer in Nantou fined for not parking in Panchiao

TAIPEI, Taiwan — A hog farmer in Chungliao in the landlocked county of Nantou was furious.

He had more than enough reason.

Traffic police in Panchiao, the seat of the Taipei county government and hundreds of miles north of his Chungliao farm near Sun Moon Lake, gave him a ticket.

“I received the ticket on Wednesday, and they wanted me to pay a NT$600 fine,” Su Ju-tien the hog farmer complained to a traffic court in Nantou yesterday.

He was fined for parking his vehicle at a Panchiao crossroad at 4:37 p.m. on Dec. 21 last year.

Su owns only one automotive vehicle, a pickup, which he drives to collect swill for his pigs.

But the vehicle shown in a photo enclosed with the ticket was a red sedan.

No Hog jokes please.

Man Commits Crime to Escape Nagging Wife

A man from Shanghai has been constantly blamed and harassed by his wife for not making enough money. He finally decided to rob people just so he could go to jail and avoid his wife’s nagging abuse.

29 year-old Linghua Wong works as a technician. He and his wife XiaoFeng have been married for nine years and have one daughter. Everyone knows Wong is a good father and husband, but his wife is not happy that he’s making so little money, and so she verbally abusing him by calling him names and making fun of him.

At first, he tried not going home to avoid his wife’s nagging but that didn’t work. Finally, he just couldn’t take it anymore. He walked in to the police station and lied that he robbed someone and ask to be taken to the jail. The police did not believe his story and refused to arrest him, so he decided to rob someone for real.