March 30, 2012 Edition

Hong Kong’s anti-graft body arrested Thursday, March 29, two of Asia’s richest property developers, Thomas and Raymond Kwok. They are being investigated for alleged corruption. The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) said two senior executives and a former senior government official had also been detained in connection with alleged bribery offenses. “Another senior executive of the listed company and four others were earlier arrested for their alleged roles in the same case. While enquiries are continuing, no further comments will be made,” the ICAC said. The commission did not name the suspects but Sun Hung Kai Properties, the property giant co-chaired by the Kwok brothers, confirmed their arrest in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange late Thursday. Details in Rappler.

More here. 

President Benigno Aquino III is lukewarm to taking on emergency powers to solve the looming energy crisis in Mindanao. Instead he prefers the construction of new power plants there even if it would take years to finish. The President pointed out that aside from being “very, very old,” some of the hydro-electric plants, such as the Agus VI hydroelectric power plant in Iligan City, have been poorly maintained. It will take 30 months to put them back to work and increase generating capacity, Aquino said. Read the details in Rappler. 

In a resolution released Dec 15, 2011, prosecutors from the Panel of National Prosecution Service found probable cause to charge retired Maj Gen Jovito Palparan Jr, retired Lt Col Felipe G. Anotado, retired Master Sgt Rizal Hilario, and Staff Sgt Edgardo Osorio with 2 counts of kidnapping and serious illegal detention in connection with the abduction of UP students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno. Cadapan, 27, and Empeno, 20, were abducted on June 26, 2006 from a farming community in Hagonoy, Bulacan. Empeno was a member of the left-wing League of Filipino Students. Cadapan was a member of Anakbayan. Both were students of the University of the Philippines Diliman. A 57-year-old farmer named Manuel Merino who responded to their screams was abducted as well. More in Rappler. 

Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, 66, is expected to easily grab a parliamentary seat in Myanmar’s by-election on Sunday. A total of 45 out of 48 seats are up for contention, with the 3 remaining in Kachin state, awaiting a ceasefire being worked out between the military and Kachin rebels. The US is expected to respond to the holding of the polls by easing economic sanctions. Party candidates from the Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) are also expected to win slots in the 664-seat bicameral national parliament. Even combined with other opposition politicians, however, Suu Kyi and her allies will be little match against the regime. Read more here. 

Additional details here. 

The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – collectively known as the BRICS – moved closer toward establishing an alternative to the World Bank. They agreed to examine more closely the creation of a South-South Development Bank, funded and managed by the 5 top emerging economies and other developing countries. The BRICS countries constitute one-fifth of the global economy. According to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the finance ministers from the BRICS countries have been instructed to study the idea of a development bank and report back in the next summit. They were meeting in New Delhi. Details here.

Read more here. 

Islamist gunman Mohamed Merah was buried in his hometown Toulouse on Thursday, despite a protest by the French city’s mayor. Previously the 23-year-old serial killer’s homeland Algeria refused his corpse. The burial took place after President Nicolas Sarkozy waded into the debate over where the man who shot dead three Jewish children, a teacher and three soldiers should be buried after he himself was killed in a police raid. “He was French. Let him be buried and let’s not have any arguments about it,” Sarkozy was quoted as saying. Toulouse mayor Pierre Cohen called earlier for a last-minute delay to the burial, saying it was “inappropriate” for him to be buried in his hometown in southwestern France where he also carried out some of his killings. Merah killed 7 people, including 3 people in southwestern France before we was shot dead in a siege at his home. Details here. 

The damage to the core of at least one of the meltdown-stricken reactors at Fukushima in Japan could be far worse than previously thought, raising fresh concerns over the plant’s stability and gravely complicating the post-disaster cleanup, a recent internal investigation has shown. The results of the inquiry, released this week by the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, also cast doubt over the Japanese government’s declaration three months ago that the ravaged site is now under control.

Throughout the crisis that ensued after a powerful earthquake and tsunami last March, both the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, or Tepco, and the government were accused of playing down the dangers posed by the nuclear meltdown. 

Read more from the New York Times. 

It’s not a dumbed down version of yoga, but it’s yoga for men. The actual series was developed to include some non-traditional moves that will appeal to men. “This is not a dumbed down version of yoga. There’s a lot of movement linking the postures, but adding push-ups and variations of squats,” co-founder Robert Sidoti was quoted as saying in the Huffington Post. Still, the emphasis remains on breath, strength and balance, along with flexibility. Anything that makes men more likely to enter the studio is a good thing – particularly as they advance in age. More from the Huffington Post here. 

At this era when Hollywood blockbusters are rarely engaging and provocative at the same moviegoing time, The Hunger Games is a refreshing concoction. The 2012 movie, based on the 2008 debut novel by Suzanne Collins (who went on to co-script the big-screen adaptation), dares to present a future—a fictitious but not improbable one—where teenagers are pitted against each other, against their will, in a deadly fight to the finish. This mainly for the callous enjoyment of a dominant social class who gets to revel in the televised “hunger games.” More in Rappler. 

A growing number of experts consider Internet addiction to be a serious and growing scourge. One of these individuals is Dr. Kimberly Young, founder of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery and author of “Caught in the Net” (1998). Young told The Fix that Internet addiction is an umbrella term that includes everything from online pornography and gambling to gaming and eBay — and more. “It is generally considered to cover all aspects of compulsive online behavior,” she said. One out of 8 Americans are said to suffer from the addiction. Read more here.