Artist attempts longest batik
Artist attempts longest batik
SINGAPORE: Sleeping two hours a day for the past five days, a 62-
year-old Singapore artist hopes to enter the record books with
the world's longest batik painting.
A visibly tired Sarkasi Said had finished the 100 meter by 0.7
meter Indonesian-style painting of orchids on Tuesday morning and
planned to submit the entry to the Guinness Book of World
Records, a spokeswoman for Sarkasi said.
His painting of purple and yellowish flowers and shooting
green stems was inspired by Singapore's Botanic Gardens, using a
modern adaptation of Indonesia's centuries-old traditional batik
textile art of dyes and wax.
Known in Singapore as the "baron of batik", the Muslim artist
has won several local awards for his batik art, usually drawn
with dyes and a container of wax on washed and boiled silk.
--Reuters
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Aglance-Thailand-crime
Prime minister declares war on Thailand's underworld bosses
JP/11/ASEAN
PM wages war on underworld bosses
THAILAND: Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Tuesday
declared war against the country's underworld godfathers, telling
them to abandon their illegal activities or face the
consequences.
Addressing a meeting of about 300 senior police, military
officers and civil servants, Thaksin said that "influential
figures" - as underworld bosses are euphemistically called - will
have to stop their wrongdoing beginning Wednesday.
He told the officials to take all-out action against criminal
kingpins, focusing at first on those with outstanding arrest
warrants and weapons caches.
His plan to crack down on the mafia follows a controversial
three-month campaign on drug trafficking, during which there was
a major rise in the number of homicides. --AP
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Aglance-Malaysia-Italy-Crime
Malaysian court grants bail to hi-tech Italian peeping Tom
JP/11/ASEAN
Hi-tech peeping Tom granted bail
MALAYSIA: A Malaysian court has freed on bail an Italian
economist who allegedly peeped underneath the skirt of a student
using a video camera, it was reported on Tuesday.
Luca Dal Pozzo was detained earlier this month after a
30-year-old female student claimed she caught him recording her
thighs and buttocks while she was going up a shopping mall
escalator in the capital, Kuala Lumpur.
The 39-year-old economist was released on Monday morning after
posting bail of 10,000 ringgit (US$2,632), the Star reported.
Pozzo had sought a trial on charges that he had placed his
video camera beneath the escalator with the hopes of catching a
glimpse beneath the student's skirt, the report said. He faces a
five-year jail sentence if found guilty. --DPA
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Aglance-Vietnam-drownings
Eighteen students drown as boat sinks in Vietnam
JP/11/ASEAN
18 students drown as boat sinks
VIETNAM: Eighteen junior high-school students aged 13 and 14 died
when a boat capsized in central Vietnam, an official said on
Tuesday.
Heavy rains began pouring down at about 5 p.m. Monday and the
students crowded onto the ferry-boat in the river in Quang Nam
province, said Nguyen Van Hai, the chief administrator of Que
Trung commune.
The overloaded boat was carrying 39 students across the Thu
Bon river when the rain, strong winds and panicked students made
it sink seven metres from the bank, Hai said.
Ten girls and eight boys died and 21 others were either
rescued, or swam to the riverbank swim, Hai said from the
province, 800 kilometers south of Hanoi. --DPA