Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

SINGAPORE, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Singapore's former Transport Minister S. Iswaran has been charged in court for graft, the anti-corruption agency said on Thursday, in one of the most high-profile graft cases involving a minister in the Asian financial hub in decades.

The Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB), in a statement, said Iswaran, who was arrested in July last year, is alleged to have obtained kickbacks valued at S$384,340.98 ($286,181) from property tycoon Ong Beng Seng, partly to advance Ong's business interests.

MANILA, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Philippine troops on Wednesday killed two suspected rebels in a clash in Negros Occidental province in the central Philippines, a military report said.

The report said that the fighting between the troops and around five rebels from the New People's Army (NPA) occurred in La Castellana town around 6:45 a.m. local time.

The troops recovered an AR-15 rifle, a homemade shotgun, a .45-caliber pistol, and ammunition from the encounter site.

TOKYO, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Japan's automaker Daihatsu Motor Co. on Wednesday said it plans to recall two mini-vehicles with a door defect.

The recall, which would potentially involve about 320,000 units, was announced a day after Japan's transport ministry instructed the company to consider recalling the Cast model sold under the Daihatsu brand and the Pixis Joy sold under the marque of its parent Toyota Motor Corp. following the scandal that the company had rigged safety tests for most of its models.

JAKARTA, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Jakarta-Bandung High-speed Railway (HSR), the first of its kind in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, has set a target to serve 31,000 passengers per day throughout this year, said PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia-China (KCIC), a joint venture consortium between Indonesian and Chinese state-owned firms that constructs and runs the HSR.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Even for a nation that has perfected the provocative, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s declaration that he would abandon the existential goal of reconciling with rival South Korea was a shock. But a closer look shows it’s the almost inevitable culmination of years of building tension.

World powers will now be closely watching to see how one of Kim’s biggest foreign policy declarations since he took power in 2011 plays out as he works to gain leverage in a region that holds both promise and danger for his small, impoverished, nuclear-armed nation.

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 16 (NNN-BERNAMA) – Malaysian authorities said yesterday, they had seized 528 kg of drugs worth 19 million ringgit (4.06 million U.S. dollars) hidden in a forest reserve in Perlis state, near the border with Thailand.

Four suspects had been arrested in connection with the case, with four vehicles and seven motorcycles seized as well, Bukit Aman Narcotics Crime Investigation Department (NCID) director, Mohd Kamarudin Md Din said.

VIENTIANE, Jan 16 (NNN-KPL) – Six people suffered serious injuries, when a landmine detonated, as people prepared land for the planting of cassava in southern Laos’ Attapeu province.

The incident took place in Viengxay village of Phouvong district in Attapeu province, some 560 km south-east of the Lao capital, Vientiane, on Jan 11, Lao national radio reported, today.

The explosion wounded three females and three males, two of whom were children, according to the report.

TOKYO, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Two passenger planes made contact on the ground at New Chitose Airport in Japan's northern prefecture of Hokkaido on Tuesday evening, with no reports of injuries so far.

At around 5:30 p.m. local time, a Korean Air aircraft and a Cathay Pacific plane "came into contact with each other," according to national broadcaster NHK, citing the operator Hokkaido Airports Co., Ltd. as saying.

BEIJING (AP) — Rescuers evacuated tourists on Tuesday from a remote skiing area in northwestern China where dozens of avalanches triggered by heavy snow have trapped more than 1,000 people for a week, state media said.

The avalanches have blocked roads, stranding both tourists and residents in a village in Altay prefecture in the Xinjiang region, close to China’s border with Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan.

Those injured were being airlifted out on a military helicopter while supplies such as food and fuel were being flown in.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would no longer pursue reconciliation with South Korea and called for rewriting the North’s constitution to eliminate the idea of shared statehood between the war-divided countries, state media said Tuesday.