Weird News From Asia

Comics defying taboos, ditching slapstick for political satire

By MARI YAMAGUCHI
The Associated Press
Comedian Hikari Ota is doing what he does best on his weekly "news" show: taking aim at Japan's aging lawmakers.
"It's easy to spot them nodding off during Diet sessions," he tells the studio audience while a large screen on stage shows a napping lawmaker. "Sometimes they're even dead!"

Ota's treatment of authority figures might seem tame by some nations' standards, but in Japan it represents a bold foray into the formerly forbidden territory of political satire.

Japan's political leaders have been a sleep at the wheel for so long that they've gone into hibernation.

Keep off sex education, teachers told
The controversy on sex education for school children has taken a new turn. The Siksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has warned teachers that they may be violating the law if they take sex to the classroom.

In a letter to teachers across the country, they have noted that teachers can be charged under Section 354 of the IPC for outraging modesty of a woman, if they follow the exercises prescribed in the UNICEF training manual on sex education in their classrooms.

Taking a page from America's Christian Fundamentalists are we. Keep everyone ignorant about sex until its far to late.

Now for a degree in prostitution?
July 18, 2007 - 2:11PM

Funding for tertiary courses in prostitution could be considered under changes aimed at boosting quality and relevance in the sector, New Zealand education officials say.

But MPs on parliament's education and science select committee were told today that although courses in the world's oldest profession might be considered if providers put them forward, they would still have to meet tight criteria to get funding.

Talk about a career change.

Financial Supervisory Commission under probe for role in financial scam
Vice Chairwoman Susan Chang of the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) defended yesterday the role she and other regulators played when dealing with a financial unit of the collapsed Rebar Group.

Chang also said she and her colleagues will give full cooperation with investigators' into their allegedly giving preferential treatment to Great Chinese Bills Finance Corp.

She made the remarks when the Taipei District Court called yesterday half a dozen of FSC officials for testimony in the trial of former senior executives of the bills finance firm