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About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (July 16, 2018)
ASIA / PACIFIC Page 16 n THE ASIAN REPORTER July 16, 2018 U.N. official says N. Korea needs food, medicine, clean water ILLEGAL OPERATIONS. In this April 27, 2011 file photo, nuns of Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Teresa, stand in a queue to cast their vote during West Bengal state assembly elections in Kolkata, India. Police in eastern India say they have arrested a nun and another worker at a shelter run by the charity for allegedly selling a baby. (AP Photo/Bikas Das, File) Two at Mother Teresa’s charity arrested over alleged baby sale By Indrajit Singh The Associated Press ATNA, India — A nun and another worker at a shelter for unwed mothers run by Mother Teresa’s charity in eastern India have been arrested for allegedly selling a baby, police say. Three other complaints are also being investigated. An Indian couple claimed they paid 120,000 rupees ($1,760) to Anima Indwar, who worked at the shelter run by the Missionaries of Charity, police officer Aman Kumar said. Kumar said the police were investi- gating three other complaints against Indwar for allegedly selling children from the shelter. One more charity worker was questioned by police. Kumar also said the police have shifted 12 pregnant women from the charity to a government-run home for care. The move apparently was to avoid any similar situation after their babies are born. The arrests followed the couple’s complaint the charity worker had taken back the baby boy and kept their money. Spokeswoman Sunita Kumar said the Missionaries of Charity was investigating. “There was no question of selling any child as the Missionaries of Charity had stopped P giving children for adoption three years ago,” she said. She said the charity had never taken money from parents while arranging adoptions in the past. Police officer Kumar said 100,000 rupees ($1,470) was recovered from the two who were arrested. Kumar said the boy was born May 1 to a resident of the shelter and was handed to the Indian couple by Indwar on May 14 in Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand state. The couple told police that Indwar called them on July 1 and asked them to visit the shelter with the baby to complete some formalities. Rupa Verma, chairperson of an organization run by the state government for children’s welfare, said Indwar took the child away when the couple arrived. The state-run organization later took custody of the boy, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Verma as saying. Mother Teresa started the Missionaries of Charity order in Kolkata in 1950 and it later set up hundreds of shelters that care for some of the world’s neediest, people she described as “the poorest of the poor.” She received the Nobel Peace Prize for her charitable work in 1979 and Pope Francis declared her a saint last year, two decades after her death. TOKYO (AP) — About 20 percent of North Korean children are stunted because of malnutrition, and half the children in rural areas are drinking unsafe water, a senior United Nations (U.N.) official visiting the country said. Much progress has been made compared with 20 years ago, but “significant humanitarian challenges” remain, Mark Lowrock, the undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, said at a news conference in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. The U.N. issued a transcript of his remarks. The United Nations is trying to raise $111 million to meet health, water and sanitation, and food security needs for about 6 million people in North Korea. Only 10 percent has been raised so far, Lowrock said, through donations from the Swedish, Swiss, and Canadian governments. U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterres urged donors to fund the U.N. appeal “to try to address directly the humanitarian aspects that exist in North Korea.” The proportion of children affected by stunting, a failure to develop physically and cognitively, has fallen to 20 percent from 28 percent in 2011, but that “is still a high number,” Lowrock said. “Too much of the water is contaminated, which is a cause of disease and threatens the development of too many children,” he said, according to the transcript. Besides malnutrition and water, Low- rock also highlighted a shortage of drugs and medical supplies and equipment. One hospital he visited had only enough drugs for 40 of its 140 tuberculosis patients, creating dilemmas for doctors who have to figure out what to do, he said. Lowrock said Kim Yong Nam, a senior official, briefed him on the government’s commitment to denuclearization and the new focus on economic development as a top priority. Indonesia’s Aceh carries out public canings despite pledge By Heri Juanda The Associated Press ANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Indonesia’s deeply conservative Muslim province of Aceh publicly caned 15 people found guilty of violating Shariah law, despite pledging not to carry out the punishment in public. Several hundred people including a group of tourists from Malaysia watched the caning after Friday prayers in mid-July outside the Baiturrahim Mosque in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. Among those punished were a gay couple sentenced to receive 86 lashes each by three executioners. The two men had been captured by residents in Banda Aceh and were sentenced initially to 90 lashes, but the number was reduced to 86 for the four months they spent in custody. The other 13 included couples punished for showing affection in public and people caught drinking or selling alcohol, who were caned 13 to 27 times. In April, Aceh’s then-governor Irwandi Yusuf signed a memorandum of under- standing with the head of the provincial B Law and Human Rights office, stipulating that caning can only take place inside prisons or other places of detention. The number of witnesses was expected to be much smaller than the hundreds who regularly cheered the outdoor proceedings. The chief of the city security office, Muhammad Hidayat, said the punishment was still being held publicly “because there was no technical guidance yet” about how to carry out the canings inside prisons. “The authority of caning within the prisons is on the hand of the prosecutors office,” Hidayat said. The head of the Banda Aceh prosecutors office, Erwin Desman, said his office has not yet received guidance from the Law and Human Rights Ministry about preparing prisons to be a venue for the canings. The pledge had followed international condemnation of the caning last year of two men for consensual gay sex. The public display in May 2017 intensified an anti-gay backlash in the world’s most populous Muslim country, and human- Continued on page 12 How to identify a possible gas leak. If you smell ROTTEN EGGS it could be a gas leak. And the best thing to do is leave your home and call NW Natural. We’ll be out to make sure everything is safe. Unsure of what to do? Just take a look at our tips to the right. Smell. Go. Let Us Know. 800-882-3377 If you smell a rotten egg or sulfur odor, you hear a blowing or hissing sound, or you see blowing dirt, it could be a gas leak. What to do. Leave your home and the area immediately. 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