Reality beyond your imagination

NUSA DUA: President Barack Obama on Friday hailed the East Asia Summit as the top forum for tackling the region’s seething maritime row with China, setting a course for confrontation with Beijing.

The Chinese government has testily declared the South China Sea dispute off-limits at Saturday’s talks, to be attended by Obama, China’s Premier Wen Jiabao, and 16 other nations including several with claims over the waterway. But Obama said the gathering, held this year on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, “can be the premier arena for us to be able to work together on a wide range of issues — maritime security or nonproliferation.”

SINGAPORE: A member of Singapore’s ruling party has been forced to quit and is under police investigation after using a Facebook post to describe Muslim children in a school bus as terrorists in training.

A police spokesman told  Friday that they were investigating Jason Neo, 30, after members of the public lodged complaints over the posting he made on the social networking site in February.

NEW DELHI: Up to three million people in Afghanistan are facing hunger, malnutrition and disease after a severe drought wiped out their crops and extreme winter weather risks cutting off their access to vital food aid, a group of aid agencies warned on Friday.

Poor rains earlier this year destroyed 80 percent of wheat crops in the country’s north, northeast and west, leaving impoverished farming communities with little food to eat, said the nine charities which included Oxfam and Save the Children.