Asia in 3 minutes: Saudi’s beauty show camels banned for botox, Japan turns ugly for panda cub
Philippines leader Duterte warns Middle East nations over abuse of maids; Joint North-South Korean hockey team gets acquainted
Camels disqualified from Saudi beauty pageant for getting ‘Botox’ injections
A dozen camels were disqualified from an annual beauty contest in Saudi Arabia for having cosmetic botulinum injections. Local media reported a vet had been caught giving the animals Botox-like injections before the contest, and then performing cosmetic surgery on them at the event. The King Abdulaziz camel festival carries a tempting US$31.8 million in total prize money. Ali al-Mazrouei, the son of an Emirati camel breeder, said the injections inflate the animals’ head “so when the camel comes it’s like, ‘Oh, look at how big that head is. It has big lips, a big nose’”.
What next: Key attributes in camel beauty are delicate ears and fulsome snouts. But regulations prohibit the use of drugs in the lips, shaved or clipped body parts. The festival is the biggest in the Gulf with up to 30,000 camels.
Philippines threatens to ban maids from Middle East amid reports of rape
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to ban thousands of Filipinos from working as maids in the Middle East amid media reports of rape, exploitation and deaths in Kuwait. He warned the Arab nation that if he hears “One more incident about a woman, a Filipino worker being raped there, committing suicide, I’m going to stop – I’m going to ban”. There are more than two million Filipinos working in the Middle East, many of them employed as domestic helpers, who send back billions of dollars in salary remittances to their families at home. Duterte also said “all the Filipinos there, they can all go home”.
What next: Kuwait said it was still awaiting details from the Philippines about the abuse cases that Duterte was referring to. The Kuwaiti foreign minister, Khaled al-Jarallah, said Filipino workers were still welcome, and that their rights were guaranteed.
Rescue, evacuation efforts struggle with Japan, Philippines volcanoes
Volcano eruptions across Asia caused havoc for authorities this week. In the Philippines, Mount Mayon’s ongoing eruption escalated with an explosion of ash, lava and superheated rocks that shot 5km up into the air and far out over its surrounding slopes. More than 75,000 residents have fled since lava began flowing from its crater last week. Meanwhile, a surprise eruption at Japan’s popular Kusatsu Kokusai ski resort on Tuesday saw ash and molten rock burst onto surrounding ski fields, killing one person and injuring 11. More than 650 volcanic earthquakes have been observed since.
