Bringing ASEAN museums together--that is the aim of Singapore’s National Heritage Board (NHB), which has organized the first ever ASEAN Museum Directors Symposium.
At the symposium, museum leaders from the region are discussing possibilities of combining their strengths to promote ASEAN culture and heritage worldwide, said Channelnewsasia.com.
The NHB has also announced it will embark on Integrated ASEAN Programming for various Singapore museums over the next three years.
“There are many stories that we can tell together and bring to the world, the global community, to let them know more about ASEAN’s culture and heritage,“ said Michael Koh, CEO, National Heritage Board, Singapore.
“We must work together. We cannot work alone because our country is too small...So if we work together, we [would] become bigger and we [would] have so many kinds of heritage we can introduce to the world,“ said Dr Saharudin Haji Ismail, Director-General, National Art Gallery, Malaysia.
“This forum will go a long way in informing one another about trends... sharing is not only of information but of techniques in museum communication, conservation and other aspects of museum work,“ said Corazon Alvina, Director, National Museum, the Philippines.
Museums can also serve as gateways to foster peace and harmony.
“There is a greater need than ever before to forge closer and stronger cross-cultural respect and understanding. Our museums have important roles to play in fostering awareness of our history and cultural identity as well as promote racial and religious harmony,“ said Dr Lee Boon Yang, Information, Communications & the Arts Minister.

Tibet's Potala palace

UNESCO has expressed concern over development at Tibet’s Potala palace and five other Chinese World Heritage sites, and has urged corrective measures, a specialist with the group said.
In a move so far unreported in China, the United Nations group singled out two Chinese sites on the World Heritage List for “examination“ and four more for “noting,“ Feng Jing, reported Xinhua.
Chinese media earlier last week reported prominently on the addition of two more Chinese sites to the World Heritage List at the group’s just-concluded meeting in New Zealand, bringing China’s total to 35.
A listing can vastly increase a site’s attractiveness to tourists, and local governments compete ferociously for the honor--and the additional revenues it can bring.
It was not clear exactly what the designations meant, but sites can eventually be removed from the list if UNESCO’s concerns are not met. However, Feng said no Chinese sites were considered for placement on the group’s in-danger list, a more serious step toward de-listing.
Listed for noting were the Potala complex, which also includes two other sites in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, and Beijing’s ancient imperial palace, summer palace and Temple of Heaven.
The old town in the southwestern city of Lijiang was listed for examination, along with the protected areas surrounding Yunnan province’s Three Parallel Rivers, on which dams are being built.
In Beijing, which is sprucing up its sites for next year’s 2008 Summer Olympic Games, UNESCO wanted the “application of clear principles in conducting conservation works,“ Feng wrote.
China is among the countries with the most listed sites, with the fortified tower houses of Kaiping and south China karst formations added this year.

A letter from Napoleon Bonaparte to his future wife Josephine sold for more than a quarter of a million pounds at an auction of original handwritten letters by historical figures--more than five times the pre-sale estimate.
The letter from the French leader fetched 276,000 pounds (409,000 euros, 557,000 dollars) at the Christie’s auction in London. It had only been expected to fetch 50,000 pounds, wrote AFP.
Just three letters written by Napolean to Josephine, Viscomtesse de Beauharnais, before their marriage are known to exist, the auction house said in a statement.
The collection of letters, which were written between the 13th and 20th centuries, was put together over 30 years by Albin Schram, a professor of law who died last year in Switzerland. He amassed the hundreds of original manuscripts largely without his family’s knowledge.
In all, the 500 lots on offer fetched 3.8 million pounds, nearly double the amount expected.
Other highlights of the sale included a manuscript by Sir Isaac Newton in which he discusses the theory of gravity. It sold for 204,000 pounds: more than four times the pre-sale estimate of 50,000 pounds.
But Christie’s agreed earlier to withdraw a letter written by Mahatma Gandhi shortly before his death, and return it to the Indian government.
The Indian government had been planning to bid for the letter, written 19 days before Gandhi was shot dead on January 30, 1948 by a Hindu fanatic who opposed his tolerance towards Muslims.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa no longer leans quite so much after a £20 million project to save it was hailed a complete success.

The leaning tower of Pisa, which was on the verge of collapse, has been straightened by 18 inches (45 centimeters) returning it to its 1838 position.
“It has straightened a little bit more than we expected, but every little helps,“ said Prof John Burland, an expert in soil mechanics at Imperial College London, who was the only British member of the 14-strong rescue committee, reported Telegraph.co.uk.
He said the tower was still “very slightly moving“ towards being upright, but that it had stabilized.
The tower, which has been leaning almost since building work first began in 1173, was closed to the public in 1990 because of safety fears. The 183-foot tower was nearly 15 feet off vertical and its structure was found to have been weakened by centuries of strain.
Prof Burland said it could have collapsed “at any moment“. However, it took nine years of bureaucratic wrangling before any work was done. “That was the difficult bit, getting the work going,“ Prof Burland said.
The last attempt at straightening the tower was carried out under orders from Benito Mussolini, who wanted it to be perfectly vertical.

A view of Imamzadeh Abdollah in Rey, south Tehran

A biology field trip for Chilean teenagers from a small Pacific coast town became an adventure in space and time when they found fossils from four whales that died 5 million years ago.
The classmates from a school in Concon discovered the backbones, jawbones and ribs in the hills near the village of Los Maitenes, about four miles from the ocean and 100 miles from Santiago.
“We got to the place thinking we might find a bone, something small and some invertebrate fossils,“ biology teacher Veronica Andrade told Reuters. “But because the kids are restless they fanned out all over the area and they found lots of fragments close to the surface.“
Geologists expect to find more whale fossils in the area.
Local authorities are hailing the discovery as one of the most important of its kind in central Chile and say they plan to declare the area a national monument, which would give the area protected status.

Some 450,000 people visit Dracula castle every year.

A Habsburg heir is hoping someone will take a bite of his offer to sell “Dracula’s Castle“ in Transylvania.
The medieval Bran Castle, perched on a cliff near Brasov in mountainous central Romania, is a top tourist attraction because of its ties to Prince Vlad the Impaler, the warlord whose cruelty inspired Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, “Dracula“, AP reported.
Legend has it that the ruthless Vlad--who earned his nickname because of the way he tortured his enemies--spent one night in the 1400s at the castle.
The Habsburgs formally put the Bran Castle on the market, No selling price was announced.
Bran Castle was built in the 14th century to serve as a fortress to protect against the invading Ottoman Turks.
The royal family moved into the castle in the 1920s, living there until the communist regime confiscated it from Princess Ileana in 1948.
After being restored in the late 1980s and following the end of communist rule in Romania, it gained popularity as a tourist attraction known as “Dracula’s Castle.“
In May 2006, the castle was returned to Princess Ileana’s son, New York architect Archduke Dominic Habsburg.
He pledged to keep it open as a museum until 2009.
Habsburg, 69, offered to sell the castle last year to local authorities for $80 million, but the offer was rejected.
Habsburg said in a statement: “Aside from the castle’s connection to one of the most famous novels ever written, Bran Castle is steeped in critical events of European history dating from the 14th century to the present.“
According to a contract signed when the castle was returned, the government pays rent to Habsburg to run the castle as a museum for three years, charging admission. After 2009, Habsburg will have full control of the castle, Gardner said.
In recent years, the castle--complete with occasional glimpses of bats flying around its ramparts at twilight--has attracted filmmakers looking for a dramatic backdrop for films about Dracula and other horror movies.
Some 450,000 people visit the castle every year, Gardner said.

Unlike in the rest of the world, the mango in several Pakistani provinces has another purpose than just consumption and enjoying.
“If you receive a crate of mangoes from your rivals in summer that means they want to reconcile with you,“ said Imtiaz Hussain Gillani, a top mango producer and tribal chief, said Bruneitimes.com.
“Tribal traditions consider it very bad form to reject such a gift,“ he added.
For many Pakistanis, mango is used only as a delicious fruit.
But it serves other purposes in Sindh and the southern Punjab provinces, where political rivals and tribal people use it to mend fences and end their rivalries and bloody feuds.
Hailing from the southwestern town of Khairpur, in the interior of the Sindh province, Gillani put an end to his old enmity with rival tribesmen after they sent him a mango gift two years ago.
“When you accept the gift, the rivalry goes away automatically,“ he said.
“You do not have to say or discuss anything further after that.“
The interior parts of Sindh and southern Punjab are famous for mango production, which is known as the king of fruit.
These areas produce 110 kinds of mangoes, which are exported to several European and Persian Gulf states.
The United Arab Emirates is the largest buyer of Pakistani mangoes.
Gillani insisted that the gift sent to rivals must be not be bought from the market.
“These mangoes must be from your own farm. Mangoes purchased from the market are not accepted.“
The tribal chief said mango gifts are used to replace embarrassing verbal apologies in local customs.
“In a tribal atmosphere, it is very difficult for people to apologize verbally or publicly,“ he said.
Gillani traced the history of mango diplomacy to the 19th century.