Page 2 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
ASIA / PACIFIC
September 18, 2017
China looks at ending sales of gasoline cars
BEIJING (AP) — China is joining France and Britain in announcing plans to
end sales of gasoline and diesel cars. China’s industry ministry is developing a
timetable to end production and sale of traditional fuel cars and will promote
development of electric technology, state media cited a cabinet official as saying.
The reports gave no possible target date, but Beijing is stepping up pressure on
automakers to accelerate development of electrics. China is the biggest auto
market by number of vehicles sold, giving any policy changes outsize importance
for the global industry. France and Britain announced in July they will stop
sales of gasoline and diesel automobiles by 2040 as part of efforts to reduce
pollution and carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. Communist
leaders also want to curb China’s growing appetite for imported oil and see
electric cars as a promising industry in which their country can take an early
lead. China passed the United States last year as the biggest electric car market.
Sales of electrics and gasoline-electric hybrids rose 50 percent over 2015 to
336,000 vehicles, or 40 percent of global demand. U.S. sales totalled 159,620.
Indian journalist shot, killed by unknown assailants
BANGALORE, India (AP) — An Indian journalist was fatally shot by
unidentified attackers in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, police said. The
assailants pumped bullets into Gauri Lankesh as she left her car after reaching
her home in Bangalore, the Karnataka state capital. The attackers fled the
scene. Top police officer R.K. Dutta said it was too early to say who killed her. He
said he had met Lankesh recently, but she did not mention any threat to her life.
She edited a local magazine, Lankesh Patrike, and was found responsible in a
defamation case by a lawmaker of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party for her
writing about Hindu nationalists in 2016. In 2015, an Indian scholar,
Malleshappa M. Kalburgi, was killed in a similar way, also in Bangalore. He had
received death threats from angry right-wing Hindu groups after he criticized
idol worship and superstitious beliefs by Hindus. He was the third critic of
religious superstition to be killed in the country in three years. India has long
held secularism to be a keystone of its constitution — and a necessity for keeping
the peace among its cacophony of cultures defined by caste, clan, tribe, or
religion, including Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism,
and Buddhism.
Plane lands safely after engine flame seen at takeoff
TOKYO (AP) — A Japan Airlines (JAL) plane bound for New York returned
safely to a Tokyo airport after the pilot reported a bird strike to an engine during
takeoff. Television footage showed a red flame flickering from the left engine as
the plane ascended from the runway. JAL said the Boeing 777 carrying 233
passengers and 15 crewmembers requested an emergency landing minutes after
takeoff from Haneda International Airport. The plane returned to the airport
about an hour after takeoff and no injuries were reported. JAL is inspecting the
engine. Haneda had the worst record for bird strikes in Japan last year at 182
cases, followed by Osaka with 73 cases and Narita’s 57, though not all of them
affected flight operations, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure,
Transport, and Tourism.
Vietnam seizes more than a ton of smuggled ivory
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Authorities have seized more than a ton of smuggled
ivory at a Vietnamese port where some six tons were seized last year. Customs
official Le Dinh Loi in Ho Chi Minh City said the ivory seized in Cat Lai port had
been packed with sawdust and layers of plaster and asphalt to hide it. He said
the container held 2,983 pounds of ivory smuggled from Africa that was
transiting through Vietnam to its destination in neighboring Cambodia.
Vietnam bans hunting of its own dwindling elephant population but is one of the
world’s major transit points and consumers of ivory and rhino horn, where ivory
is often used as jewelry and home decoration.
PILES OF PLASTIC. Garbage at Versova Beach on the coast of the Arabian Sea is seen in Mumbai, India. The
approximately 1.5-mile stretch of the beach was littered with plastic water bottles, discarded plastic bags and containers,
empty packets of chips, plastic wrappers, and more. According to government estimates, each one of India’s 1.3 billion
citizens generates roughly seven ounces to 1.3 pounds of waste each day. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)
Nauseating trash heaps in India
spark citizen cleanup drives
By Manish Mehta and Vaishnavee Sharma
The Associated Press
UMBAI, India — Lawyer Afroz
Shah moved to Mumbai with a
dream of looking out at the wild,
blue Arabian Sea. What he saw instead was
nauseating — waves churning with plastic
shopping bags and empty chip packets,
beaches covered so thick with soda bottles and
snack wrappers that he could no longer see the
sand.
The coast off India’s financial capital, like so
many other places across the South Asian
nation, has become choked by garbage tossed
without much thought by the millions of
people who live there.
“I could have gone to the court. I could have
complained” to municipal authorities, said
Shah, age 34. Instead, he decided to take
action with his own two hands.
He and a neighbor near Mumbai’s Versova
Beach pulled on gloves and face masks and
began picking rubbish out of the sand.
Gradually, they were joined by other volun-
teers and sometimes tourists. Over 98 week-
ends, they gathered more than 11 million
pounds of trash.
“This littering is done by us,” Shah says of
his fellow Indian citizens. “I should pick it up.”
One environmental activist calls India’s
garbage problem a “ticking time bomb” that
will ultimately bury the nation’s cities and
towns unless its 1.3 billion people stop
littering at will. The country is “drowning in
trash,” says Chitra Mukherjee of the New
Delhi-based Chintan Environmental Re-
search and Action Group.
Each day, every Indian generates about
M
Asian Currency
Exchange Rates
Cambodian PM Hun Sen says he’ll rule 10 more years
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has
vowed to continue leading his impoverished Southeast Asian nation for another
10 years. He made the statement days after the arrest of his leading opponent.
Speaking to some 10,000 garment factory workers in the outskirts of Phnom
Penh, the capital, Hun Sen said he has decided to run for another two terms.
After that, he said he’d think about leaving office. In power for 32 years, Hun Sen
is already the world’s longest-serving prime minister and among its longest-
serving leaders. In 2007, he said he wanted to retire at age 90, but backtracked
on the claim in 2015. After the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party
mounted a strong challenge in 2013, Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party
have sought to stifle dissent and weaken challengers ahead of elections in July
2018. His party has often been accused in the past of using violence or threats
against opponents, but in recent years has stalked its foes mostly in the courts.
Legal threats forced opposition leader Sam Rainsy to resign this year; he now
lives in exile. Cambodian authorities arrested his successor, Kem Sokha. He was
formally charged with treason for allegedly conspiring with the United States to
topple the government and could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted. The
move sharply escalates political tensions and raises questions about whether
upcoming elections can be free or fair. The opposition party says the treason
allegation is false and politically motivated. Hun Sen urged the factory workers
at the event to vote for him next year, promising he would give them better jobs
and healthcare.
seven ounces to 1.3 pounds of garbage, the
government estimates. The vast majority of
that ends up tossed into the country’s forests,
parks, streets and sidewalks, rivers, or
surrounding oceans.
“The citizen has to realize that ‘this is my
waste, nobody is going to take care of it but
me,’” says Mukherjee.
In 2014, the government tried to raise
awareness with a campaign called “Swacch
Bharath Abhiyan,” or “Clean India Mission.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi even hammed
it up for media photographers by posing with a
broom.
But three years later, little has changed.
People still carry their household trash in
plastic bags to the edge of the water and toss it
out to sea, watching as it bobs away.
The slow progress means Shah and others
continue leading small citizens’ movements to
help. But not every effort has been successful.
A group called New Delhi Rising says it’s
been unable to find enough volunteers to
handle the 15,500 tons of waste generated
every day in the Indian capital.
New Delhi’s three landfills are already
overflowing, says the group’s founder, Nakul,
who like many in India goes by only one name.
Even the swankiest neighborhoods often
have garbage tucked into the corners between
buildings or beneath park benches.
Some Delhi students volunteer regularly to
help pick it up, but most of New Delhi Rising’s
engagement has come from social media
“likes” and follows. Nakul hopes more
residents will come out to help.
“It only takes two hours; it doesn’t take
money,” he said.
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81.341
4080.7
6.5526
2.0229
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64.082
13240
33425
110.83
8325.4
4.1895
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105.13
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