Page 2 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
ASIA / PACIFIC
September 17, 2018
Aceh region bans unmarried couples at same café tables
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) — A district in Indonesia’s deeply conserva-
tive Aceh province has banned unmarried couples from sitting at the same table
in restaurants, cafés, and coffee shops. The head of the district’s Islamic affairs
office, Jufliwan, said the measure also forbids restaurants, cafés, and coffee
shops from serving female customers after 9:00pm if they are not accompanied
by their husbands, fathers, or brothers. He said the regulation, which was issued
in August in Bireuen district, also prohibits restaurants and coffee shops from
hiring lesbians, gays, bisexual, or transgender people as waiters or waitresses.
Aceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia that practices Islamic
Shariah law, a concession made by the central government in 2001 as part of
efforts to end a decades-long war for independence.
China move points to possible end of birth limits
BEIJING (AP) — China is eliminating a trio of agencies responsible for
enforcing family-planning policies in a further sign the government may be
planning to scrap long-standing limits on the number of children its citizens can
have. The move was part of a reorganization of the National Health Commission
that creates a new single department called the Division of Population
Monitoring and Family Development. Alarmed by the rapidly aging population
and shrinking workforce, China abandoned the notorious one-child policy two
years ago to allow two children, but the effect on the birthrate has been less than
expected. There were 17.2 million births in the country last year, down from 17.9
million in 2016. Meanwhile, the proportion of the population age 60 or older
increased last year to 17.3 percent.
Philippine president vents anger toward fierce critic on TV
MANILA, The Philippines (AP) — The Philippine president has vented his
anger toward his fiercest political critic on a TV talk show, prompting opposition
calls for him to focus instead on worsening inflation, rice shortages, and an
approaching powerful typhoon. President Rodrigo Duterte attempted to explain
the legal offensive he launched against opposition senator Antonio Trillanes IV.
He linked Trillanes’ political group to an alleged plot to oust him, and said he has
ordered the release of intelligence provided by a foreign government about the
alleged plan. Opposition senator Risa Hontiveros responded that Duterte
“should snap out of his fantasy with destabilization plots, roll up his sleeves, and
start working.”
DJ mounts challenge of colonial-era anti-gay law
SINGAPORE (AP) — A Singaporean disc jockey (DJ) is challenging a law that
bans sex between men, a holdover from British colonial days that conservatives
insist on keeping but authorities have promised not to enforce. The case brought
by Johnson Ong, whose stage name is DJ Big Kid, is the first against the
anti-gay law since an appeal by three people was thrown out by the Supreme
Court in 2014. The law, known as Section 377A, states that acts of “gross
indecency” between men are punishable with a jail term of up to two years.
Homosexuality is quietly tolerated in Singapore. However, discrimination
remains rife, although it is often subtle and masked under the need to protect a
pro-family Asian culture.
Vietnam’s capital urges residents to stop eating dog meat
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Authorities in Vietnam’s capital are urging
residents to stop eating dog meat because it hurts the city’s image and improper
raising and slaughtering of the animals could spread rabies. For many
Vietnamese, dog meat is a delicacy that is thought to increase stamina. Hanoi
vice mayor Nguyen Van Suu said in a message on the city’s website that
slaughtering and consuming dog and cat meat are disturbing to foreigners and
“negatively impact the image of a civilized and modern capital.” Suu instructed
local governments to raise awareness of the risk of rabies when raising dog and
cat meat. The move is part of a national program to stamp out rabies by 2021.
Nguyen Thi Minh, who has run a dog meat restaurant in Hanoi for more than 20
years, said there are no risks of rabies because her restaurant selects healthy
dogs and the meat is properly cooked. “People eat dog meat and there’s no
problem,” she said. “I serve customers from South Korea, the United States, and
other countries.” Officials say there are 493,000 dogs and cats in Hanoi, of which
more than 10 percent are raised for commercial purposes.
CLIMATE-CONTROLLED CROPS. Choi Jae Bin, the head of NextOn, talks about his farm’s crop cultivation
system next to sesame leaves growing on vertically stacked styrofoam at the tunnel-based vertical indoor NextOn farm
in Okcheon, South Korea. The high-tech farm inside a former tunnel in South Korea is seen as a potential solution to the
havoc wreaked on crops by the extreme weather linked to climate change, and to shortages of land and workers as the
country ages. (AP Photo/Han Myung Oh)
As temperatures rise, farmers
plant crops in S. Korean tunnel
By Jung-Yoon Kim
The Associated Press
O
KCHEON, South Korea — Behind a
blue wall that seals a former highway
tunnel stretches a massive indoor
farm bathed in rose-tinted light.
Fruits and vegetables grow hydroponically
— with no soil — in vertically stacked layers
inside, illuminated by neon-pink LEDs
instead of sunlight.
Operators of the high-tech facility in South
Korea say it is the world’s first indoor vertical
farm built in a tunnel. It’s also the largest such
farm in the country and one of the biggest in
the world, with a floor area of 25,000 square
feet, nearly half the size of an American
football field.
Indoor vertical farming is seen as a potential
solution to the havoc wreaked on crops by the
extreme weather linked to climate change and
to shortages of land and workers in countries
with aging populations.
The tunnel, about 120 miles south of Seoul,
was built in 1970 for one of South Korea’s first
major highways. Once a symbol of the
country’s industrialization, it closed in 2002.
An indoor farming company rented the tunnel
from the government last year and trans-
formed it into a “smart farm.”
Instead of the chirrups of cicadas, Claude
Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” resonates in the
tunnel in hopes of stimulating the crops’
healthy growth.
“We are playing classical music because
vegetables also love listening to music like we
do,” said Choi Jae Bin, head of NextOn, the
company that runs the vertical farm.
Sixty types of fruits and vegetables grow in
optimized conditions using NextOn’s own
growth and harvest systems. Among them, 42
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Muslim lesbian couple caned in public punishment
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Two Malaysian Muslim women
convicted under Islamic laws for attempting to have sexual intercourse have
been caned in a rare public whipping that was slammed by rights activists as a
grave miscarriage of justice. Lawyers and activists say more than 100 people
witnessed the caning in a Sharia court in northeast Terengganu state. Muslim
Lawyers’ Association deputy president Abdul Rahim Sinwan said the women,
22 and 32 years old, were given six strokes from a light rattan cane on their
backs by female prison officers. He said the caning wasn’t harsh and was meant
to educate the women so they will repent. But women’s groups called the caning
“a form of torture” and warned it could worsen discrimination against people in
Malaysia’s lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgendered community. Malaysia
follows a dual-track justice system. Nearly two-thirds of Malaysia’s 31 million
people are Muslims, who are governed by Islamic courts in family, marriage,
and personal issues. The two unidentified women were discovered by Islamic
officials in April and sentenced in August by a Shariah court to six strokes of a
cane and a fine after pleading guilty.
are certified as no-pesticide, no-herbicide, and
non-GMO products, said Dave Suh, NextOn’s
chief technology officer.
He said the tunnel provides temperatures of
10º to 22º Celsius (50º to 72º Fahrenheit),
enabling the company to optimize growing
conditions.
High-tech smart farms, used also in places
like Dubai and Israel where growing condi-
tions are challenging, can be a key to develop-
ing sustainable agriculture, experts said.
“Society is aging and urbanization is
intensifying as our agricultural workforce is
shrinking,” said Son Jung Eek, a professor of
plant science at Seoul National University.
Smart farming can help address that
challenge, he said, as well as make it easier to
raise high-value crops that are sensitive to
temperature and other conditions.
Only slightly more than 16 percent of South
Korea’s land was devoted to farming in 2016,
according to government statistics. The rural
population has fallen by almost half over the
past four decades, even as the overall
population has grown nearly 40 percent.
The Agriculture Ministry announced earlier
this year that it will invest in smart farm
development nationwide, expanding their
total area to 17,000 acres from the current
9,900 acres.
Turning a profit can be challenging for
indoor vertical farms given the high cost of
construction and infrastructure. NextOn cut
construction costs in half by using the
abandoned tunnel and developing its own LED
lights and other technologies.
The proprietary technologies reduce water
and energy use and the need for workers,
cutting operation costs, Suh said. Sensors in
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111.98
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115.85
122.14
3.263
53.971
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