Page 2 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
ASIA / PACIFIC
November 5, 2018
Paraguay contestant wins, then swoons at beauty pageant
BANGKOK (AP) — A Paraguayan beauty pageant winner swooned on stage
after admitting the anticipation just before the announcement was unbearable.
Miss Grand International 2018 Clara Sosa fell as soon as she was announced
this year’s winner. At the time, she was holding hands with the first runner-up,
Meenakshi Chaudhary of India, who tried to help but failed to catch Sosa as she
collapsed and hit the floor. Sosa soon recovered and waved, cried, and smiled to
cameras before she was surrounded by fellow contestants who congratulated
her. In an interview before the winner was announced, Sosa said breathlessly
that she might need a doctor because she felt like she would have a heart attack.
Earlier in the night, contestants were asked which country they would visit to
campaign for an end to wars and violence. Sosa said if she won she would
“strategically” choose to visit President Donald Trump “because the United
States is an example for other countries. So my first message to him would be:
please be an example of peace, love, and tolerance.”
Spacecraft sent on seven-year journey to Mercury
TOKYO (AP) — European and Japanese space agencies say an Ariane 5
rocket successfully lifted a spacecraft into orbit for a joint mission to Mercury,
the closest planet to the sun. The European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency say the BepiColombo spacecraft successfully separated and
was sent into orbit from French Guiana to begin a seven-year journey to
Mercury. The mission is complicated by the intense gravity pull of the sun,
forcing the spacecraft to take an elliptical path that involves two fly-bys of Venus
and six of Mercury itself. Once the spacecraft arrives in late 2025, it will release
two probes that will independently investigate the surface and magnetic field of
Mercury.
Chris Evert trophy will go to No. 1 player in WTA
SINGAPORE (AP) — The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) has dedicated
its trophy for the top-ranked player of the year in honor of Chris Evert. Simona
Halep has received the newly named Chris Evert WTA World No. 1 Trophy.
She’s the year-end No. 1 for the second straight season. Halep isn’t playing in the
current WTA Finals because of a back injury. Evert was the first WTA No. 1 in
1975, when she won 15 titles. She said she’s “honored and privileged” to have her
name on the trophy. The American finished her career in 1989 with 157 singles
titles and 18 Grand Slam singles titles. Steffi Graf earned the year-end No. 1 a
record eight times from 1987-1996.
China says internment camps are “free vocational training”
BEIJING (AP) — A senior Chinese official is describing the mass internment
of ethnic minority Muslims in the country’s far west as a system of training
centers that saves Muslims from religious extremism by teaching them to speak
Mandarin and accept modern science. It was a rare instance of the ruling
Communist Party publicly detailing its vision of what the extrajudicial
detention of an estimated 1 million ethnic minority Uighur (WEE-gur) and
Kazakh Muslims is setting out to achieve. Shohrat Zakir, governor of the
Xinjiang region, said in a report by the official Xinhua News Agency that the
centers also train people to work in factories. Former detainees have told The
Associated Press that they were held in camps where they were forced to recite
party slogans and renounce their faith.
Nepal blocks 25,000 websites in pornography ban
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Nepalese internet providers have begun
blocking thousands of pornographic websites as part of a government directive
aimed at stopping sexual violence. The government issued new criminal and
civil codes this year that include regulations against the use, broadcast, and
publication of pornographic materials. Min Prasad Aryal of the Nepal Telecom
Authority said more than 25,000 websites were blocked under the campaign.
Internet service providers say they are complying with the government order
but say it would be impossible to weed out and block all such sites. The
government issued a similar ban in 2011, but this time there are more serious
punishments for violations.
VANISHING GLACIER. Tourists pose for a selfie near the Baishui No. 1 Glacier atop Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in
the southern province of Yunnan in China. Scientists say the glacier is one of the fastest melting glaciers in the world due to
climate change and its relative proximity to the Equator. It has lost 60 percent of its mass and shrunk 820 feet since 1982,
according to a 2018 report in the Journal of Geophysical Research. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil)
Melting glacier in China
draws tourists, climate worries
By Sam McNeil and Olivia Zhang
The Associated Press
ULONGXUESHAN, China — The loud
crack rang out from the fog above the
Baishui No. 1 Glacier as a stone shard
careened down the ice, flying past Chen
Yanjun as he operated a GPS device.
More projectiles were tumbling down the
hulk of ice that scientists say is one of the
world’s fastest melting glaciers.
“We should go,” said the 30-year-old
geologist. “The first rule is safety.”
Chen hiked away and onto a barren land-
scape once buried beneath the glacier. Now
there is exposed rock littered with oxygen
tanks discarded by tourists visiting the
15,000-foot-high blanket of ice in southern
China.
Millions of people each year are drawn to
Baishui’s frosty beauty on the southeastern
edge of the Third Pole — a region in Central
Asia with the world’s third largest store of ice
after Antarctica and Greenland that’s roughly
the size of Texas and New Mexico combined.
Third Pole glaciers are vital to billions of
people from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Asia’s 10
largest rivers — including the Yangtze,
Yellow, Mekong, and Ganges — are fed by
seasonal melting.
“You’re talking about one of the world’s
largest freshwater sources,” said Ashley
Johnson, energy program manager at the
National Bureau of Asian Research, an
American think tank. “Depending on how it
melts, a lot of the freshwater will be leaving
the region for the ocean, which will have severe
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Sri Lanka president sacks PM, appoints strongman
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lankan state television says President
Maithripala Sirisena has sacked the prime minister and replaced him with a
former strongman. The state-run Rupavahinj station reported that Sirisena
replaced Ranil Wickremesinghe with his former nemesis, Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The move ends a more than three-year-old coalition government that was
formed between bitterly opposed political parties in 2015 on a platform of good
governance.
Vietnam frees popular blogger on condition she leave Asia
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam has freed a well-known blogger after two
years in prison on the condition that she leave for the United States. Nguyen
Ngoc Nhu Quynh, known as “Mother Mushroom,” was arrested in October 2016
and sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of defaming the Communist
government. The conviction of the popular blogger, who wrote about human
rights and industrial pollution, drew criticism from some western governments
and international human-rights groups. Friends of the 39-year-old blogger said
she was on her way to the U.S. with her mother and two young children. Quynh’s
lawyer, Ha Huy Son, said her release was good news but did not lift the obstacles
faced by people who fight for democracy in Vietnam.
impacts on water and food security.”
Earth is today 1º Centigrade (1.8º Fahren-
heit) hotter than pre-industrial levels because
of climate change — enough to melt 28 to 44
percent of glaciers worldwide, according to a
new report by the U.N. Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. Temperatures are
expected to keep rising.
Baishui is about as close to the Equator as
Tampa, Florida. And the impacts of climate
change already are dramatic.
The glacier has lost 60 percent of its mass
and shrunk 820 feet since 1982, according to a
2018 report in the Journal of Geophysical
Research.
Scientists found in 2015 that 82 percent of
glaciers surveyed in China had retreated.
They warned that the effects of glacier melting
on water resources are gradually becoming
“increasingly serious” for China.
“China has always had a freshwater supply
problem with 20 percent of the world’s
population but only seven percent of its
freshwater,” said Jonna Nyman, an energy
security lecturer at the University of Sheffield.
“That’s heightened by the impact of climate
change.”
For years, scientists have observed global
warming change Jade Dragon Snow Mountain
in the Chinese province of Yunnan.
One research team has tracked Baishui’s
retreat of about 30 yards per year over the past
decade. Flowers, such as snow lotus, have
rooted in exposed earth, says Wang Shijin, a
glaciologist and director of the Yulong Snow
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