BANGKOK: Protesters in Bangkok on Thursday dumped plastic waste in front of a government building and called on Southeast Asian leaders to ban imports of trash from developed countries.
The protest comes ahead of a weekend meeting of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with many countries struggling to deal with the flood of plastic waste unleashed by China’s decision last year to stop importing recyclables from abroad.
Countries in ASEAN now receive more than a quarter of global plastic waste, most of which comes from developed economies like Canada, the US, Australia, and Japan.
A group of about 50 Thai activists, some holding placards reading “No Space for Waste,” joined Greenpeace campaigners to call for an end to all trash imports to Southeast Asia.
“The communities are here today to reclaim ... the right to live in a sustainable environment in Thailand,” said Tara Buakamsri of Greenpeace Thailand.
They called for ASEAN countries to ban the export of waste “from anywhere in the world into the region,” Tara said.
The trash pile-up in Southeast Asia accelerated after China stopped accepting waste in 2018, and Greenpeace says plastic refuse imports have increased by a staggering 171 percent since 2016.
The imported waste is supposed to be recycled, but sometimes arrives mixed with unrecyclable items or is improperly handled and ends up being burnt or leaking into waterways and the sea.
The issue has been in the headlines recently after the Philippines sent a huge shipment of garbage back to Canada, sparking a diplomatic row.
And last week, Indonesia returned five containers of rubbish to the US, saying it refused to be a “dumping ground.”
Thailand currently imports waste from scores of countries, much of it ending up in landfills and waste disposal facilities that have prompted pollution complaints from residents.
“There is air, dust, and water pollution... it burdens the Thai people,” said Jorn Naowaopas, an activist from Chachoengsao province where several dumpsites are located.
The contaminated groundwater run-off and toxic fumes caused by disposing of plastic and electronic waste can cause serious environmental and health problems if not properly treated.
The ASEAN summit, which kicks off Saturday with a foreign ministers meeting, has not put the waste issue on its agenda.
But discussions will have as a “priority” the issue of marine waste because it affects “the food chain of people worldwide,” Thai government spokesman Werachon Sukondhapatipak said Wednesday.
In March, ASEAN environment ministers drafted the “Bangkok Declaration on Combating Marine Debris,” the first-ever region-wide attempt to tackle plastic waste clogging its waters.
Protesters urge ASEAN leaders to ban trash imports
Protesters urge ASEAN leaders to ban trash imports
- Countries in ASEAN now receive more than a quarter of global plastic waste
- Waste comes from developed economies like Canada, the US, Australia and Japan
Navalny family mulls taking France to European court: lawyer
“It was our duty to go all the way with his wife, in memory of Alexei“
PARIS: The family of late Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny is considering taking France to the European Court of Human Rights in a case that implicates French cosmetics firm Yves Rocher, a lawyer said on Tuesday.
In 2014, Navalny and his brother Oleg were found guilty of fraud and money laundering via their transport and logistics firm which was working with Yves Rocher.
The brothers later took Yves Rocher to court in France over alleged false accusations but their complaint was dismissed by the courts.
“We are considering taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights,” said William Bourdon, who represents Navalny’s family.
“It was our duty to go all the way with his wife, in memory of Alexei,” he said, referring to the opposition politician’s widow Yulia Navalnaya.
In 2013, Russian investigators accused the Navalny brothers of “stealing” and laundering millions of rubles from Yves Rocher and a Russian firm.
The indictment followed a protracted investigation, which Navalny dismissed as persecution over his political activities.
Oleg served three-and-a-half years in prison and was released in 2018, while Alexei received a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence.
Yves Rocher, one of the first foreign cosmetics brands to enter Russia in 1991 after the Soviet Union’s demise, eventually acknowledged publically that it had sustained “no damage” in the money laundering case.
But in 2021, Russian authorities used the old embezzlement charges to jail Navalny. He died three years later in unclear circumstances, with his family saying he was killed on President Vladimir Putin’s orders.
“I’m in jail due to a criminal complaint by a French company,” Navalny said in 2022, referring to Yves Rocher.
In 2017, the European Court of Human Rights denounced the Russian court for its original ruling that was “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable,” ordering that the brothers be paid 83,000 euros ($93,000) in damages and costs.
Alexei and Oleg Navalny then filed a false accusation complaint in the western French city of Vannes, nor far from Yves Rocher’s headquarters, and an inquiry was opened in 2019.
“We do believe that we will find here a real and fair justice which unfortunately we cannot find in Russia,” Alexei Navalny said at the time.
However, French judges eventually dropped the inquiry, and on Tuesday, the Court of Cassation, the highest court of the French judicial system, upheld the decision after an appeal by Navalny’s family.
“We are disappointed that the Vannes court was too cautious, which benefited Yves Rocher,” said Bourdon.
North Korea troops not in combat in Russia’s Kursk since mid-Jan: Seoul
- “Since mid-January, it appears that the North Korean troops deployed to the Kursk region of Russia have not engaged in combat,” South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said
- “One reason for this may be the occurrence of many casualties, but the exact details are still being monitored“
SEOUL: North Korean soldiers previously fighting alongside Russia’s army on the Kursk front line appear not to have been engaged in combat since mid-January, South Korea’s spy agency told AFP Tuesday, after Ukraine claimed they had been withdrawn following heavy losses.
“Since mid-January, it appears that the North Korean troops deployed to the Kursk region of Russia have not engaged in combat,” South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said.
“One reason for this may be the occurrence of many casualties, but the exact details are still being monitored,” it added in a statement.
Ukraine’s military said Friday it believed North Korean soldiers deployed to the front line in Kursk had been “withdrawn” after suffering heavy losses.
Western, South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence agencies say Pyongyang deployed more than 10,000 troops to support Russian forces fighting in its western Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a shock cross-border offensive in August.
Neither Pyongyang nor Moscow have officially confirmed the troop deployment, but the two countries signed an agreement, including a mutual defense element, when Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare visit to the nuclear-armed North last year.
Kyiv captured dozens of border settlements in the operation — the first time a foreign army had crossed into Russian territory since the Second World War — in an embarrassing setback for the Kremlin.
The North Korean deployment was supposed to reinforce Russia’s army and help it expel Ukraine’s troops — but nearly six months on Ukraine still holds swathes of Russian territory.
Ukraine previously said it had captured or killed several North Korean soldiers in Kursk.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has published footage of interrogations with what he said were North Korean prisoners captured by his army on the Kursk front.
Ukrainian officials have said wounded North Korean troops were blowing themselves up with grenades rather than being taken alive.
Kyiv and the West had denounced their deployment as a major escalation in the three-year conflict.
Seoul has previously said that due to losses among its forces, North Korea is preparing for additional deployment to Ukraine.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in December that Pyongyang is “preparing for the rotation or additional deployment of soldiers” to aid Russia’s war effort.
Pyongyang and Moscow have deepened political, military and cultural ties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In a New Year’s letter, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hailed Putin and made a possible reference to the war in Ukraine.
He said 2025 would be the year “when the Russian army and people defeat neo-Nazism and achieve a great victory.”
Ukraine says it hit Russian command post in Kursk region
- Ukraine’s military has reported numerous strikes on Russian military and energy facilities
KYIV: Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday its air force had struck a Russian military command post in Russia’s Kursk region the previous day.
“The facility sustained significant damage, leading to substantial casualties among enemy personnel,” the general staff said on Telegram.
Reuters could not independently verify the statement.
Ukraine’s military has reported numerous strikes on Russian military and energy facilities in recent weeks. Ukrainian forces have been battling Russian troops in the Kursk region since Ukraine mounted a cross border operation there last year.
UN warns maternal deaths in Afghanistan may rise after US funding pause
- Pio Smith, regional director for Asia and the Pacific at UNFPA said that over 9 million people in Afghanistan would lose access to services
- “If I just take the example of Afghanistan, between 2025 and 2028 we estimate that the absence of US support will result in 1,200 additional maternal deaths”
GENEVA: A UN aid official said on Tuesday that a US funding pause would cut off millions of Afghans from sexual and reproductive health services, and the continued absence of this support could cause over 1,000 maternal deaths in Afghanistan from 2025 to 2028.
US President Donald Trump last month ordered a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance, pending assessment of efficiencies and consistency with his foreign policy, setting alarm bells ringing among aid groups around the world that depend on US largesse.
Trump has also restored US participation in international anti-abortion pacts, cutting off US family planning funds for foreign organizations providing or promoting abortion.
Pio Smith, regional director for Asia and the Pacific at the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA), said that over 9 million people in Afghanistan would lose access to services and over 1.2 million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan due to the closure of health facilities.
Afghanistan has one of the highest death rates in the world for pregnant women, with a mother dying of preventable pregnancy complications every two hours, he said.
“What happens when our work is not funded? Women give birth alone, in unsanitary conditions...Newborns die from preventable causes,” he told a Geneva press briefing. “These are literally the world’s most vulnerable people.”
“If I just take the example of Afghanistan, between 2025 and 2028 we estimate that the absence of US support will result in 1,200 additional maternal deaths and 109,000 additional unintended pregnancies,” he said.
Across the Asia-Pacific region, UNFPA receives about $77 million in US funding, he added.
Riva Eskinazi, director of donor relations at the International Planned Parenthood Federation told Reuters it, too, would have to halt family planning and sexual and reproductive health services in West Africa as a result of the pause.
“We can foresee an increase in unintended pregnancies and maternal deaths. There is going to be a problem sending contraceptives to our members. It’s devastating,” she said.
IPPF, a federation of national organizations that advocates for sexual and reproductive health, calculates that it would have to forego at least $61 million in US funding over four years in 13 countries, most of which are in Africa.
Trial of man in Salman Rushdie stabbing begins with jury selection
- Matar has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault
- Matar’s trial has been delayed twice, most recently after his defense lawyer unsuccessfully tried to move it to a different venue
NEW YORK: The trial of the man charged with attempting to murder the novelist Salman Rushdie at a New York lecture is due to begin on Tuesday with jury selection.
Hadi Matar, 26, can be seen in cellphone videos rushing the stage at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York in August, 2022, as Rushdie was being introduced to the audience. Rushdie, 77, was stabbed with a knife multiple times in an attack that led to the loss of his right eye and damaged his liver.
Matar has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault. Rushdie, who has faced death threats since the 1988 publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses,” is due to be among the first witnesses to testify at the trial.
Rushdie has published a memoir about the attack, and said in interviews he believed he was going to die on the Chautauqua Institution’s stage.
Rushdie, who was raised in a Muslim Kashmiri family, went into hiding under the protection of British police in 1989 after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme leader, pronounced “The Satanic Verses” to be blasphemous. Khomeini’s fatwa, or religious edict, called upon Muslims to kill the novelist and anyone involved in the book’s publication, leading to a multi-million-dollar bounty.
The Iranian government said in 1998 it would no longer back the fatwa, and Rushdie ended his years as a recluse, becoming a fixture of literary parties in New York City, where he lives.
After the attack, Matar told the New York Post that he traveled from his home in New Jersey after seeing the Rushdie event advertised because he disliked the novelist, saying Rushdie had attacked Islam. Matar, a dual citizen of his native US and Lebanon, said in the interview that he was surprised that Rushdie survived, the Post reported.
Matar’s trial has been delayed twice, most recently after his defense lawyer unsuccessfully tried to move it to a different venue, saying Matar could not get a fair trial in Chautauqua. The trial is being held at the Chautauqua County Court in Mayfield, a town of about 1,500 people near the Canadian border. If convicted of attempted murder, Matar faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.
Matar is also facing federal charges in which prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in western New York accused him of attempting to murder Rushdie as an act of terrorism and of providing material support to the armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon, which the US has designated as a terrorist organization.
