In the Vietnamese action blockbuster “Furie” viewed mostly on Netflix, the protagonist puts her gang days behind her and becomes a debt collector. The fact that filmmaker Veronica Ngo, whose recent credits include the Star Wars film The Last Jedi, chose this as a plot detail reflects how debt collection is a fairly well known part of life in Vietnam.As with the protagonist’s past, some aspects of real life debt collection have become sordid and even dangerous, such that authorities are wondering if it should even be a legal business sector anymore. Critics worry that desperate borrowers have resorted to loan sharks, who could use illegal means to collect debt. Others say people with poor borrowing histories still need access to loans, especially when turned away by traditional banks. The debate, which began last month in Parliament, is similar to one that was had in the U.S., amid the payday loans and predatory lending that contributed to the subprime mortgage crisis. Now the debate has come to Vietnam, as consumer demand grows for housing, vehicles, and even smartphones, all of which can be bought through loans. A motorbike driver rides past a branch of Eximbank in Ho Chi Minh City. (H. Nguyen/VOA)”This business has created many negative consequences for society,” Pham Huyen Ngoc, a Member of Parliament, said. He and his colleagues were discussing whether to add debt collection to the list of business sectors that are restricted or prohibited by law. It is not hard to walk around Vietnam and find lenders in the gray economy. They post flyers on street lamps, or write their numbers directly on walls enclosing yards or construction sites, offering loans. There is even a slang term for this practice: “tin dung cot dien,” or credit from an electric pole. The social impact of debt burdens also attracted public attention after October, when authorities in Essex, England found 39 Vietnamese had suffocated to death in a truck. That led to discussions about human trafficking and the debts that migrants take on when they pay brokers to take them to places like England. Another social issue that concerns authorities is gambling, a common reason that people get into debt. When vulnerable borrowers get in over their heads, a single life event, like a hospital bill, can easily lead to a missed loan payment. That adds more late fees and interest, leading to a debt trap. Officials like Ngoc worry that if these loans come from illegal lenders, they will threaten borrowers. However it may not be realistic to outlaw debt collection altogether. For as long as there has been money, there have been people borrowing it, whether they qualify for legal bank loans, or resort to other lenders. “I believe that the issue is that the relevant authorities, including the police and local government, have to have tight management and regulations,” Bui Thi Quynh Thoa, a Member of Parliament, said. She also worried about the potential for violence as part of debt collection. However the business must be regulated rather than prohibited, she said. Vietnam faces a difficult predicament. It wants to protect vulnerable borrowers from possibly dangerous money lenders. However it is hard to do away with the gray economy altogether. Solutions are hard to come by though it might help to look at what other places are doing. For instance, at a church in Philadelphia, a city in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, members form groups to help pay off each other’s debt. That helps to prevent individuals from missing a single payment, which could get them into a cycle of debt, and increases the odds that everyone’s debt will be paid off collectively. How a whole nation can address the debt problem, however, is a bigger question.
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Category: East
East news. East is the direction toward which the Earth rotates about its axis, and therefore the general direction from which the Sun appears to rise. The practice of praying towards the East is older than Christianity, but has been adopted by this religion as the Orient was thought of as containing mankind’s original home
At Least One Dead, Scores Missing After New Zealand Volcano Eruption
One person is confirmed dead and the toll is likely to rise after a volcano began erupting Monday afternoon off New Zealand’s North Island, one of the country’s two main islands.While several people are still missing and some of the injured have been transported to the area hospitals, emergency teams say it is too dangerous to continue the rescue operation.Emergency officials say around 50 people were on White island when the eruption began, fewer than initially reported by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who said 100 tourists were “on or around” the White Island volcano, also known as Whakaari in the Maori language.AFP reports that cameras providing a live feed from the volcano showed a group of tourists walking on the crater floor moments before the eruption occurred.White Island sits 50 kilometers northeast of the town of Tauranga on North Island.Authorities urged people to avoid areas on North Island near to the eruption. GeoNet agency classified the volcanic eruption as moderate and raised its alert level to four, on a scale where five represents a major eruption.GeoNet says White Island is New Zealand’s most active cone volcano and about 70 percent of the volcano is under the sea.
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Health Experts Warn of Emerging Threat of Nipah Virus
A deadly virus called Nipah carried by bats has already caused human outbreaks across South and South East Asia and has “serious epidemic potential,” global health and infectious disease specialists said on Monday.The virus, identified in 1999 in Malaysia and Singapore, has sparked outbreaks with mortality rates of between 40% and 90% and spread thousands of kilometers to Bangladesh and India – yet there are no drugs or vaccines against it, they said.”Twenty years have passed since its discovery, but the world is still not adequately equipped to tackle the global health threat posed by Nipah virus,” said Richard Hatchett, chief executive of the CEPI Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which is co-leading a Nipah conference this week in Singapore.CEPI, a partnership between disease experts, and public, private, philanthropic, and civil organizations, was set up in 2017 to try to speed up the development of vaccines against newly emerging and unknown infectious diseases.Among its first disease targets is Nipah, a virus carried primarily by certain types of fruit bats and pigs, which can also be transmitted directly from person to person as well as through contaminated food.Within two years of being first discovered, Nipah had spread to Bangladesh, where it has caused several outbreaks since 2001. A 2018 Nipah outbreak in Kerala, India, killed 17 people.”Outbreaks of Nipah virus have so far been confined to South and Southeast Asia, but the virus has serious epidemic potential, because Pteropus fruit bats that carry the virus are found throughout the tropics and sub-tropics, which are home to more than two billion people,” Hatchett said.He said since Nipah can also pass from person to person, it could, in theory, also spread into densely populated areas too. The two-day Nipah conference, the first to focus on this deadly virus, is being co-hosted by CEPI and the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore and starts on Monday.”There are currently no specific drugs or vaccines for Nipah virus infection, even though the World Health Organization has identified (it) as a priority disease,” said Wang Linfa, a Duke NUS professor and co-chair the conference. He hoped the meeting would stimulate experts to find ways of finding Nipah.
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A Glimmer of Hope for Online News in Cambodia
Minutes before a recent show, “VOD Roundtable” host Lim Thida readied notes and warmed up the day’s guests. Control room staffers prepped to go live with all the trappings of the kind of on-air radio broadcast that, until a few years ago, was typical for the longtime Voice of Democracy program.But this was 2019, and instead of radio, “VOD Roundtable” was being reborn online. Producer Srey Sopheak ran a final check with the engineers, then gave Lim a go-ahead via walkie-talkie.“Hi, this is me, Thida, welcoming all TV viewers who are watching this live ‘VOD Roundtable’ show, which is broadcast via the Facebook page of vodkhmer.news. Today, we will look at measures to eliminate corruption in Cambodia’s judicial system.”Lim Thida, VOD production chief and a co-host of VOD Roundtable, Phnom Penh, Sept. 11, 2019. (Tum Malis/VOA Khmer)Over the next hour, the panelists included a top government spokesperson, a prominent human rights activist, and a member of an advisory body representing a consortium minority parties – a mix underscoring the balance and independence that have been VOD’s hallmark.A glimmer of hope in an otherwise bruising environment for independent media in Cambodia, VOD is one of multiple outlets whose operations were threatened in the run-up to the 2018 elections, as the incumbent government of President Hun Sen sought to smother dissent.Some news outlets were hit with exorbitant tax bills, while others, including five VOD radio affiliates, saw their broadcast licenses revoked, costing them millions of listeners.This, said Daniel Bastard, Asia-Pacific chief for Yi Soksan, senior investigator for local human rights group Adhoc, is seen speaking at VOD’s studio, in Phnom Penh, Sept. 11, 2019. (Tum Malis/VOA Khmer)Even Chin, who appeared to discuss judicial corruption alongside Yi Soksan, a senior investigator with the human rights group Adhoc credited “VOD Roundtable” with helping to get his government message out.“We had a good discussion,” Chin told VOA. “Like our guest [today] from civil society, we all work for the same social development goals, but the ways we work are different and our challenges are different. So it is good to sit down for a discussion, exchange concerns, and come to a common solution.”If “VOD Roundtable” represents a flicker of hope in Cambodia’s otherwise darkened media landscape, it has yet to prove that its online format can regain the millions of radio listeners lost in the crackdown.“As radio, we had a lot of fans and we could receive up to five or six callers during the one hour [show],” Lim said. “But after our transition, there are fewer callers.”Facebook recently surpassed television and radio as a primary news source for many Cambodians, but digital media remains a new beast. Advertising and hidden algorithms decide what gets visibility as controversies about censorship and disinformation swirl.Bastard, of Reporters Without Borders, is a skeptic about the potential for digital media to grow.“Things could have been much worse without the internet, of course, but radios were a great way to inform communities in remote areas and to reach people who are not literate enough to read written articles,” he told VOA.“Online information cannot replace this,” he said, “especially given the biases indicated by the platforms themselves.”Government officials routinely deny that there are any efforts to suppress media. Phos Sovann, director-general of the Ministry of Information’s department of information and broadcasting, told VOA that radio license revocations during the 2017 crackdown were justifiable “legal enforcement measures and nothing else.”Nop Vy, the media director of VOD’s parent, said he’s hopeful that ongoing digital innovation, including plans for an English website, can generate an audience that compensates for the millions of listeners lost in the crackdown.And if “VOD Roundtable” continues to foster public debate by involving citizens and the government alike, he said, it can survive by having an impact.”We will have to take it step by step,” he said.This story originated in VOA’s Khmer Service.
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Philippines Bamboo Entrepreneur Digs In on Poverty and Climate Threats
Mark Sultan Gersava grew up in poverty, one of 12 children of a slash-and-burn subsistence farmer in the Philippines province of Sultan Kudarat.Today he is the “chief executive farmer” of a company aimed at tackling that same poverty, and combating climate change at the same time.His firm Bambuhay helps farmers shift from slash-and-burn agriculture – which accounts for about a third of deforestation in the Philippines – to growing bamboo, now in demand as an alternative material to throw-away plastic.The company, now in its second year of operation, makes popular bamboo straws, toothbrushes, tumblers, and bamboo-based charcoal briquettes, to replace those made from wood.So far Bambuhay has sold nearly 400,000 reuseable bamboo straws, Gersava said.Bamboo straws are stored in a jar on a table at the Copacabana restaurant on Yoff Virage beach in Dakar, Senegal, Sept. 3, 2019.In late October, wearing a bamboo salakót, a traditional farmers hat, he told delegates to the One Young World conference of youth leaders in London what drove him to launch his company.”In the span of one year, I experienced two super typhoons (and) the hottest measured temperature in Philippines history,” Gersava said.”This was the first time I had faced the direct consequences of climate change,” he said.Less Poverty, Fewer EmissionsGersava settled on bamboo – a fast-growing plant that absorbs large amounts of climate-changing carbon dioxide and can help prevent soil erosion – as a way of taking action on both climate change and poverty.The Philippines climate, he said, is perfect for growing the giant grass and has helped poor farmers “become agri-preneurs.”The effort has helped cut extreme poverty for thousands of farmers so far, he says.”Bamboo is a symbol of poverty in the Philippines. If you live in a bamboo house, you’re very poor – that’s basically how it was before,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.”But bamboo now has gained a lot of good attention since I started the company,” he said.Bambuhay has partnered with the Philippines government and farmers to replant 540 hectares (1,340 acres) of deforested land through the company’s Bamboo AgroForestry Program, Gersava said.Just how versatile bamboo fibre can be was evident in the entrepreneur’s own attire at the conference, including a sleek bamboo wallet and his cone-shaped hat, a golden salakót.Such hats are usually made from reeds, but his was produced by farmers from bamboo – a gift in gratitude for his help in pulling them out of poverty, he said.”When I wear this hat, I feel connected to the farmers. They are the one who are left behind,” Gersava said.”They are the most important people that we that we need to protect. … We need to value these people more.”Bamboo BusinessLast year, Gersava sold his condominium, quit his job and with no formal business training and just $2,000 in start-up funds launched Bambuhay, his social enterprise.”It’s very hard to start a business in the Philippines,” he said.”There’s no support from the government, you have very limited funding. … I started with only one person.”Now Gersava employs 17 full-time staff. He says as CEO his aim is not to become rich but to ensure much of what the company earns passes to its farmers.Still, in addition to helping farmers, he’s been able to help pay college fees for his two nieces and support his siblings and parents, he said.He says his work is far from done. By 2030, he aims for his company to have helped establish 1 billion bamboo plants and to have lifted 100,000 farmers out of poverty, especially in extremely poor areas such as his hometown and the province of Sulu.Growing up in an impoverished family in Sultan Kudarat, he said, has given him a deep understanding of who pays the highest price as climate change impacts, from floods and droughts to heatwaves and storms, intensify.”The wealthy CEOs and politicians are not the ones suffering the most from the consequences of climate change. It is the rural villager,” he said.”It is the struggling farmers who are suffering from severe water shortages and droughts that will be the worst hit by food insecurity,” he predicted.To battle both poverty and climate change, “we cannot continue with business as usual,” he said.”We must continue to innovate, to protest and to hold government and companies’ feet to the fire,” he said in a speech at the conference.
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Trump Warns North Korea’s Kim on Hostile Actions
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un against hostile military actions, even as Pyongyang announced it had conducted “a very important test” at a satellite launching site.”Kim Jong Un is too smart and has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way,” Trump said on Twitter.”He signed a strong Denuclearization Agreement with me in Singapore,” the U.S. leader said. “He does not want to void his special relationship with the President of the United States or interfere with the U.S. Presidential Election in November. North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, has tremendous economic potential, but it must denuclearize as promised. NATO, China, Russia, Japan, and the entire world is unified on this issue!” Trump’s remarks came after North Korea’s state media said the test was conducted Saturday at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station 7, a long-range rocket launching site station in Tongch’ang-ri, a part of North Pyongang Province located near the border of China.The government-run Korean Central News Agency said the results “will have an important effect on changing the strategic position of the DPRK once again in the near future,” it added, using an acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. But the report did not say what kind of test was performed at the site.The North Korean announcement came a day after CNN reported that Planet Labs, a commercial satellite imagery company, had detected activity at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, including the image of a large shipping container.
FILE – A man watches a TV broadcast showing an image of the Sohae Satellite Launching Station in Tongchang-ri, North Korea, during a news program shown at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, March 6, 2019.This year has been one of North Korea’s busiest in terms of missile launches. Saturday’s test comes as North Korea continues to emphasize its declared end-of-year deadline for the United States to change its approach to stalled nuclear talks.
Pyongyang has carried out 13 rounds of short- or medium-range launches since May. Most experts say nearly all of the tests have involved some form of ballistic missile technology.Earlier this month, Trump, in answering reporters’ questions about North Korea at the NATO summit in London, said, “Now we have the most powerful military we’ve ever had and we’re by far the most powerful country in the world. And, hopefully, we don’t have to use it, but if we do, we’ll use it. If we have to, we’ll do it.”North Korea responded in kind. “Anyone can guess with what action the DPRK will answer if the U.S. undertakes military actions against the DPRK,” Pak Jong Chon, head of the Korean People’s Army, said on state media. “One thing I would like to make clear is that the use of armed forces is not the privilege of the U.S. only.”North Korea last tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in November 2017 and conducted a nuclear test in September 2017.In April 2018, Kim announced a self-imposed moratorium on ICBM and nuclear tests, saying North Korea “no longer need(s)” those tests. Recently, however, North Korean officials have issued reminders that North Korea’s pause on ICBM and nuclear tests was self-imposed and can be reversed.
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Hundreds of Thousands of Protesters Pack Hong Kong Streets
Hundreds of thousands of protesters packed the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday to mark six months of an unprecedented, sweeping anti-government movement in this Chinese-ruled, semi-autonomous city.The police-sanctioned march on Sunday which started at 3pm local time was largely peaceful but tensions escalated in the evening, when riot police got locked into a tense standoff with a large group of black-clad protesters who split off from the authorized rally to occupy a major thoroughfare in the business district of Central, the end point of the protest route.Protesters set up makeshift barricades with plastic roadside barriers, metal sheets, bamboo poles and other objects on the thoroughfare and a box marked with the message “Do not kick, it may explode” was placed on the road.Some riot police officers pointed their non-lethal shotguns at people and journalists gathered there and ordered them to leave. The police’s water-cannon-equipped anti-riot vehicle also stood by.The Hong Kong government said the protest was “in general peaceful and orderly” but condemned “violent and illegal acts”. The Hong Kong police said protesters threw petrol bombs outside the High Court and the Court of Final Appeal and spray-painted the outside walls of the High Court building. “The Hong Kong Government hopes to work together with the whole community to stop the violence, uphold the rule of law, restore social order and find a way out for Hong Kong’s deep-seated problems through dialogues,” a late night government statement said.The protest movement, sparked by a controversial extradition bill which could see individuals sent to mainland China for trial, started with a mass demonstration attended by around a million protesters on June 9, but it has since morphed into a broader and increasingly violent movement. Protesters attend a Human Rights Day march, organized by the Civil Human Right Front, in Hong Kong, Dec. 8, 2019.Demonstrators wearing protective gear on Sunday also set up makeshift road blocks at other locations along the protest route. Police warned protesters that “necessary action” would be taken if protesters ignore instructions to disperse, noting that the protesters had gone beyond the end point of the protest route.Police issued a statement saying a group of protesters vandalized shops and a bank during the rally and warned them to refrain from “illegal acts posing a threat to public order and endangering public safety.” A Chinese-owned bank was smashed up with broken glass littering the floor and sign was placed outside the bank that says “Love China, hate the party”, reported public broadcaster RTHK. A Starbucks cafe, run by a franchise company seen as pro-Beijing, was also vandalized.Earlier in the evening, the fire alarm was set off at the High Court and broken bottles were found at its front entrance, which had been burned black. The message “Rule of law is dead” was emblazoned on the wall of the building. Protesters attend a Human Rights Day march, organized by the Civil Human Right Front, in Hong Kong, Dec. 8, 2019.The organizer of the protest, Civil Human Rights Front, said around 800,000 people participated in the march on Sunday. The participants in the authorized rally came from a vast age range and backgrounds, from parents pushing toddlers in strollers, young people, middle-aged professionals to pensioners. Some were in wheelchairs. It was the first police-sanctioned mass protest for almost four months and was also the first after pro-democracy politicians scored a landslide victory in a district election last month.Unlike many of the recent protests which had been banned by police, the march on Sunday had a relaxed atmosphere and protesters were in high spirits.“Good guys don’t become police!” yelled protesters at riot police officers guarding a footbridge, while many stuck their middle fingers at them.An estimated 800,000 protesters flock to the streets of Hong Kong to mark the six-month anniversary of the anti-government movement sparked by a controversial extradition law, Dec. 8, 2019. (Verna Yu/VOA)Earlier in the day, the unofficial anthem of the movement wafted in the air as people chanted “Five demands, not one less!”, referring to the political demands yet unfulfilled which included universal suffrage and an independent investigation into police brutality. The extradition bill which sparked the protest in June was belatedly scrapped in September but many ordinary Hong Kongers say excessive police force should be investigated by an independent body.Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, raising funds for victims of police brutality in the six-month movement, said to a crowd: “We want our freedoms back so our young people can regain the freedom from fear.”“I feel so sorry for our young people the police have real weapons and bullets, while the youngsters have only bricks and Molotov cocktails. They have no other way to resist,” said Mary Tse, a retiree.A young couple was seen waving a giant U.S. flag during the protest Sunday. They said they were grateful to the United States for passing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.“I am truly thank to the U.S. for this law. There is nothing more we can do to change our political system and if we don’t come out to fight there will never be an opportunity,” said Joe Lai, 30.Earlier in the day, police said they had seized a semi-automatic Glock pistol and 105 bullets in an operation. Police arrested eleven people aged between 20 and 63.
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Hong Kong Police Recover Weapons Ahead of Rally
Hong Kong police have conducted raids ahead of Sunday afternoon’s protest rally, uncovering several weapons, including a pistol with more than 100 bullets.Eleven people were arrested during the raids.Daggers, swords, batons and pepper spray were also recovered in the raids at several locations.The city’s organized crime bureau said it believed protesters planned to use the weapons during the demonstration “to incite chaos” and “impugn the police.”The territory is bracing for a large turnout for Sunday’s protest. Hong Kong has given its approval for the rally called by the Civil Human Rights Front, a group that has organized some of the city’s biggest demonstrations.Monday marks the sixth month anniversary of the rallies that were initially mounted to rally against a now-withdrawn government proposal that would have allowed Hong Kong criminal suspects to be spent to mainland China’s Communist-controlled courts to stand trial.The demonstrations have transformed into a push for democratic elections for the city’s leader and legislature and an investigation into what protesters say has been excessive force used against them.
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Myanmar Leader Suu Kyi Departs for Genocide Hearings Amid Fanfare at Home
Myanmar leader and Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi departed on Sunday for the U.N.’s top court in The Hague to defend the country against charges of genocide of its Rohingya Muslim minority.Suu Kyi was pictured smiling as she walked through the airport in the nation’s capital, Naypyitaw, flanked by officials, a day after thousands rallied in the city to support her and a prayer ceremony was held in her name.Crowds are expected to gather again in the afternoon to send off several dozen supporters who will travel to The Hague in the Netherlands and demonstrations are planned throughout the coming week, with hearings set for Dec. 10 to 12.Gambia, a tiny, mainly Muslim West African country, filed a lawsuit in November accusing Buddhist-majority Myanmar of genocide, the most serious international crime, against its Rohingya Muslim minority.During three days of hearings, it will ask the 16-member panel of U.N judges at the International Criminal Court of Justice to impose “provisional measures” to protect the Rohingya before the case can be heard in full.More than 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar in 2017 after a brutal military-led crackdown the U.N has said was executed with “genocidal intent” and included mass killings and rape.Despite international condemnation over the campaign, Suu Kyi, whose government has defended the campaign as a legitimate response to attacks by Rohingya militants, remains overwhelmingly popular at home.On Saturday, thousands rallied in Naypyitaw while senior officials held a prayer ceremony at St Mary’s Cathedral in the former capital of Yangon.Among them was religion minister Thura Aung Ko, who was been vocal in his disdain for the minority and last year said refugees in the camps in Bangladesh were being “brainwashed” into “marching” on Buddhist-majority Myanmar.Suu Kyi spent the eve of her departure meeting with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, with both countries pledging stronger ties, according to Zhao Lijian, deputy director general of the information department at China’s foreign ministry.”Aung San Suu Kyi thanked China for its strong support and help in safeguarding national sovereignty, opposing foreign interference, and promoting economic and social development,” he said on Twitter on Sunday.Pro-Suu Kyi demonstrations have been held in major towns and cities since the news was announced that she would attend the hearings in person.Billboards with her picture and the words”stand with Suu Kyi” have also been erected around the country, including in historic former capital Bagan, the country’s major attraction for tourists who come to see the centuries-old temples.
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North Korea Reports ‘Very Important Test’ at Rocket Launch Site
North Korea conducted “a very important test” at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, the country’s state media said Sunday.
The test took place Saturday at the long-range rocket launching station in Tongchang-ri, a part of North Pyongan province near the border of China, the government-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. Sohae Satellite Launching StationThe results “will have an important effect on changing the strategic position of the DPRK once again in the near future,” it added, using an acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The report did not say what kind of test was performed at the site.
The announcement came a day after CNN reported that Planet Labs, a commercial satellite imagery company, had detected activity at the Sohae station, including the image of a large shipping container at the site.
This year has been one of North Korea’s busiest in terms of missile launches. Saturday’s launch came as North Korea has continued to emphasize its end-of-year deadline for the United States to change its approach to stalled nuclear talks.
Pyongyang has carried out 13 rounds of short- or medium-range launches since May. Most experts say nearly all the tests have involved some form of ballistic missile technology.
Trump commentEarlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump, in answering reporters’ questions about North Korea at the NATO summit in London, said, “Now we have the most powerful military we’ve ever had and we’re by far the most powerful country in the world. And, hopefully, we don’t have to use it, but if we do, we’ll use it. If we have to, we’ll do it.”
North Korea responded in kind. “Anyone can guess with what action the DPRK will answer if the U.S. undertakes military actions against the DPRK,” Pak Jong Chon, head of the Korean People’s Army (KPA), stated through KCNA December 4. “One thing I would like to make clear is that the use of armed forces is not the privilege of the U.S. only.”
North Korea last tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in November 2017 and conducted a nuclear test in September 2017.
In April 2018, Kim announced a self-imposed moratorium on ICBM and nuclear tests, saying North Korea “no longer need[s]” those tests. Recently, however, North Korean officials have issued reminders that North Korea’s pause on ICBM and nuclear tests was self-imposed and could be reversed.
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Pro-government Protesters Denounce Hong Kong ‘Rioters’
Only after finding safety in numbers, joining hundreds of other pro-government protesters in Hong Kong on Saturday, did Reddy Lin drum up the courage to slip into her red T-shirt marked, “China, I love you” and glue a heart-shaped Chinese-flag sticker on her face.But for the train ride home, the teacher said she’d be taking all her pro-China garb off again. The risk of running into supporters from the rival camp, those who oppose China’s communist rulers, was simply too great, she said.“It’s very dangerous. They’ll beat you,” she said. “They’re brutes.”Lin and hundreds of other protesters waving red Chinese flags packed a Hong Kong park to vociferously denounce what they say is a reign of terror being imposed on the city by months of anti-government demonstrations. The protest highlighted the widening gulf between the pro- and anti-government camps in Hong Kong, with divisions that appear irreconcilable.Compared to the hundreds of anti-government rallies that have gripped Hong Kong since June, the pro-China demonstration was like stepping through a looking glass. The Hong Kong police were praised as saviors, not bullies. China was presented as a country to love, not fear. Hong Kong was described as a city freer than most, instead of a place losing its liberties.Chief among the demonstrators’ complaints was that they have grown scared of the black-clad, frequently violent hard core of the anti-government movement.Calling them “rioters,” many said hard-line protesters are destroying Hong Kong’s freedoms, rather than protecting them, by resorting to violence.In chants, the crowd called anti-government protesters “cockroaches.” Photos displayed at the rally showed the bloodied faces of people who have been attacked during protests. They have included people who’ve been deemed by mobs to be unsympathetic to the anti-government movement, including a man who was doused with inflammable liquid and set on fire last month.“They destroy everything,” fumed Tata Tsg, a retiree at the rally who said she is now too scared to go out in the evenings. “Those bastards have freedom, I have no freedom.”Tsg and two friends who joined her, sisters Angie and Winnie Choi, said it marked the first time that any of them, all in their fifties, had ever taken part in a protest. Angie Choi carried a poster marked: “Extreme rioters. Hong Kong suffers.”Lin, the civics teacher who traveled from the neighboring Chinese city of Shenzhen for the protest in a small square amid Hong Kong tower blocks, collected hundreds of signatures for ‘Thank you’ letters she said she’ll mail to the territory’s much-maligned police force.“They are working very hard,” she said. Lin said her 20-year-old son, who studies at a Hong Kong university, was too afraid to join her at the demonstration, scared that he might be recognized by classmates and “be beaten.”The police force has become hated by many anti-government protesters, furious over riot officers’ liberal use of choking tear gas and thousands of often muscular arrests. A call for an independent probe of police behavior features among the anti-government movement’s main demands.Hong Kong’s new police commissioner, Chris Tang, said Saturday in Beijing that he’ll adopt both “hard and soft approaches” for policing protests. He spoke after his first meetings with Chinese officials since his appointment last month.Hurling gasoline bombs or stones are “violent actions we will not tolerate,” he said. “But for other incidents, such as protesters walking off-road or other minor incidents, we will take humanistic and flexible approaches.”Those pledges will be tested by a rally Sunday of the anti-government movement that will offer a fresh gauge of its appeal and ability to continue mobilizing support.At the pro-government rally, some demonstrators said they don’t feel great admiration for embattled Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam or her Communist Party bosses in Beijing but feel such great anger about protest violence that they had to turn out.But leaving the rally, many demonstrators furled and put away their Chinese flags and peeled off red stickers they’d been wearing, for fear of running into opponents on their rides home.“Who is more scary: the communists or the rioters?” said retiree Peter Pang. “I don’t like the government very much but I don’t like rioters even more.”
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Trump Calls for World Bank to Stop Loaning to China
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday called for the World Bank to stop loaning money to China, one day after the institution adopted a lending plan to Beijing over Washington’s objections.The World Bank on Thursday adopted a plan to aid China with $1 billion to $1.5 billion in low-interest loans annually through June 2025. The plan calls for lending to “gradually decline” from the previous five-year average of $1.8 billion.”Why is the World Bank loaning money to China? Can this be possible? China has plenty of money, and if they don’t, they create it. STOP!” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter.”World Bank lending to China has fallen sharply and will continue to reduce as part of our agreement with all our shareholders including the United States,” the World Bank said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
“We eliminate lending as countries get richer.”Spokespeople for the White House declined to comment on the record.The World Bank loaned China $1.3 billion in the fiscal 2019 year, which ended on June 30, a decrease from around $2.4 billion in fiscal 2017.But the fall in the World Bank’s loans to China is not swift enough for the Trump administration, which has argued that Beijing is too wealthy for international aid.
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Australian Firefighters Confront ‘Mega Blaze’ Near Sydney
One hundred forty bushfires continue to burn across eastern Australia. A huge blaze near Sydney is bigger in size than the city itself and could take weeks to put out. Conditions have eased Saturday but the dangers persist. Sydney is again shrouded in a toxic, smoky haze. Health warnings have been issued and many weekend sporting activities have been cancelled. Several blazes have combined to create a “mega fire” north of Australia’s biggest city. The fire’s front is 60 kilometers long and officials warn it is simply too big to put out.Lauren McGowan works in a bar in the nearby city of Cessnock.“Everyone is a bit on edge, getting a little bit too close to home for around here. Like, even with people we have working here the fires are practically on their doors,” she said.There are 95 bushfires here in the drought-hit state of New South Wales. Half are burning out of control. More than 2,000 firefighters are on the ground. Their task is unrelenting, but reinforcements have arrived from overseas, including Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Morgan Kehr, a senior firefighter from Edmonton, has flown in to join his Australian counterparts, who have in previous years battled blazes in Canada.“First time away from Christmas, as it is with all of these guys. Certainly a tough conversation but we’re happy,” said Kehr. “We’ve been assisted four times out of the last five years.”
There are hazardous conditions in Queensland, to the north. Parts of that state are blanketed in smoke, and dozens of blazes still rage. The World Health Quality index, a nonprofit environmental project based in China that measures global pollution, has shown unhealthy levels of air quality in many areas.
Authorities say that only heavy rain will put some of the fires out, but, ominously, the forecast is for more hot and dry conditions over the Australian summer.
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Afghans Mourn Slain Japanese Doctor Known as Uncle Murad
He came to Afghanistan as Dr. Tetsu Nakamura in the 1980s to help treat leprosy patients in Afghanistan and refugee camps in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. His body is leaving Afghanistan as “Kaka Murad” or Uncle Murad, revered by millions of people across the country who feel indebted to his three decades of humanitarian work in the war-torn country.Dr. Tetsu Nakamura speaks at a meeting about Afghanistan’s drought in Fukuoka, Japan, Nov. 16, 2018. (Kyodo/via Reuters)On Wednesday, Nakamura was on his way to work with five members of his aid organization, Peace Japan Medical Services, when his car came under attack by unidentified gunmen in Jalalabad, the capital of eastern Nangarhar province.He and his staff were shot and killed, with Nakamura dying of his wounds on the way to Bagram Airfield, a U.S. military base in northern Afghanistan, local Afghan officials said.Life’s work in AfghanistanNakamura, 73, had dedicated most of his adult life to working in Afghanistan, trying to save lives at times as a physician and at times as a mason, building water canals for people affected by drought.“You’d hear a child screaming in the waiting room, but by the time you got there, they’d be dead,” Nakamura told NHK TV, Japan’s national broadcasting organization, in October.“That happened almost every day. They were so malnourished that things like diarrhea could kill them. … My thinking was that if those patients had clean water and enough to eat, they would have survived,” he added.Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani, right, and Japanese Dr. Tetsu Nakamura pose in this undated photo in Kabul, Afghanistan.Japanese Afghan citizenAfghan President Ashraf Ghani bestowed upon Nakamura an honorary Afghan citizenship in October, and earlier this year residents of Nangarhar province campaigned on social media for him to become the mayor of Jalalabad city.“This morning a terror attack against the reconstruction hero of Afghanistan, Japanese Afghan Dr. Tetsu Nakamura, resulted in his injury. His deep wounds unfortunately led to his death,” Ghani tweeted in Pashto earlier this week.Ghani offered “our deepest condolences” to Japanese Ambassador to Afghanistan Mitsuji Suzuka, as well as to the families of the Afghans who were killed in the attack.On Friday, Ghani met with Nakamura’s family in Kabul, the presidential office said.Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani meets with family of Japanese Dr. Tetsu Nakamura, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Dec. 6, 2019, in the Afghan Presidential Palace.#SorryJapan#SorryJapan has been trending on Afghan social media networks with officials, activists and Afghan citizens expressing sorrow over Nakamura’s death and apologizing to Japan for not being able to protect him.“#Nakamura I can’t stop my tears. My heart cries for you, my heart aches so much. I can’t forget you, you were the true servant of this land,” Basir Atiqzai wrote on twitter.Bilal Sarwary, a former BBC reporter in Afghanistan, said Nakamura had great affection for the people of Afghanistan.Sarwary tweeted he remembered “the joy and jubilation” on Nakamura’s face “after inaugurating the water canal. His friendly hugs with Gul Agha Shiraz and his laughter of joy shows his deep love for Afghanistan.”Amrullah Saleh, the former chief of Afghan intelligence and Ghani’s running mate in September’s presidential elections, said the crime against Nakamura would not go unpunished.Nakamura has become “a hero of compassion for all Afghans. He was an uncle for east Afg before. There is no way his murder will remain a mystery for ever. No way. He is too big to be cremated or buried. This high profile crime won’t go unpunished. We promise,” Saleh wrote on Twitter Thursday.Afghan men light candles for Japanese Dr. Tetsu Nakamura, who was killed in Jalalabad in a terrorist attack, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Dec. 5, 2019.VigilsCandlelight vigils have been held in several provinces in Afghanistan. Locals named a roundabout after Nakamura in Eastern Khost province with Kam Air, a local Afghan airline, putting Nakamura’s portrait on an Airbus 340 to pay tribute to the slain aid worker.WATCH: Afghan Activists Hold Vigil in Honor of Slain Japanese Doctor
Afghan Activists Hold Vigil in Honor of Slain Japanese Doctor video player.
Embed” />Copy LinkAfghans living in the Washington, D.C., area are planning a candlelight vigil Saturday.No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack against the group. The Taliban denied responsibility for it, but Afghan officials and civil society activists have blamed the insurgent group for it.On Friday, a group of activists held a protest in Kabul in front of Pakistan’s Embassy to condemn the terror attack and criticize Pakistan’s alleged support for the Afghan militants.Pakistan has not immediately reacted to the protest.“Afghans will never forget his services for this country,” Rahimullah Samandar, a civil society activist, told Reuters. “The whole nation will love him and keep him in their memories.”Afghan National Army soldiers drape the flag of Afghanistan on the coffin of Japanese Dr. Tetsu Nakamura, at a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, Dec. 6, 2019.‘I couldn’t ignore Afghans’Nakamura was born in western Japan. He was a physician by profession and left his country in 1984 to work at a clinic in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. He treated Afghan refugees displaced by war and suffering from leprosy.He eventually opened a clinic in Afghanistan in 1991. He found the health problems in Afghanistan overwhelming for his clinic and instead found another way to combat them: irrigation canals.In 2003, borrowing tactics from Japan’s irrigation systems, he swapped his doctor’s tools for construction gear. He began building an irrigation canal to help address the drought issue in eastern Afghanistan. He and local residents spent six years completing the construction of a canal that has reportedly changed the lives of nearly a million people.“As a doctor, nothing is better than healing patients and sending them home,” and providing water to drought-stricken areas did the same for rural Afghanistan, Nakamura told NHK TV.“A hospital treats patients one by one, but this helps an entire village. … I love seeing a village that’s been brought back to life,” he added.Since the construction of the irrigation canal, more than 16,000 hectares (about 40,000 acres) of desert has been reportedly brought back to life.Nakamura was fluent in both Dari and Pashto, the two main languages spoken in Afghanistan.“I couldn’t ignore the Afghans,” Nakamura told NHK TV.VOA’s Mehdi Jedinia and Rikar Hussein contributed to this story from Washington. Some of the materials used in this story came from Reuters.
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Vietnam, China Start Talks Again as Part of 20-Year Fight-Make-up Cycle
Maritime sovereignty rivals China and Vietnam have started talking again after a prolonged standoff earlier this year, entering what analysts call a routine show of peace before more flare-ups.China’s withdrawal of a survey ship from disputed waters in October and Vietnam’s ascent to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations led the reasons that the two began talking this month, political observers say.On Wednesday, a Vietnam-China working group on maritime cooperation held its 13th round of talks in Ho Chi Minh City. The event brought in midlevel officials from each side’s foreign ministry, Viet Nam News reported.“It seems to me they’re moving into a phase of talk, because the confrontation no longer serves any particular purpose,” said Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia-specialist emeritus professor with the University of New South Wales in Australia.FILE – Protesters hold up Vietnamese flags and anti-China banners in front of the Chinese embassy during a protest against the alleged invasion of Vietnamese territory by Chinese ships in disputed waters in Hanoi, June 12, 2011.China and Vietnam have cycled through dozens of tiffs and talks over at least the past 20 years. Diplomacy normally comes after the two sides bury a specific issue and one or both wants to boost its image as a peacemaker — especially when a tense China-ASEAN dialogue looms — experts have said. Their talks do not solve underlying disagreements about rights to the resource-rich South China Sea.“China’s still maintaining a firm stance on the South China Sea issue,” said Nguyen Thanh Trung, Center for International Studies director at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City. “They will not make many concessions to push forward for negotiations with other countries in the region.”The two neighbors with a centuries-long history of territorial disputes both claim western parts of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, although China is militarily and economically stronger, which has given it more clout at sea since the 1970s. Both countries are looking for potentially vast reserves of oil and gas under the seabed.Cycle of spats, talksVietnam and China typically negotiate after China moves ships or a rig into contested waters, or the Vietnamese step up energy exploration. For example, talks picked up speed in 2014 as both sides wanted to get past an incident in which Vietnamese boats had rammed Chinese counterparts near the Gulf of Tonkin over Beijing’s approval for an oil rig. Then, during a meeting in Vietnam in 2017, senior officials from both sides agreed to manage disputes in the sea.This year’s standoff began in June when a Chinese energy survey ship, the Haiyang Dizhi 8, began patrolling contested waters around Vanguard Bank, 350 kilometers off the coast of southeastern Vietnam. In October a rig contracted by Vietnam said it had stopped work in the tract and a day later the survey ship retreated.FILE – Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc takes the gavel from Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha who hands over the ASEAN chairmanship to Vietnam at the end of the 35th ASEAN Summit, Bangkok, Thailand, Nov. 4, 2019.Reasons for talks this monthVietnam should look like a negotiator, not a fighter, among regional leaders over the next year as ASEAN chair, analysts say. Beijing for its part hopes to get along with Vietnam through its term into late 2020, in case the 10-country bloc takes action on the South China Sea, they say.“China has to confront an ASEAN with Vietnam at the chair, which has already been very, very strongly opposing China’s actions,” Thayer said.The Vietnamese government wants its citizens to see it trying to work with China in case something goes wrong later, Nguyen said. Talks might produce more deals on fishing or energy exploration, he added.“For Vietnam, because now it’s the ASEAN chair, so it doesn’t look good on Vietnam if it continues to adopt a more militant stance toward China, especially after China has already withdrawn that survey vessel from Vanguard bank,” said Collin Koh, maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.In the future, though, China will still “coerce within a manageable threshold” and Vietnam will want China to stop, Koh said. The negotiations now mark a “repetition of the cycle” of struggle and reconciliation, he said.
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South Korea, US Fail to Strike Defense Cost-Sharing Deal
The United States and South Korea failed to reach a defense cost-sharing agreement after holding a fourth round of talks this week.Jeong Eun-bo, South Korea’s head negotiator in the defense cost-sharing talks, met with U.S. officials for two days in Washington this week. By the end of his trip, the two countries had not reached any conclusions, he said.”At this point, we are in a situation where we need to continue to narrow our differences. It is not that we have reached a concrete result,” Yonhap reported that Jeong said at Dulles International Airport on Dec. 6.FILE – U.S. soldiers wait for a speech by U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) as he meets U.S. troops based in Osan Air Base, South Korea, June 30, 2019.Since meeting in Honolulu last October, U.S. negotiators have asked that South Korea pay roughly $5 billion to cover the cost of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed there. That’s five times the roughly $800 million amount South Korea is currently paying. It appears that the United States is still asking for Seoul to pay the sharp increase — even after South Korea agreed to increase its share of the cost burden by 8.2% last February. South Korea also agreed to cover roughly 90% of the $10.7 billion cost to relocate a U.S. military base away from Seoul and allow the base to operate rent-free.”It is right to say that the U.S. maintains its position,” Jeong said. “We will try hard to conclude the negotiations by the year’s end.”Despite the disagreements, the U.S. and South Korea are forced to work under a tight deadline. The current Special Measures Agreement (SMA) is set to expire at the end of the year.Jeong and the top U.S. negotiator, James DeHart, will meet later this month in Seoul to further talk defense cost-sharing, according to several South Korean media reports.
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South Korea Extends Ping-Pong Invitation to Pyongyang
South Korea has invited North Korean athletes to a game of Ping-Pong in Busan next year.The Korea Table Tennis Association (KTTA) says it sent the invitation all the way to Pyongyang through the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), which is holding the World Team Table Tennis Championship from March 22 to March 29 next year. The KTTA is also considering the idea of creating a joint Korean team.So far, no official response from North Korea has been made public, but analysts say the invitation is South Korea’s latest attempt at maintaining momentum in inter-Korean relations.“South Korea’s approach is to engage on all fronts while upholding economic sanctions on North Korea that endure for lack of denuclearization,” Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, wrote in an email to VOA News. “Sports diplomacy is a useful tool, but Ping-Pong alone is unlikely to make a breakthrough with Pyongyang.”FILE – Photos of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics are displayed during a photo exhibition to wish for peace on the Korean Peninsula in Seoul, South Korea, Sept. 19, 2018.South Korea’s renewed relationship with the North is largely rooted in sports, with the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics paving the way for inter-Korean exchanges and nuclear talks in February 2018. Later that year in May, the two Koreas formed a joint team and took home a bronze medal at the World Team Table Tennis Championship quarterfinals in Halmstad, Sweden.Since then, North Korea has dispatched Ping-Pong players to the Korea Open in Daejeon and at the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals in Incheon.South Korea’s latest invitation comes during a time of increased military tensions between Washington and Pyongyang ahead of Kim Jong Un’s end-of-year deadline to see progress in nuclear negotiations with President Donald Trump. For now, experts like Easley are unsure whether a match of Ping-Pong will make a significant difference.“The Kim regime has nearly frozen inter-Korean exchanges, and while Seoul still looks to provide enticements, North Korea should be held accountable for failing to meet its commitments,” he said.
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Firefighters Worry About Wildfires Approaching Sydney
Firefighters battled to contain nearly 150 fires burning in New South Wales state Friday as strong winds fanned the flames and again shrouded Sydney, Australia’s biggest city, in hazardous smoke.Bushfires have killed at least four people and destroyed more than 680 homes since the start of November. Fires are still burning in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland states.While nearly 150 blazes were burning across Australia’s east coast, New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said authorities were particularly concerned about eight fires now at emergency levels around Sydney, the state capital where about 5 million people live.A ferry makes its way from Taronga Zoo to Circular Quay, with the Sydney skyline barely visible in the background through smoke haze from bushfires, in Sydney Harbor, Australia, Dec. 5, 2019.“They have the potential or are expected to spread further east, which unfortunately is getting into more populated areas, villages, communities, isolated rural areas, and other farming practices and businesses throughout the region,” Fitzsimmons told reporters in Sydney.Several fires to the northwest of the city had joined together to create one massive blaze, spreading with hot, dry winds, he said.Bushfires are common in Australia, but this year’s fire season has begun much earlier than usual, with temperatures soaring regularly above 40 degrees C (104 F) before the start of the southern summer and high winds scouring the drought-parched landscape.Australia’s worst bushfires on record destroyed thousands of homes in Victoria in February 2009, killing 173 people and injuring 414 more.
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Mekong River’s New Aquamarine Color May Be Sign of Trouble
The Mekong River has recently acquired an aquamarine color that may beguile tourists but also indicates a problem caused by upstream dams, experts in Thailand say.The river usually has a yellowish-brown shade due to the sediment it normally carries downstream. But lately it has been running clear, taking on a blue-green hue that is a reflection of the sky. The water levels have also become unusually low, exposing sandbanks that allow the curious to stand in the middle of the river.Low water levels pose an obvious problem for fishermen and farmers, but experts say the decline in sediment exposes a different danger that can result in greater erosion of the river’s banks and bed.FILE – Fishing boats are moored in Mekong River, which has turned blue instead of its usual muddy color, in Nakhon Phanom province, northeastern Thailand, Dec. 4, 2019.The experts and people living along the river blame a large hydroelectric dam upstream in Laos that began operating in October for contributing to both problems, though rainfall has also been sparse.Around 70 million people depend on the Mekong River for water, food, commerce, irrigation and transportation. Critics charge that large-scale development projects such as the Xayaburi Dam dangerously disrupt the region’s ecology.The dam blocks much sediment from moving further downstream, which accounts for the water becoming clear, said Pravit Kanthaduang, chief of the fishery office at Bueng Khong Long, a district in Thailand’s Bueng Kan province. Less sediment means less nutrition for plants and fish in the river, threatening the ecological balance, he said.’Hungry water’With less sediment, the water also has more stream power, a phenomenon known as “hungry water,” said Chainarong Setthachau of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at Mahasarakham University in Thailand’s northeast, who has studied changes in the Mekong’s ecology for the past two decades.”The current has less sediment, which unleashes energy onto the river banks downstream. This so-called ‘hungry water’ will cause much more erosion to the banks, uprooting trees and damaging engineering structures in the river,” Chainarong said.The dam’s developers have denied that they were responsible for low water levels that some critics tied to trial runs of the generators that began in March. In October, the Xayaburi Power Co. Ltd. said the project has spent more than 19.4 billion baht ($640 million) to mitigate negative impacts on the environment, including the building of outlets for sediment passage and flow and facilities to allow the passage of fish. The plant’s total cost was $4.47 billion.Loss of ‘abundance’Daeng Pongpim, from a farming family that used to fish in Ta Mui village in Ubon Ratchathani province, lives 800 kilometers (500 miles) downstream from the Xayaburi Dam, but said she still believes it is responsible for the river’s recent unusual condition.”I am 67 years old and have never seen anything like it before. What makes me concerned the most is the low level of the water. Now, we are in early winter, the water level should not be this low. I can’t imagine how hard it could be for us at the height of the dry season, in March and April.”Chaiwat Parakun, who lives 200 kilometers (125 miles) downstream from the dam, said he abandoned his fishing gear several years ago because of the declining amount of fish available to catch. He now has a tourism business.”The Mekong has gradually lost its abundance. People who depend on the river like us could sense it many years ago. But that was nothing like the effects from Xayaburi. We cannot figure out how we can live with this degraded environment,” he said.
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Experts See Possibility of Trump Slashing US Troops in South Korea
Experts no longer rule out the possibility of U.S. President Donald Trump scaling back the American military presence on the Korean peninsula.Trump questioned the advantage of keeping U.S. troops in South Korea as the two allies are deep in their disagreements over the cost-sharing deal for American military presence.While speaking to reporters in London where he was attending a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit on Tuesday, Trump said continuing the U.S. military presence in its current state is Rear Adm. Jeffrey Anderson, deputy director for political-military affairs for Asia on the Joint Chief of Staff, said he is not aware of any discussions on troop reduction.”I know of no discussions within the Pentagon that talks about any type of drawdown in, reduction of force or anything like that,” Anderson said Wednesday. “That said, we’re always assessing the effectiveness of our organizational structure.”O’Hanlon gave credence to Trump’s comments because he thinks troop reduction could be “harmful” but “not be disastrous.” He said downsizing would require pulling out a large number of aircraft and reducing logistical capabilities in addition to cutting ground units. Combined, the moves would “make it hard to reinforce in the time of war.” However, he said the reduction “would probably not lead to complete deterrence failure.”Christopher Hill, a chief U.S. negotiator in nuclear talks with North Korea during the George W. Bush administration, is wary that Trump’s remarks, whether as a negotiation tactic or serious consideration, will bolster North Korea’s escalating threats against the U.S. aimed at ending what Pyongyang sees as its “hostile policy.””It’s emboldening to the North Koreans,” said Hill. “What they would like to see from the U.S. side is a reduction of U.S. troops. I think that is increasingly part of their definition of ending ‘hostile policy,’ which also includes, of course, U.N. sanctions [relief]. So I think this is playing into North Korean hands.”LE – Amphibious assault vehicles of the South Korean Marine Corps fire smoke bombs as they move to land on the shore as part of the U.S.-South Korea annual joint military training called Foal Eagle, in Pohang, South Korea, April 2, 2017.As denuclearization talks remain stalled, North Korea recently increased repetitions of its ultimatum that the U.S. has until the end of this year to end its “The reaction of former officials, current officials, military officials, and national security experts in the United States would be even more powerful if the president were to try to unilaterally withdraw U.S. troops in the Korean peninsula and reduce or end our military presence there,” Revere said. After mounting criticism, Trump reversed his course in October and had U.S. troops remain in Syria to guard oil fields. The U.S. troops were in Syria to fight with the Kurds against Islamic State, and the counterterrorism operation resumed in November. Christy Lee contributed to this report from VOA’s Korean Service.
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Nepal Makes First Arrest over ‘Menstrual Hut’ Death
Police in Nepal have arrested the brother-in-law of a woman who died after she was banished to a ‘menstrual hut’, the first such arrest in the Himalayan nation as it seeks to end the practice.The body of Parbati Buda Rawat, 21, was found on Monday after she lit a fire to keep warm in a mud and stone hut and suffocated in Nepal’s western Achhan district, the latest victim of the centuries-old, “chhaupadi” custom, outlawed in 2005.”This is the first time we have arrested any person in connection with a death under the chhaupadi custom,” Achham’s chief district officer, Bhoj Raj Shrestha, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.The custom remains prevalent in Nepal’s remote west where some communities fear misfortune, such as a natural disaster, unless menstruating women and girls – seen as impure – are sent away to animal sheds or huts.Police official Janak Shahi said Chhatra Rawat, 25, a brother-in-law of the dead woman, was arrested in the district capital, Mangalsen, to investigate if he was responsible in sending her to the illegal hut, and he may later be charged.If found guilty, he could be sentenced to up to three months in jail and a fine of up to 3,000 Nepali rupees ($26).
A village in the neighboring Doti district this week announced a financial reward of 5,000 rupees for each woman who refuses to be confined to a hut during her period, in the hope this would deter her family from attempting to banish her again.Outrage led to a parliamentary investigation into chhaupadi after a teenage girl and a mother and her young sons died in two similar incidents earlier this year.($1 = 114.7400 Nepalese rupees)
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Cambodian-American Fighter Punching For the Top
An MMA fighter of Cambodian decent has never set her foot in her mother’s homeland, but now she is using her fighting career to reconnect with the country that her mother told her about when she was a child. VOA’s Chetra Chap reports
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US, North Korea Allude to War Ahead of Pyongyang’s Deadline
The United States and North Korea are resorting to alluded threats of force ahead of Pyongyang’s end-of-year deadline for progress with nuclear negotiations.Pak Jong Chon, head of the Korean People’s Army (KPA), threatened to reciprocate any U.S. military action with force in a statement he made to North Korean state media Wednesday. The statement was a direct response to comments made by President Trump, who alluded to using military force against North Korea if necessary.“One thing I would like to make clear is that the use of armed forces is not the privilege of the U.S. only,” Pak reportedly said through North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) Dec. 4. “Anyone can guess with what action the DPRK will answer if the U.S. undertakes military actions against the DPRK.”Hours earlier, Trump spoke about North Korea to reporters at the NATO summit in London: “Now we have the most powerful military we’ve ever had and we’re by far the most powerful country in the world. And, hopefully, we don’t have to use it, but if we do, we’ll use it. If we have to, we’ll do it.”FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Panmunjom, South Korea, June 30, 2019.Grave signWhile it’s true that the United States and North Korea have exchanged numerous threats since Trump took office in January 2017, some experts believe that the latest exchange is a grave sign of rising tensions.“There has been a pattern all year in North Korea’s statements. They have been quite deliberate about not directly criticizing Trump,” said John Delury, a North Korea analyst and an associate professor of Chinese Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul. “This rhetoric — where Trump and Kim are starting to move toward directly criticizing one another or seeing each other as part of the problem — is significant.”Earlier this week, on Dec. 3, an official at North Korea’s foreign ministry accused the United States of keeping North Korea “bound to dialogue” as a “foolish trick” or political tool to use for the 2020 presidential election. Ri Thae Song, the first vice minister, also stated that “it is entirely up to the U.S. what Christmas gift it will select to get.”End-of-year deadlineThe uptick in tensions likely has to do with Kim Jong Un’s Dec. 31, 2019, deadline to see tangible progress in nuclear negotiations from the United States. So far, North Korea has not stated what specific steps it would need to see from President Trump by the end of the year, but Delury said that Pyongyang purposely left it open-ended.“Really, [North Korea’s] position is that they’ve done a lot of stuff for the U.S. and Trump takes credit for it, but the U.S. has not done anything in return,” Delury said. “So what they’re saying is that the U.S. needs to acknowledge the positive steps that North Korea has made and do something to reciprocate.”The United States has repeatedly refused to lift economic sanctions against North Korea in return for several concessions from Pyongyang, including repatriating soldier remains from the Korean War, shutting down the Punggye-ri nuclear test site and ceasing all long-range missile and nuclear tests.“Interestingly, the whole discussion on the American side has nothing to do with [making concessions]. It’s more, ‘What are we going to ask for next?’” Delury said. “You can see there’s a big gap. From my reading of these statements, the Dec. 31 deadline isn’t about locking in the next phase of steps. It’s almost refers to locking in the current situation. The North Koreans are saying, ‘You gotta do something to reciprocate.’”
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Samoa’s Capital Deserted as Teams Battle Measles Door to Door
Samoa’s main streets were eerily quiet Thursday as the government stepped up efforts to curb a measles epidemic that has killed 62 people.The government told most public and private workers to stay home Thursday and Friday and shut down roads to nonessential vehicles as teams began going door-to-door to administer vaccines.Families in the Pacific island nation were asked to hang red flags from their houses if they needed to be vaccinated.A red flag hangs outside the home of residents who have not been vaccinated in Apia, Samoa, Dec. 5, 2019. Samoa’s main streets were quiet Thursday, as the government stepped up efforts to curb a measles epidemic that has killed 62 people.Most of those who have died from the virus are young, with 54 deaths among children age 4 or younger.The Samoa Observer newspaper said the normally bustling capital Apia was a ghost town Thursday, with only birds nesting in the rooftops and stray dogs roaming the streets.Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi told reporters the vaccine drive was unprecedented in the nation’s history.He said one challenge was that a lot of people hadn’t considered that measles could be deadly.“They seem to take a kind of lackadaisical attitude to all the warnings that we had issued through the television and also through the radio,” he said.Another challenge, he said, was that others had been seeking help from traditional healers, who had been successfully treating tropical diseases in Samoa for some 4,000 years.“Some of our people pay a visit to traditional healers thinking that measles is a typical tropical disease, which it is not,” the prime minister said.Samoan authorities believe the virus was first spread by a traveler from New Zealand.National emergencyThe nation declared a national emergency last month and mandated that all 200,000 people get vaccinated. The government has also closed all schools and banned children from public gatherings.According to the government, more than 4,000 people have contracted the disease since the outbreak began and 172 people remain in hospitals, including 19 children in critical condition.Figures from the World Health Organization and UNICEF indicate that fewer than 30% of Samoan infants were immunized last year. That low rate was exacerbated by a medical mishap that killed two babies who were administered a vaccine that had been incorrectly mixed, causing wider delays and distrust in the vaccination program.
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