Dangerous dust storms in Asia have intensified fivefold over the past half-century, posing health and economic hazards as part of global trend toward bigger natural disasters, the UN warned yesterday. \nThe dust storms originate in the desert regions of Mongolia and increasingly China, where 30 percent of the land is parched by over-farming, overgrazing, deforestation and changing weather patterns, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) said. \nThe sands whip up as far away as the Korean Peninsula, Japan and the Pacific basin, for a combined economic loss of US$6.5 billion a year, UNEP said. \nCities like Seoul become shrouded in a haze of "yellow dust" that sometimes leaves a film of grit. In severe cases, it forces school closures and airline cancelations, can disrupt communications and damage crops and livestock. \nUnlike similar storms from Africa's remote Sahara Desert, the Asian storms pose serious health risks because the dust particles pick up toxic pollutants from Chinese industry. \nDuring a South Korean dust storm in April 2002, dust levels reached 2,070 micrograms per cubic meter, twice the level deemed hazardous to health, UNEP said. \nSince the 1950s, the frequency of Asian sand storms has increased five times, UNEP said. The Gobi Desert in China alone expanded by 52,400km2 from 1994-1999, according to UNEP's GEO Global Year Book. \nThe new findings were released as environment ministers from around the world gathered at a UN environment summit aimed at sustainable development. \nIronically, the news comes a day after the Korea Meteorological Administration issued a dust alert for much of South Korea, urging care for those with respiratory problems. \n"We are worried about the creep of environmental problems -- their disrespect of political boundaries -- and the way they threaten to compound and disrupt the functioning of major natural systems," UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer said. \nThe dust storms are part of a larger trend of increasing natural disasters, UNEP said. \nIt cited the record heatwave in Europe that killed thousands last summer, widespread flooding in China that left millions homeless last July, the recent appearance of a hurricane in the South Atlantic for the first time and a record season of tornadoes in North America. \nThe cost of damage from dust storms, hurricanes, tornadoes and other weather-related catastrophes topped US$60 billion for the first time last year, according to UNEP. \nAbout 80 percent of such disasters worldwide occur in Asia, affecting 1.7 million people and inflicting US$369 billion in damage from 1991-2001. \nUNEP is working with governments and the Asian Development Bank on a US$1 million early warning system for dust and sand storms in the region. The system will use a network of monitoring stations to standardize data. \nRecent research shows that dust storms originating from the Sahara Desert trigger algae infestations of coral reefs as far away as the Caribbean Sea. \nThose sands pose less of a risk to human health because they are relatively cleaner than the Asian variety, UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttall said.
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Reporters Without Borders has accused the Algerian government of taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to “settle scores” with independent journalists, including those covering long-running anti-government protests. In a statement signed with Algerian non-governmental organizations, the watchdog on Thursday called for the immediate release of its correspondent, Khaled Drareni, who has been in pretrial detention since Sunday after being charged with inciting an unarmed gathering and endangering national unity. Drareni has been arrested several times for covering the “Hirak” anti-government protests held in the capital, Algiers, every Friday since February last year. Imprisoning people during a pandemic is “an act of physical endangerment,”
Vietnam has lodged an official protest with China following the sinking of a Vietnamese fishing boat that it said had been rammed by a Chinese maritime surveillance vessel near islands in the South China Sea. The Vietnamese fishing vessel, with eight fishermen onboard, was fishing near the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) on Thursday when it was rammed and sunk by the Chinese vessel, the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement posted on a government Web site yesterday. All of the fishermen were picked up by the Chinese vessel alive and were transferred to two other Vietnamese fishing vessels
DIVIDED YOUTH: There is a belief that overseas students see themselves as superior, which is compounded by perceptions of their extreme wealth and multiple nationalities Chinese students flying home from overseas to escape the COVID-19 pandemic face a frosty reception from sections of the public who view them as wealthy, spoiled — and potentially contaminated. The number of officially reported cases in China has dwindled dramatically over the last month, but the country is now taking drastic steps to try and stem a second wave of infections brought in from abroad. With most international flights canceled and nearly all foreigners barred from entering the country, the vast majority of returnees are Chinese nationals, including many students. The situation has exposed animosities over class and privilege in Chinese society,
An Australian graduate student arrested for spying and expelled from North Korea last year said that he was threatened with a firing-squad execution and told not even US President Donald Trump could save his “sorry arse.” Among the crimes Alek Sigley was accused of committing was posting a picture of a toy tank on Instagram, which his interrogators told him was military espionage. Sigley, 30, was studying for a master’s degree in Korean literature at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang when he went missing in June last year, sparking alarm. A fluent speaker of Korean, he had written articles for several publications
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