US Sees Growing Threats to ‘Freedom of Action’ in Space

Russia and China are racing to advance their space-based military capabilities and could soon prevent the United States and its allies from using outer space freely.

The warning, in a new report Monday from the Defense Intelligence Agency, builds on a series of warnings issued by the defense and intelligence communities over the past several years.

But unlike many previous assessments, which focused on Russian and Chinese efforts to match or counter U.S. capabilities, the new DIA report suggests both countries are pursuing a far more aggressive agenda.

“They are developing systems that pose a threat to freedom of action in space,” the report warned, citing current Russian and Chinese military doctrine that sees the ability to control outer space as “integral to winning modern wars.”

U.S. defense intelligence officials believe Russia and China have spent the past four years increasingly aligning their militaries around the importance of space operations.

Already, those efforts have resulted in what officials describe as “robust and capable” space services for both countries, with improvements constantly in the works.

Additionally, Russia and China now have “enhanced situational awareness, enabling them to monitor, track and target U.S. and allied forces,” the report said.

Both countries have also made gains in tracking U.S. space assets.

“Chinese and Russian space surveillance networks are capable of searching, tracking, and characterizing satellites in all Earth orbits,” the report added.

Such capabilities are critical in order for Russia and China to successfully use a variety of systems that could eliminate or incapacitate U.S. satellites, from directed energy weapons to anti-satellite missiles.

While the DIA report warns Russia and China pose the greatest threats to the U.S. in space, other countries are also taking aim at U.S. dominance in space, including Iran and North Korea.

Both Tehran and Pyongyang have shown the ability to jam space-based communications and “maintain independent space launch capabilities.”

In January, the U.S. issued a new National Intelligence Strategy, which warned of growing competition in space.

The strategy, by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said both Russia and China are pursuing “a full range of anti-satellite weapons, which could degrade U.S. intelligence gathering abilities.”

The U.S. Worldwide Threat Assessment issued late last month also said China already has an anti-satellite missile capable of hitting satellites in low-Earth orbits, while Russia has been field testing ground-based laser weapons.

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Taliban Calls for Recognition of Qatar Office Ahead of Fresh Talks With US

The Taliban says it hopes ongoing negotiations with the United States would bring a long-demanded formal recognition for the insurgent group’s “political office” in Qatar, insisting it would help accelerate consultations over the endgame in the Afghan war.

The Taliban has been informally running the office in Doha, the Qatari capital, since 2013, but the host country has not allowed it to use the facility for any public dealings under objections from the Afghan government.

U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, and his team in recent months have held several meetings with Taliban envoys mostly in Doha. The two sides are set to meet there again on Feb. 25 to build on “significant progress” they made in six days of marathon talks in January.

Suhail Shaheen, the spokesman for the Taliban’s political office, in an interview told VOA that all their meetings with U.S. interlocutors and other foreign delegations take place in different hotels, making it difficult for his group to timely share details or progress with media.

“We have raised this issue the U.S. delegation,” he said.

Shaheen noted that the Taliban last week held its first formal “intra-Afghan” dialogue in Moscow with a large group of prominent opposition leaders from Afghanistan, and a follow-up meeting of those consultations is scheduled for next month in Doha.  

“The delegation from Afghanistan, of course, would come to the office and we will have a meeting with them and exchange views about the current peace process and how the Afghan issue can be resolved,” he observed.

No government envoys attended the Moscow meeting because the Taliban refuses to talk to Afghan officials, declaring the Kabul administration an illegal entity or American “puppets.” The rigid insurgent stance has also forced the U.S. to exclude President Ashraf Ghani from the dialogue process.

Ghani slammed the gathering in the Russian capital as an unauthorized dialogue and an attempt by his political opponents to gain power.

On Monday, Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, while addressing a weekly meeting of cabinet ministers, blamed “stubbornness of the Taliban” for being the main and only reason behind the war. He criticized the insurgent group for indulging in “propaganda” instead of joining “real talks” with the government. He did not elaborate.

Abdullah’s remarks came a day after he offered the Taliban to open an office in Afghanistan for conducting talks with his government.

Shaheen dismissed the offer and criticism as an attempt to “harm and derail” the current peace process. “Afghanistan is our own country and we don’t need permission from anyone to open an office there. By making such offers at this stage, they [Ghani government] are trying to harm the peace efforts,” Shaheen said.

The Taliban controls or influences nearly half of Afghanistan, but its leaders and fighters remain under attack from U.S.-backed Afghan ground and air forces. The insurgent group is opposed to ceasing its battlefield attacks until all foreign forces withdraw from the country.

Khalilzad, while delivering a public talk in Washington last week, said that after many conversations, the U.S. has reached “an agreement in principle” with the Taliban on a framework that would provide guarantees that no terrorist group or individuals would be able to use Afghan soil for attacks against the U.S. and its allies.

“Similarly, we have agreed in principle on a framework for possible U.S. [troop] withdrawal as part of a package deal,” he noted.

Taliban spokesman Shaheen said that both sides also agreed to appoint two working groups to flesh out these undertakings and bring them to the table for the meeting scheduled for this month in Doha. He anticipated further progress in the upcoming round of talks and vowed to again raise with U.S. delegates the issue of granting formal recognition to the Taliban’s office, because his group is determined to carry forward Afghan peace talks in Doha.

There was no U.S. response available to the Taliban’s demand.

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European Court Deals Blow to Human Rights Efforts in Turkey

The European Court of Human Rights has dealt Turkish human rights activists a significant blow in its refusal to hear a pivotal case stemming from a Turkish military operation that left more than 100 civilians dead. The military campaign took place in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast between December 2015 and February 2016 as the security forces sought to oust PKK separatist fighters from towns and cities across the region.

The European Court cases focused on Cizre, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting. U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said Turkish security forces “deliberately and unjustifiably killed about 130 people — among whom were unarmed civilians and injured combatants — trapped in the basements.” Ankara strongly condemned the allegations, maintaining that civilians were not deliberately killed.

Two civilians, Orhan Tunc and Omer Elci, were among the casualties in Cizre. Last Thursday, the court ruled that their cases were inadmissible because all “domestic remedies” had not been exhausted.  That means lawyers had not taken their case to Turkey’s Constitutional Court. The decision is a crucial legal victory for Ankara, but casts a shadow in the minds of many in Turkey over the integrity of the European court.

Town centers turned to ruins

During the military campaign in southeastern Turkey, the military, using tanks and artillery, turned many city and town centers to ruins, killing thousands and leaving hundreds of thousands more homeless. More than 600 members of the Turkish security forces were also killed.

“Human rights groups documented unlawful and mass killings, destruction of property and displacement, and so far there has been no effective criminal investigation into any aspect of what occurred,” said Turkey senior researcher Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch. 

Lawyer Ramazan Demir, representing Orhan Tunc, whose burned remains were found with his brother Mehmet in Cizre, said the case was the last hope for legal redress. “They (families of the killed) were hoping that the (European) Court would rule on the facts of mass crimes committed by security forces. They are abandoned to Turkish judiciary once again by the court.”

The court’s rejection of the cases validates Ankara’s argument the Turkish judiciary remains independent and functioning, according to analysts who say the ruling will also likely end hopes of dozens more similar pending cases. 

“The European Court of Human Rights has become an apologist for the Turkish Constitutional Court, claiming that the Turkish Court provides an effective remedy,” tweeted law professor Yaman Akdeniz and freedom of speech activists.

‘Demise of judiciary independence’

International human rights organizations and the European Union have sharply criticized Ankara for undermining the independence of the judiciary.

Since a 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, 4,400 judges and prosecutors have been jailed or arrested. Two constitutional court judges are also languishing behind bars.

“In the history of the republic, it has never witnessed such demise of the judiciary independence,” said political scientist Cengiz Aktar.  “The judiciary was always under the heavy influence of the executive, but never at the level, we are witnessing now. The regime is installing a new concept of law in Turkey.”

Ankara defends the purge, saying those behind the attempted coup have an extensive network of followers within the judiciary and security forces.

The mass arrests and dismissals within the judiciary and the Turkish presidency’s greater powers to appoint high-level judges, including to the constitutional court, are adding to growing pressure on the European Human Rights Court to accept cases without going through the Turkish legal process. This is a power the European court has seldomly used.

Court has limitations

Analysts warn such a move threatens to bring the court to a standstill. “There are so many violations (in Turkey) of the European Convention of Human Rights, if the courts accepted all those cases it would be overwhelmed,” said Aktar, adding, “It would stop the work of the court. This is why the court is so careful in accepting cases.”

Aktar points out it’s essential to understand the court’s limitations.

“The European Court of Human rights is not a tribunal to ensure the change of non-democratic countries into democratic ones,” said Aktar. “The court is conceived to redress of small deviations from the rule of law.  In Turkey, Azerbaijan and Russia, these are non-democratic countries. The court can’t help there.”

Demir said he fears the door is closing on the last hope of legal redress for victims of injustice in Turkey. “The court has always been final hope for the victims,” said Demir. “However, they (Court) prefer not to disappoint the (member) states nowadays…”

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European Court Deals Blow to Human Rights Efforts in Turkey

The European Court of Human Rights has dealt Turkish human rights activists a significant blow in its refusal to hear a pivotal case stemming from a Turkish military operation that left more than 100 civilians dead. The military campaign took place in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast between December 2015 and February 2016 as the security forces sought to oust PKK separatist fighters from towns and cities across the region.

The European Court cases focused on Cizre, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting. U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said Turkish security forces “deliberately and unjustifiably killed about 130 people — among whom were unarmed civilians and injured combatants — trapped in the basements.” Ankara strongly condemned the allegations, maintaining that civilians were not deliberately killed.

Two civilians, Orhan Tunc and Omer Elci, were among the casualties in Cizre. Last Thursday, the court ruled that their cases were inadmissible because all “domestic remedies” had not been exhausted.  That means lawyers had not taken their case to Turkey’s Constitutional Court. The decision is a crucial legal victory for Ankara, but casts a shadow in the minds of many in Turkey over the integrity of the European court.

Town centers turned to ruins

During the military campaign in southeastern Turkey, the military, using tanks and artillery, turned many city and town centers to ruins, killing thousands and leaving hundreds of thousands more homeless. More than 600 members of the Turkish security forces were also killed.

“Human rights groups documented unlawful and mass killings, destruction of property and displacement, and so far there has been no effective criminal investigation into any aspect of what occurred,” said Turkey senior researcher Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch. 

Lawyer Ramazan Demir, representing Orhan Tunc, whose burned remains were found with his brother Mehmet in Cizre, said the case was the last hope for legal redress. “They (families of the killed) were hoping that the (European) Court would rule on the facts of mass crimes committed by security forces. They are abandoned to Turkish judiciary once again by the court.”

The court’s rejection of the cases validates Ankara’s argument the Turkish judiciary remains independent and functioning, according to analysts who say the ruling will also likely end hopes of dozens more similar pending cases. 

“The European Court of Human Rights has become an apologist for the Turkish Constitutional Court, claiming that the Turkish Court provides an effective remedy,” tweeted law professor Yaman Akdeniz and freedom of speech activists.

‘Demise of judiciary independence’

International human rights organizations and the European Union have sharply criticized Ankara for undermining the independence of the judiciary.

Since a 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, 4,400 judges and prosecutors have been jailed or arrested. Two constitutional court judges are also languishing behind bars.

“In the history of the republic, it has never witnessed such demise of the judiciary independence,” said political scientist Cengiz Aktar.  “The judiciary was always under the heavy influence of the executive, but never at the level, we are witnessing now. The regime is installing a new concept of law in Turkey.”

Ankara defends the purge, saying those behind the attempted coup have an extensive network of followers within the judiciary and security forces.

The mass arrests and dismissals within the judiciary and the Turkish presidency’s greater powers to appoint high-level judges, including to the constitutional court, are adding to growing pressure on the European Human Rights Court to accept cases without going through the Turkish legal process. This is a power the European court has seldomly used.

Court has limitations

Analysts warn such a move threatens to bring the court to a standstill. “There are so many violations (in Turkey) of the European Convention of Human Rights, if the courts accepted all those cases it would be overwhelmed,” said Aktar, adding, “It would stop the work of the court. This is why the court is so careful in accepting cases.”

Aktar points out it’s essential to understand the court’s limitations.

“The European Court of Human rights is not a tribunal to ensure the change of non-democratic countries into democratic ones,” said Aktar. “The court is conceived to redress of small deviations from the rule of law.  In Turkey, Azerbaijan and Russia, these are non-democratic countries. The court can’t help there.”

Demir said he fears the door is closing on the last hope of legal redress for victims of injustice in Turkey. “The court has always been final hope for the victims,” said Demir. “However, they (Court) prefer not to disappoint the (member) states nowadays…”

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Rights Expert: Hungary Backsliding on Women, Refugee Rights

Hungary is facing “many interconnected human rights challenges,” including laws targeting civic groups, backsliding on women’s rights and the systematic detention of asylum-seekers, the Council of Europe’s human rights chief said Monday.

Commissioner Dunja Mijatovic, who visited Hungary last week, also expressed concerns about the independence of Hungary’s media and judiciary.

 

“The space for the work of NGOs, human rights defenders and journalists critical of the government has become very narrow and restricted,” Mijatovic said in a statement, calling on Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government to “reverse its worrying course” on human rights.

 

Orban’s government said Mijatovic’s criticism was “not unexpected” and called it a “political attack” related to Hungary’s “zero tolerance” position on immigration. It said it expected further criticism ahead of the European Parliament election in May.

 

“As the elections approach, we can expect a rather sharp rise in the number of such political attacks against Hungary,” the government’s International Communications Office said. “However, Hungary will continue its migration policy, because… the Hungarian people have declared their opinion and their will: they do not want to live in an immigrant country.”

 

Last year Hungary approved jail sentences for people convicted of aiding asylum-seekers and put taxes on grants or contributions from foreign sources.

 

Mijatovic said the new laws had “a continuous chilling effect on the human rights work of civil society organizations.”

 

On women’s rights, she noted that 28 percent of Hungarian women age 15 or over have experienced physical or sexual violence.

 

“There is an urgent need to raise awareness of violence against women in Hungary,” Mijatovic said, urging the government to ratify the Istanbul Convention on combating domestic violence, while acknowledging that the country was expanding support services to address the problem.

 

Mijatovic also said Hungary should stop detaining asylum-seekers at border transit zones, since that blocks them from being able to “apply for refugee protections guaranteed under international and European law.”

 

 

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Rights Expert: Hungary Backsliding on Women, Refugee Rights

Hungary is facing “many interconnected human rights challenges,” including laws targeting civic groups, backsliding on women’s rights and the systematic detention of asylum-seekers, the Council of Europe’s human rights chief said Monday.

Commissioner Dunja Mijatovic, who visited Hungary last week, also expressed concerns about the independence of Hungary’s media and judiciary.

 

“The space for the work of NGOs, human rights defenders and journalists critical of the government has become very narrow and restricted,” Mijatovic said in a statement, calling on Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government to “reverse its worrying course” on human rights.

 

Orban’s government said Mijatovic’s criticism was “not unexpected” and called it a “political attack” related to Hungary’s “zero tolerance” position on immigration. It said it expected further criticism ahead of the European Parliament election in May.

 

“As the elections approach, we can expect a rather sharp rise in the number of such political attacks against Hungary,” the government’s International Communications Office said. “However, Hungary will continue its migration policy, because… the Hungarian people have declared their opinion and their will: they do not want to live in an immigrant country.”

 

Last year Hungary approved jail sentences for people convicted of aiding asylum-seekers and put taxes on grants or contributions from foreign sources.

 

Mijatovic said the new laws had “a continuous chilling effect on the human rights work of civil society organizations.”

 

On women’s rights, she noted that 28 percent of Hungarian women age 15 or over have experienced physical or sexual violence.

 

“There is an urgent need to raise awareness of violence against women in Hungary,” Mijatovic said, urging the government to ratify the Istanbul Convention on combating domestic violence, while acknowledging that the country was expanding support services to address the problem.

 

Mijatovic also said Hungary should stop detaining asylum-seekers at border transit zones, since that blocks them from being able to “apply for refugee protections guaranteed under international and European law.”

 

 

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Turkey Opens Government Vegetable Stalls in Battle with Inflation

Battling a sharp rise in food costs, Turkish authorities opened their own markets on Monday to sell cheap vegetables directly to shoppers, cutting out retailers who the government has accused of jacking up prices.

Crowds queued outside municipality tents to buy tomatoes, onions and peppers in Istanbul’s Bayrampasa district, waiting for an hour for items selling at half the regular shop prices.

The move to set up state markets follows a 31 percent year-on-year surge in food prices in January and precedes local elections next month in which President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party faces a tough challenge to maintain support.

Traders blamed storms in southern Turkey’s farming region for food price inflation, as well as rising costs of labor and transport. Authorities called it “food terror” and said they would punish anyone trying to keep prices artificially high.

“This was a game. They started manipulating prices, they tried to make prices skyrocket,” President Tayyip Erdogan said in a campaign speech on Monday.

“This was an attempt to terrorize (society),” Erdogan said.

Under the government initiative, municipalities are selling vegetables at around 50 percent of prices recorded by the Turkish Statistical Institute in January. A maximum of three kilos of goods per person is allowed.

The move will be extended to rice and pulses such as lentils, as well as cleaning products, Erdogan said.

The project is currently taking place only in Istanbul, where around 50 sites are selling the cut-price goods, and in the capital Ankara. That means it is unlikely to have a direct impact on national inflation figures, but could mitigate the price rises for residents of Turkey’s two largest cities.

Barely managing

Mustafa Dilli, 55, said he was struggling to make ends meet and hoped shops would follow suit by lowering their prices. “I think I can only shop here from now on,” he said. “We barely make it through to the end of the month.”

Several shoppers in Bayrampasa said they hoped the sales would carry on after next month’s vote. “I am curious whether this will continue after the elections,” 43-year-old housewife Nebahat Deniz said as she bought spinach and eggplants.

Agriculture Minister Bekir Pakdemirli, visiting a tent set up by the Ankara municipality, said the project would continue as long as it is needed, and could become permanent.

Last week, authorities inspected fresh produce wholesalers and imposed fines totaling 2 million lira ($380,000) on 88 firms for setting unreasonably high prices, according to the Trade Ministry.

At an Istanbul food market in a covered parking lot, traders complained that they could not compete with municipality stalls they said were subsidized by taxpayers and had been set up to win votes.

Standing behind an array of peppers, tomatoes and fresh greens, one trader said he was being hit by rising costs across the board.

“Prices in the food market are affected by the price of plastic bags, employee wages, stall fees, taxes, fuel prices.

All of them are increasing the cost of the goods,” said the trader, who only gave his first name, Yusuf.

“The government does not have these costs,” Yusuf said. “All of their costs are paid from the money out of our pockets.”

Another vendor, Erkan, said municipality sales were aimed purely at maximizing votes. “After the election, municipality sales will halt,” he said.

Erkan said the profit margin at his own stall, which supports three or four families, was very tight. “If we buy for 8 liras per kilo from the wholesaler we sell with little profit. We sell the goods for 9 liras for example,” Erkan said.

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‘Water from Air’ Aims to Turn Back Thailand’s Tide of Plastic

Staying at a hotel on the Thai island of Koh Samui in 2015, Meghan Kerrigan noticed the four bottles of water she was given every day were clogging her bin with plastic.

Outside her door, Chaweng beach was smothered in rubbish. It was then that she and Kohler brothers, Ryan and Matthew, had a “light-bulb moment.”

“Instead of trying to solve the problem by cleaning the beaches every day, let’s go to what the source of the problem is, and take the plastic bottle away,” said Kerrigan, now 31.

In 2016, the trio founded startup company Generation Water, based on the Thai resort island of Phuket.

They partnered with Marriott, the world’s largest hotel brand, in January 2017 to come up with a sustainable alternative to plastic bottles that would be commercially competitive and meet the needs of resorts and authorities.

Two years on, the South African-born entrepreneurs explained the workings of a pilot water plant at the JW Marriott Phuket Resort & Spa on Mai Khao beach, next to slogans saying “Save Water Drink Air” and “Made 100% from the air.”

Here, in the sweltering heat, two water generators suck in vapor from the air, which then condenses into water when it hits cold coils.

The water drips into tanks, making 4,000 liters a day. It is filtered, minerals are added, and it is put into reusable glass bottles. These are placed into 445 guestrooms at the JW Marriott Phuket and neighboring Renaissance Phuket Resort & Spa.

The bottled water is also being trialed at two Marriott vacation clubs nearby.

The move is part of a wider effort on the holiday island to cut down on plastic bottles, rife in the hospitality industry, and a major problem in Asia and its travel hotspots.

Sustainable shift

In many parts of Asia, tap water is unsafe to drink, so hotel guests get complimentary water, mostly in plastic bottles.

As much as 60 percent of the plastic found in the ocean comes from five Asian nations, including Thailand, according to U.S.-based nonprofit group Ocean Conservancy.

In 2017, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific organized a forum to encourage sustainable water management on resort islands.

On Phuket, which is half the size of Hong Kong, more hotels are being built, and water is already in short supply.

Trucks navigate crowded roads as resorts without their own catchment area bring in water from reservoirs.

Phuket was the world’s 11th top city destination in 2017, with 11.6 million international arrivals, according to global research company Euromonitor International.

To cope with the environmental impacts of this influx, nearly 70 hotels from the Phuket Hotels Association have pledged to cut plastic bottles and straws by the end of 2019.

Since Marriott started producing its own water four months ago, it has stopped more than 100,000 plastic bottles from entering landfill or oceans, the chain says.

It plans to expand the scheme to all Marriott resorts in southern Thailand, handing out 4 million glass bottles.

Carsten Siebert, Marriott International’s director of operations for Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar, said the company understood it had “a greater obligation to operate responsibly given our expanding global footprint.”

The chain has a goal to reduce water consumption per occupied room by 20 percent between 2007 and 2020.

‘Climate-positive’

The “water from air” technology uses 78 percent less energy than producing standard bottled water, has a lower carbon footprint, and is about a third cheaper, Generation Water says.

“The good thing is that it starts to become financially affordable,” said Matthias Y. Sutter, general manager at JW Marriott Phuket.

Nor does the system rely on pulling water from the ground, rivers or lakes.

“We don’t have to invest in land to secure our own water,” said Kanokwan Homcha-aim, corporate social responsibility manager for the same Marriott hotel.

Guests here have reacted positively since the bottled water was introduced in September, happy that “finally a big brand made a move,” she said.

They also like the taste. Michael Lawson, a lawyer from Sydney sitting at the Sala Sawasdee lobby bar, said his children were “quite picky” about water. “But it’s very refreshing and they are fighting over it in the room,” he said.

Downstairs in the Siam Deli, teenage student Jeremy Frydman from Melbourne said it was better than tap water at home.

One challenge for Generation Water is explaining the science behind the technology.

Many guests ask about air pollution, for example. But the water collected is clean to start with, and the technology still works if the air is polluted as only water condenses, not the air or its contaminants, said Ryan Kohler.

And with human activities emitting more greenhouse gases, the atmosphere is warming up, causing more water to evaporate, which further heats the air in “a vicious circle,” he added.

The water-from-air system helps reduce this vapor, said Kerrigan, adding that it has no impact on rainfall levels.

Thailand’s food and drug administration approved Generation Water last August, and the company is now expanding.

It is building a plant in Phuket, which will use solar energy to make “climate-positive” water, producing more than 20,000 liters of water per day by the end of the year.

Nine Marriott resorts on Phuket are in the process of signing up, along with 30 other hotels.

Generation Water is now eyeing the rest of Thailand, and is talking to hotels in Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Maldives, Kohler said.

It also sells smaller water production units that can be used in homes, offices, classrooms and yachts.

The company’s goal is to stop 1 billion 500 ml plastic bottles from entering landfills and the oceans every year by the end of 2021 — equal to supplying 3,000 hotels of 250 rooms.

As for Marriott staff on Phuket, they have “no excuse now,” said Homcha-aim.

Their birthday gift from the company will be a reusable tumbler, which they can fill up with “water from the air.”

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‘Water from Air’ Aims to Turn Back Thailand’s Tide of Plastic

Staying at a hotel on the Thai island of Koh Samui in 2015, Meghan Kerrigan noticed the four bottles of water she was given every day were clogging her bin with plastic.

Outside her door, Chaweng beach was smothered in rubbish. It was then that she and Kohler brothers, Ryan and Matthew, had a “light-bulb moment.”

“Instead of trying to solve the problem by cleaning the beaches every day, let’s go to what the source of the problem is, and take the plastic bottle away,” said Kerrigan, now 31.

In 2016, the trio founded startup company Generation Water, based on the Thai resort island of Phuket.

They partnered with Marriott, the world’s largest hotel brand, in January 2017 to come up with a sustainable alternative to plastic bottles that would be commercially competitive and meet the needs of resorts and authorities.

Two years on, the South African-born entrepreneurs explained the workings of a pilot water plant at the JW Marriott Phuket Resort & Spa on Mai Khao beach, next to slogans saying “Save Water Drink Air” and “Made 100% from the air.”

Here, in the sweltering heat, two water generators suck in vapor from the air, which then condenses into water when it hits cold coils.

The water drips into tanks, making 4,000 liters a day. It is filtered, minerals are added, and it is put into reusable glass bottles. These are placed into 445 guestrooms at the JW Marriott Phuket and neighboring Renaissance Phuket Resort & Spa.

The bottled water is also being trialed at two Marriott vacation clubs nearby.

The move is part of a wider effort on the holiday island to cut down on plastic bottles, rife in the hospitality industry, and a major problem in Asia and its travel hotspots.

Sustainable shift

In many parts of Asia, tap water is unsafe to drink, so hotel guests get complimentary water, mostly in plastic bottles.

As much as 60 percent of the plastic found in the ocean comes from five Asian nations, including Thailand, according to U.S.-based nonprofit group Ocean Conservancy.

In 2017, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific organized a forum to encourage sustainable water management on resort islands.

On Phuket, which is half the size of Hong Kong, more hotels are being built, and water is already in short supply.

Trucks navigate crowded roads as resorts without their own catchment area bring in water from reservoirs.

Phuket was the world’s 11th top city destination in 2017, with 11.6 million international arrivals, according to global research company Euromonitor International.

To cope with the environmental impacts of this influx, nearly 70 hotels from the Phuket Hotels Association have pledged to cut plastic bottles and straws by the end of 2019.

Since Marriott started producing its own water four months ago, it has stopped more than 100,000 plastic bottles from entering landfill or oceans, the chain says.

It plans to expand the scheme to all Marriott resorts in southern Thailand, handing out 4 million glass bottles.

Carsten Siebert, Marriott International’s director of operations for Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar, said the company understood it had “a greater obligation to operate responsibly given our expanding global footprint.”

The chain has a goal to reduce water consumption per occupied room by 20 percent between 2007 and 2020.

‘Climate-positive’

The “water from air” technology uses 78 percent less energy than producing standard bottled water, has a lower carbon footprint, and is about a third cheaper, Generation Water says.

“The good thing is that it starts to become financially affordable,” said Matthias Y. Sutter, general manager at JW Marriott Phuket.

Nor does the system rely on pulling water from the ground, rivers or lakes.

“We don’t have to invest in land to secure our own water,” said Kanokwan Homcha-aim, corporate social responsibility manager for the same Marriott hotel.

Guests here have reacted positively since the bottled water was introduced in September, happy that “finally a big brand made a move,” she said.

They also like the taste. Michael Lawson, a lawyer from Sydney sitting at the Sala Sawasdee lobby bar, said his children were “quite picky” about water. “But it’s very refreshing and they are fighting over it in the room,” he said.

Downstairs in the Siam Deli, teenage student Jeremy Frydman from Melbourne said it was better than tap water at home.

One challenge for Generation Water is explaining the science behind the technology.

Many guests ask about air pollution, for example. But the water collected is clean to start with, and the technology still works if the air is polluted as only water condenses, not the air or its contaminants, said Ryan Kohler.

And with human activities emitting more greenhouse gases, the atmosphere is warming up, causing more water to evaporate, which further heats the air in “a vicious circle,” he added.

The water-from-air system helps reduce this vapor, said Kerrigan, adding that it has no impact on rainfall levels.

Thailand’s food and drug administration approved Generation Water last August, and the company is now expanding.

It is building a plant in Phuket, which will use solar energy to make “climate-positive” water, producing more than 20,000 liters of water per day by the end of the year.

Nine Marriott resorts on Phuket are in the process of signing up, along with 30 other hotels.

Generation Water is now eyeing the rest of Thailand, and is talking to hotels in Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Maldives, Kohler said.

It also sells smaller water production units that can be used in homes, offices, classrooms and yachts.

The company’s goal is to stop 1 billion 500 ml plastic bottles from entering landfills and the oceans every year by the end of 2021 — equal to supplying 3,000 hotels of 250 rooms.

As for Marriott staff on Phuket, they have “no excuse now,” said Homcha-aim.

Their birthday gift from the company will be a reusable tumbler, which they can fill up with “water from the air.”

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From Sports to Work, Rohingya Women Face New Roles in World’s Largest Refugee Camp

On a blue mat in their mud and bamboo home in the middle of the world’s largest refugee settlement, Mohammad Selim is pacing his 9-year-old daughter Nasima Akter on her taekwondo drill.

As a local taekwondo champion in his Rohingya district in Myanmar before fleeing to Bangladesh 18 months ago, Selim dreamed of making a career of his sport but now he is hoping that his daughter can instead follow that path.

He said in Myanmar it was impossible to teach her, as taekwondo was considered improper for girls and he didn’t have time, but their flight to camps near Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh has started to change his society’s rules for women.

For women and girls make up about 55 percent of the 900,000 plus mainly Muslim Rohingya living in about 34 sprawling, crowded camps in the settlement and they are needed to work or to run households as many have lost their husbands.

“I want my daughter to learn taekwondo and one day represent us as a champion,” Selim, 35, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation via an interpreter watched by his wife and three other younger children in their tidy, two-room shelter.

“Our society is conservative and we prefer covering our women but in taekwondo you are covered so people can’t question a girl participating. We practice inside to not get criticized but many people regret they cannot teach their daughters.”

With most Rohingya now in Bangladesh for 18 months and life starting to become more routine in the camps, Selim is not the only one breaking away from the Rohingya’s previous lifestyle, where women rarely left the house and were segregated from men.

He is hoping to get approval to teach taekwondo to other girls in the camps where children do not have access to a formal education but can attend learning centers until about age 14.

More than 730,000 Rohingya have fled Buddhist-dominated Myanmar since August 2017 to escape a military offensive the United Nations called “ethnic cleansing” of one of the world’s most oppressed people, joining others already in Bangladesh.

The chance of returning soon to Myanmar looks remote, with Bangladesh vowing to only repatriate volunteers.

The U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, said in late January it was clear they cannot return “in the near future” with the situation in Myanmar unchanged.

Myanmar has denied most allegations of persecution.

Women-only areas

Aid agencies and non-government organizations (NGOs) working alongside Bangladesh’s government in the camps were aware from the outset that women and girls were vulnerable to sexual and other violence, both on their journey and in the camps.

To address this, they have set up women-only projects and committees to encourage women to get involved in the community as well as counseling services for those who faced abuse.

But not all Rohingya men used to a conservative Islamic lifestyle are happy to see women taking on new roles and making decisions, adding to the risk of domestic violence which aid groups said is on the rise in the camps as time goes by.

“Some men say it is a sin for women to work because in Myanmar we never worked,” said Nuran Kis, 40, a Rohingya mother of eight, who is teaching others to sew in a women-only center.

“My husband supports me though because we need money and want to survive,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, sitting cross-legged in her two-room home on a hill overlooking Balukhali camp, a maze of dirt roads and makeshift shelters.

Shameema Akhter, who co-ordinates eight women-friendly spaces in Balukhali camp for BRAC, Bangladesh’s largest NGO, said some men were initially reluctant to allow women and girls to come to these centers but gradually that was changing.

She said they ran craft sessions for the women and girls, taught them to sew, talked to them about the risk of rape, human trafficking, and child marriage, how to manage hygiene, and provided one-on-one counseling for anyone abused.

Akhter said when they arrived many girls were given sanitary pads, but had no idea how to use them and cut them up as face tissues while handouts of cereal, a food item not known to the Rohingya, were sold at markets for a fraction of the real value.

Most of the Rohingya are illiterate, having had limited access to education — and healthcare — in Myanmar’s Rakhine state where they were refused citizenship and free movement.

“Many of the girls were depressed and traumatized about being raped or being forced by their families to get married and very shy,” Akhter told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the group’s center decorated with brightly colored paper cutouts.

“But now they want to come here and learn skills that might help them and their families in the future.”

Limited work

Under Bangladesh government rules, Rohingya cannot take formal employment, but they can join cash-for-work schemes run by NGOs in the camps to earn about 400 Bangladeshi taka (US$5) a day — and some women have taken roles previously only for men.

Dola Banu, 35, is one of the women building roads and other infrastructure under a Site Maintenance Engineering Project (SMEP) run by United Nations agencies International Organization for Migration (IOM), World Food Program (WFP) and UNHCR.

“This is the first time I have ever done any kind of work like this,” Banu told the Thomson Reuters Foundation via an interpreter during a break from carrying bricks for a new road.

“I like this work and want to keep doing it as long as I can to support my family,” said Banu, who is raising her four children as a single mother after her husband died.

Aid workers said these new roles were giving women more confidence and more were willing to take leadership roles in the community so they could raise issues such as the need for more lighting by latrines, where women fear being attacked at night.

“This is a group going through forced societal change and women are finding new forms of confidence,” said Gemma Snowdon, a WFP spokeswoman based in the beachside town of Cox’s Bazar about 40 km (25 miles) from the nearest of the camps.

She said a key barrier for female-led households was childcare so they planned to launch mobile child care and boost self-reliance by teaching women skills such as growing vegetables, sewing, and even repairing mobile phones.

Some help has come from outside the settlement as well.

Launched late last year, the Testimony Tailors website https://testimonytailors.com lets users fund and pick garments to be made by about 40 female Rohingya, with finished items donated to refugees in the camps.

Jamila Hanan, a British-based manager at #Hands4Rohingya, which supports the project, said all the women and girls involved in the project were aged between 15 and 40 and survivors of rape or massacres.

Many had witnessed family members being killed “This cooperative is them helping themselves… It has been incredible to see them supporting each other,” said Hanan.

While some Rohingya are struggling to accept women’s new roles and projects such as encouraging girls to play football, for others like Nasima Akter, the changes are part of adjusting to life in the camps for the foreseeable future.

 

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From Sports to Work, Rohingya Women Face New Roles in World’s Largest Refugee Camp

On a blue mat in their mud and bamboo home in the middle of the world’s largest refugee settlement, Mohammad Selim is pacing his 9-year-old daughter Nasima Akter on her taekwondo drill.

As a local taekwondo champion in his Rohingya district in Myanmar before fleeing to Bangladesh 18 months ago, Selim dreamed of making a career of his sport but now he is hoping that his daughter can instead follow that path.

He said in Myanmar it was impossible to teach her, as taekwondo was considered improper for girls and he didn’t have time, but their flight to camps near Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh has started to change his society’s rules for women.

For women and girls make up about 55 percent of the 900,000 plus mainly Muslim Rohingya living in about 34 sprawling, crowded camps in the settlement and they are needed to work or to run households as many have lost their husbands.

“I want my daughter to learn taekwondo and one day represent us as a champion,” Selim, 35, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation via an interpreter watched by his wife and three other younger children in their tidy, two-room shelter.

“Our society is conservative and we prefer covering our women but in taekwondo you are covered so people can’t question a girl participating. We practice inside to not get criticized but many people regret they cannot teach their daughters.”

With most Rohingya now in Bangladesh for 18 months and life starting to become more routine in the camps, Selim is not the only one breaking away from the Rohingya’s previous lifestyle, where women rarely left the house and were segregated from men.

He is hoping to get approval to teach taekwondo to other girls in the camps where children do not have access to a formal education but can attend learning centers until about age 14.

More than 730,000 Rohingya have fled Buddhist-dominated Myanmar since August 2017 to escape a military offensive the United Nations called “ethnic cleansing” of one of the world’s most oppressed people, joining others already in Bangladesh.

The chance of returning soon to Myanmar looks remote, with Bangladesh vowing to only repatriate volunteers.

The U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, said in late January it was clear they cannot return “in the near future” with the situation in Myanmar unchanged.

Myanmar has denied most allegations of persecution.

Women-only areas

Aid agencies and non-government organizations (NGOs) working alongside Bangladesh’s government in the camps were aware from the outset that women and girls were vulnerable to sexual and other violence, both on their journey and in the camps.

To address this, they have set up women-only projects and committees to encourage women to get involved in the community as well as counseling services for those who faced abuse.

But not all Rohingya men used to a conservative Islamic lifestyle are happy to see women taking on new roles and making decisions, adding to the risk of domestic violence which aid groups said is on the rise in the camps as time goes by.

“Some men say it is a sin for women to work because in Myanmar we never worked,” said Nuran Kis, 40, a Rohingya mother of eight, who is teaching others to sew in a women-only center.

“My husband supports me though because we need money and want to survive,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, sitting cross-legged in her two-room home on a hill overlooking Balukhali camp, a maze of dirt roads and makeshift shelters.

Shameema Akhter, who co-ordinates eight women-friendly spaces in Balukhali camp for BRAC, Bangladesh’s largest NGO, said some men were initially reluctant to allow women and girls to come to these centers but gradually that was changing.

She said they ran craft sessions for the women and girls, taught them to sew, talked to them about the risk of rape, human trafficking, and child marriage, how to manage hygiene, and provided one-on-one counseling for anyone abused.

Akhter said when they arrived many girls were given sanitary pads, but had no idea how to use them and cut them up as face tissues while handouts of cereal, a food item not known to the Rohingya, were sold at markets for a fraction of the real value.

Most of the Rohingya are illiterate, having had limited access to education — and healthcare — in Myanmar’s Rakhine state where they were refused citizenship and free movement.

“Many of the girls were depressed and traumatized about being raped or being forced by their families to get married and very shy,” Akhter told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the group’s center decorated with brightly colored paper cutouts.

“But now they want to come here and learn skills that might help them and their families in the future.”

Limited work

Under Bangladesh government rules, Rohingya cannot take formal employment, but they can join cash-for-work schemes run by NGOs in the camps to earn about 400 Bangladeshi taka (US$5) a day — and some women have taken roles previously only for men.

Dola Banu, 35, is one of the women building roads and other infrastructure under a Site Maintenance Engineering Project (SMEP) run by United Nations agencies International Organization for Migration (IOM), World Food Program (WFP) and UNHCR.

“This is the first time I have ever done any kind of work like this,” Banu told the Thomson Reuters Foundation via an interpreter during a break from carrying bricks for a new road.

“I like this work and want to keep doing it as long as I can to support my family,” said Banu, who is raising her four children as a single mother after her husband died.

Aid workers said these new roles were giving women more confidence and more were willing to take leadership roles in the community so they could raise issues such as the need for more lighting by latrines, where women fear being attacked at night.

“This is a group going through forced societal change and women are finding new forms of confidence,” said Gemma Snowdon, a WFP spokeswoman based in the beachside town of Cox’s Bazar about 40 km (25 miles) from the nearest of the camps.

She said a key barrier for female-led households was childcare so they planned to launch mobile child care and boost self-reliance by teaching women skills such as growing vegetables, sewing, and even repairing mobile phones.

Some help has come from outside the settlement as well.

Launched late last year, the Testimony Tailors website https://testimonytailors.com lets users fund and pick garments to be made by about 40 female Rohingya, with finished items donated to refugees in the camps.

Jamila Hanan, a British-based manager at #Hands4Rohingya, which supports the project, said all the women and girls involved in the project were aged between 15 and 40 and survivors of rape or massacres.

Many had witnessed family members being killed “This cooperative is them helping themselves… It has been incredible to see them supporting each other,” said Hanan.

While some Rohingya are struggling to accept women’s new roles and projects such as encouraging girls to play football, for others like Nasima Akter, the changes are part of adjusting to life in the camps for the foreseeable future.

 

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Australia Leads Global Renewable Energy Revolution

Australia is installing renewable energy facilities at a faster rate than any other country.  Research shows Australia is on track to meet its Paris climate commitments five years earlier than expected — in 2025.

Australia is enjoying a green energy revolution.  It is installing renewable energy facilities faster than anywhere else, and research shows Australia is on track to meet its Paris climate commitments five years early.  The agreement reached in the French capital in 2016 stressed the need for global action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Academics say at the current rate Australia can expect to be 100 percent powered by green sources within a decade-and-a-half.  

Andrew Blakers is a professor of engineering at the Australian National University.

“Currently above 20 percent renewable electricity. At this rate we are going to get to 50 percent in 2024, and 100 percent in about 2032 if we just keep doing exactly what we are doing now.  This is four or five faster per capita than the United States, China, Japan or the European Union,” he said.

The research from the Australian National University contrasts previous studies, which found Australia is not on track to meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement.  The 2018 Emissions Gap Report from the United Nations listed Australia as a G20 country that will not meet its 2030 emission reduction target.

There is broad agreement, however, that renewable energy has an increasingly important part to play in Australia.   

It is a sunny and windy place.  It has a range of renewable power sources, including solar, wind, hydro and geothermal energy, which taps heat in the earth.  It has a growing rooftop solar industry.  At the end of last year, more than 2 million Australian homes had rooftop solar systems.

Renewable energy will help to cut emissions in Australia, which still uses coal to generate much of its electricity.   

Recent extreme conditions in Australia have again focused attention on the impact of climate change.  

January was the hottest month ever documented, and 2018 was the third warmest year on record.  

The Bureau of Meteorology says that while it cannot attribute individual heatwaves to climate change, it states that as the planet warms, bursts of extreme heat will become more frequent and intense.

your ad here

Australia Leads Global Renewable Energy Revolution

Australia is installing renewable energy facilities at a faster rate than any other country.  Research shows Australia is on track to meet its Paris climate commitments five years earlier than expected — in 2025.

Australia is enjoying a green energy revolution.  It is installing renewable energy facilities faster than anywhere else, and research shows Australia is on track to meet its Paris climate commitments five years early.  The agreement reached in the French capital in 2016 stressed the need for global action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Academics say at the current rate Australia can expect to be 100 percent powered by green sources within a decade-and-a-half.  

Andrew Blakers is a professor of engineering at the Australian National University.

“Currently above 20 percent renewable electricity. At this rate we are going to get to 50 percent in 2024, and 100 percent in about 2032 if we just keep doing exactly what we are doing now.  This is four or five faster per capita than the United States, China, Japan or the European Union,” he said.

The research from the Australian National University contrasts previous studies, which found Australia is not on track to meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement.  The 2018 Emissions Gap Report from the United Nations listed Australia as a G20 country that will not meet its 2030 emission reduction target.

There is broad agreement, however, that renewable energy has an increasingly important part to play in Australia.   

It is a sunny and windy place.  It has a range of renewable power sources, including solar, wind, hydro and geothermal energy, which taps heat in the earth.  It has a growing rooftop solar industry.  At the end of last year, more than 2 million Australian homes had rooftop solar systems.

Renewable energy will help to cut emissions in Australia, which still uses coal to generate much of its electricity.   

Recent extreme conditions in Australia have again focused attention on the impact of climate change.  

January was the hottest month ever documented, and 2018 was the third warmest year on record.  

The Bureau of Meteorology says that while it cannot attribute individual heatwaves to climate change, it states that as the planet warms, bursts of extreme heat will become more frequent and intense.

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DR Congo Election Loser Calls for Rematch

The runner-up in DR Congo’s controversial presidential election has proposed staging the poll again within six months.

In a letter to the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Martin Fayulu restated his allegation that the vote result had been rigged, and suggested “holding the elections again within six months”.

Felix Tshisekedi was declared winner of the December 30 ballot with 38.5 percent of the vote, against Fayulu’s 34.8 percent.

Fayulu, whose letter was made public on Monday, said the DRC’s Independent National Election Commission (CENI) had “quite simply fabricated the results it published”.

He pointed to reports from independent election monitors and observers from his own coalition, Lamuka, as well as to vote tallies by the CENI itself that have been leaked to the press.

“[All] attest that I was elected president of the Democratic Republic of Congo with more than 60 percent of the vote,” he charged.

Fayulu suggested setting up an AU special committee to verify the results.

The two-day AU summit, which was winding up on Monday, was attended by Tshisekedi, who was elected the organization’s second vice president for 2019.

He also met UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the European Union’s foreign relations chief, Federica Mogherini.

Fayulu’s bitterness over the election outcome has mingled with relief outside the country that the vote was calm by DRC standards and led to the country’s first-ever peaceful transition of power.

Tshisekedi succeeded Joseph Kabila, whose 18-year tenure was criticised for authoritarianism, rights abuses and corruption.

Both Fayulu and Tshisekedi are from the ranks of the opposition.

The election should have taken place at the end of 2016 but Kabila stayed in office for an additional two years, invoking a caretaker clause in the constitution.

 

 

 

 

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