Latest news with #Bhutan
NHK
7 hours ago
- Automotive
- NHK
June 10 NEWSROOM TOKYO Bangkok Live
Lineup: 1. 15 university students killed in Malaysia bus crash 2. India woos foreign automakers to boost domestic EV production 3. Bhutan gets a hand from Japan to fight stomach cancer
NHK
03-06-2025
- Business
- NHK
Singapore aiming for net-zero emissions by earning carbon credits
Singapore is stepping up its efforts to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by earning carbon credits. It's working with countries in Asia, South America and Africa to offset its emissions. Singapore signed an agreement on carbon credits with Paraguay last month. The deal was the island country's seventh, following those with partners such as Bhutan, Peru and Rwanda. The credits are tradable instruments for global decarbonization efforts. Singapore provides its partners with technology or funding to cut emissions. When those countries achieve reductions, Singapore gets a share of the earned credits. The country aims for net-zero emissions by 2050. But it has very limited space for green energy generators such as solar panels and wind turbines. Singapore hopes that by cooperating with other countries, it can both reduce its carbon footprint and achieve green business expansion.
South China Morning Post
02-06-2025
- General
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong women's footballer calls for government backing as team eyes Asian Cup return
Vicky Chung Pui-ki has called on the government to pump more money into women's football in the city, as Hong Kong ramp up preparations for the start of their AFC Asian Cup qualifiers in late June. Advertisement In tri-series matches over the past week, the city team drew with hosts Bhutan and beat Malaysia in their last scheduled fixtures before they battle the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Cambodia for one spot in the 2026 finals in Australia. Chung said the women's game in Hong Kong had 'grown up' since her international debut in 2017, with the head coach Ricardo Rambo's team boasting players from leagues in England, Taiwan and mainland China. Chung had time with Scottish club Kilmarnock in the 2019-2020 season. Nonetheless, the 27-year-old Kitchee defender, who raised the possibility of following in the footsteps of Chan Yuen-ting as a female head coach in the men's game, lamented the absence of a full-time domestic competition in Hong Kong. 'We have so many talented young girls, but we could have more support from the government to give us the platform to promote women's football, and we could have a professional league in Hong Kong,' Chung said. Vicky Chung wants a professional women's league in Hong Kong. Photo: Kitchee Chung, whose team have an FA Cup final against their biggest rivals TSL on Sunday, coaches in schools to supplement her income.
Arab News
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
What We Are Reading Today: Pico Iyer's essay ‘The Joy of Quiet'
Pico Iyer's essay 'The Joy of Quiet' dissects modern life's paradox: the louder our world grows, the more we crave silence. The essay was first published in 2012 in The New York Times. With the precision of a cultural surgeon, Iyer — a travel writer famed for his meditative prose — exposes how digital noise erodes human connection, leaving us drowning in a sea of notifications yet thirsting for meaning. But this isn't a diatribe against technology; it's a forensic examination of our collective burnout. He maps a silent counterrevolution emerging in the unlikeliest corners: Silicon Valley CEOs fleeing to Himalayan monasteries, Amish-inspired 'digital sabbaths' trending among younger generations, executives paying to lock away their phones and nations like Bhutan trading gross domestic product for 'Gross National Happiness' as radical acts of cultural defiance. Iyer's genius lies in reframing silence as an insurgent act of self-preservation. A Kyoto temple's rock garden becomes a 'vacuum of stillness' where fractured minds heal; a tech mogul's secret retreats — funded by the same wealth that built addictive apps — mock his own industry's promises of liberation. The essay's sharpest insight? Our devices aren't just distractions but 'weapons of mass distraction,' systematically severing us from presence, empathy and the sacred monotony of undivided attention. Critics might argue Iyer romanticizes privilege (not everyone can jet to a Balinese silent retreat), yet his message transcends class: in an age of algorithmic overload, solitude becomes not a luxury but psychic armor. He anticipates today's 'attention economy' battleground, where mindfulness apps monetize the very serenity they promise to provide. His closing warning: 'We've gone from exalting timesaving devices to fleeing them,' feels prophetic in 2025, as AI chatbots colonize conversation and virtual reality headsets replace eye contact. Less self-flagellating than Orwell's colonial reckonings, 'The Joy of Quiet' offers no easy answers. Instead, it dares readers to ask: When every ping demands obedience, what revolution begins with a silenced phone? What if reclaiming our humanity starts not with consuming more but with the radical courage to disappear?
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Bhutanese Nepalis fled ethnic cleansing for the US. Trump is returning them to the refugee camps
Aasis Subedi, a Bhutanese Nepali refugee, finds himself back in the same Nepal refugee camp he spent part of his youth, once again stateless. Last month, Subedi and two dozen community members from across the US were deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers to Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan country where they had never previously set foot. At least four, including Subedi, were immediately rejected by Bhutanese authorities and then expelled to India, where they fled to a refugee camp in Nepal. 'I have nothing right now. They brought us in [to Bhutan] without any documents,' he says from one of the three Beldangi refugee camps in the southeast of Nepal, where he is using his father's cell phone. Subedi had been serving jail time for a third-degree felony offense committed in Columbus, Ohio, before he was put on a plane and deported via New Jersey. Subedi is one of the more than 100,000 Bhutanese Nepalis who fled ethnic cleansing and were made stateless by the Bhutanese government who stripped them of their citizenship rights in the 1980s. Since 2008, more than 90,000 have been resettled in the US. But the Trump administration has upended life for the community. 'Bhutan is still not safe for our community members to return [to]. It is a matter of putting our lives at risk … Now, people are going through the cycle of being stateless again,' says Robin Gurung of Asian Refugees United. Several of the deported people are believed to be missing in India. ICE told Global Press Journal that Subedi was deported under a 'targeted enforcement operation.' Green card holders – Subedi is a legal permanent resident – can be deported having been found guilty of a serious crime but only after having the opportunity to plead their case in court and once the US government has shown 'clear and convincing evidence' that the person can be deported. US laws forbid the deportation of individuals to countries where their safety may be at risk. 'Most of the folks who have been deported have already served their time. For me, that is the matter of concern,' says Gurung. 'They served their time, they were in their communities, providing for their families, their children, and now they are gone.' Thousands of Bhutanese Nepalis have settled in parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania that faced major economic struggles and population loss due to the 2008 Great Recession. Around 8,000 Bhutanese Nepali people now live in Reynoldsburg, a city outside Columbus, making up around one-fifth of the population. Along the suburb's main thoroughfare, East Main Street, Bhutanese Americans have opened up more than 30 businesses ranging from hair salons to restaurants. 'A lot of the community works at local Amazon and FedEx facilities. Those kinds of jobs were very attractive for folks, and the schools in Reynoldsburg are good,' says Bhuwan Pyakurel who came to Reynoldsburg in 2016 and has since become America's first-ever Nepali-Bhutanese elected official. 'Many of those businesses were closed before we came here [and] we came and revived them. Cricket is a big thing for the Bhutanese community when it wasn't known here in the past. Now the city is in the process of building a new cricket field.' While towns and cities across the Sun Belt have grown significantly in recent years, northern states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and beyond have struggled to retain and attract residents. As a result, immigrants have played an important role in helping local economies grow, creating a tax base for city authorities and adding vibrancy to a region working to shed its Rust belt past. Next door in Pennsylvania, around 40,000 Bhutanese Nepalis live in the cities of Harrisburg and Lancaster. Harrisburg has lost nearly half of its population since 1950, though in recent years that decline has been halted. But now a crippling fear has gripped immigrant communities across the country. Pyakurel, who was elected to Reynoldsburg's city council in 2019 having lived in a refugee camp in Nepal for 18 years, says he now fields five to ten phone calls a day from worried local Bhutanese Nepali residents, many asking for guidance. 'People are wondering if they should apply for their citizenship or wait for three years, if they should renew certain documentation,' he says. Last month, Palestinian green card holder and Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi was detained at a naturalization interview and deportation proceedings against him were enacted. On 30 April, Mahdawi was released. 'Nowadays, I carry my passport with me all the time,' says Pyakurel. 'Even though I'm a [city council] representative here, I don't look like a citizen to many ICE officers.' Subedi came to the US through a government refugee relocation program in July 2016 and had been living and working as a machine operator in Pennsylvania before his arrest in Columbus last July. Now 7,700 miles from home, he has little to do but sit all day in the refugee camp, where he lives in a bamboo-made hut – the very same camp he spent the first two years of his life and where his father still lives. The arrival of him and three others deported from the US caused a stir at the camp, which drew the attention of the Nepali police, who detained him for several weeks as his legal status was investigated. This month, his daughter turns three years old. He says his family has no money to assist him in the refugee camp in part because his wife stopped working when their child was born. He says he doesn't know if he'll be able to come back to the US. 'I want to come back. I have family, my kids,' Subedi says. 'This is the second time we have become a refugee.'
