India tackles pollution with ban on certain single-use plastic items
NEW DELHI — India banned some single-use or disposable plastic products Friday as part of a federal plan to phase out the ubiquitous material in the nation of nearly 1.4 billion people.
For the first stage, it has identified 19 plastic items that aren’t very useful but have a high potential to become litter, and makes it illegal to produce, import, stock, distribute or sell them. These items range from plastic cups and straws to ice cream sticks. Some disposable plastic bags will also be phased out and replaced with thicker ones.
Thousands of other plastic products — like bottles for water or soda or bags of chips — aren’t covered by the ban. But the federal government has set targets for manufacturers to be responsible for recycling or disposing of them after their use.
Plastic manufacturers had appealed to the government to delay the ban, citing inflation and potential job losses. But India’s federal environment minister Bhupender Yadav said at a press briefing in New Delhi that the ban had been in the pipeline for a year.
“Now that time is up,” he said.
This isn’t the first time that India has considered a plastic ban. But previous iterations have focused on specific regions, resulting in varying degrees of success. A nationwide ban that includes not just the use of plastic, but also its production or importation, is a “definite boost,” said Satyarupa Shekhar, the Asia-Pacific coordinator of the advocacy group Break Free from Plastic.
In 2020, over 4.5 million tons of plastic waste was generated in India, according to its federal pollution watchdog.
The creaky waste management system in the country’s burgeoning cities and villages means that much of this waste isn’t recycled and ends up polluting the environment. Nearly 14 million tons of plastic waste was either littered or not recycled by the South Asian nation in 2019 — the highest in the world, according to Our World in Data.
Deadly India mudslide:
Rescuers found more bodies Friday as they resumed searching for dozens of missing after a mudslide triggered by weeks of heavy downpours killed at least 19 people at a railroad construction site in India’s northeast, officials said.
Soldiers joined more than 200 workers and police using bulldozers and other equipment to rescue those buried under the debris in Noney, a town near Imphal, the capital of Manipur state. Intermittent rain continued in the region where the bodies have been recovered so far after a hillock caved in and buried the railroad project area, said H. Guite, district magistrate.
Lt. Gen. R.P. Kalita, head of the army’s eastern command, said 13 soldiers and five civilians were saved from the debris of the railroad station, staff residential quarters and other infrastructure that was being built. The army also set up a medical post at the site to treat those rescued, Kalita said.
Eighteen people with injuries have been hospitalized, said Guite. He put the number of those still unaccounted for at around 50.
The first lawsuits have been filed days after an Amtrak train collision and derailment in rural Missouri that left four
Amtrak crash lawsuits:
people dead and injured up to 150 others.
In a federal lawsuit filed Friday, surviving passenger Janet Williams of Dubuque, Iowa, named Amtrak, BNSF Railway Co. and MS Contracting LLC, the employer of the dump truck driver whose vehicle was struck by the train. The complaint alleges negligent design of the railroad crossing near the town of Mendon, and says the train was packed with too many riders, creating “cattle car conditions.”
On Thursday, Amtrak and BNSF Railway filed a federal lawsuit against MS Contracting, the Kansas City Star reported. That lawsuit said the train was “clearly visible” and that the truck driver was careless in crossing the tracks.
The truck driver, Billy Barton II, 54, of Brookfield, died in the collision, along with three passengers on the train. His widow, Erin Barton, on Thursday filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in
state court against Chariton County and a BNSF official who cited the crossing as unsafe.
Assange appeals: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has appealed the British government decision last month to order his extradition to the U.S.
The appeal was filed Friday at the High Court, the latest twist in a decadelong legal saga sparked by his website’s publication of classified U.S. documents.
Assange’s supporters staged protests before his 51st birthday this weekend, with his wife Stella Assange among people who gathered outside the Home Office on Friday to call for his release from prison.
Julian Assange has battled in British courts for years to avoid being sent to the U.S., where he faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse.
NKorea blames balloons: North Korea suggested
Friday its COVID-19 outbreak began in people who had contact with balloons flown from South Korea — a claim that appeared to be an attempt to hold its rival responsible amid increasing tensions over its nuclear program.
Activists have long flown balloons across the border to distribute hundreds of thousands of propaganda leaflets critical of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The state media report said North Korea’s epidemic prevention center, in what it called “an emergency instruction,” ordered officials to “to vigilantly deal with alien things coming by wind and other climate phenomena and balloons” along the inter-Korean border. It also stressed that anyone finding “alien things” must notify authorities immediately so they could be removed.
In previous dubious statements on COVID-19, North Korea also claimed the virus could spread through falling
snow or migratory birds.
Swiss same-sex marriage: Lesbian and gay couples in Switzerland rejoiced as they legally tied the knot Friday when the Alpine nation formally joined many other western European countries in allowing same-sex marriage.
The first same-sex marriages came about nine months after 64.1% of voters backed the “Marriage for All” law in a national referendum. It puts same-sex partners on an equal legal footing with heterosexual couples, including allowing them to adopt and to sponsor a spouse for citizenship.
Switzerland authorized same-sex civil partnerships in 2007.
Traditionally conservative Switzerland was until Friday among a few western European nations that didn’t recognize same-sex marriages. Greece, Italy, Andorra, Monaco and San Marino only allow malefemale couples to marry.