The World Economic Forum: This is how The Ocean Cleanup's mission to clear the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is going

The world produces 300 million tonnes of plastic a year. There are 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean, and 90% of seabirds have swallowed plastic. [...]

The Ocean Cleanup says it could rid the GPGP of 50% of its waste in five years. Conventional methods of clearing the water, like vessels and nets, would take vast sums of money and thousands of years. [...]

And the project has even more ambitious goals. In what it calls “the largest ocean clean-up in history,” it wants to remove 90% of ocean plastic pollution by 2040.

It's also attempting to stop this pollution at its source: in the world’s rivers. It has developed the “Interceptor,” an autonomous, solar-powered catamaran that works in conjunction with a barrier to scoop plastic out of the water. Capable of extracting 50,000 kilogrammes of plastic a day, two of these craft are already at work, in Jakarta and Malaysia.

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IFLScience: Nepal's Tiger Population Doubles Thanks To Dedicated Conservation Work

Once found throughout the Asian continent and several Asian islands, tigers (Panthera tigris) have been wiped out of existence in many regions and are endangered in all their remaining pockets of habitat due to human activities, chiefly deforestation for agriculture and urbanization (more than 40 percent of native tiger ecosystems have been destroyed in the past 20 years alone), depletion of prey species, and poaching.

Per the IUCN Red List, tigers have disappeared from Java, Bali, southwest and central Asia, and from large areas of southeast and eastern Asia over the past 100 years. Currently, tigers inhabit about 7 percent of their former range, with evidence of breeding populations in Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, Thailand, and potentially China and Myanmar. It is estimated that there were around 100,000 tigers in the wild in the early 1900s; now there are around 3,200 tigers – a figure that encompasses all subspecies.

Nepal’s success provides a model of how other nations can fulfill their pledge to meet the goal of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)’s TX2 project. Launched at the WWF’s 2010 Tiger Summit, TX2 is an ambitious research, conservation, and anti-poaching project aimed at doubling the total tiger population to 6,000 individuals by 2022 – the next Year of the Tiger in the Chinese Zodiac. Nepal and 12 other nations within the species’ range have committed to the plan.

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Politico: China’s trash ban forces Europe to confront its waste problem

Of the 56.4 million tons of paper EU citizens threw away in 2016, some 8 million ended up in China, purchased by recycling centers that turn it into cardboard and send it back to Europe as packaging for Chinese exports. That same year, the EU collected 8.4 million tons of plastic waste, and sent 1.6 million tons to China.

At the end of last year, Beijing put an end to the practice, putting in place strict limits on imports of foreign waste. Only eight weeks later, Europe is struggling to deal with mountains of plastic and paper waste. [...]

The EU is to some extent a victim of its own success. For years, European leaders have touted the benefits of limiting and reusing waste. Just last month, the European Commission presented its vision for the future of plastics, exhorting Europe to turn waste into an economic opportunity. [...]

The Commission’s Plastics Strategy, announced in January, aims to make all plastic packaging recyclable or reusable by 2030, something that it says could create 200,000 jobs. For that to happen, Europe’s capacity to sort and recycle waste would have to be multiplied fourfold — something that would cost as much as €16.6 billion.

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Deutsche Welle: Saudi Arabia exports extremism to many countries - including Germany, study says

Susanne Schröter: The findings do not surprise me at all. It has long been known that Saudi Arabia has been exporting Wahhabist ideology - largely similar to the ideology of the so-called "Islamic State" (IS). Propaganda material and organizational expertise are being sent along with money. People are being hired to build mosques, educational institutions, cultural centers and similar organizations, so that Wahhabist theology can reach the public – with great success. [...]

The export of Wahhabism got off the ground after the Islamic revolution in Iran. The revolution had dramatically shaken the Saudis. When Iran started exporting its Shiite ideology, the Saudis felt threatened by it. Around that time, in 1979, hardliners seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The Saudis launched an ideological offensive and said, "Now we are exporting our own ideology. We will show the hardliners in our own country what we are capable of achieving." Then, they started promoting Wahhabism through intermediaries and organizations like the World Muslim League in different countries throughout Asia, Africa and parts of Europe – for example, in former Yugoslavia where Muslims and Christians fought against each other in the civil war. Wahhabists saw it as gateway, where money was needed since the Muslim population was ready for a new and radical ideology.

The result is that, in many parts of the world, a radical form of Islam is gaining the upper hand. I have experienced this first hand in Southeast Asia. In southern Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and sometimes Malaysia, it was always said that a special form of Islam was practiced, a much more open, much more tolerant version. There has been a dramatic development towards radicalism over the past three decades. It is perfectly clear that this development has been encouraged by Saudi money. Moreover, young intellectuals have been recruited with generous scholarships at Saudi universities. These people return to their homes after having studied at Saudi universities and suddenly carry out Wahhabi missionary work in all their home countries.

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Los Angeles Times: Taiwan's high court paves the way for same-sex marriage, a first in Asia

The Constitutional Court ruled that it is illegal to ban marriages between two people of the same sex and ordered parliament to change the civil code within two years to bring it in line with the constitution, a court official said. Today’s conditions are “in violation of both the people’s freedom of marriage … and the people’s right to equality,” the judiciary's secretary-general, Lu Tai-lang, said. [...]

While Japan and South Korea are also democracies, Japan has less of a sense of multiculturalism and South Korea is strongly influenced by Christian conservatives, creating impediments to same-sex marriage, said Jens Damm, associate professor in the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Studies at Chang Jung University in Taiwan.

Indonesia and Malaysia, because of the prevalence of Islam, would find little backing compared to Taiwan despite their democratic governments. Countries under authoritarian rule limit social activism, a common prerequisite for government attention to LGBTQ causes. Taiwan lifted martial law in the 1980s after decades of authoritarian rule. [...]

Christian churches joined activists supporting traditional Chinese family values favoring households headed by one man and one woman. Some argued that the death of a same-sex spouse would leave the survivor dependent on government support because many same-sex couples would not have children to support them in old age, a common phenomenon in Chinese societies such as Taiwan.

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The Guardian: Kim Jong-nam's body targeted in morgue break-in, say police

“We knew there were attempts by someone to break into the hospital mortuary. We had to take precautions. We will not allow anyone to tamper with the mortuary,” the Malay Mail quoted him as saying. [...]

The detained Indonesian woman has said she was duped into playing a role in the killing, believing she was part of a television comedy prank.

But Khalid disputed that on Wednesday, saying the suspects were “trained” and had even practised the attack at different public places, including a major mall in downtown Kuala Lumpur.

“Yes, the two female suspects knew that the substance they had was toxic. We don’t know what kind of chemical was used,” he said. Samples from an inconclusive autopsy were sent away for lab tests.

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CityLab: Is China Building a Ghost City on Malaysian Islands?

China is known for its hundreds of “ghost cities”—ultra-modern metropolises built for the country’s urbanizing population that have yet to attract many residents. High-rise apartment and office buildings, pavilions, sculptures, and even a man-made lake with music piped in among its surrounding paths sit almost devoid of human activity. The flip side to these eerily hollow cities are frenetic urban centers such as Beijing and Shanghai, where rural to urban migration has caused populations to explode. [...]

While such investment generally concerns existing housing, in Johor Bahru, Chinese companies are building their own high-rises and villas. One outfit, Country Garden, is building enough to accommodate a whopping 700,000 people. Though Malaysians, Singaporeans, and other nationalities will purchase some of the units, they are being heavily marketed to Chinese, with planeloads of potential buyers flown in to peruse model apartments. Luxury two-bedroom units are going for as little as $180,000—around a third of what buyers would pay in central Shanghai. [...]

Developers are banking on Johor Bahru’s proximity to Singapore, as well as the widespread use of Mandarin Chinese and Chinese dialects in the region, to make Forest City a desirable place for Chinese ex-pats to live. But even if there are enough buyers, owners may choose to simply keep the properties empty, as investments, or save them for retirement or their children—potentially creating an atmosphere not unlike a Chinese ghost city.

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Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell: Overpopulation – The Human Explosion Explained

Quartz: Photos: Malaysia inaugurates its new king in a lavish ceremony

The country’s unique constitutional monarchy ensures there’s a new ruler at the throne every five years. The ceremonial ruler is rotated among nine of 13 states that have hereditary royal rulers.

In a lavish ceremony at Kuala Lumpur’s national palace on Dec. 13, 47-year-old Sultan Muhammad V became the 15th king of Malaysia. The ceremony, which was attended by prime minister Najib Razak (who is currently embroiled in a massive corruption scandal) and hundreds soldiers and Islamic prayers, was televised nationally

.Educated in the UK, the new king has a love of extreme sports such as four-wheel drive expeditions and shooting. He married Tengku Zubaidah Tengku Norudin from a royal family in Thailand’s Pattani in 2004, but the marriage ended in a divorce.

Here are photos from the ceremony

The Washington Post: A new crisis in the Muslim world: Is it too young?

 In early August, when leaders of several dozen Muslim countries gathered in Jakarta for an annual economic conference, some of the speakers acknowledged that things aren’t looking good for their global community. Chaos continues to grip their heartland in the Middle East, they noted, and anti-Muslim politicians are drawing unprecedented support in Europe, the United States and elsewhere.

When Indonesian President Joko Widodo spoke, however, the World Islamic Economic Forum’s host offered a bracing dose of optimism.

Citing data from a landmark 2015 Pew study showing that the number of Muslims worldwide is expected to grow by 73 percent from 2010 to 2050, the head of the world’s most-populous Muslim-majority nation told his counterparts that their countries must seek to leverage their “fundamental strength”: a huge and expanding youth population. [...]

The “youth bulge,” seen when infant mortality drops while fertility rates remain high, can indeed boost economies by increasing the number of people available to work, experts agree. But it also can lead to social instability if the masses of working-age youths are unable to find productive jobs. [...]

When young people lack economic opportunities and the prospect of being able to support families of their own, experts say, they are especially susceptible to the lure of anti-establishment ideology. In Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, when countries in the region were experiencing youth bulges, that draw was often Marxism, Assaad noted. But it could take the form of austere varieties of Islam for disgruntled Muslim youths today.

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Slate: Can Islam and Liberalism Coexist?

No, no. I’m not saying Islam is incompatible with democratic politics; I’m saying that Islam is in tension with liberalism, and this is why I think it’s important for us to distinguish between liberalism and democracy. Let’s say an Islamist party comes to power through a democratic election. Islamism is by definition illiberal, and they would promote things that are contrary to classical liberalism, in the sense of non-negotiable personal rights and freedoms, gender equality, protection of minorities.

Fareed Zakaria was the first one to really popularize the idea of illiberal democracy. I feel like the Americans I’ve talked to have struggled to really grasp the idea because we don’t really have much experience with that directly. With the rise of Trump it makes things easier because we can see quite clearly that, Hey, this is a guy who might be democratically elected but his commitment to classical liberalism is quite questionable, even antagonistic. [...]

I think Islam is more capable of contributing to social order and the cohesion of a society in a place where the vast majority of citizens share that basic Islamic identity. Maybe Islam is also useful for people who want to get into heaven. That might sound like a weird thing to say, but also the way we think about rationality is problematic. I mean we’re always looking for nonreligious reasons to explain why people do what they do: So, there are economic and material factors, and people are poor and angry, whatever. Sometimes the goal of an individual can be pretty straightforward; they just want to mind their own business and get into heaven. I think Islam can be useful for people who believe that. [...]

I do think that social peace is possible, and Malaysia and Indonesia—which rarely get talked about in Washington—are really interesting cases because Indonesia is certainly more democratic but has also more implementation of Sharia ordinances on the local level than Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, you name it. In some sense democratization does not necessarily go hand in hand with secularism; it might actually go hand in hand with more Islam in politics, if that’s what voters want. How would you answer that question by the way: Why do you think liberalism is necessarily better for X society in the Middle East or Southeast Asia?

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BBC: The newlyweds with no country to call home

Based on data from 30 countries in 2010, Eurostat estimated one in 12 marriages in Europe were between people of different nationalities. In Switzerland, it was about one in five, compared with about one in 11 in the UK and hardly any at all in Romania. In Australia, nearly one in three marriages in 2014 was mixed. In Singapore, where the number of marriages in 2014 was the highest since 1997, transnational marriages accounted for 37% of those unions up from 23% in 2003. And the US Census Bureau revealed that in 2011, in 21% of married households in America, at least one of the spouses was born outside the US. [...]

Despite economic policies that encourage the globalisation that make transnational marriages inevitable, young couples like Han and Stuart, and people who’ve been married for years, have become unexpected victims of hardening attitudes towards migration.

“There has been increasing stress on ‘managed migration’ by governments to try to maximise economic benefits from migration, and control types of migration not seen as so beneficial,” Katharine Charsley, an academic at the University of Bristol, said by email. Spouses who migrate are selected as a matter of the heart, “rather than selected for their skills to fill shortage occupations by the state”.

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