Pakistan bans new hotel construction around tourist lakes

Pakistan will ban for five years the construction of new hotels around picturesque lakes in the north that attract tens of thousands of tourists each year, a government agency said.Unregulated construction of hotels and guest houses in Gilgit-Baltistan — which boasts around 13,000 glaciers, more than any other country on Earth outside the polar regions — has sparked major concerns about environmental degradation.The natural beauty of the region has made it a top tourist destination, with towering peaks looming over the Old Silk Road, and a highway transporting tourists between cherry orchards, glaciers, and ice-blue lakes.However, in recent years construction has exploded led by companies from outside the region, straining water and power resources, and increasing waste.”If we let them construct hotels at such pace, there will be a forest of concrete,” Khadim Hussain, a senior official at the Gilgit-Baltistan Environmental Protection Authority told AFP on Friday.”People don’t visit here to see concrete; people come here to enjoy natural beauty,” he added.Last month, a foreign tourist posted a video on Instagram — which quickly went viral — alleging wastewater was being discharged by a hotel into Lake Attabad, which serves as a freshwater source for Hunza.The next day, authorities fined the hotel more than $5,000.Asif Sakhi, a political activist and resident of the Hunza Valley, welcomed the ban.”We have noticed rapid changes in the name of tourism and development,” he said, adding hotel construction was “destroying our natural lakes and rivers”.Shah Nawaz, a hotel manager and local resident of the valley, also praised the ban, saying he believes “protecting the environment and natural beauty is everyone’s responsibility”.

Trump’s budget hacksaw leaves public broadcasting on precipice

Hundreds of television and radio stations across the United States risk seeing their resources evaporate, after President Donald Trump prevailed Friday in scrapping federal funding for public broadcasting.The cuts follow Trump’s accusations of ideological bias and will deal a bitter blow to information dissemination nationwide, including rural areas with limited news resources. At the Republican president’s urging, lawmakers along party lines approved the clawback of $1.1 billion in funding already allocated by Congress over the next two years to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.Created in 1967 by president Lyndon Johnson, the non-profit CPB finances a minority share of the budgets of national radio and television mainstays NPR and PBS.But the unprecedented rescission will also critically impact some 1,500 local radio and TV stations, from the East Coast to Alaska, that air part of the public broadcasters’ content.”Without federal funding, many local public radio and television stations will be forced to shut down,” warned CPB president Patricia Harrison.- Connection -Stations have been sounding the alarm for months. Prairie Public Broadcasting, which has served North Dakota for 60 years, estimates it could lose 26 percent of its budget between combined cuts in state and CPB funding. For Vermont Public, a broadcaster in the US Northeast, $4 million in funding is at stake.”We’re going to be forced to make some really difficult decisions about what local programming stays and what local programming we have to cut,” said Ryan Howlett, who heads the financial arm of South Dakota Public Broadcasting, which oversees a dozen local radio stations and as many local TV stations.In this rural and conservative state, “you’re going to lose a connection point that binds us together,” he told AFP.Trump has made very public his hostility to the media, which he often brands “fake news” and the “enemy of the people,” a driving force behind his political rhetoric. In early May, Trump issued an executive order requiring an end to the subsidization of NPR and PBS, saying “neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.””These are partisan, leftwing outlets that are funded by the taxpayers, and this administration does not believe it’s a good use of the taxpayers’ time and money,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday.Howlett emphasized that there is little such criticism in local communities in South Dakota. “We’re part of people’s everyday lives,” he said.- Turning point -The elimination of CPB funding, advocated by the “Project 2025” blueprint of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, marks a turning point. Other attempts in the past had met with opposition from lawmakers, including Republicans in rural areas.Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University in Boston, stressed it is in those very areas where the funding cuts are likely to have “a devastating effect.”For remote communities, “these stations are an absolute lifeline,” he said. “This is where people go to find out a tornado is coming,” or about other emergency news.Such arguments were rejected by Heritage Foundation fellow Mike Gonzalez, who wrote the chapter on public broadcasting in the Project 2025 blueprint.For him, “state and local governments can devise and set up systems that take care of the problem, on a much cheaper basis than the entire public broadcasting apparatus, and without the attendant ills that accompany the present system.”The end of the federal funding is undoubtedly a blow to local news in the United States.Due to declining readership and the consolidation of titles under larger corporations, more than a third of the nation’s newspapers have shuttered since 2005, a loss of 3,300 titles, according to a report from the Medill School at Northwestern University.According to a recent map drawn by analysis firm Muck Rack and the Rebuild Local News coalition, there are now only 8.2 journalists per 100,000 Americans, down from 40 in the early 2000s.

Serge Atlaoui, ex-condamné à mort en Indonésie, va sortir de prison après 20 ans de détention

La liberté, après vingt ans de détention dont dix-huit dans le couloir de la mort: Serge Atlaoui, ex-condamné à la peine capitale en Indonésie pour trafic de drogue, transféré et incarcéré en février en France, sort de prison ce vendredi.”Il va respirer une liberté attendue, espérée depuis tant d’années”, a annoncé sa femme Sabine Atlaoui vendredi matin sur RTL. Serge Atlaoui, condamné en Indonésie pour narcotrafic et détenu depuis 2005, sera accueilli par son avocat, Me Richard Sédillot, à sa sortie de la prison de Meaux, a-t-elle ajouté, indiquant aussi ne pas vouloir dévoiler le lieu et le moment où elle retrouvera son mari. “Se dire qu’il est de retour, qu’il va être auprès de nous à nouveau dans notre quotidien, c’est tellement incroyable que je le réalise sans le réaliser”, a raconté Mme Atlaoui, très émue. – “Se reconstruire” -“Je vais redécouvrir mon mari et à l’inverse, il va me redécouvrir. Il y a 20 ans quand même, donc on va se reconstruire. Tout le monde va devoir apprendre à vivre normalement”, a-t-elle confié. La peine de Serge Atlaoui, 61 ans, ayant été commuée en droit français en 30 années de réclusion criminelle par le tribunal de Pontoise en février, l’artisan-soudeur était théoriquement éligible à la libération conditionnelle depuis 2011 selon les règles françaises.”L’histoire de Serge Atlaoui condamné à mort, c’est une leçon de vie. Il nous donne une leçon dans sa résilience, son courage, sa patience, son humanité”, a déclaré à l’AFP son avocat, Me Sédillot, devant la prison de Meaux, avant la sortie de son client.Originaire de Metz, Serge Atlaoui avait été arrêté en 2005 dans une usine près de Jakarta où des dizaines de kilos de drogue avaient été découverts. Les autorités indonésiennes l’avaient accusé d’être un “chimiste”.Le Français s’est toujours défendu d’être un trafiquant de drogue, affirmant qu’il n’avait fait qu’installer des machines industrielles dans ce qu’il croyait être une usine d’acrylique.Initialement condamné à la prison à vie, il avait vu la Cour suprême indonésienne alourdir la sentence et le condamner à la peine capitale en appel en 2007.- Dernière minute -L’affaire avait fait grand bruit en Indonésie, où la législation antidrogue est l’une des plus sévères du monde. Mais aussi en France où des personnalités s’étaient mobilisées pour le soutenir, en faisant un symbole de la lutte contre la peine de mort.Serge Atlaoui devait être exécuté aux côtés de neuf autres condamnés en 2015, mais avait obtenu un sursis de dernière minute après une pression diplomatique intense de la part des autorités françaises.”Très clairement, le travail diplomatique durant toutes ces années a fait revenir mon mari et a pu faire en sorte qu’en France, on puisse avoir une issue de liberté pour nous”, a souligné Mme Atlaoui vendredi sur RTL. M. Atlaoui et la Philippine Mary Jane Veloso, également condamnée à mort pour trafic de drogue, figuraient tous deux sur une liste de 10 détenus qui devaient passer devant le peloton d’exécution le même jour d’avril 2015: huit furent exécutés, mais leurs deux noms ont été retirés de la liste au dernier moment.Sous la houlette du nouveau président Prabowo Subianto, Jakarta avait ouvert la voie début novembre 2024 à de possibles rapatriements de prisonniers, indiquant être également en discussion avec les Philippines et l’Australie. Mary Jane Veloso a ainsi été rapatriée à Manille le 18 décembre, et Serge Atlaoui a finalement été transféré en France en février dernier. Son retour avait confronté la justice au cas inédit d’adaptation en droit français d’une peine capitale, abolie dans le pays depuis 1981. La justice française n’était pas compétente sur le fond de l’affaire, définitivement jugée en Indonésie, et pouvait seulement se prononcer sur la peine de Serge Atlaoui. Le parquet de Pontoise avait alors requis à son encontre une réclusion criminelle à perpétuité, en estimant que la peine de mort étant la plus haute peine possible, il fallait lui substituer celle qui était la plus “rigoureuse” dans la législation française.Le tribunal lui avait finalement infligé la peine maximale encourue pour la fabrication et la production de stupéfiants en bande organisée, 30 ans de réclusion criminelle.

Les Bourses européennes ouvrent en hausse

Les Bourses européennes ont ouvert en hausse vendredi, tirées par les records franchis la veille à Wall Street, après la publication de données jugées rassurantes sur la santé économique des Etats-Unis.Dans les premiers échanges, la Bourse de Paris prenait 0,47%, Londres 0,17%, Francfort 0,43% et Milan 0,45%.

North Korea bars foreign tourists from new seaside resort

North Korea has barred foreigners from a newly opened beach resort, the country’s tourism administration said this week, just days after Russia’s top diplomat visited the area.The sprawling seaside resort on its east coast, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s pet project, opened to domestic visitors earlier this month with great fanfare in state-run media.Dubbed “North Korea’s Waikiki” by South Korean media, the Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Zone appears to be lined with high-rise hotels and waterparks, and can purportedly accommodate some 20,000 people.State media previously said visits to Wonsan by Russian tour groups were expected in the coming months.But following Lavrov’s visit, the North’s National Tourism Administration said “foreign tourists are temporarily not being accepted” without giving further details, in a statement posted on an official website this week.Kim showed a keen interest in developing North Korea’s tourism industry during his early years in power, analysts have said, and the coastal resort area was a particular focus.He said ahead of the opening of the beach resort that the construction of the site would go down as “one of the greatest successes this year” and that the North would build more large-scale tourist zones “in the shortest time possible”.The North last year permitted Russian tourists to return for the first time since the pandemic and Western tour operators briefly returned in February this year.Seoul’s unification ministry, however, said that it expected international tourism to the new resort was “likely to remain small in scale” given the limited capacity of available flights.Kim held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Wonsan last week where he offered Moscow his full and “unconditional” support for its war in Ukraine, KCNA reported.Lavrov reportedly hailed the seaside project as a “good tourist attraction”, adding it would become popular among both local and Russian visitors looking for new destinations. Ahead of Lavrov’s recent visit, Russia announced that it would begin twice-a-week flights between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Se diversifier pour survivre: au Japon, des PME prêtes à s’adapter face à la tempête Trump

Comme toutes les PME qui forment le cœur du tissu économique japonais, Mitsuwa Electric, fabricant de fils métalliques et autres composants, a traversé maintes épreuves au fil des décennies: désormais, son PDG Yuji Miyazaki s’efforce de garder son optimisme face aux barrières douanières érigées par l’administration Trump.Le Japon, bien qu’allié-clé des Etats-Unis, est soumis aux mêmes droits de douane américains de base de 10% que la plupart des nations, ainsi qu’à des surtaxes de 25% sur les voitures et de 50% l’acier. Et le pays est menacé d’un relèvement à 25% des surtaxes dites “réciproques”, suspendues jusqu’au 1er août.Pour autant, M. Miyazaki assure n’être “pas trop inquiet”. “Nous fournissons des produits très spécifiques à des industries spécialisées, où il est difficile de changer de fournisseur ou de pays d’approvisionnement au gré des changements de taxes douanières”, déclare-t-il à l’AFP, en arpentant le site de son entreprise créée il y a 92 ans.”Si les firmes américaines ne peuvent pas produire elles-mêmes des pièces, elles n’ont d’autre choix que de les importer, quels que soient les droits de douane”, insiste ce descendant du fondateur du groupe.Avec 100 employés, Mitsuwa Electric n’est pas une marque très connue. Mais comme beaucoup des millions d’autres PME – qui représentent 99,7 % des entreprises japonaises -, c’est une référence mondiale dans son créneau très spécialisé.Après avoir commencé à fabriquer des filaments pour ampoules électriques, elle produit aujourd’hui des tiges, aiguilles, plaques, tubes et fils de métal pour divers produits (phares automobiles, photocopieurs, appareils à rayons-X….). En 2022, elle a remporté un record mondial Guinness pour le plus fin fil métallique disponible sur le marché, d’un diamètre moitié plus mince qu’un cheveu.Mitsuwa compte parmi ses clients des entreprises en Asie, Europe et Amérique du Nord, dont le géant japonais de l’ingénierie Toshiba ou une filiale du constructeur automobile Toyota. Pour l’heure, il ne subit qu’un impact limité de l’offensive douanière américaine: un client du secteur automobile lui a demandé de baisser ses prix.Mais la situation pourrait s’aggraver. “Nous ne pouvons que nous adapter à l’évolution de l’environnement économique”, soupire M. Miyazaki.- “Tirer les leçons” -Le Premier ministre japonais Shigeru Ishiba a certes envoyé son négociateur commercial, Ryosei Akazawa, à Washington à sept reprises depuis avril pour tenter d’arracher un compromis.Mais sa stratégie maximaliste, qui consiste à réclamer l’élimination totale de tous les droits de douane, alarme certains acteurs industriels à l’approche de la date butoir du 1er août. Un enjeu-clé pour la coalition gouvernementale, qui aborde en mauvaise posture des élections sénatoriales ce dimanche.Alors que l’automobile représente 8% des emplois au Japon, les exportations de voitures de l’archipel en direction des Etats-Unis ont chuté d’environ 25% sur un an en mai et juin.Plus généralement, l’imprévisibilité du président américain Donald Trump et la complexité des surtaxes douanières alarment les entrepreneurs, constate Jetro, l’organisation d’aide aux PME soutenue par le gouvernement.Depuis février, Jetro a reçu plus de 2.000 demandes de renseignements de ses membres concernant la politique douanière américaine, un flux qui s’est accéléré ces dernières semaines en vue  d’obtenir les “informations les plus récentes”. Le patron de Mitsuwa Electric lui-même commence à s’inquiéter de voir Washington mettre à exécution ses menaces de surtaxer à 200% les produits pharmaceutiques et de cibler les équipements médicaux. Mais, avec sa large gamme de produits et la diversification de sa clientèle, son groupe a été jusqu’à présent relativement protégé, observe-t-il.Cette stratégie de diversification est essentielle à la survie d’autres PME, abonde Zenkai Inoue, professeur à l’Institut des sciences de l’information de Kyushu. “Je propose une stratégie du +trépied+: il faut avoir au moins trois clients dans des régions différentes”, explique-t-il à l’AFP.”Pour une PME, assurer sa stabilité financière en sollicitant des financements bancaires est important pour survivre dans l’immédiat”, mais “la prochaine étape consistera à étendre ses canaux de vente à d’autres marchés”, ajoute-t-il.Selon cet expert, certaines entreprises japonaises ont tardé à se préparer aux droits de douane américains, alors même que M. Trump les avaient promis dès sa campagne électorale de 2024. “On a connu l’époque où les entreprises japonaises, fortement dépendantes du marché chinois, avaient été durement touchées par un changement soudain de politique de la part de Pékin”, rappelle M. Inoue. “Certaines n’en ont pas suffisamment tiré les leçons.” 

US Congress approves $9 bn in Trump cuts to foreign aid, public media

US Republicans early Friday approved President Donald Trump’s plan to cancel $9 billion in funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, vowing it was just the start of broader efforts by Congress to slash the federal budget.The cuts achieve only a tiny fraction of the $1 trillion in annual savings that tech billionaire and estranged Trump donor Elon Musk vowed to find before his acrimonious exit in May from a role spearheading federal cost-cutting.But Republicans — who recently passed a domestic policy bill expected to add more than $3 trillion to US debt — said the vote honored Trump’s election campaign pledge to rein in runaway spending.”President Trump and House Republicans promised fiscal responsibility and government efficiency,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement just after the vote.”Today, we’re once again delivering on that promise.”Both chambers of Congress are Republican-controlled, meaning a mostly party-line House of Representatives vote of 216 to 213, moments after midnight, was sufficient to approve the Senate-passed measure.The bill now heads to the White House to be signed by Trump, who praised his backers in the House. “REPUBLICANS HAVE TRIED DOING THIS FOR 40 YEARS, AND FAILED… BUT NO MORE. THIS IS BIG!!!” he wrote on Truth Social.Most of the cuts target programs for countries hit by disease, war and natural disasters. But the move also scraps $1.1 billion that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was due to receive over the next two years.Conservatives say the funding — which goes mostly to more than 1,500 local public radio and TV stations, as well as to public broadcasters NPR and PBS — is unnecessary and has funded biased coverage.The bill originally included $400 million in cuts to a global AIDS program that is credited with saving 26 million lives, but that funding was saved by a rebellion by moderate Republicans. – ‘Dark day’ -The vote was a win for Trump and fiscal hawks seeking to support the mission of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), launched by Musk as Trump was swept to power, for radical savings.Congress had already approved the cash that was clawed back, and Democrats framed the bill as a betrayal of the bipartisan government funding process.They fear Trump’s victory clears the way for more “rescissions packages” canceling agreed spending.”Instead of protecting the health, safety and well-being of the American people, House Republicans have once again rubber stamped Donald Trump’s extreme, reckless rescissions legislation,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a joint statement with fellow top Democrats.Republicans need some Democratic votes to keep the government funded past September, and the minority party had threatened to abandon any plans for cooperation if the DOGE cuts went ahead.Jeffries and fellow Democrats seemed to suggest as much on Friday.”Tonight’s vote… makes it clear that House Republicans are determined to march this country toward a painful government shutdown later this year,” they said in the statement.Although they are in the minority, Democrats have leverage in funding fights because a budget deal would need at least 60 votes in the 100-member Senate and Republicans only have 53 seats.Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it “a dark day for any American who relies on public broadcasting during floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other disasters.”White House budget chief Russell Vought told an event hosted Thursday by the Christian Science Monitor that the administration was likely to send another rescissions package to Congress.

Indian state blames cricket team for deadly stampede

State authorities blamed the management of India’s Royal Challengers Bengaluru cricket team for last month’s deadly stampede during celebrations for their first IPL title.Eleven fans were crushed to death and more than 50 wounded in a stampede near the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium after hundreds of thousands packed the streets in the southern city of Bengaluru on June 4, to welcome home their hero Virat Kohli and his RCB cricket team.Karnataka state authorities singled out the RCB, its partners and the state cricket association for their mismanagement of the event in a report made public on Thursday.It said organisers had not submitted a “formal request” or provided enough detail for permission to be granted for the celebrations. “Consequently, the permission was not granted,” it said.The team went ahead with its victory parade despite police rejecting RCB’s request, according to the report.AFP has been unable to contact RCB for comment.Four people, including a senior executive at RCB, representatives of event organisers DNA and Karnataka State Cricket Association, were detained by police in the days following the stampede.Players were parading the trophy near the stadium a day after their win over Punjab Kings in the final in Ahmedabad when the stampede occurred.The dead were aged between 14 and 29.Prime Minister Narendra Modi called it “absolutely heartrending” and Kohli, who top-scored in the final, was “at a loss for words” after it unfolded.India coach Gautam Gambhir said he was never a fan of roadshows, and the authorities should not have allowed the mass celebrations if they weren’t prepared.

China mulls economy-boosting measures to counter ‘severe situation’

China has a “plentiful” toolbox to avoid an economic slump in the second half of the year, its commerce minister said Friday as he admitted it faced a “very severe and complex situation”.Growth hit 5.2 percent in the second quarter, official data showed Tuesday, but analysts have warned that more must be done to boost sluggish domestic consumption as exports face the knock-on effects of global trade turmoil.Retail sales rose far less than expected last month and were much weaker than May, suggesting efforts to kickstart consumption have fallen flat.”We are still facing a very severe and complex situation. Global changes are unstable and uncertain. Some of our policies will provide some new responses according to the times and circumstances,” Wang Wentao told journalists at a news briefing.”Our toolbox is plentiful, and we will be fully prepared.”Asked specifically about China’s reliance on exports, Wang suggested the government was preparing policies to “further stimulate the momentum of our consumption development”.”China’s economy is improving, and the long-term fundamentals have not changed, the consumption market’s characteristics of great potential, strong resilience and vitality have not changed,” he said.Wang also namechecked Beijing-based toymaker Pop Mart, whose Labubu monster dolls have become a must-have item internationally, adorning the handbags of celebrities such as Rihanna and Dua Lipa.”We are also promoting new forms of consumption… for example Pop Mart, these kinds of new trends, new fashions and styles… the Labubu phenomenon has swept the world,” he said. – US decoupling ‘impossible’ -Beijing is battling to shift towards a growth model propelled more by domestic demand than the traditional key drivers of infrastructure investment, manufacturing and exports.That desired transformation has become more urgent since Donald Trump came to office. The US president has imposed tolls on China and most other major trading partners, upending trade norms and endangering Beijing’s exports at a time it needs them more than ever to stimulate economic activity. The two superpowers have sought to de-escalate their row after reaching a framework for a deal at talks in London last month, but observers warn of lingering uncertainty.Wang said Friday that despite “storms and rain”, Washington remained an important trading partner.Even though China-US trade has declined proportionally for each country, overall bilateral trade has remained stable, Wang said.In a sign of progress, US tech giant Nvidia said this week that it would resume sales of its H20 artificial intelligence chips to China after Washington pledged to remove licensing restrictions that had halted exports.China’s commerce ministry acknowledged the US decision in a statement Friday afternoon, even as it called for Washington to “abandon its zero-sum mentality”.”China believes that the United States should… continue to cancel a series of unreasonable economic and trade restrictive measures,” the statement read.Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has met with Chinese leaders this week in Beijing, telling journalists Wednesday that his firm was “doing our best” to serve the country’s vast semiconductor market.Wang praised recent visits by Huang and other US executives on Friday, noting that the solid economic and popular basis for US-China cooperation “makes artificial decoupling and severing supply chains impossible”, he said.Yet an inconsistent tune has “severely impacted and disrupted normal trade cooperation between China and the United States”, said Wang.Since Trump’s first term, “the trend of the trade frictions provoked by the United States has had ups and downs”, he said.