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Tokyo’s Railway Operators removing trash cans at stations

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 07, 2023

Trash cans have been disappearing from train stations as railway operators have grown weary of passengers’ bad manners such as disposing of household garbage at stations.

Railroad companies were often required to seal off or remove trash cans for security reasons such as counterterrorism measures in the past, but now dustbins are being removed for sanitary reasons such as used masks being thrown away at stations amid the pandemic.

Of the 11 major railway operators in the Tokyo metropolitan area, only East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) has trash cans at stations.

Seibu Railway Co. removed all trash cans from stations in March 2021. A sign on the platform at Seibu-Shinjuku Stations states: “Take your trash home with you.”

Beverage makers place recycling bins next to vending machines to collect plastic bottles, cans and glass bottles. However, there is nowhere to dispose of tissues and other trash.

From April to June 2020, following a state of emergency declaration due to the spread of the coronavirus, Seibu Railway temporarily sealed off trash cans to mitigate the spread of infection via garbage. After the declaration was lifted, the company made trash cans available again but began to often see cases in which used masks were discarded in dustbins.

Seibu Railway for a long time had trouble related to passengers’ bad manners regarding the use of trash cans, so the company decided to remove dustbins from all stations.

According to a Seibu Railway official, some complaints were initially made as to why only Seibu did not have trash cans at stations, but now there are almost none.

“We’ve gained a certain level of understanding,” the official said.

Customers’ reactions are divided.

“As long as safety measures are necessary and bad manners continue, it can’t be helped,” said a 48-year-old woman from Higashi-Murayama, Tokyo, who uses Seibu-Shinjuku Station.

A 78-year-old man from the same city said: “When I buy and eat food at the station, I can’t throw away the garbage. I want [them] to be installed again.”

Safety issue

Among the railway operators in the Tokyo area, Tokyu, Keikyu and Keio corporations were the first to have no dustbins at their stations.

After the 2004 Madrid train bombings terrorist attack, most Japanese railroad companies removed trash cans from stations as a safety measure. Many later reinstalled them due to requests from passengers, but some did not and continue to have none at stations.

The companies that had returned trash cans began to be bothered by bad manners, such as the disposing of garbage without sorting it as specified, which has become more common amid recent strict requirements for the sorting of household and other waste.

Some people threw out household garbage at stations, including food scraps and trash that is difficult to dispose of at home. There was even a case in which a hypodermic needle was found.

“It became a safety issue for cleaning contractors, too” said a Tobu Railway Co. official.

Against this backdrop, the coronavirus pandemic broke out, and seven railway companies began eliminating station trash cans from 2020 onward.

JR East still has garbage cans at stations because it has huge terminals such as Tokyo Station, where a variety of items, including boxed lunches and souvenirs, are sold to many long-distance travellers.

The company has removed some trash bins mainly on conventional-line platforms but is keeping them on platforms where Shinkansen bullet trains and limited express trains stop because many passengers throw out trash such as bento boxes there.

“Many stores operate at stations, so we don’t plan to remove all trash cans,” said an official at the JR East Metropolitan Area Headquarters.

However, JR East also suffers from passengers’ bad manners. Late last year, the company began a pilot program at Tokyo Station and two other stations to call the trash cans “recycling stations” and ask customers to sort their trash into five different types, up from three.

“By promoting recycling, we hope to raise customers’ awareness about waste,” said a JR East official.

The Japan Times

Asia News Network

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First virtual student ‘enrols’ at Tsinghua University

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 07, 2023

Hua Zhibing, China’s first virtual student enabled by the country’s largest pre-trained model, made its debut on Tuesday.

With the move, Hua officially became a student in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Hua, a “woman”, is able to compose poetry and music and has some ability in reasoning and emotional interaction.

The virtual student was co-developed by the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, Zhipu AI and a company, Xiaoice. It is powered by the second generation of WuDao, a pre-trained model.

“Compared with other common pre-trained models like GPT-3, WuDao is a multimodal model, which can understand and generate pictures and other content formats,” said Tang Jie, deputy dean of academic affairs at the academy and a Tsinghua University professor.

GPT-3 is English-centered, while WuDao is multilingual, including in both English and Chinese. In the future, more languages will be added, Tang said.

“WuDao is also more open than GPT-3 and many other pre-trained models. The training data, programming codes and model APIs are all open to the public,” he added.

Tang pointed out that the potential of such models is huge, as many real scenarios can use the same model with more general large pre-trained models.

“The key significance of WuDao is that it lowers the application threshold of AI and reduces the cost of the training process of machine learning models, including labour costs and carbon emissions,” he said.

China Daily

Asia News Network

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No Thais reported killed in Turkey-Syria quakes as death toll soars over 4,300

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 07, 2023

So far, no Thais have been reported injured or killed in the huge earthquakes that hit central Turkey and northwest Syria on Monday, according to the Foreign Ministry.

The epicentre of the magnitude 7.8 quake early on Monday was Karamanmaras province near the Turkey-Syria border, about 600 kilometres east of the Turkish capital Ankara, said Ministry spokeswoman Kanchana Patarachoke on Monday evening.

The quake was also felt around the Mediterranean rim in Cyprus and Lebanon. It was followed in the early afternoon by another large, magnitude 7.7 earthquake centred on Turkey’s Gaziantep province, which was also felt in Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey.

The death toll surpassed 4,300 as of 9am Thai time on Tuesday, with Turkish authorities reporting 2,921 fatalities and Syria recording 1,444, bringing the total to 4,365. However, the toll is expected to rise significantly as search and rescue teams examine collapsed buildings.

Kanchana said the Foreign Ministry expressed its condolences to the government and people of Turkey. She added that the ministry is ready to assist Thais in Turkey via the Royal Thai Embassy in Ankara.

Kanchana said the earthquake’s epicentre is some distance from Thai communities living in Istanbul and Ankara. Only a small number of Thais live in Gaziantep where the second quake hit, she said.

Thais affected by the earthquake can reach the embassy in Ankara by phoning +90 (533) 641 5698, available 24/7. People can also visit the official embassy page at facebook.com/rteankara/ for updates on the incident.

Related Stories

Powerful Earthquake Kills More Than 1400 in Turkey and Syria

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Ohio carries out controlled release of chemicals at train derailment site

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 07, 2023

Crews in eastern Ohio conducted operations on Monday to drain and burn off an “unstable” toxic chemical cargo from five rail cars of a freight train that derailed in a fiery wreck three days earlier, prompting mass evacuations, authorities said.

The “controlled release” of pressurized vinyl chloride, a highly flammable and carcinogenic gas, began with a scheduled explosion, followed by continuous burning of the substance, said Sandy Mackey, a spokesperson for the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.

No injuries were reported, Mackey added.

Live video footage shot by ABC affiliate WYTV showed a towering column of thick, black smoke rising from the accident site in East Palestine, Ohio, a town close to the Pennsylvania border northwest of Pittsburgh.

The train, operated by Norfolk Southern Railroad, derailed late on Friday (February 3), setting off a massive fire that forced the evacuation of homes in the immediate vicinity.

Public safety concerns deepened after the railroad said pressure-relief devices on some of the stricken cars were found on Sunday (February 5) to have stopped working, which the company said could “result in a catastrophic failure.”

Vinyl chloride is a colourless, industrially produced gas that burns easily and is used primarily in the manufacture of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe and other products, according to the National Cancer Institute. It also is a byproduct of cigarette smoke.

The precise means by which crews vented the toxic gas was not explained. But the railroad said its workers had prepared drainage pits and embankments, apparently to contain residue from the release. It said state environmental officials would monitor air quality.

The company said in a short statement nearly two hours after the operation began that the “controlled breach of several rail cars has been completed successfully.”

Reuters

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Major earthquake kills 3,700 in Turkey and Syria, weather hits survivors

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 07, 2023

A huge earthquake killed more than 3,700 people across a swathe of Turkey and northwest Syria on Monday, with freezing winter weather adding to the plight of the thousands left injured or homeless and hampering efforts to find survivors.

The magnitude 7.8 quake brought down whole apartment blocks in Turkish cities and piled more devastation on millions of Syrians displaced by years of war.

It struck before sunrise in harsh weather and was followed in the early afternoon by another large quake.

In Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey, a woman speaking next to the wreckage of the seven-storey block where she lived said: “We were shaken like a cradle. There were nine of us at home. Two sons of mine are still in the rubble, I’m waiting for them.”

She was nursing a broken arm and had injuries to her face.

“It was like the apocalypse,” said Abdul Salam al-Mahmoud, a Syrian in the northern town of Atareb. “It’s bitterly cold and there’s heavy rain, and people need saving.”

The earthquake was the biggest recorded worldwide by the US Geological Survey since a tremor in the remote South Atlantic in August 2021.

In Turkey, the death toll stood at 2,316, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said, making it the country’s deadliest earthquake since a tremor of similar magnitude in 1999 devastated the heavily populated eastern Marmara Sea region near Istanbul, killing more than 17,000.

At least 1,444 people were killed in Syria in Monday’s quake and about 3,500 injured, according to figures from the Damascus government and rescue workers in the northwestern region controlled by insurgents.

Poor internet connections and damaged roads between some of the worst-hit cities in Turkey’s south, homes to millions of people, hindered efforts to assess and address the impact.

Temperatures in some areas were expected to fall to near freezing overnight, worsening conditions for people trapped under rubble or left homeless. Rain fell on Monday after snowstorms swept the country at the weekend.

More than 13,000 people were injured in Turkey from the quake.

In the Turkish city of Iskenderun, rescuers climbed an enormous pile of debris that was once part of a state hospital’s intensive care unit in search of survivors. Health workers did what they could to tend to the new rush of injured patients.

“We have a patient who was taken into surgery but we don’t know what happened,” said Tulin, a woman in her 30s, standing outside the hospital, wiping away tears and praying.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, preparing for a tough election in May, called the quake a historic disaster and the worst earthquake to hit the country since 1939, but said authorities were doing all they could.

“Everyone is putting their heart and soul into efforts although the winter season, cold weather and the earthquake happening during the night makes things more difficult,” he said.

The second quake was big enough to bring down more buildings and, like the first, was felt across the region, endangering rescuers struggling to pull casualties from the rubble.

In Syria, already wrecked by more than 11 years of civil war, the health ministry said 711 people had been killed. In the Syrian rebel-held northwest emergency workers said 733 people had died.

The United Nations says 4.1 million people, many of them displaced by the conflict and living in camps, depend already on cross-border humanitarian aid in northwest Syria and international support efforts are stretched and underfunded.

“Syrian communities are simultaneously hit with an ongoing cholera outbreak and harsh winter events including heavy rain and snow over the weekend,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York.

In the government-controlled city of Aleppo, footage on Twitter showed two neighbouring buildings collapsing one after the other, filling streets with billowing dust.

Two residents of the city, which has been heavily damaged in the war, said the buildings had fallen in the hours after the quake, which was felt as far away as Cyprus and Lebanon.

In the Syrian government-held city of Hama, a Reuters journalist saw an apparently lifeless child carried from the ruins of a building.

In the rebel-held town of Jandaris in Aleppo province, a mound of concrete, steel rods and bundles of clothes lay where a multi-storey building once stood.

“There were 12 families under there. Not a single one came out. Not one,” said a thin young man, his eyes wide open in shock and his hand bandaged.

Raed al-Saleh of the Syrian White Helmets, a rescue service in rebel-held territory known for pulling people from the ruins of buildings destroyed by air strikes, said they were in “a race against time to save the lives of those under the rubble”.

Syrian state television showed rescue teams searching for survivors in heavy rain and sleet. President Bashar al-Assad held an emergency cabinet meeting to review the damage and discuss next steps, his office said.

In the Turkish city of Diyarbakir, Reuters journalists saw dozens of rescue workers searching through a mound of debris, all that was left of a big building, and hauling off bits of wreckage as they looked for survivors. Occasionally they raised their hands and called for quiet, listening for sounds of life.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Monday about the earthquake, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said.

He made the call “in the first instance to offer condolences and to make clear…that anything Turkey needed that we could provide, they should pick up the phone and let us know,” Price said. Erdogan said 45 countries had offered to help with the search and rescue efforts in Turkey.

The earthquake also halted operations at Turkey’s oil export hub in Ceyhan and stopped crude flows from Iraq and Azerbaijan.

Turkey’s lira hit a record low of 18.85 , in early trade and the country’s stocks tumbled around 5%, although both pared losses later with the currency ending the day flat and equity indexes closing 1.3%-2.2% lower.

In the Turkish city of Malatya, a rescue worker crawled into a collapsed building, trying to identify a survivor trapped under the wreckage, in footage released by emergency agency AFAD.

“What colour are you wearing? Are you wearing pink? Please take care of yourself for the moment, I cannot see anything else,” the rescue worker could be heard saying.

Reuters

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Powerful Earthquake Kills More Than 1400 in Turkey and Syria

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 06, 2023

More than 1,400 people were killed and thousands injured on Monday when a huge earthquake struck central Turkey and northwest Syria, pulversing apartment blocks and heaping more destruction on Syrian cities already devastated by years of war.

The magnitude 7.8 quake, which hit in the early darkness of a winter morning, worst to strike Turkey this century. It was also felt in Cyprus and Lebanon. It was followed in the early afternoon by another large quake, magnitude 7.7.

It was not immediately clear how much damage had been done by the second quake, also felt across the region as rescue workers were struggling to pull casualties from rubble in bitter weather.

“We were shaken like a cradle. There were nine of us at home. Two sons of mine are still in the rubble, I’m waiting for them,” said a woman with a broken arm and injuries to her face, speaking in an ambulance near the wreckage of a seven-storey block where she had lived in Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said 912 people were killed, 5,383 injured, and 2,818 buildings had collapsed in Turkey.

Erdogan said he could not predict how much the death toll would rise as search and rescue efforts continued.

“Everyone is putting their heart and soul into efforts although winter season, cold weather and the earthquake happening during the night makes things more difficult,” he said.

Live footage from Turkish state broadcaster TRT showed a building collapse in the southern province of Adana after the second quake. It was not immediately clear if the building was evacuated.

In Syria, already wrecked by more than 11 years of civil war, the health ministry said more than 326 people had been killed and 1,042 injured. In the Syrian rebel-held northwest, rescuers said 221 people had died.

In Diyarbakir, Reuters journalists saw dozens of rescue workers searching through a mound of debris, all that was left of a big building, hauling off bits of wreckage as they looked for survivors. Occasionally they raised their hands and called for quiet, listening for sounds of life.

Men carried a girl wrapped in blankets from a collapsed building in the city.

“We woke up to a big noise and severe shaking. There were two aftershocks right after that,” said Meryem, 29, from the southeastern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, near the epicentre.

“I was so scared, thought it will never stop. I took some things for my one-year old son and left the building.”

Footage circulated on Twitter showed two neighbouring buildings collapsing one after the other in Syria’s Aleppo, filling the street with billowing dust. Two residents of the city, which has been heavily damaged in the war, said the buildings had fallen in the hours after the quake.

In the Syrian rebel-held town of Jandaris in Aleppo province, a mound of concrete, steel rods and bundles of clothes lay where a multi-storey building once stood.

“There were 12 families under there. Not a single one came out. Not one,” said a thin young man, his eyes wide open in shock and his hand bandaged.

Raed Fares of the Syrian White Helmets, a rescue service in rebel-held territory known for pulling people from the ruins of buildings destroyed by air strikes, said they were in “a race against time to save the lives of those under the rubble”.

Abdul Salam al Mahmoud, a Syrian in the town of Atareb, said it felt “like the apocalypse”.

Syrian state television showed footage of rescue teams searching for survivors in heavy rain and sleet. President Bashar al-Assad held an emergency cabinet meeting to review the damage and discuss the next steps, his office said.

People in Damascus and in the Lebanese cities of Beirut and Tripoli ran into the street and took to their cars to get away from their buildings in fear of collapses, witnesses said.

Footage on broadcaster CNNTurk showed the historic Gaziantep Castle was severely damaged.

In the Turkish city of Malatya, a rescue worker crawled into a collapsed building, trying to identify a survivor trapped under the wreckage, in footage released by Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD).

“What colour are you wearing? Are you wearing pink? Please take care of yourself for the moment, I cannot see anything else,” the rescue worker could be heard saying.

Erdogan said 45 countries had offered to help the search and rescue efforts.

The United States was “profoundly concerned” about the quake and was monitoring events closely, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Twitter. “We stand ready to provide any and all needed assistance,” he said.

The US Geological Survey said quake struck at a depth of 17.9 km. It reported a series of earthquakes, one of 6.7 magnitude.

The region straddles seismic fault lines.

“The combination of large magnitude and shallow depth made this earthquake extremely destructive,” Mohammad Kashani, Associate Professor of Structural and Earthquake Engineering at the University of Southampton, said.

It was Turkey’s most severe quake since 1999, when one of similar magnitude devastated Izmit and the heavily populated eastern Marmara Sea region near Istanbul, killing more than 17,000.

Tremors were felt in the Turkish capital of Ankara, 460 km (286 miles) northwest of the epicentre, and in Cyprus, where police reported no damage.