The adaptation plan — a revision of an earlier plan drawn up in 2015 — was compiled ahead of the December effectuation of the Climate Change Adaptation Law, which is aimed at creating a society that can keep up with the progression of global warming.

Global warming can be countered through mitigation, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and adaptation, by reducing the impact of global warming.

The new plan will make clear which measures will be carried out by which ministry or agency.

For developing countries that are susceptible to the effects of global warming, the government will also set up a framework to utilize Japan’s technological strength and scientific knowledge to forecast the impact in the Asia-Pacific region and support their efforts toward adaptation.

Accordingly, the government will set up a panel to promote adaptation with the participation of relevant ministries and agencies. The panel, to be headed by the environment minister, is scheduled to hold its first meeting on Dec. 3.

Govts already taking action

Ahead of the enforcement of the Climate Change Adaptation Law, the central government and local authorities are already taking steps to protect farm produce from such climate change-related phenomena as record-breaking torrential rain and extreme heat.

The city of Uwajima, Ehime Prefecture, was hit by landslides amid heavy rain in western Japan in July. “In recent years, droughts and heavy rain have intensified tremendously,” said Keiro Wada, chief of the city government’s agricultural and forestry section.

Shinji Ninomiya, a 38-year-old tangerine farmer in the city, saw his about 100-square-meter field of tangerine trees swept away by a landslide. Landslides have occurred three or four times in the last decade and it takes three years to produce the fruit from seedlings, Ninomiya said.

“We can’t prevent it from happening, because our field is on a mountain slope,” he lamented.

In an effort to prevent future damage, the city government and the prefectural government are considering a plan to build an agricultural park near the mountain summit, where there is little possibility a landslide will occur.

The Saitama prefectural government has developed Sai no Kizuna, a high quality variety of rice resistant to high temperatures. The rice plant is about 15 centimeters shorter than that of the well-known Koshihikari variety, making it resistant to typhoons.

Rice farmers have been able to produce Sai no Kizuna even in intense heat. “By continuing to make modifications, we hope to develop a variety that won’t be affected by weather,” said Makoto Arakawa, 49, of the prefecture’s Saitama Agricultural Technology Research Center.

In addition to developing varieties resistant to heat, the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry is checking the water retention capabilities of paddy fields as a measure to cope with heavy rain.

“If we can learn the amount of water that can be retained, inundation can be delayed, reducing damage to residential areas and elsewhere,” a ministry official in charge said.

The ministry is also studying how to strengthen soil layers, to prevent fertile soil from getting washed away by heavy rain.

A special report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in October stated that the world’s average temperature has already risen by about 1 C from the level before the Industrial Revolution.

If the warming continues, the figure could climb another 1.5 C between 2030 and 2052. The U.N. body has listed possible effects of global warming based on temperature increases.

“It’s important to implement measures that fully consider precipitation patterns and temperature fluctuations,” said Takasaki City University of Economics Prof. Takeshi Mizuguchi, who specializes in measures to counter global warming.

Hassan al-Kontar’s plight became widely known after he shared posts on social media that showed him surviving on donated airline meals, washing and giving himself a haircut in the toilets at Kuala Lumpur International Airport’s Terminal 2.

He had been stuck since March — blocked from entering Malaysia because of visa issues and barred from travelling to other countries, and was detained last month by immigration officials.

“I know I look like someone who ran from the stone or middle ages. I’m sorry for that,” the smiling 36-year-old said in a Twitter video Monday, looking tired and stroking his bushy beard.

“For the last eight years, it was (a) hard, long journey. The last 10 months, it was very hard and cold,” he added.

After Kontar’s arrest, Malaysian officials had said they were going to work with Syrian authorities to deport him back to his war-torn homeland.

But Kontar’s lawyer Andrew Brouwer said they brought the Syrian back to the Kuala Lumpur airport on Monday before he was put on a Vancouver-bound flight.

Brouwer said his client was recognised by Canada as a refugee and was granted permanent residency under the country’s refugee sponsorship programme.

“We were of course very pleased that Malaysia appeared to agree and abide by international law,” he said.

Malaysia’s immigration office said in a statement Tuesday it had held talks “on the basis of concern and humanity… with the embassy of the country that agreed to receive his relocation,” without naming Canada.

‘No more airports’

In the video on his Twitter account Kontar said he was in transit in Taiwan and that he would be reaching his “final destination” the following day.

“I could not do it without the support and the prayers from all of you,” he said.

In Vancouver, he was greeted by Laurie Cooper, who with the help of a group of residents in the ski resort of Whistler and the British Columbia Muslim Association, brought him to Canada and raised almost Can$15,000 for his fresh start.

Public broadcaster CBC said he looked “fragile in a blue T-shirt and jeans, his curly hair long and his beard unkempt” after disembarking.

“I’ve done my time in airports, no more airports,” he told the network after a sleepless flight across the Pacific.

“In Canada, here you have something very special, you have an amazing group of people who believe they can make a difference, and they can.”

Looking at Cooper, he said: “When I was thinking of hope, her face was coming to my mind.”

Before climbing into a car and heading to Whistler, where a bed, fresh clothes and a hotel job were awaiting him, he whispered to himself: “I will be fine.”

Kontar is not the only asylum seeker who has been left in limbo at an airport for a long period of time.

In 2015 an Iraqi family spent more than two months in an empty smoking cubicle in a Moscow airport, relying on passengers to bring them food and water.

Kontar’s case also recalls the 2004 film “The Terminal,” in which Tom Hanks plays a man who finds himself stuck in a New York airport after his government collapses, rendering his papers useless.

Millions of Syrians have fled a devastating seven-year civil war that has left more than 350,000 people dead.

More than two dozen wrought-iron steps from the original spiral structure, from between the second and third floors of the Paris landmark, were sold to a Middle East collector for 169,000 euros ($190,000) after a bidding-war in the French capital.

Auction house Artcurial originally estimated the sale price to be between 40,000 and 60,000 euros.

The stairs, which stand 4.3 metres high (13 foot) and were part of a private Canadian collection, date from 1889 when the legendary French engineer Gustave Eiffel built the 324-metre edifice as the centrepiece of the Paris Universal Exhibition.

It soon became the most iconic feature on the Paris skyline and is France’s most visited monument despite suffering calls for its demolition in the years after the exhibition.

It is still the country’s third tallest structure, and was the highest building in the world for 41 years until the construction of the Chrysler Building in New York in 1930.

The stairs were removed from the tower in 1983 to make way for a lift and cut into 24 sections, ranging from two to nine metres high.

Several were bought by museums or ended up as historic installations in prestigious sites around the world.

Artcurial sold a separate section of the tower — just 14 steps — for 523,800 euros to an Asian buyer in 2016.

Users of the app can report groups practicing unrecognised faiths or unorthodox interpretations of Indonesia’s six officially recognised religions, including Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism.

“Smart Pakem”, which was launched Sunday and is available for free in the Google Play store, was created by the Jakarta Prosecutor’s Office, which said it would help educate the public and modernise the current reporting process.

The app will also list religious edicts and blacklisted organisations and will allow users to file complaints instantaneously, instead going through the often cumbersome process of submitting a written accusation to a government office.

“The objective…is to provide easier access to information about the spread of beliefs in Indonesia, to educate the public and to prevent them from following doctrines from an individual or a group that are not in line with the regulations,” Nirwan Nawawi, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, told AFP in a statement.

However, rights groups fear the application could be misused by increasingly powerful hardline Islamic groups and widen divisions in a country where harassment of religious and other minorities is not uncommon.

“This is going from bad to worse — another dangerous step to discriminate religious minorities in Indonesia,” said Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono.

Bonar Tigor Naipospos, vice chairman of rights group Setara Institute, added: “This is dangerous because if mainstream society doesn’t like (a group) they’ll report them through the application — this will create problems.”

Hundreds of thousands of people across the sprawling Southeast Asian archipelago who adhere to non-recognised animist and mystical faiths have long suffered discrimination and limited access to public services.

This year an angry mob rampaged through a small community of the Ahmadiyya Islamic minority on the island of Lombok, destroying homes and forcing dozens of members to flee.

The religious sect has been declared heretical by the Indonesian Ulema Counci(MUI).

Indonesia, a 17,000 island archipelago nation, is often touted for its diversity and religious tolerance, but it has a wide-ranging blasphemy law that has sparked a backlash.

Criticising religion — particularly Islam, which is followed by nearly 90 percent of Indonesia’s 260 million citizens — can land offenders in jail.

This summer, an ethnic Chinese Buddhist was jailed for insulting Islam after asking her neighbourhood mosque to lower its sound system during the daily call to prayer because she found it too loud. Her jailing was widely criticised.

Yogvedant Poddar, 21, was removed from the Jet Airways flight after a passenger spotted him typing “Terrorist on flight, I destroy women’s hearts” into his phone.

The caption accompanied a photo he had taken of himself which showed half of his face covered with a handkerchief, Kolkata deputy police commissioner Avvaru Ravindranath told AFP.

Irish national Benjamin Plackett was sitting behind Poddar on the Monday Kolkata to Mumbai service flight and alerted the cabin crew as the plane was being prepared for take-off.

Poddar was taken off the flight and detained for almost ten hours before being let go without charge, Ravindranath said.

“We questioned him extensively. We found no terror link. It was a message that was meant exclusively for his friends and was not intended to threaten or hurt anyone,” said the police official.

Jet Airways said in a statement that a passenger had been “deplaned for security reasons”.

“The aircraft departed for its destination with a revised flight timing” after the necessary checks had been carried out, the airline added.

In September an Indian passenger on a GoAir flight sparked panic in mid-air when he tried to open a plane door, apparently mistaking it for the toilet.

The same week, a passenger was kicked off an IndiGo service after he tried to access the cockpit to charge his phone while the plane was preparing for take-off.

India’s aviation market is witnessing a massive increase in passenger numbers as its growing middle class take advantage of cheap fares and better connectivity, with many taking to the skies for the first time.

Wildlife rangers and volunteers used pontoons to float the killer pygmy whales — part of a group of 12 found beached in the country’s far north on Sunday — and take them about 400 metres (437 yards) offshore.

“We are hopeful that the six whales that have been refloated will remain at sea,” the Department of Conservation (DOC) department said in a statement, adding that another two whales were euthanised after continually restranding.

Two of the pod were already dead, and two more died after being found by rescuers on the North Island’s west coast, with the remaining eight transported by truck to the east coast on Monday, where sea conditions were calmer.

The survival of even part of the pod was a rare success for DOC as it struggled to deal with four separate strandings in quick succession, including a sperm whale and a pygmy sperm whale in separate incidents on the North Island coast.

By far the largest was when up to 145 pilot whales were found late Saturday washed up on Stewart Island, 30 kilometres (19 miles) off the southern coast of the South Island.

Half the animals were already dead and the rest were put down because there was no chance of rescuing them from the remote location

US travel blogger Liz Carlson was among a group of hikers on Stewart Island that found the whales and she described her frustration at being unable to help the huge sea creatures.

“When we realised the horror of what we were seeing, we dropped everything and ran straight into the water,” she posted on social media.

“Desperately we grabbed their tails and pushed and yelled, before we got hammered by them thrashing around.

“It was useless — they were so big and heavy and the realisation we could do nothing to save them was the worst feeling I’ve ever experienced.”

The reason whales and dolphins strand is not fully understood but factors can include sickness, navigational error, geographical features, the presence of predators, and extreme weather.