The LTA clarified the regulation in response to queries from The Straits Times on Sameride, a carpool service due to launch a Singapore-Johor Baru carpooling service from Monday.

According to a press release on the Sameride website, more than 300 commuters have pre-registered for the service in the app over the last two weeks.

The company’s first route for commuters was established in 2016 in the Washington, DC Metro Area in the United States, its website says.

For its latest route, Sameride estimates that users will be able to significantly reduce the cost of their commute between Johor and Singapore by up to 50 per cent compared to taxi services.

The app also aims to expedite travel time by reducing traffic on the cross-border route.

The LTA said it takes a “serious view towards” foreign registered vehicles illegally providing hire-and-reward services, and said it will carry out strong enforcement action against such illegal activities.

It has advised the public not to engage cross-border hire services by individuals using unlicensed vehicles.

The LTA explained that such vehicles may not be sufficiently insured against third-party liabilities and passengers who ride such vehicles may not be able to claim insurance if they are involved in traffic accidents during their travel.

Those caught providing hire-and-reward services, including cross-border carpooling service without a valid PSVL, can be jailed up to six months, fined up to $3,000 or both.

The vehicle used may also be forfeited.

ST understands that Sameride has not sought approval from the LTA to launch the service, and has contacted the company for comment.

At least 10 people were reported killed — one each in Kananga and Abuyog towns in Leyte province and eight, including a 3-year-old boy, in Iloilo and Capiz provinces.

Six other people were reported missing in Iloilo.

More than 16,000 people spent the night in evacuation centers as Ursula (international name: Phanfone) blew in with monster winds that tore roofs off houses, schools, commercial and government buildings, felled trees and electric posts on Tuesday.

Thousands stranded

Thousands more who were trying to get home for Christmas were stranded at ports in the region after the Coast Guard shuttered shipping as the typhoon’s powerful winds began to make sea travel dangerous on Monday night.

Domestic airlines serving routes to the Visayas canceled 40 flights, but Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila remained busy as flights to and from parts of the country unaffected by the storm and international flights continued.

The weather bureau Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) said Ursula strengthened slightly overnight on Tuesday and was gusting at 195 kilometers per hour, which can knock down small trees and destroy flimsy houses.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Ursula had made seven landfalls in Eastern Visayas, Western Visayas and Mimaropa, Pagasa said.

The typhoon first hit land at Salcedo, Eastern Samar, at 4:45 p.m. on Tuesday then made another landfall in Tacloban City, Leyte, and in Cabucgayan, Biliran, during the night.

It went on to blow toward land, hitting Gigantes Islands in Carles, Iloilo, at 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday, then slamming into Ibajay, Aklan province, six hours later.

The storm then hit land on Semirara Island in Caluya, Antique, at 1 p.m. and finally in Bulalacao, Oriental Mindoro, two hours later.

On way out

As of 4 p.m. on Christmas Day, Ursula’s eye was 15 km south-southwest of San Jose, Occidental Mindoro. It was packing winds up to 140 km per hour and gusts of up to 195 kph.

Pagasa weather specialist Aldczar Aurelio said the typhoon was moving west-northwest at 20 kph. He said the storm was expected to be over the West Philippine Sea by Thursday afternoon, gradually weakening as it neared the boundary line of Philippine territory.

Aurelio said Ursula would further lose strength by Saturday afternoon, turning into a tropical storm as it exited the country.

As of Wednesday afternoon, tropical cyclone wind Signal No. 3 was raised in southern Oriental Mindoro, southern Occidental Mindoro, Calamian Islands and Caluya, while Signal No. 2 was up in Romblon, Batangas, Marinduque, the rest of Oriental Mindoro, the rest of Occidental Mindoro (including Lubang Island), Cuyo Islands, extreme northern Palawan, northern Antique and northwestern Aklan.

Bataan, Cavite, Laguna, the rest of northern Palawan, southern Quezon, Capiz, the rest of Antique and the rest of Aklan were under Signal No. 1.

Though weaker, Ursula tracked the same path as Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (Haiyan), the Philippines’ deadliest cyclone on record, which left more 7,300 people dead or missing in 2013.

Worst-hit provinces

Ursula also battered Boracay Island in Aklan, with residents reporting damaged houses and flooding on Christmas Day.

Among the worst hit were Samar Island, Tacloban, Capiz and Aklan, and northern Iloilo and northern Antique.

In Leyte, strong winds blew three barges to shore at Barangay Punta, Ormoc City, on Tuesday night, the Coast Guard said. One of the barges hit a house, but no one was hurt, it said.

National Grid Corporation of the Philippines said three 138-kiloVolt lines and three 230-kV lines tripped at the height of the typhoon, cutting electricity to the entire island of Samar, Leyte, Biliran and Bohol.

All of Aklan and two towns in northern Antique also lost power after strong winds damaged the 138-kV Panit-an-Nabas line.

Parts of Iloilo and Capiz also experienced power outages.

Flooding reported

Roberto Nuñez, Western Visayas civil defense director, said evacuation and flooding were reported in the northern areas of Panay Island, especially in Capiz and Aklan.

Capiz Gov. Esteban Evan Contreras said among the worst flooded was President Roxas, where floodwaters reached chest-high in the town center.

Provincial disaster officer Judy Grace Pelaez said Ursula, though weaker than Yolanda, brought heavier rains.

She said the province’s first congressional district was first to report flooding, which was unusual because towns in the second district were usually the first to be flooded during typhoons.

“We are preparing for more flooding when the floodwaters from the second district flow into areas in the first district,” Pelaez said.

As Ursula moved west on Christmas Day, some evacuees were allowed to go home in Albay and Sorsogon provinces.

In Libon town, Albay, however, 251 evacuees were not allowed to return to their homes in Barangay Burabod that were damaged by a landslide on Dec. 2.

Ian James Secillano, municipal disaster official, said the evacuees would not be allowed to decamp until the government had provided a relocation site for them.

“As long as there is a threat of landslide, we will not allow them to go back to their houses. the long-term recommendation is to relocate them, probably in the nearby village,” Secillano said.

Temporary tariff rates may apply to more than 850 items of imported goods, which will be lower than the most-favored-nation tax rates, to increase imports and optimize the import structure, the commission said in a statement on the website.

From July 1, 2020, China will cut the most-favored-nation tax rates for 176 items of information technology products, and adjust some products’ temporary tariff rates accordingly, it said.

For frozen pork, the tariff rate will be temporarily reduced from 12 percent to 8 percent, a measure to increase the pork supply and tame pork prices in the domestic market. The rate for some raw materials of medicines for asthma and diabetes will be lowered to zero. Some equipment and parts for making semiconductor products will also be added to the temporary tariff rate list, according to the statement.

These tariff adjustments are conducive to reducing import costs as well as promoting orderly and free flows of international and domestic production factors. The move will also facilitate high-quality opening-up and accelerate the construction of free trade zones, to improve the global trade environment, the commission said.

The Wire said the official was summoned to the ministry on Saturday (Dec 21), one day after the ministry issued a statement saying that Dr Mahathir’s statement was factually incorrect and told him not to comment on India’s internal affairs.

A source said the Malaysian High Commission official was told that “such remarks are neither in keeping with accepted diplomatic practice of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, nor with the state of our bilateral relations”.

“It was also conveyed that such remarks are both ill-informed and insensitive.

“Malaysia was asked to take a long-term and strategic view of the bilateral relations,” added sources quoted by the Wire.

Dr Mahathir had said that the law was regrettable as it was discriminatory to Muslims.

The Prime Minister said he was sorry to see India, a secular state, acting to deprive some Muslims of citizenship.

“Already people are dying because of this law, so why is there a necessity to do this thing when all this while, for 70 years almost, they have lived together as citizens without any problems?

“If we do that here, you know what will happen.

“There will be chaos, there will be instability and everyone will suffer,” he told reporters after visiting the media centre during the Kuala Lumpur Summit on Friday (Dec 21).

India’s parliament recently passed a law offering citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

It allows fast-track citizenship for religious minorities, including Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from the three neighbouring countries.

However, it does not mention those of Islamic faith.

As a result, there have been violent demonstrations all over the country.

A few months ago, Dr Mahathir had also ruffled feathers in India for his comments on the situation in Kashmir.

That experience encouraged him to join Extinction Rebellion (XR) Indonesia, a social movement concerned with climate issues, and took part in its Rebellion Week march along Jl. Sudirman in Central Jakarta on Oct. 13. “We spend billions to find life on other planets, but trillions on killing life on earth,” read a sign carried by Reinaldi on the march.

“I have the same vision as XR Indonesia to save Planet Earth,” said Reinaldi, when asked why he wanted to participate in XR Indonesia’s campaign.

XR Indonesia, established in July 2019, is the first social movement to demand the government declare a climate emergency and to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2025 because the earth has already reached a point of crisis.

“We are facing a climate crisis,” XR Indonesia national coordinator Defio Nandi told The Jakarta Post recently. He added that the government’s plan to tackle the crisis was not enough.

XR Indonesia’s climate-crisis claims refer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Global Warming of 1.5 Degrees Celsius report, which implies that the earth will face catastrophic risks if its temperature rises above 2 degrees Celsius, or 1.5 degrees Celsius best-case scenario, by 2030 from the pre-industrial level. The earth’s temperature has risen by 1 degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution.

Referring to the IPCC’s report, senior manager for forest and climate of the World Resource Institute (WRI) Arief Wijaya agreed that Indonesia was facing a climate crisis.

“If the temperature rises beyond 2 degrees Celsius, the impact will be catastrophic on the earth and humans,” Arief told the Post, adding that there would be extreme disasters such as uncertain harvests, forest fires, extreme heat, rising sea levels and El Nino climate phenomenon.

Such catastrophes can be avoided if the earth’s temperature is kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius. “We only have 11 years until 2030 to avoid [the catastrophic damage],” Arief said.

Indonesia has committed to keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, or 1.5 degrees Celsius under the 2015 Paris Agreement, reducing its emissions unconditionally by 29 percent and conditionally by 41 percent from the business-as-usual scenario by 2030 as the country’s nationally determined contribution (NDC).

However, Defrio said that even Indonesia’s NDC was not enough to solve the climate crisis. This is supported by the IPCC’s report, which showed that the Paris Agreement’s pathway would not prevent the temperature from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Acknowledging the situation, XR Indonesia argues that the government needs to declare a climate emergency in order to bring about climate policy reform.

However, the Environment and Forestry Ministry’s climate change management director-general, Ruandha Agung Sugardiman, said that declaring a climate emergency would not make any sudden changes in the government or among the public. He said that Indonesia should instead focus on raising public awareness about climate issues, adding that the demands for development of the country remained high.

Environment director of the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) Medrilzam added that the current climate situation had yet to reach a point of crisis. “We are in a climate crisis when we reach dreadful and unlivable conditions,” he said. “We have not reached that stage yet.”

Bappenas has published the Low Carbon Development Indonesia (LCDI) report that outlines policy plans to reduce its emissions. By utilizing its natural resources sustainably as well as reducing its carbon and energy intensity, the plan expects the country’s greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced by 43 percent.

Indonesia’s carbon dioxide emissions were 543 million tons in 2018, according to the 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. It was an increase of 5.2 percent, from 516.1 million tons in 2017. Indonesia alone shared 1.6 percent of the total world’s emissions in 2018. In the 2007–2017 period, the country’s emissions growth was 2.9 percent.

In 2011, several provinces set targets for their emissions reduction by 2020. East Java, for example, planned to reduce carbon emissions by 37.4 percent, Bengkulu by 10 percent and South Sulawesi by 46 percent. But the three provinces have exceeded their emission targets since 2014, according to data from the WRI.

In one of its policy plans, the LCDI aims to advance the transition to renewable sources of energy and away from coal. Upping the share of renewable energy from 8 percent in 2018 to 23 percent in 2030 and 30 percent in 2045.

The government needs to provide incentives to attract investment in renewable energy, Defrio said. “This is an effective top-down approach.” (dfr/mfp)

“I believe, in the slowdown, regulatory uncertainty has played a role. That’s another factor that needs to be addressed. It’s important for India to take up reforms but to be able to do this with greater clarity and greater certainty would help,” Gopinath said at an event here in the national capital.

The IMF Chief Economist said that although reforms are important for an economy, they should come with clarity and certainty on the policies and regulations.

“Economies need reforms and they are important but there also needs to be an environment of regulatory certainty, which is the clear rules of the game, what the particular policies are and how it impacts you. There has to be clarity on that,” she said at industry chamber FICCI’s 92nd Annual Convention.

Gopinath further pointed out the opacity and confusion caused by India’s biggest tax reform, the Goods and Services Tax (GST), she said that more needs to be done to bring clarity and certainty regarding the regulations and tax rates.

“GST, which has been very important for formalising the Indian economy, but again there… certainly more needs to be done on what the rules are, what the rates are going to be…”

On her recent announcement that the IMF may sharply revise India’s growth outlook for the current fiscal, she said that some high frequency indicators do not show an increase in India’s growth in the third and fourth quarters as was anticipated earlier.

“Our expectation was that the first two quarters of fiscal 2019-20 would be a slowing scenario and then there would be an uptick in the third and fourth quarter. Looking at some of the high frequency indicators we are not seeing the kind of uptick we were projecting, so this is why I mentioned that we will be revising the numbers again in January.”

The plant is being planned in Techno Park Poi Pet, in Cambodia’s Banteay Meanchey province.

Naoto Sugita, the business park’s deputy managing director, told NNA News that TYO’s wholly owned, Poipet-based subsidiary Techno Park Poi Pet Pvt Corp had signed a contract with Japanese-Cambodian venture Sanco

Cambo Investment Group Corp, which operates a special economic zone (SEZ) in Poipet, to build the facility.

According to the report, TYO is set to complete construction of the 8,000-square-metre factory in Techno Park Poi Pet – four hours from Bangkok – in August next year.

The investment amount was not disclosed.

Official Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) data shows there were 141 Japanese investment projects in Cambodia as of September, with US$2.5 billion in capital investment.

Of these, 66 are located in SEZs with an estimated capital investment of $340 million, according to the CDC.

Cambodia Chamber of Commerce vice-president Lim Heng, an investor in several rental warehouses and factories, said the move was indicative of the increased demand to invest in Cambodia’s manufacturing sector.

Heng told The Post that a growing number of investors from China, South Korea and Japan had sought out Cambodia as a manufacturing base to export automotive parts, consumer electronics and other goods for the global market.

“The high demand for rental factories has increased rental prices to $2.50 per square metre, up from $1.80 last year,” he said.

Poipet has become an increasingly attractive destination for Japanese firms who are struggling with rising wages in Thailand.

The new rental factory is to provide other services such as logistics, staffing, education and customs clearance.

TYO said it may build a third facility in Cambodia if there is the demand.

In 2016, TYO built its first rental factory in Techno Park, where five other firms also produce automotive and electrical components and other goods.

Dewan Negara, the Malaysian Senate, has approved the repeal of the Act, Bernama Radio reported on Thursday (December 19).

This was ruling Pakatan Harapan’s second attempt at abolishing the controversial Act introduced by the previous Barisan Nasional government just before the 14th General Election in May last year.

Under the law, those found guilty of spreading what authorities deemed as fake news could be jailed for up to six years and fined up to 500,000 Malaysian ringgit (Bt3.6 million).

In August 2018, the Dewan Rakyat passed the Bill to repeal the Act, but it hit a roadblock after the Senate rejected it late last year.

This year in October, the Bill to repeal the Act was again tabled after a cooling-off period of one year under Article 68 of the Federal Constitution was over.

Article 68 of the Federal Constitution allows the government to table a Bill rejected by the upper house after the cooling-off period.

The Bill to repeal the Act was then passed on October 9 when 92 MPs voted for the law to be abolished, while 51 were against it.

The Bill was then tabled in Dewan Negara, which can only block a Bill once.

Unlike the first time, the Bill will be presented to the King for assent, regardless of the vote in the upper house.

In her lawsuit, Ito, 30, demanded ¥11 million in damages from the former TBS reporter, 53, claiming that she was raped by him in 2015.

Presiding Judge Akihiro Suzuki said Yamaguchi “had intercourse with the unconscious plaintiff without her consent and then tried to continue the act after she regained consciousness and refused.”

According to her petition, Ito lost consciousness while dining and drinking with Yamaguchi to discuss her job in April 2015. She claimed that she was raped at a hotel in Tokyo.

The judge acknowledged that Ito had consumed a large amount of alcohol and was in a state of inebriation when she entered the hotel.

Given that Ito had consulted her case immediately after the incident, Suzuki said that the sex was without consent and that she had no reason to make false claims.

Suzuki refuted Yamaguchi’s insistence that the sex was consensual, saying his statements “changed unreasonably and were not reliable.”

The court rejected a lawsuit from Yamaguchi demanding that Ito pay compensation, claiming that her statements during a press conference undermined his confidence in society.

The judge ruled that the press conference did not amount to defamation, saying that it was held “to improve the environment surrounding sex crime victims.”

In July 2016, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office did not indict Yamaguchi after he was accused by police of raping an intoxicated person.

Although Ito filed a complaint against the prosecutors’ decision, a prosecution inquest committee ruled that the decision was fair, saying that there was no reason to reverse it. After the court handed down the latest ruling, Ito said that she was pleased that all the evidence and testimonies were made public thanks to the hearing.Speech