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Meet in Minsk. x.com/NOELreports/status/1967826299860156751— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) Sep 16, 2025
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Month: September 2025
Finding happiness in amber: On Germany’s Baltic coast, people go hunting for the precious pieces [deltaMinutes] mins ago Now
Robert Redford died Tuesday at his home in Utah.
A bare-chested Bryce Harper poured a bottle of champagne over his head, soaking in the Philadelphia Phillies’ second consecutive NL East title.
Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs is preparing new legislation that would prohibit electric scooters from being used on sidewalks, Deputy Minister Igor Lepekha announced.
Initial restrictions on scooters were introduced in 2023, requiring riders to limit their speed to 6 km/h on sidewalks. However, compliance has been minimal, largely due to limited state enforcement and the failure of kick-sharing companies to implement speed-limiting technologies.
The issue resurfaced at the highest level on September 8, when President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called for urgent measures to improve pedestrian safety.
Lepekha stated that previously rejected amendments to scooter regulations have now been redrafted. “These proposals to tighten control have already been submitted to parliament by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but a number of them did not find support. In this regard, new amendments have been developed jointly with deputies, providing for a ban on the movement of electric scooters on sidewalks,” he said.
The Ministry also proposes new safety responsibilities for kick-sharing companies and wants to give local authorities the right to regulate scooter use within their jurisdictions. “The municipality could decide for itself on which streets and at what times they can be ridden and when they should be prohibited, thus defining zones,” Lepekha added.
Since the beginning of the year, Kazakhstan has recorded 361 traffic accidents involving electric scooters, resulting in 365 injuries and one death. According to a government report, authorities documented 29,000 traffic violations by scooter riders in 2025 alone, with 8,000 devices impounded.
As of August 29, the Ministry had recorded 213 accidents and 224 injuries, along with 24,000 violations and 2,500 scooters sent to impound lots. The figures indicate that in the two weeks following Tokayev’s directive, scooter-related violations increased by 5,000, and the number of impounded devices more than doubled.
As The Times of Central Asia previously reported, enforcement has intensified particularly in Almaty, where the highest number of violations has been reported.
Desertification is a global crisis threatening the livelihoods of 3.2 billion people worldwide. From China’s vast green belt along its largest desert to Central Asia’s unified efforts to halt land degradation on arid plains, the fight against encroaching sand continues. These initiatives offer hopeful examples of human endeavor in restoring degraded lands and safeguarding the future of our planet.
In the heart of southern Xinjiang lies the Taklamakan Desert, a vast expanse known as the “sea of death” for its extreme arid and inhospitable conditions. Covering 330,000 square kilometers – an area almost the size of Finland – it is China’s largest desert and the world’s second-largest shifting desert. Here, dunes stretch endlessly, and sandstorm days comprise one-third of the year.
For generations, the Taklamakan Desert has threatened surrounding villages, farmlands, and transportation routes, squeezing the living space of those who dwell on its edges. Nearly 80% of the desert sands are in constant motion, while seasonal floods from melting snow on the mountains add further instability, leaving homes and livelihoods at risk.
The danger is long-term: at one point, the Taklamakan risked merging with the nearby Kumtag Desert, placing even greater pressure on human settlements.
How To Contain The Sands
Faced with the challenge, China launched an ambitious initiative: building a shield of vegetation to encircle the Taklamakan Desert, planting desert-tolerant species such as desert poplar, red willow, saxaul, and even roses.
This massive project took more than 40 years to complete. By the end of 2023, 2,761 kilometers (about 1,716 miles) of the belt had been established. A year later, the final 285 kilometers – the most challenging section – was closed through the dedicated efforts of 600,000 people.
On November 28, 2024, in Yutian County on the desert’s southern edge, the last seedlings were planted into the sands, completing a 3,046-kilometer green belt. This vast ecological barrier stabilizes the Taklamakan Desert’s edge, prevents sandstorms, and protects the fragile ecology. In addition, the green belt provides wild animals in the desert with safe conditions for survival, breeding, and migration.
A Bold Green Strategy Against Desertification
The Taklamakan Desert control project is a part of China’s Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program, or TSFP, the world’s largest afforestation program aimed at curbing desertification.
Launched in 1978, this ambitious program seeks to slow the progress of desertification and reduce the frequency of sandstorms by planting vast stretches of trees and resilient plant species across the arid and semi-arid regions in northern China, where sandstorms pose a constant threat to local farmlands and residents.
Official data shows that forest coverage in areas covered by the TSFP has risen from 5% in 1977 to 13.8% today. More than 60% of regions prone to soil erosion have been effectively controlled, and roughly 30 million hectares of farmland have been safeguarded from desert expansion.
Turning Lands of Despair into Fields of Hope: A Shared Mission
The challenges faced in northern China echo across the globe. From the Sahel in Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia, up to 40% of the planet’s land is degraded, threatening 3.2 billion people – almost half of the global population. The encouraging news is that projects such as the Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program seem to demonstrate that humans have the know-how to turn degradation into restoration.
Central Asia faces some of the most pressing challenges. More than 20% of the region’s land is degraded – an area nearly four times the size of Kyrgyzstan. The Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth-largest inland lake, has shrunk by 90% since the 1960s, leaving behind a desert that has worsened soil erosion, dust storms, and agricultural loss.
In response, Central Asian nations are taking effective measures. Uzbekistan is planting native shrubs and trees across 500,000 hectares on the former bed of the Aral Sea to stabilize soil and reduce dust storms. Kazakhstan has committed to planting two billion trees by 2025 across 1.5 million hectares, including the dried-up seabed of the Aral Sea. Regionally, all five Central Asian nations have joined the UN’s Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) program to halt and reverse land loss.
The “sea of death” may never entirely vanish – and it does not have to. Yet the efforts of China and Central Asian countries serve as a hopeful reminder that if roses can bloom on the desert’s edge, then even the land of despair can be transformed into fields of hope.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the publication, its affiliates, or any other organizations mentioned.
There’s still time to pass through a Holy Door! aleteia.org
“Makes so much sense! I like how his ears are half-heartedly trying to stand up a little,” one user said in the comments.
Entering a fifth NBA season in his prime, he is healthy and pumped for a remodeled Knicks offense.
Three weeks ago, an ICE raid in Viejo San Juan jolted the city. In full view of locals and tourists, several masked agents in unmarked cars detained migrant employees from the Argentine restaurant El Viejo Almacén, just steps from La Fortaleza, the governor’s residence.
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Neighbors in my chat group were stunned. It was not an isolated case. Stories of similar scenes are sweeping Puerto Rico—raids without court orders, marked by deception and racial profiling, often regardless of legal status. Federal figures show that of the nearly 1,000 immigrants detained across the archipelago, fewer than 12% have criminal records, and most of those detained are minors. With about 90,000 immigrant residents, more than 20,000 undocumented, families are torn apart and neighborhoods live in fear.
This surge in arrests is the direct impact of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, which hit Puerto Rico with devastating force, increasing detentions five-fold. In Bayamón, ICE agents stopped a Dominican fruit vendor at a traffic light and hauled him away, leaving his dog tied and abandoned—an act his lawyer called a violation of basic decency. In Carolina, Bad Bunny posted a video of agents forcing people into unmarked cars, while in other raids officers pointed weapons. In Barrio Obrero, where the first raids began, parents now fear sending children to school and residents avoid clinics and supermarkets. These raids unravel Puerto Rico’s society.
Migrants have long been part of Puerto Rico’s culture and history. Dominicans, Haitians, Cubans, Venezuelans, and others have been arriving for decades, enriching the archipelago’s culture and economy. Many of them risk their lives, chasing the same dream that pushes Puerto Ricans to move to the mainland United States: the hope of work, safety, and better life. And yet, for their labor, they are repaid with fear and betrayal.
It wasn’t always this way. In 2013, Governor Alejandro García Padilla signed a law allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, and by 2015 they were also able to open bank accounts, recognizing that equality and stability mattered more than papers. Celebrated as progressive, these measures also created a database of immigrant drivers. Today, ICE uses that very database—shared by Puerto Rico’s current government who has been cooperating—to identify and arrest migrants. Governor Jenniffer González defended the practice, saying, “We cannot choose which laws we are going to follow.” Unlike Puerto Rico, cities such as Boston, Colorado, Chicago and many others have chosen not to cooperate, adopting sanctuary policies to protect immigrants like the city hall of the western town of Aguadilla did, but the local government later withdrew federal funds after declaring itself a sanctuary city.
For many, this cooperation felt like a betrayal. The Puerto Rican government had promised immigrant communities that they would not be targeted. Municipal offices were supposed to be safe spaces. Yet in Cabo Rojo, a Dominican woman disappeared after seeking municipal services, only to end up in ICE custody. In Ocean Park, residents were forced to form a human shield to prevent federal agents from snatching workers at a construction site. What is happening is not simply the enforcement of U.S. law; it is the active participation of local authorities in a policy that criminalizes and dehumanizes people who came here to contribute.
Puerto Rico’s colonial status makes the situation more painful. With no voting representation in Congress, the archipelago has no formal say in federal immigration policy. The White House dictates; Puerto Rico enforces. Yet to claim there is no choice is misleading. Local governments could refuse to cooperate and resist acting as ICE’s outstretched hand. Instead, officials reinforce colonial subordination while deepening the vulnerability of immigrant communities.
At the heart of this debate is the question of solidarity. Puerto Ricans must ask ourselves: do we see Dominican, Haitian, Cuban, Venezuelan, and other migrants as outsiders, or as part of a broader Caribbean family? To stand with them is not just an act of compassion—it is an act of resistance. It is resistance against the colonial system that demands obedience to laws we had no part in creating. It is resistance against racialized exclusion that paints Black and Brown migrants as threats. And it is resistance against the broader war on immigrants that has now reached our shores.
Solidarity is also an affirmation of history. Before 1492, the Caribbean was a space of constant movement and exchange. The Taíno of Borikén, who had migrated from the Orinoco, traded with the Warao of Florida, with crops and knowledge flowing freely across the sea. Avocado, cassava, sweet potatoes, and maize traveled between islands long before Europeans divided the waters into empires. With European colonization came African and Asian communities, and under control by the United States migration has continued. Still today, migrants arrive, proving the Caribbean was never a land of walls but of bridges, kinship, and mutual survival.
There are already powerful examples of solidarity. In Ocean Park, when ICE agents arrived, neighbors locked arms to block them. Churches have offered food, shelter, and legal aid. The ACLU of Puerto Rico, alongside Amnesty International, Kilómetro 0, and Comuna Caribe, launched the campaign migrar no es un crimen, or “migrating is not a crime,” to denounce institutional violence and provide tools for community defense. Through sacalacarapr.com, Puerto Ricans can access guides, legal resources, and strategies to support immigrant neighbors. Protesters have marched with banners declaring, “Yo defiendo a mis hermanos.” These actions reject complicity and affirm justice.
Critics argue that Puerto Rico has no choice, that federal law leaves no room for resistance. But history proves otherwise. Sanctuary cities across the United States have limited cooperation with ICE, insisting that community trust and safety matter more than punitive enforcement. To claim helplessness is to embrace colonial subjugation, to accept that Puerto Rico can only obey. In reality, refusing to participate in raids would be both legally possible and morally necessary.
Some Puerto Ricans also argue that undocumented immigrants are a burden, straining public services or competing for jobs. But this framing ignores reality. Immigrants in Puerto Rico work in sectors often abandoned by others. They pay rent, buy food, and pay taxes through sales and consumption. Far from draining resources, they help sustain the economy. And even if they did not, their humanity would not be negotiable. No amount of economic contribution should determine whether a person deserves dignity, safety, and the chance to build a life.
Aimé Césaire warned that colonization “works to decivilize” not just the colonized but the colonizer as well.
Puerto Rico faces a choice. We can remain an obedient colonial outpost, handing our neighbors to American ICE agents, or we can stand with them, recognizing them as part of the same Caribbean family that has shaped us for centuries. Solidarity here is not symbolic. It is survival. It is resistance. And it is memory—memory of a time when the sea was not a wall but a bridge.
Puerto Ricans know what it means to migrate. We know the hope and heartbreak of leaving home in search of better futures. To turn our backs on those who come here seeking the same is to betray not only them but ourselves. Amid the raids, the handcuffs, and the families living in fear, we must remember who we are: a Caribbean people, forged in movement and connection. To defend our immigrant neighbors is to defend our own history, our own dignity, our own humanity. If we say we are one Caribbean, now is the time to prove it.