Asia News Wrap: Air pollution closes schools in Pakistan, and more

Here are a few stories from around Asia you may have missed this week.

Smog shuts schools in Lahore

Unprecedented levels of air pollution on Monday forced Pakistani officials to close primary schools for a week in Lahore, the country's second-largest city. The measures were part of an effort to protect children from respiratory-related and other diseases in the city of 14 million people. 

The government said everyone in Lahore was required to wear a face mask. Fifty percent of employees must also work from home as part of a "green lockdown" in the city, barbecuing food without filters was banned and motorized rickshaws were restricted.

World's first wooden satellite launched 

The world's first wooden satellite, built by Japanese researchers, was launched into space on Tuesday in an early test of using timber in lunar and Mars exploration. LignoSat, developed by Kyoto University and homebuilder Sumitomo Forestry, reached the International Space Station on a SpaceX mission a day later. Named after the Latin word for wood, the palm-sized LignoSat is tasked with demonstrating the cosmic potential of renewable material as humans explore living in space. LignoSat is made of a wood called honoki, using a traditional Japanese crafts technique without screws or glue. 

"With timber, a material we can produce by ourselves, we will be able to build houses, live and work in space forever," said Takao Doi, an astronaut who has flown on the Space Shuttle and studies human space activities at Kyoto University. With a 50-year plan to plant trees and build timber houses on the moon and Mars, Doi's team developed a NASA-certified wooden satellite to prove wood is a space-grade material. The main motive for using wood to construct a satellite is to reduce space junk/debris, as it can be easily burned off in the Earth's atmosphere by sending the satellite into low-Earth orbit.

Facebook fined $15.67 million in South Korea for breach of privacy laws

South Korea has ordered Facebook's owner, Meta Platforms, to pay 21.62 billion won ($15.67 million) in fines after finding it had collected user data and given it to advertisers illegally, Seoul's data protection agency said. 

Reuters reported, "The U.S. tech giant obtained information from about 980,000 South Korean Facebook users on issues such as their religion, political views and sexuality while failing to seek agreement from users, the Personal Information Protection Commission said in a statement on Tuesday." According to the commission's statement, Meta shared this data with around 4,000 advertisers, who used it for targeted advertising based on topics like religious affiliations and gender identities.

Thousands to be relocated after volcano erupts in Indonesia 

The Indonesian government plans to permanently relocate thousands of residents after a series of eruptions of the Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki volcano killed nine people and damaged thousands of houses. 

Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki, located in East Nusa Tenggara province, erupted on Sunday night, followed by smaller eruptions on Monday and Tuesday. Permanent relocation is considered a "long-term mitigation measure" to anticipate similar eruptions in the future, said Suharyanto, the head of Indonesia's disaster agency, in a statement on Wednesday. The government aims to relocate all residents living within a seven-kilometer radius of the volcano.

(Cover: A man exercises in a park amid heavy smog in Lahore, Pakistan on November 7, 2024. /CFP)