A match fixing scandal and a financial crisis in Saudi soccer provide a microcosm of the daunting task and pitfalls involved in Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s plans to reform and diversify the kingdom’s oil dependent economy, streamline its governance, and upgrade its autocracy.

The Saud Arabian Football Federation’s handling of the scandal and the crisis offer a glimpse of how the government and the ruling Al Saud family hope to root out corruption, introduce a degree of transparency, and cater to the aspirations of a young population without surrendering absolute political control.

Cleaning up soccer, the kingdom’s most popular sport, further serves to achieve the goals of greater international competitiveness and engagement by Saudis in exercise that were spelled out in Prince Mohammed’s Vision 2030, a framework for economic and social reform announced last April.

Sources close to the federation say 1st League soccer club Al Mojze FC could become the first team in Saudi football history to be relegated as a result of match fixing. Based in the city of Al-Majma’ah, Al Mojze, which graduated from the 3rd to the 1st League in a mere two years, is suspected of having achieved its success through match fixing.

“Something is wrong. They have no experience and no important players. They have no super talent,” said a source close to the federation.

The relegation would nullify Al Mojze’s graduation to the Saudi Professional or Abdul Latif Jameel League, the country’s top division, as a result of its winning of the 1st League. It would follow the relegation three years ago of two handball teams, Al Safa FC and Mudhar HC, the first ever in the kingdom’s sports history.

It would also send a message that the kingdom is serious about enhancing competitiveness and fighting corruption in a soccer sector in which members of the ruling family allegedly would interfere with referees and management when clubs were not performing to their liking.

Acting firmly against Al Mojze was made easier by the fact that the club is neither owned nor sponsored by a member of the ruling Al Saud family.

To its credit, the federation did not spare clubs associated with the family when it recently published in advance of the new soccer season a schedule for clubs to pay off their debts. The federation also imposed a ban on the hiring of foreign players.

Included in the schedule were Al Ahli Saudi FC which is linked to Prince Faisal bin Khaled bin Abdullah, Al Hilal FC that is headed by Prince Nawaf bin Saad, Al Shabab FC that falls under the auspices of Prince Khaled Bin Sultan and Al Nasser FC which is headed by Prince Faisal bin Turki bin Nasser.

Sources close to the federation noted that the schedule listed for Al Nasser only $453,400 in debts to the soccer association even though the club’s total debt is asserted to be approximately $70 million. If correct, it would make Al Nasser Saud Arabia’s most indebted club after Al Ittihad FC, which owes $76 million. Al Ahli’s total debt was listed at $40 million, Al Hilal’s at $36.5 million and Al Shabab at $19.4 million.

“The game of football played by all sports clubs in Saudi Arabia is just like the competition between the business enterprises in which each football club tries to become the best team in the country and hence gain name, fame and superiority over other clubs, or rather say superiority over other princes who are behind the rival clubs,” wrote Sharaf Sabri in a book published more than a decade ago, The House of Saud in Commerce: A Study of Royal Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Sabri put his finger on the problem the federation is likely to have in cleaning up the kingdom’s premier soccer league. It is a problem Crown Prince Mohammed is likely to encounter in restructuring an economy in which members of the ruling family have a finger in many pies and may not want to see their perks compromised.

A Facebook page entitled Nasrawi Revolution demanded in 2013 the resignation as head of Al Nasser of Prince Faisal, a burly nephew of the late King Abdullah who sports a moustache and chin hair. A You Tube video captured Prince Faisal seemingly being pelted and chanted against as he rushed off the soccer pitch after rudely shoving a security official aside.

The campaign against Prince Faisal followed the unprecedented resignation in 2012 of Prince Nawaf bin Feisal as head of the Saudi Football Federation (SFF), the first royal to be persuaded by public pressure step down in a region where monarchical control of the sport is seen as politically important.

Prince Nawaf’s resignation led to the election of a commoner, storied former player Ahmed Eid Alharbi, who is widely viewed as a reformer and proponent of women’s soccer.

The resignation of Prince Nawaf and the campaign against Prince Faisal gained added significance in a nation in which the results of premier league clubs associated with various members of the kingdom’s secretive royal family are seen as a barometer of their relative status, particularly at a time that its septuagenarian and octogenarian leaders have initiated a generational transition and are seeking to restructure the economy and recast the social contract without granting political concessions.

“The Saudis are extremely worried. Soccer clubs rather than the mosque are likely to be the centre of any revolution. Kids go more to stadiums than to mosques. They are not religious, they are not ruled by religious dogma,” said Washington-based Saudi dissident Ali al-Ahmad, who heads the Gulf Institute.

Mr. Al-Ahmad was referring to the power of clerics preaching Wahhabism, the puritan interpretation of Islam developed by 18th century preacher Mohammed ibn Abdul Al-Wahhab. Saudi Arabia’s ruling Al Saud family established the kingdom with the help of the Wahhabis who in return were granted the right to ensure that their views would dominate public life.

Similarly, the federation’s ban on the hiring of foreign talent came as Prince Mohammed was seeking to force employers to replace foreign labour with Saudi nationals. The effort that predates last year’s accession to the throne of King Salman and the instalment of Prince Mohammed as one of the kingdom’s most powerful men provoked soccer opposition already in late 2014.

Clubs resisted the application of a quota system to soccer and warned that it would put them at a disadvantage in international competitions. The problem of Saudi clubs was compounded by the kingdom’s reluctance to encourage Saudi players to garner experience by playing abroad for foreign clubs.

Saudi Arabia has long had a complex relationship with soccer because it evokes passions similar to those sparked by religion. Saudi clerics rolled out mobile mosques during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa in an effort to persuade fans gathered in cafes to watch matches to observe obligatory prayer times.

A senior Saudi soccer executive highlighted a key Saudi soccer problem, saying that “we are funded by the government to serve the country.” With oil prices strongly reduced, Saudi Arabia, like other countries is seeking to cut costs and control spending, making less money available to soccer clubs.

Equally importantly, serving the country in Saudi Arabia means the government’s desire to control soccer because it provides popular entertainment and often deviates attention from more political concerns, yet constitutes a potentially powerful venue for the expression of dissent.

To achieve Vision 2030’s goals of greater Saudi competitiveness and transparency, Prince Mohammed and the federation will have to square those goals with dealing with the corrosive effect of political interference in the sport, particularly by members of the ruling family. Dealing publicly with match fixing and debt suggests the government and the federation may have taken a first step.

By Geethanjali Nataraj

FBI Director James B. Comey said Monday that the Bureau has recommended to the Department of Justice that no charges are appropriate following an extensive investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.

The FBI investigation followed a referral last July from the Intelligence Community Inspector General and focused on whether classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail servers during her four-year tenure.

“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” Comey said during a 15-minute press briefing to reporters at FBI Headquarters.

Following is the Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Use of a Personal E-Mail System

Good morning. I’m here to give you an update on the FBI’s investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.

After a tremendous amount of work over the last year, the FBI is completing its investigation and referring the case to the Department of Justice for a prosecutive decision. What I would like to do today is tell you three things: what we did; what we found; and what we are recommending to the Department of Justice.

This will be an unusual statement in at least a couple ways. First, I am going to include more detail about our process than I ordinarily would, because I think the American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest. Second, I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about to say.

I want to start by thanking the FBI employees who did remarkable work in this case. Once you have a better sense of how much we have done, you will understand why I am so grateful and proud of their efforts.

So, first, what we have done:

The investigation began as a referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General in connection with Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server during her time as Secretary of State. The referral focused on whether classified information was transmitted on that personal system.

Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way, or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.

Consistent with our counterintelligence responsibilities, we have also investigated to determine whether there is evidence of computer intrusion in connection with the personal e-mail server by any foreign power, or other hostile actors.

I have so far used the singular term, “e-mail server,” in describing the referral that began our investigation. It turns out to have been more complicated than that. Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mail on that personal domain. As new servers and equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and decommissioned in various ways. Piecing all of that back together—to gain as full an understanding as possible of the ways in which personal e-mail was used for government work—has been a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of hours of effort.

For example, when one of Secretary Clinton’s original personal servers was decommissioned in 2013, the e-mail software was removed. Doing that didn’t remove the e-mail content, but it was like removing the frame from a huge finished jigsaw puzzle and dumping the pieces on the floor. The effect was that millions of e-mail fragments end up unsorted in the server’s unused—or “slack”—space. We searched through all of it to see what was there, and what parts of the puzzle could be put back together.

FBI investigators have also read all of the approximately 30,000 e-mails provided by Secretary Clinton to the State Department in December 2014. Where an e-mail was assessed as possibly containing classified information, the FBI referred the e-mail to any U.S. government agency that was a likely “owner” of information in the e-mail, so that agency could make a determination as to whether the e-mail contained classified information at the time it was sent or received, or whether there was reason to classify the e-mail now, even if its content was not classified at the time it was sent (that is the process sometimes referred to as “up-classifying”).

From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.

The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014. We found those additional e-mails in a variety of ways. Some had been deleted over the years and we found traces of them on devices that supported or were connected to the private e-mail domain. Others we found by reviewing the archived government e-mail accounts of people who had been government employees at the same time as Secretary Clinton, including high-ranking officials at other agencies, people with whom a Secretary of State might naturally correspond.

This helped us recover work-related e-mails that were not among the 30,000 produced to State. Still others we recovered from the laborious review of the millions of e-mail fragments dumped into the slack space of the server decommissioned in 2013.

With respect to the thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level. There were no additional Top Secret e-mails found. Finally, none of those we found have since been “up-classified.”

I should add here that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Our assessment is that, like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed. Because she was not using a government account—or even a commercial account like Gmail—there was no archiving at all of her e-mails, so it is not surprising that we discovered e-mails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s system in 2014, when she produced the 30,000 e-mails to the State Department.

It could also be that some of the additional work-related e-mails we recovered were among those deleted as “personal” by Secretary Clinton’s lawyers when they reviewed and sorted her e-mails for production in 2014.

The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014. It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server.

It is also likely that there are other work-related e-mails that they did not produce to State and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they deleted all e-mails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.

We have conducted interviews and done technical examination to attempt to understand how that sorting was done by her attorneys. Although we do not have complete visibility because we are not able to fully reconstruct the electronic record of that sorting, we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort.

And, of course, in addition to our technical work, we interviewed many people, from those involved in setting up and maintaining the various iterations of Secretary Clinton’s personal server, to staff members with whom she corresponded on e-mail, to those involved in the e-mail production to State, and finally, Secretary Clinton herself.

Last, we have done extensive work to understand what indications there might be of compromise by hostile actors in connection with the personal e-mail operation.

That’s what we have done. Now let me tell you what we found:

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).

None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.

Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.

While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.

With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.

So that’s what we found. Finally, with respect to our recommendation to the Department of Justice:

In our system, the prosecutors make the decisions about whether charges are appropriate based on evidence the FBI has helped collect. Although we don’t normally make public our recommendations to the prosecutors, we frequently make recommendations and engage in productive conversations with prosecutors about what resolution may be appropriate, given the evidence. In this case, given the importance of the matter, I think unusual transparency is in order.

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.

In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.

As a result, although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.

I know there will be intense public debate in the wake of this recommendation, as there was throughout this investigation. What I can assure the American people is that this investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently. No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear.

I know there were many opinions expressed by people who were not part of the investigation—including people in government—but none of that mattered to us. Opinions are irrelevant, and they were all uninformed by insight into our investigation, because we did the investigation the right way. Only facts matter, and the FBI found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional way. I couldn’t be prouder to be part of this organization.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ruled out reconciliation with Egypt in the wake of Ankara’s decision to normalize relations with Russia and Israel last week.

Relations between Ankara and Cairo have soured since Egypt’s first democratically-elected president and a close ally of Erdogan’s ruling party, Mohamed Morsi, was ousted in a military coup in 2013.

The Turkish leader said on Tuesday reconciliation with Egypt’s “oppressive regime” will not take place any time soon.

There have been speculations that Turkey may mend ties with Egypt particularly after it restored relations with Moscow and Tel Aviv.

“The context with Egypt is different from the approaches undertaken with Russia and Israel,” Dogan news agency quoted the Turkish president as saying.

He also told reporters that Ankara’s row was with Egypt’s government, not its people, denouncing once again the crackdown on Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

“Sentences handed down to Morsi and his friends have been based on fabrications,” Erdogan said.

“These people are our brothers, we cannot accept these decisions by an oppressive regime,” he said.

Saudi Arabia, a staunch Turkish ally and a main backer of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is interested in seeing the two countries reconcile.

The Egyptian government has cracked down on the opposition since Morsi was ousted in a military coup led by Sisi as the army chief.

Sisi has been accused of leading the suppression of Morsi’s supporters. Hundreds of the Morsi supporters have been killed in clashes with security forces since the ouster.

Rights groups say the army’s crackdown has led to the deaths of over 1,400 people and the arrest of 22,000 others, including some 200 people who have been sentenced to death in mass trials.

Original article

The EU is now in a deep crisis, one that is the product not only of Britain’s vote to leave it but also of the organization’s “inability to stand up to the global economic crisis, Russian military-political and information expansion, international terrorism and uncontrolled mass migration,” according to Aleksandr Voronin.

As a result, many in EU countries and their neighbors are considering alternatives, the Ukrainian commentator says. One of the most intriguing is a new push for the establishment of a Baltic-Black Sea Union or “Intermarium”– not as a replacement for the EU and NATO but as a supplement and assistant to them (qha.com.ua/ru/politika/intermarium-alternativa-evropeiskomu-soyuzu/162070/).

Last weekend, representatives of various groups, civic, military, and political, of the so-called “countries in between” met in Kyiv to talk about the possibilities for the emergence of such a union and what steps they should take to promote its emergence and development at the present time.

Nikolay Kravchenko, one of the organizers of the meeting, said that the grouping could begin much as the EU did with the European Coal and Steel Community and then grow both in size and in the spheres of activity that its members would approve. He suggested that “the forefathers of the Intermarium are GUAM, the Eastern Partnership, the Black Sea Cooperation Council and the Vyshegrad Four.

Other participants in the Kyiv meeting agreed, Voronin reports, and stressed that any such structure should not aspire to replace the EU or “even more Euro-Atlantic solidarity in the framework of NATO” but rather focus on tasks like security, energy independence, and information technology that can be handled at the level of that region.

The idea of an Intermarium has deep roots in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries and especially in Marshal Pilsudski’s Promethean League. (For a careful survey of these roots, see the magisterial study by Marek Chodakiewicz, Intermarium: The Land between the Black and Baltic Seas (Transaction Publishers, 2012).)

Since the end of the USSR, it has gained a following in Belarus and Ukraine. In the early 1990s, Zianon Pazniak, the first president of the Belarusian Popular Front, urged its consideration. And more recently, another Belarusian, Konstantin Volokh, called on Ukrainians to do likewise (hvylya.net/analytics/geopolitics/tretiy-put-dlya-vostochnoy-evropyi.html).

Even before Russia invaded Ukraine, he wrote that “it is obvious that the integration of post-socialist countries is chiefly directed at the creation of a system for the containment of eastern expansion and in the first instance by the forces and resources of those countries and peoples which experienced on their own skin the state of being hostages of the military competition between major geopolitical players and then the victims of the unification of one of the centers of socialist planning.””

This year, Voronin points out, is the 90^th anniversary of the Promethean League which was founded by Polish efforts in Paris and which included representatives “not only of Crimea and Ukraine but also Azerbaijan, the Don Cossacks, Georgia, Idel-Ural, Ingria, Karelia, Komi, Kuban, the North Caucasus and Turkestan.

(The Promethean League had a long and complex history. For a recent discussion, see

Etienne Copeaux, “Le movement prométhéen.” Cahiers d’études sur la Méditerranée orientale et le monde turco-iranien, 16 (1993):  pp. 9–45 available at persee.fr/doc/cemot_0764-9878_1993_num_16_1_1050.)

Many in Ukraine are now talking about a new Intermarium. Among them are Andrey Biletski, the founder of the Azov Regiment, Andrey Paruby, the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, and most recently Vladimir Gorbulin, the head of Kyiv’s National Institute for Strategic Research (gazeta.zn.ua/internal/2017-y-prodolzhenie-sleduet-cennostnye-resursy-voyny-i-mira-ukrainskiy-format-_.html).

Despite all this, the Intermarium idea has attracted relatively little attention among analysts in the West; but one indication of its rise is that Russian authors are now discussing it ever more frequently. See, among others, politcom.ru/21154.html, riafan.ru/533159-budet-li-sozdan-antirossiiskii-intermarium-posle-raskola-v-evrosoyuze-fan-tv and riata.ru/publikatsiyaya/item/20539-mezhdumore.

In a concluding section of his article entitled “Today It’s a Phantom; Tomorrow, a Strategy; and the Day after Tomorrow a Reality?” Voronin says that it is obviously too early to say that this idea has mass support. But given the crisis in the EU, “it is not excluded that soon the idea of the Intermarium will become a commonplace not only of party programs but of international memoranda.”

That is clearly what the participants in last weekend’s meeting in the Ukrainian capital think. After all, they met under a banner reading “The Heart of Europe Beats in the East.”

Christians who worship publicly in their east Indian village will be fined by the police says a Christian Daily report.

Police have forced the Christians from the village in the state of Jharkhand to agree that they will only worship in their homes or else pay 10,000 rupees (US$150) fines and face other punishments unspecified by the report.

“We were forced to sign the bond, we have no other choice as we have nowhere else to stay except in the village,” Pastor Ravi told Christian Daily.

The police threat of fines follows reports of attacks against Christians in the village by Hindu hardliners who demanded that they give up their faith. Six Christians were beaten up by the hardliners in June, said the report.

Jharkhand, with a population of 33 million people, now has some 1.4 million Christians, most of whom are indigenous people or those belonging to the Dalit or former untouchable castes.

The state’s 4.5 percent Christian population is almost double that of the national average.

Detecting pesticides and nerve gas in very low concentrations — an international team of researchers led by Ivo Stassen and Rob Ameloot from KU Leuven, Belgium, have made it possible.

The best-known electronic nose is the breathalyser. As drivers breathe into the device, a chemical sensor measures the amount of alcohol in their breath. This chemical reaction is then converted into an electronic signal, allowing the police officer to read off the result. Alcohol is easy to detect, because the chemical reaction is specific and the concentration of the measured gas is fairly high. But many other gases are complex mixtures of molecules in very low concentrations. Building electronic noses to detect them is thus quite a challenge.

Researchers from KU Leuven have now built a very sensitive electronic nose with metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). “MOFs are like microscopic sponges,” postdoctoral researcher Ivo Stassen said. “They can absorb quite a lot of gas into their minuscule pores.”

“We created a MOF that absorbs the phosphonates found in pesticides and nerve gases. This means you can use it to find traces of chemical weapons such as sarin or to identify the residue of pesticides on food. This MOF is the most sensitive gas sensor to date for these dangerous substances. Our measurements were conducted in cooperation with imec, the Leuven-based nanotechnology research centre. The concentrations we’re dealing with are extremely low: parts per billion – a drop of water in an Olympic swimming pool – and parts per trillion.”

The chemical sensor can easily be integrated into existing electronic devices, Professor Rob Ameloot added. “You can apply the MOF as a thin film over the surface of, for instance, an electric circuit. Therefore, it’s fairly easy to equip a smartphone with a gas sensor for pesticides and nerve gas.”

“Further research will allow us to examine other applications as well,” Professor Ameloot said. “MOFs can measure very low concentrations, so we could use them to screen someone’s breath for diseases such as lung cancer and MS in an early stage. Or we could use the signature scent of a product to find out whether food has gone bad or to distinguish imitation wine from the original. This technology, in other words, offers a wide range of perspectives.”

The Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP), Earth’s largest region of warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs), has the highest rainfall and is fundamental to global atmospheric circulation and the hydrological cycle. The IPWP has experienced substantial warming and growth during the past century. The region also experienced the highest rates of sea-level rise over the world, indicating large increases in ocean heat content and leading to substantial impacts on small island states in the region.

Recent studies have found increasing greenhouse gas concentrations to be the major cause for much of global ocean temperature warming, yet it is unclear how they have contributed to the observed IPWP region changes along with natural variability in the climate. Evan Weller and Seung-Ki Min from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) and their international colleagues have provided the first quantitative attribution of not only the observed IPWP warming but also its expansion over the course of the past 60 years, examining human influences and natural contributions to the IPWP warming and expansion. Their findings were published in the latest issue of Science Advances, a new sister journal of Science.

In order to identify contributions from human caused anthropogenic forcings (mainly an increase in greenhouse gases) and natural causes (internal climate variability over the Pacific Ocean) to the observed IPWP warming and expansion, they used multiple climate model simulations integrated with and without human influences, and compared simulated changes in the IPWP with the observations using a sophisticated ‘fingerprinting’ technique. Using this technique, the researchers detected patterns of human climate drivers (so-called fingerprints) associated with the observed change just like detectives look for fingerprints to catch criminals. They found that the IPWP warming and expansion is dominantly attributable to an increase in man-made greenhouse gases with a small contribution from natural variations of the climate across decades.

They also found that the shape and impact of human-induced IPWP growth may not be identical between the Indian and Pacific basins. That is, expansion of the warm pool in the Indian Ocean has far exceeded that in the Pacific Ocean. Expansion of the IPWP due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations will likely continue. However, shifts in the average climate of the tropical oceans could change the relative amounts of expansion in these two adjoining oceans, and ultimately modulate the long-term change in the IPWP impact on regional rainfall amounts. This has important implications for understanding and predicting changes in rainfall patterns over large populations across the Asia and Oceania regions.

“This quantitative attribution of human and natural climate influences on the IPWP expansion increases our confidence in the understanding of the causes of past changes as well as for projections of future changes under further greenhouse warming,” commented Seung-Ki Min, a professor with POSTECH’s School of Environmental Science and Engineering.

By Adelaide Mena

Both the Catholic Church and the tradition of religious freedom can trace their roots in the United States to the earliest days of the founding of Maryland, says a new documentary that aired on EWTN over the Fourth of July Weekend.

Greg Hendrick, producer of the documentary, “Catholic Beginnings: Maryland,” told CNA that “many of the roots of Catholicism in America originated in Maryland.”

“It’s an essential part of U.S. history, not just for Catholics, but for all interested in exploring the grounds on which religious freedom and tolerance were founded.”

The eight-part series premiered on EWTN beginning July 3 at 6:30 p.m. EST.

While Maryland was not the first place to have Catholic populations in what would become the U.S. – Spanish colonies and French trading outposts were settled first – the EWTN series focuses on Maryland because of its major role in both American history and Catholic history in the U.S.

The first episode of the series opens by tracing Maryland’s roots from before the nation’s founding, when it was the only predominantly Catholic British colony. This opening for religious tolerance within the British colonies later grew, as Maryland would go on at the time of the American Revolution to serve as a model of religious freedom for the fledgling nation.

King James I granted the charter for the proprietary colony of Maryland to George Calvert on June 20, 1632, allowing Calvert to decide what to do with the land. Following Calvert’s death, his brother, Leonard Calvert, brought a group of settlers to the new colony on board two small ships, the Ark and the Dove. When they landed on March 25, 1634, on St. Clement’s Island, a Jesuit priest, Fr. Andrew White, offered the first Mass in the British colonies.

Along with Fr. White, another Jesuit priest, Fr. John Altham, and a Jesuit Brother, Thomas Gervase, were also part of the initial colonizing expedition.

“This is where the colonists first landed, this is where the first Mass was said, and everything, everything starts from St. Clement’s Island in St. Mary’s County in Southern Maryland,” Fr. Charles Connor, S.T.L., explained in the documentary.

However, understanding the significance of that first Mass requires an understanding of the British Catholics who were trying to make their way in the new colony. Fr. Connor continued.

George Calvert, who had been a close advisor of King James I made the decision to convert to Catholicism in 1625, and his conversion was a public one, rather than a quiet refusal to participate in the Church of England. This public rejection of the King’s Protestant faith for the Roman Catholic Church cost Calvert his position as one of the Secretaries of State and other positions of importance, Fr. Connor expounded.

Yet, although his conversion cost him dearly, Calvert’s friendship with the King also enabled him to secure the grant for the land of the colony of Maryland for himself, and, after death, his family members. Furthermore, Calvert’s reputation enabled him to “gather about him a number of very wealthy individuals, both Catholic and Protestant, who were going to make their way to the new world, to the Chesapeake,” and to fund and staff the founding of the new colony.

Many of the Catholic members of the expedition also sought to flee the persecution they faced in England and looked forward to practicing their faith in the new colony. “That’s the reason. The hostility was terrible. And Maryland was going to offer the refuge,” Fr. Connor said.

These beginnings – colonists fleeing religious persecution, the cooperation of both Catholic and Protestant backers and colonists – helped lay the foundation of the Maryland Toleration Act in 1649, one of the first religious toleration laws, and helped lay the beginnings of a framework of religious freedom.

This thread and other developments that sprung forth from the earliest days of Maryland – from the first Mass on St. Clement’s Island and from the colony’s founding itself, set the stage for the whole of Church history in the United States, Fr. Connor said.

“This really and truly is where the Catholic Church began in the United States.”

ISIS reverses course: Jihadists leave Syria, putting countries like Bangladesh under siege and driving wedges amid political squabbling.

By Saroj Kumar Rath*

For three years Bangladesh had witnessed sporadic killing of minorities, free- thinking bloggers and members of LGBT community amid signs of a growing ISIS presence. With the brutal murder of 22 diners, workers and police at the upscale Holey Artisan Bakery, Dhaka now joins Paris, Brussels, Orlando and Istanbul on the global map for terrorism. Distinguishing the Dhaka suspects from others is that they belong to the country’s western-educated elite including a senior member of the ruling party. The homegrown bunch made sure their crime got international airing, using the restaurant’s wifi to post ghastly images on the Islamic State website. As Bruce Riedel, a leading expert on terrorism, has noted, Bangladeshi terrorists have graduated from lone-wolf to wolf-pack attacks in extending the ISIS ideological footprint into South Asia.

The massacre carried out by a group of suicidal young men who had every reason to live not only raises questions about the appeal of extremist ideology on an unlikely cohort – it also exposes the hollowness of Bangladesh’s vaunted fight against terrorism, protecting the perpetrators while targeting political opponents. Sheikh Hasina government’s dismal failure in containing the spread of radical poison threatens to destabilize the country and the fragile region.

Since Sheikh Hasina won the 2014 elections that were boycotted by the opposition and since the formation of Islamic State and Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, Bangladesh has witnessed the killings of 18 persons in daylight attacks, ISIS–al Qaeda style. The Bangladeshi authorities insisted that Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, an organization formed in 1998, was behind the restaurant attack, and there is no denying that the militants were linked to JMB, but in the November issue of Dabiq, the Islamic State’s magazine, the group’s chief in Bangladesh, Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif,, had praised JMB for its intent and capacity to resist “the effect of both European colonization and Hindu cultural invasion.”

Extremist organizations in Bangladesh work in a fluid environment where cross-fertilization is the norm of the day.  Jamaat-e-Islami of Bangladesh has direct contact with Afghan Taliban, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e Islami and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. Hizb-ut-Tahrir is banned, but operates in the country. There is undeniable sprinkling of Islamic State militants and Ansarullah Bangla Team, an Al Qaeda affiliate, in Bangladesh.

For its own reasons, Bangladesh has chosen to turn a blind eye to foreign inspirations. Last year when one Italian aid worker and a Japanese farmer were killed, ISIS was quick to claim responsibility. But a police investigation alleged that opposition leader Khalida Zia’s Bangladesh National Party workers orchestrated such attacks.

Independent secular bloggers, four in total, have been killed in similar fashion. The profile of other victims, comprised of non-Sunni Bangladeshi Muslims, Hindus, Christians, visiting foreigners and atheists confused local authorities. All the attacks were owned either by Islamic State or Al Qaeda, but the government refused to accept the presence of offshore militant organizations in the country, perhaps to reassure foreign investors. A nonchalant home minister, Asaduzzaman Khan, reiterated, “There’s no organizational existence of IS.” The prime minister preempted police by alleging the attacks were the handiwork of opposition parties.

The inception of International Crimes Tribunal by Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League Government in 2010 was used as a forum to settle political and personal scores on the nation’s founding tragedy – war crimes committed during the liberation war against Pakistan. Ongoing conflict between the two major political parties, the Bangladesh National Party, which considers itself custodian of Bangladeshi nationalism, and the Awami League, which regards itself as the sole guiding force of Bangladeshi liberation, has left the field open to ISIS and Al Qaeda to recruit militants.

As ISIS emerged in 2014, thousands of extremists from across the globe headed to Syria and Iraq. Authorities across the world, including those in Bangladesh, conveniently ignored the outflow of homegrown militants. Bangladeshi intelligence had alerted its government long ago that hundreds of their residents had traveled to Syria and Iraq to participate in Islamic State’s jihad to establish an Islamic Caliphate. High-ranking Bangladeshi intelligence officials noted that about 25 Bangladeshi militants have returned to the country from the Syrian and Iraqi theaters of war, and the same is true for India where security agencies have arrested three Indians who had participated in jihad in Syria. Indian cybersecurity experts have profiled ISIS propaganda in South Asia and tracked returnees from Syria and Iraq while also following the spread of ISIS ideology through the internet. Despite such monitoring, it was only a matter of time for militants driven out of ISIS strongholds in Syria and Iraq to return to their homelands. What ISIS lost in terms of territory in Syria and Iraq, it has regained in terms of influence.

The reverse flow of ISIS ideology, if not fighters, was quick in Europe and the United States in cities like Paris, Brussels, Istanbul and Orlando. In these cases, although de-radicalization methods were adopted by security agencies, local authorities tried to downplay the ISIS presence, fearing such admissions might be construed as a failure on the part of the incumbent government.

Since 2014, social media has indicated growing cooperation between ISIS and Bangladeshi extremist groups like Ansar ul Bangla Team, Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh and AQIS. A confabulated Dhaka Police discounted the possibility of the Islamic State’s presence in Bangladesh. In June, complicating the topography of extremism, Bangladesh police arrested 5,000 suspected militants from various groups including ISIS.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is helping Sheikh Hasina on many fronts. Both leaders get along well on many issues including containment of Islamic extremism. Although Modi and his ministers repeatedly disclaim the infiltration of ISIS in India, security agencies, especially cybersecurity wings, are known to constantly feed the government with real-time information about ISIS activities in India and neighboring countries.

It’s no secret that Indian radicals run a Twitter handle and other propaganda mechanisms for ISIS from Indian cities. One such recruiter is in Indian custody. Fearing the growing impact of ISIS, Modi himself initiated a session on de-radicalization at the annual meeting of state police chiefs at Rann of Katch in Gujarat. Nevertheless a lack of coordination among state and federal security agencies, as well as the inefficiency of state police and political rivalries, is taking a toll on India’s anti-terror policy. Reelection of Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, accused of being soft on Islamic terrorism and Bangladeshi migrants, is a setback for Modi. India is like a landmine field, with extreme poverty, inequality in education and other opportunities, and a Muslim minority feeling marginalized. With the retreat of ISIS from Syria and Iraq, it’s more than likely that the ideology will soon reach Indian cities with a Dhaka-like attack waiting to unfold.

Closer scrutiny of the perpetrators’ profiles in Friday’s attack suggests that some children of the country’s elite are disillusioned with Bangladeshi politics and inspired by the Islamic State’s vision of an Islamic caliphate. Some have been silently radicalized by militant Islamists. Bangladeshi youth are exposed to real and imaginary pains of the Muslim world, and ISIS ideology carries appeal. Street struggles between the country’s leading political parties, hampering development of Bangladesh, has left educated, employable but impressionable youths disenchanted with the ability of political leaders to resolve problems. Prolonged political fights alienate the country’s elite, a sure way for the government to lose the country to the brutal ideologies of ISIS and its affiliates.

*Saroj Kumar Rath, PhD, is assistant professor at the University of Delhi and an expert on security affairs in South Asia.

The United States has strongly condemns the terrorist attacks yesterday in Saudi Arabia and commends the work of Saudi security forces, whose decisive response prevented further loss of life, according to a statement by National Security Council Spokesperson Ned Price.

Price noted that although the investigation of these attacks is still in its early phases, the intent of the terrorists is clear: to sow division and fear.

“As we join in mourning the loss of at least six individuals, we stand in solidarity with the Saudi people, particularly during this time of celebration and prayer that marks the culmination of the holy month of Ramadan,” Price said, adding that the US reaffirms “our commitment to the security of Saudi Arabia and to further strengthening our robust counterterrorism cooperation with the Saudi government.”

The number of unemployed registered with Spain’s Public Employment Services fell in June by 124,349 on the previous month. This decline is the second largest on record, only bettered by the month of June 2013. The total number of recorded unemployed now stands at 3,767,054, the lowest figure since September 2009, according to the Spanish government’s latest figures.

n seasonally-adjusted terms, unemployment fell by 48,579 in the month of June. This is the largest reduction in a month of June since records began. Unemployment has fallen in seasonally-adjusted terms in 37 of the last 38 months.

Over the last 12 months, recorded unemployment has fallen by 353,250. The rate of year-on-year decline in unemployment stands at 8.57% in June, the best figure since the year 1999.

Unemployment among the under-25s has fallen by 24,522 in June (down 7.55%) on the previous month.

Recorded unemployment fell in all autonomous regions, headed up by Catalonia (down 20,145), Andalusia (down 19,251), and Galicia (down 13,144).

By activity sector, recorded unemployment fell in services by 84,160, in construction by 14,545 and in industry by 13,614. In contrast, unemployment increased in the agriculture and fisheries sector by 410. Unemployment fell among first-time job seekers by 11,840.

The number of contracts registered in the month of June amounted to a total of 1,920,340, the highest figure on record. This represents an increase of 11.3% on June 2015.

The number of permanent employment contracts registered in June amounted to 148,395, an increase of 17% on the same month last year.

Full-time permanent employment grew by 17.3% year-on-year, and is once again the class of employment contract to enjoy the highest growth.

By Cheryl Pellerin

US Defense Secretary Ash Carter is closely monitoring the aftermath of brutal terrorist attacks over the past few days in Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook told reporters Tuesday.

Responsibility for attacks that according to media reports killed 42 people in Turkey, at least 200 in Baghdad, nearly 30 in Bangladesh and four in Saudi Arabia has not been established in all cases, but Cook said speculation has centered on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

“These tragic events once again highlight why it’s so important to accelerate the coalition campaign to deliver ISIL a lasting defeat in Iraq and Syria, to further limit the group’s ability to carry out attacks in other parts of the world and to do all we can to prevent the spread of its hateful ideology,” the spokesman said.

The attacks occur as support for local forces from the counter-ISIL coalition erodes ISIL’s self-styled caliphate, recapturing key terrain that includes major cities, infrastructure and economic nodes finance ISIL activity and fuel its claims of legitimacy, Cook said.

Making Progress Against ISIL

Today, he added, ISIL has lost Fallujah, the city from which they controlled much of western Iraq and launched attacks into Baghdad, and Iraqi security forces are clearing key terrain on the way to Mosul.

Manbij — the final waystation between ISIL’s so-called Syrian capital of Raqqa and the Turkish border — is surrounded by a tightening cordon of Arab troops, Cook said.

“The Iraqi security forces and Prime Minister [Haider al-] Abadi have been clear about the need to conduct operations in Fallujah and to continue the push to the north, while at the same time trying to maintain security in Baghdad,” he said.

“We’re confident, working closely with the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi government, that we can continue to pressure ISIL on multiple fronts at the same time,” Cook added.

ISIL affiliates in places such as Libya, Afghanistan and East Africa also are under intensifying pressure, he said.

“This is notable and important progress from a year ago or six months ago, but as the tragedies in Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq and Saudi Arabia demonstrate, there is still much work left to do,” Cook told reporters.

Part of the Strategy

The military defeat of ISIL in Iraq and Syria is necessary to protect innocent lives from ISIL’s brutality but it’s just one part of a strategy that calls for “defeating ISIL in its parent tumor in Iraq and Syria, targeting its cancerous spread elsewhere in the world and strengthening security in the homeland against attacks planned or inspired by ISIL,” he said.

This week, representatives from 28 nations will convene at the NATO Summit in Warsaw, Poland’s capital city. President Barack Obama, Carter and the other senior leaders will discuss a range of topics, including how to strengthen the campaign against ISIL, he added.

Later this month, Carter will convene fellow defense ministers from counter-ISIL coalition nations in Washington to assess the campaign’s progress and how to further accelerate it, Cook said.

“Every day,” he added, “the brave men and women of our armed forces are working alongside partner forces to end ISIL’s ability to threaten innocent lives in the Middle East and around the world. And we remain committed to that mission.”

Of course, Badminton is not like cricket — which is a total farce with fake records being considered by national and international awards and honors, mostly by payment basis — but there still exists a certain “mischief” that is spoiling its image as a genuine sport.

There is a serious flaw in badminton scheduling and timings as some vested interests seem to decide the outcomes in some measures. BWF deliberately makes weak candidates play against the top players, thereby letting the big players win points and easy money, while the newcomers and weak ones leave the field in the first round.

That is bad. Not because the weak and new players should play longer, but the top players get all the benefits as they don’t face each other in the first rounds. BWF needs to make two categories of standard players and weak players and let them play against their own level so that they can learn and stay on for first two or three rounds and stabilize themselves in due course.

If the new and low-seeded players play separately for the first two rounds, a couple of them could reach the upper rounds, even if they don’t win any title, but they would gain experience and expertise. If they keep losing in the first round they might exit from badminton once andfor all.

Then there is the issue of the time table and scheduling by BWF.  Some candidates generally do not have to face strong candidates as per scheduling, which helps them gain points and easy money.

One fails to understand why the BW lords keep changing the beginning time of tournament each day, from 9 am to 12 pm to 4 pm to 6 pm etc. Why don’t they start the tournament at one fixed time each day of the tournament?

Clearly there is some mischief in both scheduling, mixing up the weak candidates with top players, and in the times for tournaments.

Even the USA and Canada, without any good players, have begun “Open” tournaments for the lower-ranked players, and both these countries could even possible help some other country because of Asia-pivot politics.

Will BWF bosses make changes appropriately so that no mischief sneaks into the tournament and titles?

Obviously, some countries gain from these types of activities. Titles, money and points should be earned properly and not by mischief by teams and officials.

By Miodrag Vlahovic*

The Brexit referendum has seriously damaged the basis of the EU’s structure and has upset the applecart of European politics in general.

This seismic event will overshadow all political developments in Europe for the immediate future (and for years to come, too), while European leaders fixate on the very concept and perspective of the EU.

This is understandable, but Europe risks ignoring its international responsibilities during a pivotal year which includes the election of the next UN Secretary-General. This is a key international role which needs Europe’s attention, despite the oppressive and challenging post-Brexit agenda.

Governments from Eastern Europe, the only region never to have held this position, put forward eight nominees to compete for the position including Mr Igor Luksic, the former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Montenegro, my home country.

After a series of public hearings at the UN General Assembly in April, the candidates set out their platforms for a new UN. Their campaigns to secure the support of the Security Council members are underway and July’s first round of discussion should thin this field of candidates leaving those serious contenders.

As a Montenegrin, I am proud to see Mr Luksic representing our country and giving a positive vision for the UN. Igor runs a very interesting campaign, being very active in presenting his ideas and proposals at all relevant international and diplomatic addresses.

It would be a stunning achievement for our country our candidate to hold the position of UN Secretary-General. But even if this does not occur, the very fact that Montenegro has a serious contender is a very important fact for the country which became a UN member only in 2006.

Among all criteria which may be of interest for the UN members, there is a strong international movement to elect for the first time a woman Secretary-General. That element in the complex election puzzle should not be ignored. The global trend in this aspect will have its impact on world organisation, also.

That is why I find myself among those who believe that Bulgaria’s official candidate, Mrs Irina Bokova, the current head of UNESCO and previous acting Foreign Minister, would be most probably the best chance for Eastern Europe to get this position.

She has strong UN and diplomatic credentials and a solid track record. She was twice elected as Director-General of UNESCO meaning she is trusted by the Member States and has good working contacts with practically all UN members. She also successfully overhauled the organisation in the face of budget constraints. These are all very important elements to be taken into account.

As with any election, there are backroom negotiations reported. The most interesting case happens to be the situation with Bulgaria’s Kristalina Georgieva, current European Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources. Mrs Georgieva failed to gain her own country’s support earlier this year, but she has been trying to secure the nomination from other countries, namely Hungary and Albania.

It seems obvious that Mrs Georgieva is not only acting against the interest of her own country, but also against the very interest of Eastern Europe in general. The common position of Eastern Europeans is less likely to occur if, instead of harmonising the opinions of all countries involved, we face the situation that candidates are nominated by other governments than their own. Confusion and potential for disputes would be obvious and cannot be ignored.

This is exactly how a senior member of the European Commission member should not behave, especially not in post-Brexit times.

Last week, the Albanian Foreign Ministry announced that its government would not nominate Georgieva. This would have been too problematic, obviously. There will not be any surprise if Hungary does the same.

The eyes of the world are on Eastern Europe for a positive reason. It should stay like that. As a region, we must be smart and look to the benefits of this diplomatic race for our common good. We must find our way to support our strongest candidate.

If we revert to the stereotypical politics of misunderstanding, confrontation and conflict, we will turn inwards and reject our place on the global stage. This would be non-intelligent and we could risk losing our historic opportunity for international leadership to a Latin American candidate, per example. Other UN members have seen the window of opportunity there and candidates have emerged from Argentina, New Zealand, Portugal and possibly even from Costa Rica or Mexico.

This will certainly be Eastern Europe’s only chance to have a UN Secretary-General for years to come. The two-term mandate of the post is an un-written rule. We can make a positive mark on the world by supporting a relevant and strong candidate who has the best chances to lead the UN.

Eastern Europe can provide this person – but only if we come together, understanding the necessity to rise above our differences and do what is best for our region as a whole. After the July 21 straw poll, we will need to regroup as a region, and identify our common strategy for the future.

Seventy years after the creation of the United Nations and over 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it would be a landmark historic achievement for Eastern Europe to provide its first Secretary-General of the UN.

If we have the ‘obligation’ of addressing the newly-elected person as ‘Madame Secretary-General’ – even better!

*Miodrag Vlahovic was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Montenegro and the first Montenegrin Ambassador to Washington.

President Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt is a man of vision. In addition to his ambitions for his own country, there is mounting evidence that he aims to build a positive legacy for himself in the wider Middle East. He seems to have set his sights on promoting not only a new peace-making initiative between Israel and the Palestinians, but a further effort to bridge the apparently irreconcilable differences between the two wings of the Palestinian body politic, Hamas and Fatah.

It was in a determined counter-attack on the terror-based Islamism represented by the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates that Sisi came to power in the middle of 2014. One year of Muslim Brotherhood rule – democratically based though it was – proved more than enough for most Egyptians, who could see the increasingly hardline policies of the ruling party strangling the liberties built into their constitution. So after the coup that deposed Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi, al-Sisi faced the electorate which, albeit without a great deal of enthusiasm, voted him into office.

It soon became obvious that Sisi’s determined opposition to Islamist extremism at home was no passing phase, but a deeply held conviction, allied to an aspiration to see “genuine Islam” at peace with itself and the rest of the world.

Only six months into his presidency, Sisi delivered a most astonishing speech for an Arab leader. On January 1, 2015, he visited Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, where he addressed a gathering of Egypt’s religious élite. In his remarks he ventured into an area shunned by most political figures in the West, fearful of being tarred with that most unacceptable of brushes for the politically correct – Islamophobia.

Religious clerics, he asserted, were venerating a set of ideas that were causing the entire Islamic nation to be a source of anxiety to the rest of the world.

“That thinking (I am not saying “religion” but “thinking”)…that we have held sacred over the years…is antagonizing the entire world. Is it possible that 1.6 billion Muslims should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible! We are in need of a religious revolution…because the Islamic nation is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost – and it is being lost by our own hands.”

In short Sisi was declaring ideological war on jihadism in all its forms – on al-Qaeda, on Islamic State, on Iranian Islamism, on the Muslim Brotherhood, and on all the affiliates and sub-groups of those organizations.

His initiative did not fall on deaf ears. On April 2, 2015, Egypt’s Grand Mufti, Shawki Allam, spoke to Muslims worldwide.

“There is no true religion that does not regard the sanctity of human life as one of its highest values, and Islam is no exception. Indeed, Allah made this unequivocal in the Qur’an. He emphasized the gravity of the universal prohibition against murder, stating that when a person takes even one life, ‘it is as if he has killed all mankind’.”

Referring to the videos showing decapitations in Sinai and Libya, the burning alive of a Jordanian pilot, and other horrific acts by jihadists, he said: “These thugs are invoking religious texts to justify their inhumane crimes.” This, he asserted,”is a flagrant misreading of both the letter and spirit of the Islamic tradition… These terrorists are not Muslim activists, but criminals who have been fed a mistaken interpretation of the Qur’an and Sunnah, the teachings and practices of the Prophet Mohammed.

“We are in an ideological battle… against the terrorist cancer. In this battle, Egypt is defending not only itself, but also humanity against the encroaching danger of extremism.”

It is against that background that Sisi’s recent initiatives need to be assessed. In his speech to the UN on September 28. 2015, he supported the establishment of a Palestinian state, because it would “effectively eliminate one of the most …dangerous pretexts used to justify extremism and terrorism.”

Sisi’s remarks were no flash in the pan. In hindsight it seems clear that a well-conceived strategic plan was already being rolled out. The plan contemplated even closer cooperation with Israel than was already functioning in the Sinai peninsula, where Egypt and Israel were together combatting a hodge-podge of jihadist groups intent on disrupting Egypt’s administration.

In March 2016 Sisi nominated former Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, often referred to in Arab media as “Israel’s friend,” to head the Arab League. On May 17, In a speech in the southern city of Assiut, Sisi promised Israel warmer ties if it accepts efforts to resume peace talks with the Palestinians. He also said that Egypt was willing to mediate a reconciliation between rival Palestinian factions to pave the way toward a lasting peace accord with the Israelis.

Then, on June 3, 2016, hours after the conclusion of the French-led peace conference in Paris, Sisi reiterated his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adding that he believed achieving a peace deal would have a major positive effect on the region.

“The Palestinian issue has been neglected in recent years… if we solve it, we will all live in a better situation.”

Official Palestinian and Israeli responses welcoming Sisi’s original statement in May were quick in coming. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas  appreciated Egyptian efforts to establish a Palestinian state; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was encouraged by the leadership Sisi was displaying. Even Hamas issued a press statement, welcoming the Egyptian statement on Palestinian reconciliation, though ignoring Sisi’s comments on peace with Israel.

Some Israeli journalists suggested prior coordination between Sisi and the Israeli government over Egypt’s peace initiative, asserting that Israeli and Palestinian officials had been pushing Sisi ahead of the Paris international conference to take the lead as mediator in restarting the peace process. Some pointed to the fact that Israel’s response came only 20 minutes after Sisi finished speaking. Also significant, some believe, is that Netanyahu’s pointed rejection of the French international peace conferences had been matched by his positive reaction to Sisi’s initiative.

Sisi, meanwhile, feels the hand of history heavy on his shoulder. As he said in February, 2016: “If by our combined efforts and real desire, we can all achieve a solution to this problem and find hope for the Palestinians and security for the Israelis, history will write a new page that will be no less and might even be more of an achievement than the signing of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel forty years ago.”

The suicide bombings in Medina, the second holiest shrine of Islam, on 4th of July has indeed brought the spectre of radical Islam full circle for the Saudis. Having spawned Islamic radicalism and funded terrorists for more than two decades now, it was but a matter of time that the radicals bit the very hand that fed them.

The Saudis have been doing a balancing act for far too long to be able to sustain it endlessly- maintaining a close relationship with the US on one hand, and secretly funding the jihadis on the other, was always mutually incompatible. It has become even more so, with the Islamic State taking their fight to altogether new levels of barbarianism.

The attack was also meant to direct two significant missives at the world. One, the attack was planned in the holy month of Ramadan, and two, it was carried out on the 4th of July. Coinciding with the American Independence Day, it was evidently symbolic of the Islamic State’s fIght against the global hegemon. That it was done during Ramadan was clearly a challenge to traditional Islam’s view of a month of spirituality and penance by the IS, trying to superimpose its own interpretation of the scriptures, portraying Ramadan as a month of plunder and conquest.

Despite all the best efforts of the countries aligned against the IS, there is yet much of a palpable fight left. Equally, for the Saudis, the proverbial chickens have come home to roost.

*Vishakha Amitabh Hoskote, MPHIL (Politics, International Relations) Rani Durgavati University Jabalpur, MA Politics, International Relations School of International Studies, JNU Delhi, PG Diploma Development Communications, AJK MCRC,Jamia Millia Islamia New Delhi, BA Political Science, Lady Shri Ram College for Women,Delhi University

Rulings pertaining to the annulment of marriages in India that are decided by ecclesiastical tribunals, commonly known among Christians as church courts, have no legal sanctity reaffirmed the country’s Supreme Court on July 4, reported The Times of India.

The court also ruled that anyone who remarried after being given such a divorce decree would be committing an offence, the report said.

The ruling comes after a Catholic lawyer Clarence Pais sought legal sanctity for divorce decrees granted by ecclesiastical tribunals.

The Supreme Court said a 1996 ruling had already settled the issue of how much authority ecclesiastical tribunals have in matters relating to divorce.

The nation’s observed birthday—July 4th—always brings forth what passes for modern day “patriotism”: prominent displays of the flag everywhere, celebration of the military, picnics, backyard barbeques, and of course fireworks. There is even an occasional tribute to the nation’s “founders,” those men who supposedly signed the Declaration of Independence on that date, and the genius of Thomas Jefferson who purportedly masterminded and wrote the document. Yet Americans, although a great people, are usually vacant on their history, and many really admit it, because history seems a like a dusty little hobby that is irrelevant to the “here and now,” which self-help gurus on TV tell us we need to focus on. However, comparatively, people in other countries usually pay more attention to their own history and those of at least their region of the world.

Because many people in the United States don’t value history very much, they tend to allow politicians to be selective in their remembering of historical events—usually to manipulate public nationalism (which now passes for patriotism) for their own dubious policy goals. For example, if Americans had focused more on the fact that historically, the Vietnamese had been fighting fiercely over the centuries to throw out foreign invaders—such as the Japanese, the Chinese, and recently the French—perhaps they would have demanded that their politicians think twice, even three times, about invading that country. And if Americans had known that the historically fractious Iraq, an artificial country that had been created by the greedy colonial powers after World War I to exploit the country’s oil reserves, they might have wisely rejected George W. Bush’s attempt at military social work in one of the most unlikely places in the Middle East for democracy to flourish.

Similarly, if most of American public had been more aware that the mighty British Empire had failed three times to subdue Afghanistan in the 1800s and early 1900s, and that the Soviets had ignominiously withdrew in defeat from that country just over a decade before, perhaps they would have pressured George W. Bush to be more selective in his military response to 9/11, thus avoiding the current quagmire in that warlike and xenophobic country, which especially hates foreign invaders.

In fact, the vast majority of Americans would scratch their heads when asked about the causes of even traumatic events in the nation’s history. For example, they wouldn’t be able to tell you what motivated the British to burn Washington, D.C. in the War of 1812, the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor to begin World War II, or Osama bin Laden to launch his terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001. Yet only in the new physics can we have uncaused events. Americans just ignore such causes because they don’t like to complicate the story of their government heroically battling the forces of evil.

Americans are not the only country to distort history to their liking, but they do seem far too fuzzy on historical details, thus allowing their politicians to manipulate them into usually disastrous adventures at home and abroad. Let’s take a current example. The Obama administration just patted itself on the back by disclosing that since the president expanded Bush’s drone wars against terrorists to at least seven countries on two continents, this modern technology has allowed the killing of between 2.372 and 2,581 “combatants” from 2009 to through the end of 2015, but only between 64 and 116 civilians during that same period (most independent groups tracking such civilian deaths put the total about two-to-three times higher). All of these killings, however, were only “outside areas of active hostilities,” such as Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya, not in the designated war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.

In a republic, there are several problems with these secret (well, not-so-secret) wars. The first is that the killing of any civilians by a foreign attacker is used as a propaganda tool by Islamist militants, thus helping to recruit more terrorists. In Yemen, documentation by journalists on the ground has shown that U.S. drone strikes and air strikes have motivated the angry Yemeni population to significantly swell the ranks of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula there. Second, and even more important, Americans have forgotten that their Constitution (much more important than the Declaration of Independence, because it is supposed to be a legally binding constraint on adventure-happy politicians of both parties) requires that Congress, the representatives of the American people, approve wars, which has not occurred with the secret drone wars. (Even the congressional resolutions approving U.S. military action in the three designated war zones are way more than a decade old and out of date (in Afghanistan and Iraq) or nonexistent (in Syria). The arrogance of the modern executive branch in conducting such constitutionally dangerous secret wars was brought forth by an unnamed administration official when defending the data release on drone war killings (which conveniently didn’t provide enough details to allow the media or private organizations to match it up with their higher totals), “We didn’t have to do this in the first place. We do believe we’re trying to go the extra mile here.” At least go the extra ten miles and make these illegal wars legitimate by getting congressional approval or, even better, go the extra hundred miles by ending such counterproductive adventurism.

But Americans don’t pressure their politicians to follow the Constitution, because most regard it as a dusty old historical document, which has become less important as people began excessively worshipping the American flag, the alleged signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 (it was not, and only became an important document many years later when its lead plagiarizer, Thomas Jefferson, became a prominent national politician), and the U.S. military (the anti-militarist founders, who didn’t even allow a standing army in the Constitution, would pass out on this one). Rather, Americans should probably instead celebrate September 17, 1787—the date the newly signed Constitution brought forth the resilient system of popular government Americans have enjoyed for well over 200 years—even over July 2, 1776, the important date on which the Continental Congress voted for independence from Britain. That Constitution was designed to make the country a peaceful republic, not a voracious globe-girdling empire, which it became only after World War II—because its citizens sought imperial glory, because they had the power to do so, rather than remembering the history of why the country was founded. True patriotism demands more work from the American people.

This article was published at Huffington Post and reprinted with permission.

By Fouad Farhaoui*

Since January 2015, there has been much talk in the media about China’s efforts to establish a military base in Namibia. It is reported that the Namibian ambassador to China held talks with Chinese military officials about construction of a naval base in Port of Walvis Bay. However, Chinese and Namibian authorities had denied this news, as stated and declared by Chinese defense minister on Agence France-Presse in January 2015. Apart from this media controversy, Namibia is one of many African countries that have close ties with China. Those ties exist at different levels in the political and economic domains, as well as that of military and security.

China between SWAPO and the issue of Walvis Bay

Namibia was under the control of the German Empire after 1884, but became subject to the Republic of South Africa by a decision of the League of Nations after the end of World War I. In 1958, SWAPO “South West Africa People’s Organization” was created to fight for in dependence of Namibia. During the same period, the organization sent volunteers for military training in China[1].

When the issue of Namibian independence was posed at the United Nations in 1971, Beijing supported Namibia’s claims for separation from South Africa. Moreover, China sought to strengthen its influence in southern Africa after the military coup in Portugal in 1974ended the European country’s presence in Angola, Northern Namibia, and Mozambique. In 1973, China voted for United Nations General Assembly’s resolution that would recognize “SWAPO” as the legitimate and sole representative of the Namibian people, and supported its negotiations for independence. However, the status of Walvis Bay Port was the biggest obstacle in the negotiations during this period-the Western Contact Group (US, United Kingdom, France, West Germany, and Canada) called for a self-determination referendum in Namibian January 1977, but South Africa refused to do so, and instead maintained sovereignty over the port of Walvis Bay[2].

In fact, although the UK was part of Western Contact Group, the port was subject to the British Navy. During this time, the UK was defending its strategic naval sites around the world, such as those in Cyprus, Gibraltar, Kenya, the Suez Canal, Aden in South Yemen, and the Falkland Islands south of Argentina. These ports were increasingly important for Britain as it faced the rise of the US Navy following the end of World War II. Meanwhile, China insisted on South Africa’s withdrawal from Walvis Bay Port.

Independent Namibia and the geo-economic interests of China

Namibia obtained its independence from South Africa in 1990, and was recognized by China on 20 March of the same year. China and Namibia established diplomatic relations forthwith on March 22, 1990, as they signed agreements on economic and technical cooperation. But despite the independence of Namibia, the port of Walvis Bay remained under control of South Africa until Nelson Mandela came to power and handed over the port to Namibia in 1994.

Sino-Namibian relations have developed extensively after the visit of the Namibian president to China in 2005 and the opening of the Namibian embassy in Beijing. This period was marked by China’s interest in developing cooperation with Namibia in the fields of tourism, education, health, investment in energy and metals, media and communication, as well as in the infrastructure sector. In particular, investment in uranium is one of the most strategic economic drivers of China’s interest in Namibia, since Beijing has a program to build more than 100 nuclear reactors in the future. Furthermore, China has started working on energy exploration in northern coast of Namibiain recent years.

This development of China’s economic and trade relations with Namibia has also motivated Chinese businessmen to set up an export area surrounding Walvis Bay. Furthermore, this port is also considered as a key that connects Chinese interests with both Botswana and Zimbabwe, neither of which possesses access to sea. The development of these economic relations has resulted in the settlement of a large Chinese community in Namibia.

In fact, the geo-economic importance of Walvis Bay port has caused a lot speculation about China’s ambition to create a naval base in the port, including speculation from the Namibian media which stated that 2,600 tons of military material has reached the harbor, arguing that it was destined for Zimbabwe. Regardless of the accuracy of these analyses, it is reasonable to discuss future scenarios regarding the “Port” since Chinese-Namibian military relations are growing rapidly. China has trained many military cadres from Namibia in the military academy of Shanghai. It also built the Namibian military academy and military museum in Okahandja. Furthermore, it is important to note that China has also set up a station for space research in the city of Swakopmund, which is not far from Walvis Bay, which works in coordination with other Chinese stations at the Port of Malindion the Kenyan coast and the Port of Karachi in Pakistan. Some American studies have argued that those stations are being used for military purposes.

Since January 2015, mutual visits between Chinese military officials and their counterparts from both Namibia and Angola have become more frequent. On March 30, 2015, Chinese Minister of Defense Chang Wanquan visited Namibia, and then Angolan Minister of Defense João Lourenço paid a visit to Chinaon September 21, 2015, directly followed by a visit of Namibian Minister of Defense Hon Penda Ya Ndakolo on September 22 of the same year, The Angolan Defense Minister visited Chinaagain in February 2016. So, it seems that there is a rivalry between Namibia and Angola regarding military relations with China as the two countries vie to developthe port Walvis Bay and the Luwanda port, respectively, as a Chinese strategic naval position in the South Atlantic.

After all, we can track Chinese military relations in Africa to argue that Beijing has confirmed its military presence in the Western Indian Ocean by establishing a military base in Djibouti and building a special relationship with Kenya. However, due to escalating US pressure on China in South China Sea and growing interest in the economic benefits in Antarctica, China is now looking to secure its military presence in the South Atlantic, and is therefore working to strengthen military ties with Namibia and Angola. Inescapably, China will require Walvis Bay Port in Namibia for military purposes, to use it as a private naval base, or as a multi-tasking logistical port.

But the challenge for China is how it will deal with Brazilian naval strategy on one hand, which announced that the security of the region relies upon countries bordering the South Atlantic Ocean, and Britain’s stance on the other, since it has a presence on many islands in the region.

[1] Ian Taylor, “China and swapo: The role of the people’s republic in Namibia’s liberation and post‐independence relations”, South African Journal of International Affairs, 5:1, 1997, P.110 -111.
[2]Ibid , p.113.