Duterte’s belligerence towards the US alters strategic environment, but China may not budge on South China Sea.

By Murray Hiebert*

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte visited China for four days beginning October 18 in a strategic bet that he can patch up contentious relations with Beijing, seek economic aid while loosening longstanding ties with the United States. The results of the trip, during which he announced his “separation from the US,” will be closely monitored for signs of how serious the new president is about orienting the Philippines toward China and away from the United States, which would have an outsized impact on regional geopolitical dynamics and US efforts to rein in China’s ambitions in the South China Sea.

Relations between Manila and Beijing unraveled in 2012 when China seized fish-rich Scarborough Shoal, roughly 125 miles off the Philippine coast in the South China Sea. China’s move prompted the Philippines to bring a case against Beijing to an international arbitral tribunal in The Hague, causing China to react angrily. Duterte’s predecessor Benigno Aquino signed a defense cooperation agreement with the United States in 2014 giving the US military increased access to five bases and providing the Philippines increased aid and training for maritime domain awareness. Stepped up engagement with Manila was a key plank in President Barack Obama’s rebalance to Asia.

Since taking office in June, the 71-year-old former mayor of Davao City has launched a bloody campaign against drugs, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,500 people. When the US government criticized his tactics, Duterte fought back with an outburst of profanities and told Washington to “go to hell.” He reminded the United States of massacres that took place in his home province of Mindanao in the early 1900s and raised questions about whether Washington could be relied on to help the Philippines if it were attacked.

In his first three months in office, Duterte has created uncertainty about Manila’s relations with Washington. US officials have kept a stiff upper lip through Duterte’s rants and said they support his efforts to ease tensions with China. “The prospect of the Philippines pulling out of a long stretch of tense relations with Beijing is a desirable one,” Daniel Russel, senior US diplomat for East Asia, told journalists before Duterte headed to Beijing.

A key motivator driving the Philippine president to mend fences with China is economic. He recognizes that the spat with Beijing has meant that the Philippines is missing out on China’s largesse. Duterte would like help developing the country’s overextended infrastructure, particularly railways in Mindanao and Luzon. He would also like loans to buy weapons for the Philippines’ military modernization program. The day before his visit, Duterte was quoted in state-run Xinhua news agency as criticizing Washington for its limited assistance and saying “only China can help us.”

China retaliated against Manila for bringing Beijing to the international tribunal by suspending banana and other agricultural exports and telling Chinese tourists to avoid the Philippines, at considerable cost to the country’s economy. Duterte, accompanied by more than 200 Philippine business leaders, would like Beijing to lift these restrictions. In a sign of potential aid to come, a Chinese tycoon is financing construction of a giant drug rehabilitation center near Manila.

During the election campaign, Duterte took a tough stance on the Philippine maritime dispute with China pledging to ride a jet ski to the Spratly Islands and plant the nation’s flag there. His bravado has eased since he took office. Before leaving for China, Duterte told journalists that he would ask Beijing to allow Filipino fishermen to resume fishing in Scarborough Shoal, but added that Philippine sovereignty over its claims in the South China Sea was not on the negotiating table.

Duterte has said repeatedly that the tribunal ruling must form the basis of any settlement of Philippine maritime disputes with China.

As Duterte arrived in Beijing, a Xinhua editorial said his visit would be a step toward overcoming years of estrangement between the two nations: “Should he demonstrate his good faith, the trip will present a long overdue opportunity for the two nations, which enjoy longstanding friendship, to heal the wounds of the past few years and steer their relationship back to the right course.” Duterte pointedly told Chinese media: “Maybe because I’m Chinese, and I believe in sincerity.” Press reports state his grandfather was Chinese.

During a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the two leaders agreed to resume talks on the dispute in the South China Sea. Duterte said the day before the meeting that the July ruling by the international tribunal would take a “back seat.” The two sides agreed to set up a joint coast guard committee on maritime cooperation, and China pledged to provide aid for aquaculture and commercial fish processing. Beijing promised to provide preferential loans to finance infrastructure development such as railroads and roads, lifted an import ban on Philippine fruit, and said it would encourage Chinese tourists to visit the Philippines. The two countries signed some $13.5 billion in trade deals, Philippine officials said.

In the weeks before the trip, Duterte announced that he was suspending joint exercises and patrols with the United States in the South China Sea in an apparent signal that his goal of implementing a more “independent” foreign policy would result in distancing the country from Washington. Earlier Duterte had said he would ask the roughly 100 US forces providing counterterrorism assistance in attacking the Abu Sayyaf extremists in Mindanao to leave. Defense Secretary Dolfin Lorenzana said subsequently that this would be implemented once Filipino troops could fill this role.

Duterte said he would continue to honor the country’s existing treaties and military alliances, but was moving to limit cooperation with the United States to avoid antagonizing China. The defense secretary told journalists that the United States and the Philippines conduct nearly 30 joint exercises each year.

Duterte’s impromptu announcements have created considerable uncertainty about future of US engagement with the Philippines, a country with which Washington signed a mutual defense treaty in 1951. US officials say Manila has not yet officially informed Washington of any proposed changes to its relations with United States.

Many observers question whether Duterte’s expectations about what China will offer are realistic and point out that he could have reduced his leverage with Beijing by publicly insulting the United States. China has given no indication that it will agree to a bargain in which Manila would reduce defense ties with Washington in exchange for large-scale Chinese economic assistance and concessions on disputed territory.

Domestically, Duterte will likely face limits on how far he can go in improving ties with China or distancing the country from the United States. A poll conducted in late September showed that 76 percent of Filipinos surveyed had “much trust” in the United States despite Duterte’s anti-American outbursts, but only 22 percent felt the same about China.

Nonetheless, an anti-American protest calling for the withdrawal of US troops from the Philippines erupted outside the US Embassy in Manila during Duterte’s visit. About a dozen protestors were injured when a police van crashed into the crowd.

To be sure, the stunning rhetoric coming from Duterte has changed the strategic environment dramatically, but his actions must be monitored over the coming months to see whether the country’s foreign policy is adjusted significantly in the wake of Chinese pledges of assistance and cooperation. Duterte might abandon some joint exercises with the United States, but in the end, it’s unlikely that he will jettison ties with Washington when he has no certainty that discussions with China will result in significant concessions in the South China Sea.

*Murray Hiebert is senior fellow and deputy director of the Sumitro Chair for Southeast Asian Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.

By Dr Subhash Kapila

India’s foreign policy has far too long been vainly straitjacketed by pious hopes that Indian appeasement policies of the 2004-14 era towards China and Pakistan would induce moderation in their adversarial stances against India.

That hangover persisted for the period 2014-16 period till recently after incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi belatedly realised that all his personal diplomacy and political outreaches to China and Pakistan were not finding positive responses in neither Beijing nor in Islamabad.

The strategic reality underscoring the Chinese and Pakistani lack of positive responses being that both singly earlier and now jointly, have a strategic convergence in arresting India’s emergence as a major Power. This further gets enmeshed with both China and Pakistan feeling nervous about India’s growing strategic proximity to the United States.

While the Indian Armed Forces in their strategic thinking and contingency planning have for decades been alive to the possibility of a ‘Dual China-Pakistan Military Threat to India’, the resonance of such a reality did not find adequate echoes in the corridors of power in New Delhi nor reflected in any revised policy formulations on China and Pakistan.

The Indian policy establishment seemingly became alive and conscious to the reality of the military potency of the China-Pakistan Axis, its dangerous and disruptive implications for Indian security only after 2014. Whatever little doubt that still persisted on his score stood finally dispensed when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Pakistan in April 2015 and announced China’s grandiose plans for the $ 52 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor. As highlighted in my Book “China-India Military Confrontation: 21st Century Perspectives” (January 2016), with such a move China facilitated by Pakistan, had turned the flanks of India’s military postures in Ladakh and the remainder of J&K Sate. The China-Pakistan Dual Military Threat now stood concretised.

To substantiate the imperatives of India redrawing its foreign policy calculations and stances on the China-Pakistan Axis military threat to India, it becomes essential to briefly examine China’s and Pakistan’s adversarial stances against India during the period 2014-to date in 2016.

China during this period which coincided with Chinese President Xi Jinping having acquired complete control of China’s massive military apparatus, embarked on an increased number of military intrusions into Indian Territory right across India; s Northern borders with China Occupied Tibet. China began a repetition of military brinkmanship that it was following in the South China Sea.

Politically, China adopted obstructive stances on India’s admission into the Permanent Membership of the UN Security Council, more markedly and recently on India’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. China’s insistence was based on the specious argument that Pakistan also should be so admitted forgetting Pakistan’s reputation as a nuclear proliferator.

China ‘s record on not only condoning but persistently shielding Pakistan’s notorious Jihadi terrorist outfit chief, Massod Azhar from being listed as a ‘Global Terrorist’ by the UN has stood stymied by China both at the UN and recently in BRICS Summit 2016 in Goa. Is it not despicable that China aspiring to be a Superpower and with claims to be a ‘responsible stakeholder’ in global security should be shielding Pakistan’s state-sponsored terrorism.

Moving to Pakistan, no recount is necessary as Pakistan’s incessant military and military-assisted Jihadi terrorist strikes against Indian military targets led in September 2016 to India for the first time launching ‘surgical strikes’ at Pakistan Army terrorist launching pads as opposed to earlier border local strikes on Pakistani posts on the LOC.

The question arises as to who can rein-in Pakistan’s military provocations and military adventurism against India? Earlier, when the United States was the strategic patron of Pakistan, moderation was applied by the United States on the Pakistan Army not to push India to conflict escalation as a reactionary response and thereby endangering South Asia security.

Unlike the United States, the picture in 2016 is radically the opposite. In terms of restraining Pakistan’s military adventurism, China as the new strategic patron of Pakistan is not the solution. China is not only a part of the overall Pakistan problem for India but now with the CPEC as the prized strategic objective of China, the stakes for China to encourage Pakistan’s military adventurism against India gets considerably raised.

It is not far-fetched in military thinking to assert the possibility that has now arisen where China becomes a belligerent with Pakistan against India just to protect its CPEC strategic investment. As reflected in my Book quoted above, it is within the realms of possibility that China declares Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and the Northern Areas as “Core Interest of China” implicit in such declaration being that China would be willing to go to war with India to protect the CPEC traversing Indian Territory in illegal occupation of Pakistan.

Therefore, in 2016, strong imperatives have emerged that India’s foreign policy formulations and perspectives on China and Pakistan need no longer be considered as separate foreign policy planning domains but viewed as one hyphenated strategic entity

Indian foreign policy establishment viewing the China-Pakistan Axis Threat to Indian security as a potent strategic coalition ranged against India would facilitate drawing the correct deductions of India’s diplomatic and strategic responses across the board. It would also not distort India’s military force-planning parameters and requirements where when viewed singly ad-hoc measures of transferring military formations from one theatre to the other was resorted to.

No longer would India’s foreign policy planners be weighed down by distortions of examining ‘intentions’ of China and Pakistan singly. The combined intentions of China and Pakistan have to be at the core of Indian foreign policy planning for the 21st Century to counter the China-Pakistan Axis. In any case India no longer has the luxury of ‘divining’ intentions of its adversaries. India’s military postures have to be strictly related to and commensurate with the combined military weight of the China-Pakistan Axis

It also needs to be emphasised that as per current debate ongoing in India, China cannot be weaned away from Pakistan by inducing China and attracting China to make massive economic investments in India with the hope that such inducements would soften China’s adversarial stances against India. Short of India capitulating and surrendering to China’s demands on Indian territories claimed by it there are no optimistic indicators to suggest otherwise.

Concluding, it needs to be stressed that the China-Pakistan Axis Military Threat to India is “REAL” and a threat that will persist as a formidable challenge for India militarily. This ‘Threat” has all the ingredients to intensify as India ascends further upwards on the global power trajectory. India should depart from the 1962 syndrome of ascribing pious intentions to China when it comes to India’s National Security and India’s National Honour.

According to a recent poll released by the private, and independent firm, Hinterlaces, which was made public on Monday October 17, 2016, 51 percent of the Venezuelan population prefers that “the government of President Maduro take effective measures and resolve, at least in part, the economic problems of the country,” while 43 percent prefers “a government of the opposition ”.[i] Six percent did not answer or were undecided.[ii] The poll was carried out on the ground over three weeks, from September 26 to October 4, 2016.[iii]

While the poll does indicate a more favorable view of Nicolas Maduro, the legislative election in December 2015 was a clear indication that he must perform to resolve the economic crisis if the Chavista political party is to recover a solid base at the ballot box. In any case, the poll comes almost a year after that electoral defeat, and although just a snapshot in time, it does suggest some recovery in public confidence for the otherwise embattled Maduro; at least in comparison to the shaky status of the opposition. This can be attributed to several factors. The first is the success of the implementation of the numerous Comités Locales de Abastecimiento y Producción (CLAP) (Local Committees for Replenishing and production), since the beginning of April 2016.[iv] The goal of these committees is to make food and primary necessities more accessible to the local population. They are constituted by public community partnerships, bypassing the illegal networks that divert subsidized goods from the marketplace for sale on the parallel market or at the Colombian border where there are no price controls. While critics have argued that the CLAPs suffer from clientilism there is no question that the direct distribution of basic commodities to consumers is beginning to alleviate some of the frustration caused by the shortages. So far, CLAPs have provided approximately thirty-three million tons of food to more than two million Venezuelans. Hinterlaces actually carried out a poll on the popularity of this program earlier in October, and it showed that 58 percent of the population supported it, and of these 45 percent thought it was fairly effective.

Another likely factor responsible for the favorable outcome for the Maduro administration in this poll, is the increase of the oil price. Venezuela has gained fiscal flexibility with the value of its principal export going up. The spike in oil price also allows the government to increase the salaries of public workers. This boost in disposable income gives these employees more opportunities to gain access to food and other goods that had been missing from the shelves of Venezuelans’ grocery stores.

The last factor probably has to do with the opposition itself. Actually, polls by Hinterlaces have revealed that only 24 percent of the population trusts the opposition to carry out these policies effectively. The different conservative parties in Venezuela have been unable to offer a viable alternative to the policies initiated by Nicolas Maduro. The main goal of the opposition appears to be getting rid of Maduro, without any concrete reforms. They are hoping to have enough signatures to launch a recall of the referendum during October 26 through October 28. Since on October 17 the Supreme Court upheld the requirement of a 20 percent of all registered voters in each state to sign the petition to initiate the referendum.

So, maybe this feeling of not having a real alternative from the opposition combined with the recent improvement of the economy might have made the population prefer to stay with the president that they already know. President Maduro, highlighted by CLAPs, is trying to offer real solutions rather than going with all the unknown strategies that the opposition tends to offer.

One thing that seems to be clear is that President Nicolas Maduro is a survivor. He endured an all out effort by the opposition to delegitimize his close electoral win in April 2013. After a strong showing for Chavistas in the municipal elections of December 2013, he dealt with the very violent period of the Guarimbas during the first quarter of 2014; and the massive drop in oil prices to almost twenty dollars a barrel in 2014 and 2015.

But, perhaps the strongest mark of his staying power has been the fact that he has not given in to outside pressure, led mainly by the Obama administration, and right wing governments in the region. This anti-Chavista block aims at isolating Maduro, supporting the Venezuelan opposition, and depriving Caracas of access to credit. Maduro has been able to largely counter this pressure by advancing strategic partnerships with China, Russia, and other countries that are not obedient to the Washington consensus.

This regional pressure has only grown stronger during the last year, with two very close allies of Venezuela radically shifting their political and economic policies. Argentina was first, when Mr. Mauricio Macri, a former businessman and mayor of Buenos Aires, was elected president and instantly began to implement a neoliberal economic policy. [v] Then, Brazil was second, with President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment last September, and her replacement by conservative Vice President, Michel Temer. He is currently trying to reform article 241 of the Brazilian constitution to cap public spending and increase privatization of many key sectors, such as health care. [vi]

Before this recent poll from Hinterlaces, many political analyst could have concluded that Mr. Maduro was destined to follow the same path, and that a series of free market oriented reforms, so desperately desired by member of the international community, like the U.S. or the European Union, would soon ensue. However, although it is too soon to say if the poll is indicative of a broader and longer trend of popularity for President Maduro, one thing is for certain; the Venezuelan population wants to keep the ability of choosing their political and economic future for themselves. Hopefully, international players, especially the United States, will understand that a multipolar hemisphere is possible and that the real freedom comes from being able to have access to real self-determination. This is what Maduro and the majority of the Venezuelan people seem to want at this juncture.

*COHA staff, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

[i] “¿Quiénes Somos? – Hinterlaces.” Hinterlaces. October 20, 2016. Accessed October 20, 2016. http://www.hinterlaces.com/quienes-somos.

[ii] “Monitor País: Sube Valoración Positiva De Nicolás Maduro.” Hinterlaces. October 16, 2016. Accessed October 20, 2016. http://www.hinterlaces.com/monitor-pais/monitor-pais-sube-valoracion-positiva-del-desempeno-de-nicolas-maduro

[iii] Boothroyd-Rojas, Rachel. “Venezuelans Prefer Maduro to Opposition Administration, Says New Poll.” Venezuelanalysis.com. October 17, 2016. Accessed October 20, 2016. https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12725

[iv] “CLAP: Una Alternativa Para Contrarrestar La Guerra …” TeleSur. May 31, 2016. Accessed October 20, 2016. http://www.telesurtv.net/news/CLAP-una-alternativa-para-contrarrestar-la-guerra-economica-20160531-0021.html

[v] Gabin, Leandro. “La Inversión Extranjera En La Era Macri Alcanza USD 1.304 …” InfoBae. July 21, 2016. Accessed October 20, 2016. http://www.infobae.com/economia/2016/07/21/la-inversion-extranjera-en-la-era-macri-alcanza-usd-1-304-millones-y-ya-iguala-a-todo-el-ano-pasado/

[vi] Benites, Alfonso. “PEC 241: Projeto Que Limita Gastos Públicos Será Divisor …” El Pais. October 11, 2016. Accessed October 20, 2016. http://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2016/10/10/politica/1476052257_522876.html

A group of citizen scientists and professional astronomers, including Carnegie’s Jonathan Gagné, joined forces to discover an unusual hunting ground for exoplanets. They found a star surrounded by the oldest known circumstellar disk–a primordial ring of gas and dust that orbits around a young star and from which planets can form as the material collides and aggregates.

Led by Steven Silverberg of University of Oklahoma, the team described a newly identified red dwarf star with a warm circumstellar disk, of the kind associated with young planetary systems. Circumstellar disks around red dwarfs like this one are rare to begin with, but this star, called AWI0005x3s, appears to have sustained its disk for an exceptionally long time. The findings are published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“Most disks of this kind fade away in less than 30 million years,” said Silverberg. “This particular red dwarf is a candidate member of the Carina stellar association, which would make it around 45 million years old [like the rest of the stars in that group]. It’s the oldest red dwarf system with a disk we’ve seen in one of these associations.”

The discovery relied on citizen scientists from Disk Detective, a project led by NASA/GSFC’s Dr. Marc Kuchner that’s designed to find new circumstellar disks. At the project’s website, DiskDetective.org, users make classifications by viewing ten-second videos of data from NASA surveys, including the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission (WISE) and Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) projects. Since the launch of the website in January 2014, roughly 30,000 citizen scientists have participated in this process, performing roughly 2 million classifications of celestial objects.

“Without the help of the citizen scientists examining these objects and finding the good ones, we might never have spotted this object,” Kuchner said. “The WISE mission alone found 747 million [warm infrared] objects, of which we expect a few thousand to be circumstellar disks.”

“Unraveling the mysteries of our universe, while contributing to the advancement of astronomy, is without a doubt a dream come true,” says Hugo Durantini Luca from Argentina, one of eight citizen scientist co-authors.

Determining the age of a star can be tricky or impossible. But the Carina association, where this red dwarf was found, is a group of stars whose motions through the Galaxy indicate that they were all born at roughly the same time in the same stellar nursery.

Carnegie’s Gagné devised a test that showed this newly found red dwarf and its disk are likely part of the Carina association, which was key to revealing its surprising age.

“It is surprising to see a circumstellar disk around a star that may be 45 million years old, because we normally expect these disks to dissipate within a few million years,” Gagné explained. “More observations will be needed to determine whether the star is really as old as we suspect, and if it turns out to be, it will certainly become a benchmark system to understand the lifetime of disks.”

Knowing that this star and its disk are so old may help scientists understand why M dwarf disks appear to be so rare.

This star and its disk are interesting for another reason: the possibility that it could host extrasolar planets. Most of the extrasolar planets that have been found by telescopes have been located in disks similar to the one around this unusual red dwarf. Moreover, this particular star is the same spectral type as Proxima Centauri, the Sun’s nearest neighbor, which was shown to host at least one exoplanet, the famous Proxima b, in research published earlier this year.

Photodetectors, which are used in a wide range of systems and devices–from smartphones to space stations–are typically only sensitive to light within a certain narrow bandwidth, which causes numerous problems to product developers. Together with their colleagues from China and Saudi Arabia, scientists at MIPT have found a way to address this. According to their study, published in Advanced Functional Materials, treating an ordinary photodetector with UV light can turn it into a high bandwidth device.

“There is a lot of demand for photodetectors that are sensitive to a wide range of frequencies, but they are difficult to design. It’s hard to find the right materials, because the substances that permit ultraviolet light tend to be nontransparent to infrared radiation, and vice versa. We found a way to ‘broaden’ the spectral response of photodetectors,” said Vadim Agafonov, head of the Molecular Electronics Center at MIPT, a coauthor of the paper.

The research team that also includes his colleagues from the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry (China) and King Saud University (Saudi Arabia) studied polymer photodetectors based on the internal photoelectric effect, i.e., the redistribution of electrons within a polymer under the influence of light, resulting in electrical conductivity. Photodetectors based on organic materials have a number of advantages over their conventional inorganic counterparts, including their low cost, easier manufacturing, and physical flexibility. It turned out that by interacting with the surfaces of certain elements of the device, UV radiation can alter its sensitivity.

The researchers conducted an experiment whereby a polymer-based photodetector incorporating zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles was exposed to UV light for 30 seconds. As a result of this, they achieved a high-performance photodetector with a much broader spectral response and a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 140,000%, as compared to the 30% measured before UV treatment. The EQE of a photodetector is an important figure of merit defined as the ratio between the number of “dislodged” electrons and the number of incident photons. To put that in perspective, whereas before irradiation 10 photons generated just three electrons, after UV treatment the same number of photons produced 14,000 photoelectrons. However, the amount of noise experienced by the device was also greater due to an increased dark current, which is generated in the detector even when no photons are entering the device.

The researchers attribute the dramatic effect of UV light on detectors to the detachment of oxygen atoms from the zinc oxide molecules. During the manufacturing of a photodetector, oxygen molecules are adsorbed onto the surface of the semiconductor particles, whereby oxygen captures electrons from the conduction band. As a result, the captured electrons can no longer act as charge carriers. This means that the zinc oxide layer becomes a barrier that affects electron transport.

UV light treatment causes some of the valence electrons to migrate into the conduction band, driven by the radiation absorbed by the ZnO particles. The freed up electrons can then act as charge carriers, generating photocurrent even at the minimal measurable optical power intensity of 60 pW?×?cm?² (picowatts per cm²) under the bias voltage of ?0.5 V.

“You can thus convert a polymer-based photodetector into a highly sensitive broadband device. The process itself is quick, cheap, and efficient, which is important for practical applications,” said Vadim Agafonov.

According to the paper, it is sufficient to treat a photodetector with UV light once during its manufacturing in order to achieve the broad spectral response. Moreover, the newly acquired properties of the device will remain unchanged after the manufacturing process is over, as the semiconductor layer will be sealed by a layer of aluminum protecting it from oxygen.

The researchers hope to eliminate the “side effects” that arise after irradiating the detector with UV light (e.g., a sharp increase in dark current), without sacrificing the high performance and wide spectral range of the device. Photodetectors that have been treated in the proposed way could be used anywhere from imaging to atmospheric sensing.

New data presented at this year’s International Early Psychosis Association (IEPA) meeting in Milan, Italy (20-22 October) adds to accumulating evidence that high-potency cannabis in associated with an increased risk of users becoming dependent on cannabis. The analysis is by Dr Tom Freeman at University College London, UK.

Estimates suggest around 182 million people worldwide use cannabis each year, a number that could rise as legalisation of recreational use and/or medical use increases. Roughly 9% of people who try cannabis will become dependent on it at some point in their lifetime. People who are dependent on cannabis are often unable to cut down or quit, despite experiencing persistent negative effects from the drug.

Some people are more vulnerable to the harmful effects of cannabis than others. A number of factors may increase the risks of becoming dependent, such as being younger, male, and mixing tobacco with cannabis. Another possible factor is cannabis potency. The cannabis plant produces over 100 unique chemicals, and the two most abundant of these (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol or ‘THC’, and cannabidiol or ‘CBD’) can cause opposite effects on the brain and behaviour. In the last decade, the illicit cannabis market has become dominated by high-potency cannabis, which contains high THC and no CBD. This may explain why the number of people receiving professional treatment for cannabis problems has continued to rise.

Dr Freeman presented new data from a sample of over 400 young cannabis users in the UK. The sample were aged 16-23 years and 70% were male. 43% of those who preferred high-potency cannabis were dependent compared to 22% of those who did not. High-potency cannabis was associated with a two-fold greater risk of dependence (odds ratio 2.2) after adjusting for several confounders including age, gender, cannabis and tobacco use, biological markers of cannabis exposure (THC metabolites in urine, and THC and CBD in hair), and THC and CBD content in cannabis.

Dr Freeman concluded: “The illicit cannabis market is dominated by high-potency cannabis containing high THC and no CBD. Our findings suggest that people who prefer this type cannabis are around twice as likely to show problematic use.”

He added: “The best way for people to reduce risk is to quit or cut down their use. If this is not possible, they should be encouraged to switch to low-potency cannabis.”

By Kevin Jones

While presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton traded verbal jabs at the Al Smith Dinner and showed some icy awkwardness, Cardinal Timothy Dolan thought a moment of prayer was the best part of the evening.

The cardinal had asked both politicians to pray with him, and the result showed “the evening at its best,” he recounted Oct. 21.

“After the little prayer, Mr. Trump turned to Secretary Clinton and said, ‘You are one tough and talented woman’,” Cardinal Dolan told the news site TODAY. “He said, ‘This has been a good experience, this whole campaign, as tough as it’s been’.”

“She said to him, ‘Donald, whatever happens, we need to work together afterward’,” the cardinal reported.

The dinner takes its name from former New York Gov. Al Smith, the first Catholic to be nominated for U.S. president. Smith’s great-grandson, Al Smith IV, co-chaired the event. The cardinal sat between the Democratic and Republican candidates.

Cardinal Dolan said the latest event was like “a family dinner where you’re just hoping things go well.”

It comes near the end of a tense and often unpredictable political campaign.

Clinton is at odds with Catholicism on several major issues. She is a strong supporter of legal abortion, taxpayer funding for abortion, and LGBT activism. Catholics’ religious freedoms are under pressure from her political allies. A leaked February 2012 email from her current campaign manager John Podesta appeared to show him wanting to promote a “Catholic Spring”-type revolution within the Church in response to religious freedom controversy over mandatory contraceptive coverage. His email, posted to Wikileaks, appeared to suggest former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, daughter of slain 1968 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, could play a role in aiding a Catholic political revolt within the Church.

For his part, Trump has antagonized many Hispanics and others over his remarks on immigrants and Muslims. While he has claimed a recent conversion to pro-life beliefs and policy, many commentators have questioned his personality and his character, especially following release of a 2005 tape of his lewd banter that appeared to condone and admit sexual assault. Multiple women have also accused him of assault, harassment and misbehavior.

Despite these tensions and controversies, the Al Smith Dinner is traditionally intended to be a lighthearted affair that allows the candidates to roast each other humorously and to mock themselves.

The famously boastful Trump, who spoke first Thursday evening, joked that his modesty is “perhaps my best quality” and even better than his temperament. He joked that his companies’ buildings were built with his own “beautifully formed hands,” while Cardinal Dolan’s buildings were built “with the hands of God, and nobody can compete with God. Is that correct? Nobody. Right?”

He joked that the heads of major media companies were part of Clinton’s campaign staff and he poked fun at the fact that his wife used a speech apparently that appeared to be plagiarized from First Lady Michelle Obama.

Trump’s jokes at Clinton’s expense at times hit hard and drew boos from a crowd that grew unsympathetic.

“I don’t know who they’re angry at Hillary, you or I,” he said in response to an unfavorable response to his joke. “For example, here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics.”

He said the dinner guests could agree on the need to support disadvantaged children.

“We can also agree on the need to stand up to anti-Catholic bias, to defend religious liberty and to create a culture that celebrates life,” he said. “America is in many ways divided like it’s never been before. And the great religious leaders here tonight give us all an example that we can follow.”

Clinton, who went second, joked about her “rigorous nap schedule,” the fees she normally charges for speeches, and the incongruity that a dinner named for the populist Al Smith is held in “this magnificent room, full of plutocrats celebrating his legacy.”

She also joked that Trump would rate the Statue of Liberty based on her looks, that he was following a teleprompter script written by the Russians, that he was not really a billionaire, and that was not getting support from the Republican Party.

“I understand I am not known for my sense of humor,” Clinton said. “That’s why it did take a village to write these jokes.”

“And whoever wins this election, the outcome will be historic. We’ll either have the first female president or the first president who started a Twitter war with Cher,” she said.

Clinton said that opponents of Al Smith’s candidacy targeted him for his Catholic faith and spread rumors he would ban Bible reading and annul Protestant marriages.

“Rhetoric like that makes it harder for us to see each other, to respect each other, to listen to each other. And certainly a lot harder to love our neighbor as ourselves,” she said, adding “you certainly don’t need to be Catholic to be inspired by the humility and heart of the Holy Father, Pope Francis. Or to embrace his message.”

The next day, Cardinal Dolan told TODAY that the two candidates are “kind of awkward together” but said it was not a surprise. He said there was similar “iciness” four years ago when Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and President Obama

“The purpose of the evening is to break some of the ice, and thanks be to God, it works,” the cardinal said.

The dinner is a fundraiser for New York Catholic Charities. This year’s event netted about $6 million.

A controversial ultra-right Catholic group in South Korea was accused of “anti-church” activities at a church tribunal on Oct.14.

Father Park Joo-hwan accused Vincent Seo Suk-koo, representative of the so-called Catholic Association to Protect Korea, at the Daegu Archdiocesan tribunal of harming the church.

Seo is “damaging the church” by aiding and abetting the non-faithful activities of members of the group, said Father Park.

“At first I thought it was a sound group with constructive opinions but it is shaking the foundations of the church,” he said.

Father Park argued that members of the group wrote stories leading people to believe that Korean bishops are followers of North Korea’s Kim regime and aid its spies.

Recently, members of the group held a rally in front of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea building in Seoul, accusing bishops of being North Korean sympathizers.

According to Canon Law, a person who publicly incites animosity or hatred against the Apostolic See or an ordinary or provokes subjects to disobey them is to be punished by an interdict or other just penalties.

It also rules against those who impede the freedom of the ministry or intimidate church officials.

The tribunal has yet to hand down its findings on the matter.

Only a small share of Congolese villagers is the driving force behind most of the deforestation. They’re not felling trees to feed their families, but to increase their quality of life. These findings are based on fieldwork by bioscience engineer Pieter Moonen from KU Leuven (University of Leuven), Belgium. They indicate that international programmes aiming to slow down tropical deforestation are not sufficiently taking local farmers into account.

Forests, and especially centuries-old primeval forests such as in the Congo Basin in Africa, are huge CO2 reservoirs. When trees are cut down, large amounts of greenhouse gases are released. This contributes to climate change – both regional and global.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is in the world’s top five in terms of amount of deforested land per year. According to the government, this is mostly due to subsistence farming and population growth. The argument is that small farmers grow crops to feed their own families. As there is a rise in population, farmers have to keep on clearing forest to increase the area under cultivation.

Bioscience engineer Pieter Moonen is preparing a PhD on land use and climate change in the DRC. He examined whether subsistence farming really is the main culprit for deforestation. For a year, he did fieldwork in 27 Congolese villages and questioned 270 households in a survey about agriculture and deforestation.

“Most of the people surveyed are farmers, and only half of them deforest. A very small group is behind most of the deforestation. Their motive is not self-sufficiency, but earning money. After all, selling crops on the market is one of the few ways to get cash. They need this money to cover the increasing cost of education and health care or to buy western consumer goods. The image of the poor farmer felling trees to feed his family is therefore incorrect. The slightly richer farmers are the ones deforesting to sell their agricultural produce on the market- although ‘rich’ is very relative in this case.” A second important motive for deforestation is the possibility to claim the land that has become available as your property.

These findings are important for the implementation of the United Nations REDD+ programme. REDD+ stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This initiative aims to slow down or end deforestation in developing countries by means of financial incentives.

“Now that the Paris Agreement on climate change is about to take effect, REDD+ is receiving a lot of attention. The Democratic Republic of Congo is interested in taking part: they want to fight deforestation in exchange for financial compensation. But their response to deforestation focuses too much on intensifying agriculture – increasing the amount of produce per hectare. The reasoning is that felling trees is no longer necessary if existing fields yield more produce. This is an effective strategy when dealing with subsistence farming, but it may have a perverse effect when applied to commercial agriculture. After all, it may stimulate the wealthier farmers to deforest more land, so that they have even more produce to sell. Therefore, without local support for forest preservation, the outcome of such interventions is very uncertain. In that case, we risk wasting money and valuable time with REDD+.”

This study once again shows that a simple government approach to deforestation is not effective, Moonen continues. “A more effective and fair approach requires that you and the local communities reach a consensus on a sustainable system. This means that you have to agree on which areas are protected forest. You also have to set aside the necessary resources to support development: provide basic facilities and create opportunities to increase revenues, in the agricultural system and beyond.”

As many of us would agree, the continuing conflict in Syria has created a devastating humanitarian crisis: the magnitude of humanitarian needs is overwhelming in all parts of the country and affects the region and beyond. The Syrian conflict has become the world’s largest humanitarian crisis since World War II, the estimated number of people in need of the protection of International Humanitarian Law is approximately 14 million, more than two-thirds of Syria’s pre-war population.

Of these, more than 6 million are hard to reach 16 besieged, areas, and over 7 million people are internally displaced. Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, recently described the humanitarian situation in Syria as “the great tragedy of this century”. It continues to fuel a combustible environment, which has contributed to the refugee and migration crisis as well as to the rise of evermore anti-government rebels groups including extremists affiliated with, if not directly a part of, the so-called Islamic State (IS) and Fatah al-Sham.

Bombing Besieged Civilians: War Crimes

The Russian bombardment of Aleppo has continued unabated and reached an acme on 10/17/2016 with 14 members of one family reportedly killed in an airstrike on al-Marjeh area of Aleppo according to eyewitness accounts, including White Helmet rescue workers. A list of those killed included several infants, among them two six-week-old babies and six other children aged eight or under. Rescue workers, who like the local population have become expert at identifying aircraft and bombs, claimed the attack used “bunker-buster” munitions that shook the ground for a half kilometer, as well as cluster bombs.” The medical aid providers, Me’decins sans Frontières (MSF), have reported that at least 114 children have been killed and 321 injured in the last three weeks of violence, as primarily Iranian-supported Shia militias backed by Russian warplanes, seek to destroy what little resistance remains in east Aleppo.

Against the backdrop of growing calls for western intervention to stop the slaughter, a furious US Secretary of State John Kerry announced last weekend that “Crimes against humanity are taking place on a daily basis. Hospitals are targeted and children are bombed or gassed.” The UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson and some EU foreign ministers echoed Kerry. This, while Russia has come under increasing criticism from Western nations for its attacks on rebel-held east Aleppo, with the US and several prominent political figures accusing Moscow of war crimes. The EU Foreign Affairs Council published findings on 10/17/2016 that concluded the bombing of Aleppo may amount to war crimes: “The deliberate targeting of hospitals, medical personnel, schools and essential infrastructure, as well as the use of barrel bombs, cluster bombs, and chemical weapons, constitute a catastrophic escalation of the conflict and may amount to war crimes.”

Targeting, hospitals, schools, markets bakeries, Mosques, Churches, and places where civilians gather with or without using indiscriminate weapons such as cluster bombs, incendiary bombs, IED devices, barrel bombs, gas, to name a few, are War Crimes. So are sieges targeting, starving, sniping and trapping the civilian populations of Aleppo, the Sunni towns of Madaya and Zabadani, and the Shia towns of Foua, and Kafraya, among 16 towns under siege today in Syria according to the UN. War Crimes all.

Most objective analysts agree, it is unlikely there will be any forceful or effective UN or international, even regional, resistance to the slaughter happening daily in Aleppo. There is some, but not much, appetite in Washington for European capitals to enforce a ‘no-fly zone’ which entails risks of war with Russia. Despite some campaign rhetoric, presumed next U.S. President, Hilary Clinton will face resistance from the Pentagon and Congress in the unlikely event that she opts for war, as she stated the other day, “Enough is enough of war crimes in Syria!”

The Double-Edged Sword of Sanctions

So what are the realistic options for the US-led coalition and much of the global community committed to protecting the civilian population of Syria? Frankly there are almost none. But one that will be employed are more US-led sanctions against Syria and possibly even Russia. Some EU countries want to add another 20 names from Syria to a current sanctions list blocking their banking activities and imposing travel bans. EU foreign policy Chief Federica Mogherini mentioned a couple of days ago that there was a chance that ministers would agree to put more Syrians on the EU’s list of people blocked from traveling to Europe or accessing money there. These additional sanctions will likely deter no one. Those who may be affected have likely long ago employed other means five years ago to protect their assets.

Yet, despite EU divisions (Germany, Hungary, Austria Greece, Cyprus and others objecting) among the 28 EU members, whose unanimity of votes is required to impose more sanctions, on 10/17/2016 the Obama administration and the European Union expressed the view that new efforts at tightening the sanctions against Syria and Russia for countless war crimes may have some positive effects.

In this observer’s view, it is unlikely that serious new sanctions will be agreed upon by the EU which already has extensive sanctions in place against Syria, including oil and arms embargoes, plus restrictions on more than 200 individuals and 70 entities. With little result. On 10/17/2016, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told colleagues following a meeting in Lausanne, “At present, I don’t see how sanctions with a possible long-term effect are supposed to contribute to improving supplies to the civilian population”.
Meanwhile, the slaughter of civilians continues. Few objective observers deny that massive war crimes continue to be committed in Syria although there is plenty of hysterical debate over who the perpetrators are and who are defeating “terrorists” as opposed to creating more “terrorists” with every bombing.

Historically, economic sanctions have had mixed results. Between 1914 and 2016, various countries imposed economic sanctions in 125 cases. They failed to achieve their stated objectives in 66 percent of those cases and were marginally successful in the other one-third. Since 1973, the success ratio for economic sanctions has fallen to 24 percent according to scholars researching their effectiveness. Some might argue that one-quarter success rate is not so bad when one considers that sanctions are politically cheap, do not require military action, while skeptics who increasingly oppose armed interventions are more accepting of economic sanctions which show that “we are doing something!” to oppose perceived foreign oppression and brutality. Sanctions also are more acceptable among UN members as they suggest “international governance.” They are seen as more “meaty” than mere diplomatic protests, hence carry less political baggage. They are often viewed as a sort of mild punishment, short of being aggression of the kind that might portend human costs.

US-led Western Sanctions against Syria: Crimes against Humanity?

War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity now being committed in Syria also include some of the US-led sanctions in this observers view. They are the result of the most intense civilian targeting economic sanctions ever imposed by the United States or any other country. War Crimes because they target and destroy the most vulnerable Syrians, all protected by International Humanitarian Law including the Geneva Conventions as well as principles, standards and rules of International Customary Law. All must be adjudicated by a Special Tribunal for Syria without further delay.

For these reasons sanctions have largely escaped the scrutiny of International Humanitarian Law that military actions increasingly face. But the reality is that in Syria (as in Iran and Iraq) US-led sanctions are causing extensive civilian damage, because the suffering has been borne primarily by women, children, the elderly, the sick, and the poor. The targeted political and military leadership are largely exempt from their effects.

A serious and growing legal problem with respect to the US-led sanctions in Syria is that they target mainly civilians protected by the Geneva Conventions, so they are increasingly running amok and afoul of International Humanitarian Law. There is little doubt that the new US-led sanctions will increase quality of life pressure on most who still remain in Syria. They may also result in war crimes punishable before a Special Tribunal for Syria with universal jurisdiction, which is virtually certain to be established.
While economic sanctions are rapidly becoming one of the major tools of international governance of the post-Cold War era, this observer would argue that economic sanctions, like a siege, intend harm to civilians and therefore cannot be justified as a tool of warfare. The history of US-led sanctions demonstrates that they are not a device that keeps the peace and enforces international law. Rather, they are they intrinsically a form of violence, which in fact violate International Humanitarian Law as their effects target non-combatant civilians.

Like siege warfare, US-led sanctions targeting Syria are the face of economic strangulation. History teaches that the claimed targets – the military and political leaderships -, will easily insulate themselves from its consequences, and place a disproportionate burden on the civilian population. History also teaches that economic sanctions will consolidate the state’s power rather than undermine it and economic sanctions are unlikely to stop military aggression, or stop human rights violations, or achieve compliance with any political or military demand, even when sanctions drag on for decades. The history of US-led sanctions has been that they harm the most vulnerable and the least political; and that this is something which the US government and its allies such as the sanction-imposing EU know.

To the extent that economic sanctions seek to undermine the economy of a society, and thereby prevent the production or importation of necessities, they are functioning as the modern equivalent of siege and are war crimes. To the extent that sanctions deprive the most vulnerable and least political sectors of society of the food, drinkable water, medical care, and fuel necessary for survival and basic human needs, sanctions should be subject to the same international humanitarian legal standard as siege warfare and judged to be war crimes. US-led sanctions targeting Syria are imposing an economic siege which is contributing to the killing of more Syrians than those who have died and die of illness and malnutrition in sieges, such as in Aleppo, which EU and US leaders have described as war crimes.

Those who travel in Syria these days constantly observe countless examples of how these sanctions have devastated civilian lives. Rampant inflation with skyrocketing costs for nearly every consumer food and quality of life items. Today, a major worry is the availability of and affordability of fuel heating oil as winter draws near. The US-led sanctions are also blocking Syrians from the immediate civilian need to repair electricity infrastructure, health care facilities, access to fuel, the transport network and wider reconstruction. Moreover, it is unlikely that on a specific day Syria as a whole will move from war to peace.

Consequently, the sanctions’ ecosystem will need to demonstrate a much greater degree of responsiveness in how it responds to the Syrian crises. Unless addressed now, the impact of sanctions will last well after the sanctions are either removed or modified, and may create a new catastrophe in terms of crippling economic and humanitarian effects and war crimes to be judged.

The United Nations and International NGOs working in Syria are also expert on the effects on US-led, civilian-targeting sanctions. A recently leaked report from The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Syria,(UNOCHA), entitled Humanitarian Impact of Syria-Related Unilateral Restrictive Measures (aka US-led Sanctions) constitutes a strong indictment of the effects of US and EU sanctions on the civilian population of Syria. Aid agencies cited in the report complain, for example, that they cannot procure basic medicines or medical equipment for hospitals because sanctions are preventing foreign commercial companies and banks from any dealings with Syria.

According to the UNOCHA study, the US-led sanctions are blocking international banking channels for those seeking to help desperate civilians secure unsanctioned humanitarian aid such as medicine and food. They block the ability to make straight-line, direct bank-to-bank payments via the global correspondent bank network into Syria. This means that humanitarian and development funds are increasingly being transmitted via iffy remittance and informal payment channels that are not as reliable and encounter risks. Private sector entities (particularly banks and exporters) are reluctant to support humanitarian aid deliveries to Syrians in need due to the chilling effects of OFAC severe penalties. Additionally, the license application process for humanitarian support, beyond the allowable food and certain medicine, overly inhibits the delivery of humanitarian aid, as the licensing framework is lengthy, difficult to navigate and ill-prepared to respond to the needs of humanitarian actors and their related programs.

The UN complains that the provision of available general licenses and humanitarian exemptions are too limited and, despite special exemptions for UN and NGO organizations, many elements of humanitarian delivery fall outside the scope of these exceptions and therefore limit their usefulness. US-led sanctions against the export of many medical devices and software to Syria requires a license: medical treatment is one of the primary needs for those affected by the crises in Syria. Medical devices and related software require licenses for export. In recognition that many medical devices are inoperable without software updates and patches, the licensing requirement is particularly debilitating. Immense levels of infrastructure destruction have created an urgent need for development and reconstruction aid, without delay in transport, communications, hospitals, water, energy infrastructures and housing stock. This has included the need for mass purchasing of new technologies, dual use goods and related services/investment — many of which are subject to some element of sanctions.

The clear effects of the US-led sanctions targeting the civilian population of Syria which are being studied today in Syria by this observer and others, as well as noted in the OCHA) study noted above, are increasingly seen as constituting War Crimes requiring indictment.

The OCHA study documented that more than half the country’s public hospitals have been damaged or destroyed. British doctors working in Aleppo have reported that over 80% of those requiring urgent medical treatment die as a result of their injuries, or lack of basic care, medicine and equipment. During the course of this study the following experiences were expressed by major International NGOs (INGO) in relation to US-led sanctions targeting Syria: “There is a deep problem with regard to procedures surrounding license applications.

Applications have to be submitted through national state structures. In certain countries, there appears to be ‘no’ internal procedures within government as to what criteria should be applied when considering a license application. The result is that each department pursues its own obsession and interests and they often run counter to each other.” “There is often ‘no’ feedback to your license request, just ongoing questions. Given shortage of staff [within government licensing teams,] it can take weeks to process one set of questions.” “Legal costs associated with each license can outweigh the value of the good. For example, seeking U.S. approval for a computer which is destined to Syria can cost three times as much as the actual computer.” And on and on, the problems caused to civilians by US-led sanctions continue.

In areas without basic medical care there is also an increased risk of outbreaks of infectious diseases. This is due to disruptions in vaccination programs, overcrowding in public shelters from high levels of internal displacement, damage to water and sanitation infrastructure and lack of waste management systems. Starvation and famine are also regularly reported to be on the rise, caused, it is claimed, by the effects of US-led sanctions. Power blackouts are common across the major cities as the price of power is too expensive for most Syrians, and many live without any electricity, as they cannot afford this ‘luxury’.

Let there be established without further delay a Special Tribunal for Syria, so that the global community can render its judgment on all claims of War Crimes being committed daily in Syria, by all sides. And surely these claims include the US-led civilian targeting sanctions on the people of Syria.

The prevailing notion that the African continent has been getting progressively drier over time is being challenged by a new study that finds that drought has actually decreased over the past 1.3 million years and that the continent is on a 100,000-year cycle of wet and dry conditions. These new findings add a wrinkle to one of the keys to human evolutionary theory, the savannah hypothesis, which states that the progressively drier conditions in Africa led to prehuman ancestors migrating from forests and moving into grasslands.

Josef Werne, associate professor of geology and environmental science in the University of Pittsburgh’s Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, along with colleagues from universities in the United States, Australia, Chile, and the Netherlands, made the discovery by examining core samples extracted from the bottom of Lake Malawi, one of the world’s largest lakes, located between Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania in southeastern Africa. Their paper, “A progressively wetter climate in southern East Africa over the past 1.3 million years,” was published in the journal Nature.

Previous studies of the climate of Africa focused on the northern part of the continent, Werne explained, and were responsible for the origin of the savannah hypothesis that the continent was getting drier. The 100,000-year cycles the researchers found correspond with the beginnings and endings of the great ice ages.

Lake Malawi had not been explored previously because the depth of the waters–700 feet–exceeded researchers’ ability to get core samples from the bottom.

The researchers were able to overcome that limitation by using a barge and modifying oil-rig equipment to obtain a 380-meter-long sediment core sample. The core was dated using a combination of radiocarbon, volcanic ash, and magnetic polarity reversals and examined for “molecular fossils” indicating changing temperature and rainfall.

Temperature was derived by studying the distribution of the membrane lipids of a single-celled microbe, which was analyzed by mass spectroscopy, and the aridity and rainfall were measured by calcium content and the distribution and carbon isotope composition of fossil leaf waxes, which differ between those originating in trees and shrubs, which thrive in wetter conditions, and those originating in grasses, which can outcompete trees in dry conditions.

By noting the changes in temperature records and especially rainfall, the team determined that the continent was getting wetter over time in southern East Africa, as well as identifying the 100,000-year climate cycles.

The research project was more than 20 years in the making, with the solution to obtaining the core samples only completed in 2005. Analyzing the molecular fossils from these cores was under the purview of Werne at Pitt.

By T.K. Fernandes

Since the deadly use of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the international community has been calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Despite slow progress, civil society has continued to tirelessly advocate for a nuclear-free world and is in fact one step closer to its realization in principle.

While speaking to IDN, Director of Peace and Human Rights at Soka Gakkai International (SGI) Kimiaki Kawai noted the importance of nuclear disarmament, stating: “We share common global challenges like climate change, poverty, hunger and disasters – so why don’t we utilize our rich resources for more meaningful purposes?”

SGI’s Executive Director of Peace and Global Affairs Kazuo Ishiwatari echoed similar sentiments, citing the consequences of depriving citizens of necessary resources. “When people are not provided with the necessary resources, this will lead to poverty…which would eventually lead to conflicts,” he told IDN.

In that sense, there cannot be genuine peace without disarmament, Ishiwatari continued.

SGI is a lay Buddhist organization that has been working towards the abolition of nuclear weapons for over 50 years.

In his remarks during the Fifth Humanitarian Disarmament Campaigns Forum, Ishiwatari discussed the importance of civil society in the disarmament processes. “It is because these processes need to be humanized….civil society actors are able to make significant and necessary contributions to bring such perspectives in,” he stated.

Ishiwatari particularly highlighted the role of faith-based organisations like SGI in such efforts to IDN, saying that such groups help represent and convey voices from civil society.

Nuclear Disarmament Programme Manager for PAX Susi Snyder also weighed in on the subject, noting a shared respect for human dignity among the faith-based community.

“The faith community has rallied behind a prohibition on nuclear weapons because…nuclear weapons are incompatible with our common humanity,” she told IDN, adding that the threat of nuclear violence is a “painful attack” on human dignity.

PAX is a partnership between Catholic peace organisations Interchurch Peace Council (IKV) and Pax Christi.

In May, a coalition of faith-based organisations including both PAX and SGI came together to collectively convey their voices.

“We raise our voices in the name of sanity and the shared values of humanity. We reject the immorality of holding whole populations hostage, threatened with a cruel and miserable death. We urge the world’s political leaders to muster the courage needed to break the deepening spirals of mistrust that undermine the viability of human societies and threaten our shared future,” a joint statement said.

Despite a 1970 treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT), nuclear arms remain widespread.

According the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), approximately 15,000 nuclear weapons still exist and are owned by just nine countries. The Arms Control Association (ACA) estimates a higher inventory of 15,500, 90 percent of which belong to Russia and the United States. Almost 2000 of these warheads are on high alert and are ready to launch within minutes, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found.

After intensive negotiations at the latest NPT review conference in 2015, member states including Russia and the U.S. failed to make any meaningful steps towards a nuclear weapon-free world.

Ishiwatari and Kawai expressed the need to shift the understanding of security from one that focuses on armament to a new concept of humanitarian security.

Humanitarian security is a broader idea of human security that encompasses the protection of not only people, but also the environment, Founder of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy Rebecca Johnson explained to IDN.

“[Humanitarian security] carries the obligation not only to pursue disarmament and protect vulnerable people and their human rights and lives, but also to take positive actions to build peace and security and protect the environment from destructive military or economic activities,” she stated.

Though human security helped to “humanize” disarmament, both Kawai and Johnson noted that the idea was often used to justify military action under the guise of Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

Humanitarian security instead highlights protective and nonviolent action, and obliges both states and citizens to act, Johnson stated.

In order to embrace this idea and move towards a nuclear-free world, many have looked to education.

“Disarmament education needs to deal with two aspects: providing accurate information and at the same time, nurture a mindset… [to help] people interpret such information in a more meaningful way towards our common future,” Kawai told IDN.

Johnson noted the need to integrate disarmament education with education on human rights, conflict management and peace-building and to start at an early age.

“Education needs to start young and continue throughout life and work, to enable people and countries to resist the arms sellers and deter and defuse violent situations before they turn explosive,” she stated.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has also highlighted the importance of bringing the discussion of such critical issues to schools in a report to “inform and empower young people to become agents of peace.”

Kawai said already more people are interested in the issue.

In 2014, SGI youth in Japan gathered over 5 million signatures for the Nuclear Zero campaign calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. The petition was presented to the Marshall Islands, whose government filed lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed nations for failing to comply with their obligations under international law to pursue the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.

The “Generation of Change” also made a pledge during the International Youth Summit for Nuclear Abolition in Hiroshima in 2015, stating: “Nuclear weapons are a symbol of a bygone age; a symbol that poses eminent threat to our present reality and has no place in the future we are creating…we, youth around the world, are mustering the courage to stand up and fulfill these decades-old promises of abolition.”

Though the International Court of Justice rejected the Marshall Islands’ bid, some hope for the prohibition of nuclear weapons has been reignited at the United Nations.

The Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) to Develop Proposals to Take forward Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations for the Achievement and Maintenance of a World without Nuclear Weapons proposed a resolution to the First Committee of the UN General Assembly to convene a conference in 2017 to negotiate a legally binding treaty prohibiting and eliminating nuclear weapons.

“71 years ago, we entered the atomic age and in that time we have not yet prohibited the most heinous weapon of all: the nuclear weapon. So for the first time in 71 years, there is an opportunity to address that, to negotiate a prohibition,” said Snyder to IDN.

She noted that there has been widespread, overwhelming support for the resolution, “something that we have never seen.”

In a joint statement, other faith-based organisations also welcomed the resolution, stating: “In times of conflict and escalating tensions like the present – with nuclear weapons being brandished again – it is even more critical to denuclearise both international crises and international conflict resolution.”

“There now exists a historic opportunity to make substantive progress and for this General Assembly to fulfill its mandate as a truly global institution representing all states and full engaging civil society,” the statement continues.

Once the resolution has been passed, states and civil society must stand their ground to ensure treaty that is strong, universal and implemented, Snyder told IDN.

“I believe it will have meaning, I believe we are going to change the dynamics around this issue…to create a platform of peace in the twenty-first century,” she said.

Major internet services including Twitter and Spotify suffered outages on Friday, October 21 as a U.S. internet provider came under cyber attack, AFP reports.

The internet service company Dyn said that it had suffered a denial of service (DDoS) attack on its domain name service shortly after 1100 GMT, but that services had been restored in about two hours.

Other affected sites, which serve millions of customers, reportedly included the crafts marketplace Etsy and the software developer site Github, according to the website Hacker News.

“This morning, October 21, Dyn received a global DDoS attack on our Managed DNS infrastructure in the east coast of the United States,” said Scott Hilton, executive vice president for products at Dyn, in a statement.

“DNS traffic resolved from east coast name server locations are experiencing a service degradation or intermittent interruption during this time,” Hilton added.

“We have been aggressively mitigating the DDoS attack against our infrastructure.”

The company said it was continuing to investigate.

Distributed denial of service or DDoS attacks involve sending high volumes of requests to websites which can be taken off line as a result.

Domain Name Services are a crucial element of internet infrastructure, converting numbered Internet Protocol addresses into the domain names that allow users to connect to internet sites.

Through a unique training programme that brought industry and academia together, the EU–funded MARE-WINT project has helped to fill a significant skills gap in the burgeoning offshore wind energy sector.

The end result of the MARE-WINT project has been impressive. PhD degree specialists covering fields such as aerodynamics, structural mechanics and operation and maintenance have come through this unique programme with the knowledge and skills to develop Europe’s offshore wind sector and enable it to realise its full potential.

“Wind generation has been identified by policy makers and industry alike as a clean and secure means of reducing dependency on polluting fossil fuels and limiting over reliance on energy imports,” said MARE-WINT project coordinator Professor Wiesław Ostachowicz from the Polish Academy of Sciences in Gdańsk. “It also requires very little water to produce electricity – unlike nuclear and fossil fuels – and this is hugely important given the growing threat posed by water scarcity.”

But while the environmental case for wind energy has been effectively made, the perceived cost of producing electricity from wind turbines has somewhat constrained market growth.

“This is why the offshore energy industry is focused on increasing the reliability of offshore wind turbines and reducing the need for maintenance,” explained Ostachowicz. “Finding new ways of achieving these aims is crucial if the offshore wind turbine sector is to accelerate and grow.”

Training tomorrow’s offshore experts

The EU–funded MARE-WINT project was launched following recognition that a crucial skills gap exists. Knowledge from disciplines ranging from mechanical engineering and material science to metrology, fluid mechanics and computer simulation are desperately needed in order to design, build and operate the next generation of reliable and efficient turbines. In order to achieve this, MARE-WINT brought together six universities, seven research institutes and ten private sector enterprises to form a training network and provide doctoral programmes tailored to the future needs of the offshore wind sector.

“In practical terms, we’ve helped to provide the missing connection between employers – wind turbine industry companies – and their potential workforce by training 14 future offshore wind turbine researchers,” said Ostachowicz. “This will also help to accelerate research in areas targeted by European policy makers, such as renewable energy, in order to prevent global warming and climate change.”

The participation of 13 private sector partners active in off-shore developments was essential for the success of the project. Industrial partners were involved in hosting, training and defining the training needs of the researchers. The strong involvement of industry will give PhD students the widest possible employment prospects.

Sustainable energy benefits

Whilst the MARE-WINT project achieved its key objective of decreasing skill gaps in the sector, it has also provided advances in the design and operation of turbine blades, drive–trains and support structures that will be of benefit in the long term. A number of industrial partners were able to fine tune existing tools and methods that are used on a daily basis, thereby improving performance immediately.

Finally, the project’s outcomes have been presented in a published book that will be used in universities as training material for courses on wind energy technologies. The future for wind energy remains bright; the sector contributed EUR 32 billion to the EU economy in 2010 and as of 2012, 250 000 people in Europe had a job linked to wind energy. By 2020, the sector is projected to have generated 520 000 jobs.

Source: CORDIS

Japanese scientists have grown artificial eggs created from stem cells for the first time and used them to create living mice in a process that could potentially one day be extended to humans.

Nearly a dozen rodents were born after scientists created the early-stage mouse eggs from stem cells and nurtured them in the lab. The Japanese team then fertilised them with mouse sperm and went on to make hundreds of embryos from the lab-grown eggs. They were then implanted into female mice, leading some to give birth to apparently healthy mouse pups. The pups that survived grew into apparently healthy, fertile adults.

Although this method won’t be producing human eggs anytime soon (it had a very low success rate and sometimes produced defective eggs), this breakthrough could help researchers identify key genes involved in egg development and maturation. However, if the technology is developed further, many are speculating that eventually, in the distant future, the technique could be used to help more women become mothers and result in the birth of healthier babies.

Writing in the journal ‘Nature’, Professor Katsuhiko Hayashi at Kyushu University, who led the research team credited with the breakthrough, describes how he created some of the primitive mouse eggs from embryonic stem cells, and others from skin tissue taken from a mouse tail. They then created a chemical soup that mimicked the conditions of an ovary to encourage the stem cells to become follicles. These are the tiny tubes found in ovaries which produce eggs. From those follicles, the research team was able to harvest healthy eggs. Eventually they were able to put more than 300 two-day-old embryos into female mice, but this only resulted in 11 pregnancies that ended in normal births. The breakthrough builds upon 10 years of research conducted by Hayashi and his team.

“This is the first report of anyone being able to develop fully mature and fertilisable eggs in a laboratory setting right through from the earliest stages of egg development,” said Richard Anderson, professor of clinical reproductive science at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the Japanese study. “Although we are a long way from making artificial eggs for women at the moment, this study also provides us with a basis for experimental models to explore how eggs develop from other species, including in women… one day this approach might be useful for women who have lost their fertility at an early age, as well as for improvements in more conventional infertility treatments.”

However, this breakthrough also raises a number of important ethical questions, such as the technology one day being advanced enough to allow for the creation of ‘designer babies’, with specific genetic alterations requested by the parents. There’s also the possibility that such a method could result in the introduction of certain abnormalities due to the fact that the cells have gone through many lab-based manipulations.

Suffice to say, the application of Professor Hayashi’s method to humans remains a long way off but he and his colleagues are now working to take the research to the next level by applying their current success to primate cells.

Source: CORDIS

The fourth industrial revolution will benefit mankind tremendously. We can also expect disruptions. Upholding state centrality will ensure continuity and stability amidst this seismic shift.

By Tan Teck Boon*

The first, second and third industrial revolutions gave mankind steam power, electricity and electronics respectively. We are now entering the era of the fourth industrial revolution – a seismic shift that will give us a set of radically new technologies. When these technologies materialise – namely artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet-of-Things (IoT), 3D printing, bio printing, gene editing, autonomous vehicles (AVs) and so on – the world as we know it today will be dramatically transformed.

We can look forward to enhanced longevity. Given persistent shortage in human organs for transplant, bio-printing – a process which draws on 3D printers to create human organs – will let hospitals ‘print out’ human organs on-demand. Cutting down on their development cost, new drugs can be experimented on 3D-printed human organs to quickly establish their efficacy and safety. Gene editing can mean that babies in future will be born free of many genetic disorders.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and its Discontents

Despite recent reports of crashes, AVs will enhance road safety for users. With just 14 minor accidents after more than two million kilometres on the road, Google’s self-driving cars are proving that AVs can be as safe as – if not safer than – vehicles operated by humans. Meanwhile, IoT will automate much of our daily lives; for example, our refrigerators will text us when we are running low on food and our air-conditioners will turn off automatically when we step out the door. Our lives will be dramatically transformed in the coming decades.

Nevertheless, like every major technological advancement in human history, we can expect the technologies associated with the fourth industrial revolution to engender fresh problems even as they promise myriad benefits. As we enter the fourth industrial revolution, the question of how this seismic shift will impact our lives becomes more pressing.

Going forward, we can expect quite a few disruptions.

AVs and AI-enabled robotics are likely to eliminate a significant number of jobs in the transportation and service sector respectively. The convenience associated with 3D printing could lead to many retailers, manufacturers and even global supply chains faltering. In the last three industrial revolutions, machines substituted manual labour but living standards improved over time because more value-added work was created. What might presumably be different this time with the fourth industrial revolution is that subsequent job growth could be minimal because many of the new jobs created might well be filled by AI-enabled robotics.

Political instability could surface if technological unemployment – that is, joblessness resulting from the introduction of new technologies – becomes persistent and entrenched. When large segments of the population lose their livelihood, it is fair to assume that they will be frustrated and angry. Consequently, they might gravitate toward fanciful ideas of fringe politicians instead of putting their fate in the hands of sensible figures.

The Rise of Extremist Politicians

In extreme cases, some may even succumb to alternative narratives that are not only fundamentally unsound but violent in nature. Today, the widespread appeal of extremist politicians like Donald Trump and Uwe Junge are apt examples of how political instability and rising unemployment are intricately-linked.

In the fourth industrial revolution, only a select few with the right combination of talent and luck will be successful; so it is only fair to assume that income inequality could widen further. Some disparity is to be expected in life except that high rates of inequality could destabilise societies and weaken social cohesion. And what if the super-rich turn to gene-editing to give their offspring superior traits – further consolidating their wealth and power? Conventions now preclude the use of gene-editing to establish a pregnancy but there is no guarantee that all countries will continue to play by the rules as global competition heats up.

As the technologies associated with the fourth industrial revolution come online, the danger is that hackers could exploit digital weaknesses in them to cause chaos. In theory, no digitally-based system is safe from determined and well-funded hackers. So far, US researchers have demonstrated that they can breach a Jeep Cherokee’s on-board computer system, take control of the vehicle and crash it at will. Cyber criminals could also insert hidden flaws and defects into 3D printed products. Now that 3D-printed parts are being used in jet engines, this form of cyber-sabotage is particularly invidious.

Upholding State Centrality is Pivotal

In the fourth industrial revolution, the role of the state actually becomes more important even as the centre of gravity shifts to major technological companies and businesses. In a world dependent on technology, those who control it will wield tremendous power. Hence, it is foreseeable that in the era of the fourth industrial revolution, the state’s influence will progressively be eclipsed by those companies that control the technologies associated with this seismic shift. And that can create a serious problem.

Businesses are driven by profits so when technological unemployment hits, only the state will step in to stimulate demand and create jobs. Even if the state is unable do so, it can at least help the poor and weak. While private companies do often help the needy, only the state retains the kind of policy tools and planning capabilities to prevent the emergence of a persistent underclass.

The state will also be needed to provide security. Whether it is fending off terrorists or hackers, the state’s role in keeping us safe will actually become more important. Again, while private enterprises do perform a number of ancillary security functions, public safety and national defence still rest principally with the state.

The fourth industrial revolution will unleash disruptive forces and because we have become so dependent on technology, unplugging is no longer an option. The real test then is how we can ensure continuity and stability in the face of this seismic shift. Businesses have no real incentives to deal with the disruptions nor in some sense, can they be fully trusted to do so. Hence, state centrality is not only an idea as we enter the fourth industrial revolution but the key to being future-ready.

*Tan Teck Boon, PhD, is a Research Fellow with the National Security Studies Programme in the Office of the Executive Deputy Chairman, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

In December, Macedonia will be holding early elections, while its insecurity is growing every day.

Uncertainties for the future of this Balkan country are growing as the elections date is approaching. Dilemmas are very complex; they are political, ethnic and geopolitical. All of the internal actors seem to be very chaotic. Meanwhile international actors, European Union, United States, NATO and Russia continue to hit each other with arrows over the turbulent environment of Macedonia.

For sometime Macedonia has been engulfed in a deep and complex crisis with a political, ethnic, institutional, socio-economic and geopolitical character in the region. During the last year, Macedonia’s crisis erupted due to the surveillance scandal led by its top government executives and in the recent months the massive crisis of immigrants coming from Syria, Central Asia and the Middle East has heated the situation ever more.
The main cause of this state of affairs is the VMRO-DPMNE Political Party of Nikola Gruevski that has been ruling Macedonia without democratic principles for almost a decade, embracing national-racist policies and the segregation rhetoric, with corrupt and criminal methods, with conspiring authoritarian practices as well as shady international geopolitical orientations.

Unfortunately Gruevski’s burden of failure is also carried by his close government collaborators, BDI Chairman Ali Ahmeti and PDSH Chairman Menduh Thaçi. These two Albanian parties and their respective leaders during their government alliance with Mr. Gruevski could never impose the valuable principles of the Ohrid Agreement to the leaders of VMRO-DPNME including Gruevski; such an agreement has been intentionally sabotaged from Macedonian Governments since August 2001 until now.

If Macedonia happens to be collapsing due to the blunders of VMRO-DPMNE and Nikola Gruevski, the Albanian political factors are doomed to be engulfed into a deep chaos. It appears that Macedonian crisis has generated a further turbulence among Albanians and their representative political institutions. The old Albanian political leadership, but also their young leaders appear to be very confused. Their political agendas do not converge in respect to the fundamental aspects that encompass the rights of Albanians based under the Ohrid Agreement. Political fighting and personal turfs are becoming very conflictive. Division at political levels appears to extend at the human level, as a result a highly needed synergy of ideas and a unified position that represents all Albanians is totally missing.

In such a highly critical situation the political and diplomatic class in the two Albanian states, Albania and Kosovo, are not paying a highly needed attention towards the Albanian leadership in Macedonia.

To avoid a wide Albanian political chaos in Macedonia its political leaders are required to have more specific aims that converge with a general Albanian political spectrum in that country. It is imperative to have highly consolidated agendas coordinated among Albanian political leaders. At the center of this convergence must be the strategic purpose of fulfilling every item and implement every aspect that has been agreed upon in the Ohrid Agreement.

The agreement framework of Ohrid has no political alternative. It encompasses an agreement where national and international actors avoided an inter-ethnic conflict in August (2001); they initiated a constitutional reform and established the legislative and institutional basis for a democratic and a multiethnic state where freedoms, human rights and ethnic tolerance would be guaranteed.

The framework of the Ohrid Agreement has been intentionally sabotaged by VMRO-DPMNE during its years in government. The main laws that sanction the respective representation of Albanians on every public institution have been partially implemented. The law of Albanian language has not even been considered at the state level. Legislation and measures that are required to be applied towards the former Kosovo Liberation Army’s disabled members and veterans have been completely ignored. The legislation that establishes the rules on the use of Albanian National symbols continues to be selective and discriminatory. The opportunities for economic and social development among Albanians and Macedonians continue to be very discriminative.

The highest level of ethnic differentiation was reflected on the urban development, infrastructure and cultural initiatives implemented by the “Skopje 2014 Project.” This project spent over one billion Euros and was led by the nationalist and segregationist philosophy of Macedonia’s so called “Back to the Future” project, while projecting the future based on the false myths of their past.

As the false Propaganda Project was spending millions of Euros in the Eastern Part of Skopje, in the western parts of the city Albanian citizens are living in a ghetto, without electricity, without running water, without the minimal infrastructure conditions. The situation in the historical, archeological sites and the conditions of households is even worse.

Meanwhile the government of Macedonia is spending millions of Euros to raise false historical realities, everything that belongs to the real historical sites of Albanians is succumbed into forgiveness and ruined. It is very tragic: Macedonian lies are revitalized, while Albanian truths are dying.

Albanians in Macedonia have an immediate need of support from its neighboring countries. Albania and Kosovo have a determining role towards defending the interests of Albanian population in Macedonia. To accomplish this task they have the support of international legal instruments, European and Euro-Atlantic standards. The reluctance and deep silence of these two countries in front of: the Macedonian Crisis; humiliation of Albanian population in Macedonia, is utterly unexplainable.

Albania is especially obliged and is its constitutional duty to defend the freedom of Albanians living in Macedonia. The defense of these rights is a significant contribution towards the domestic stability of Macedonia and of the Balkans. While there is a deep crisis in Macedonia, Albanian government diplomacy must be more active and constructive and not fall asleep and continue with its rhetorical mindset.

Meanwhile it is well known the fact that Albanians are not the cause of recent crisis in Macedonia; Albanians are only suffering its consequences. Macedonia is in the middle of great dilemmas, which have created nationalistic policies that entail racism, strengthen Gruevski’s anti-democratic and his party’s anti-western attitude.

The propensity of Macedonian leaders continues to blame Albanians for every crisis that takes place in Skopje; such an unsubstantiated blame must stop. Even for this reason there is a great need for an active and constructive role of Tirana’s official diplomatic channels to cooperate with Prishtina, work together with Albanian political elite in Macedonia and with Euro-Atlantic partners.

The current crises in Macedonia could escalate and reach perilous levels that could have a ripple effect throughout South Eastern Europe. It appears that such an escalation is being aided by the Greek blockade towards Macedonia’s official name recognition as well as the Russian offensive of geopolitical interests.
It is already known that Macedonia has awakened the appetite of Moscow; meanwhile Russia is revitalizing an obvious nostalgia among the main political actors of Macedonia. In this thunderstorm of crisis Macedonia is geopolitically quivering between the Western Democracies and Russia.

In the middle of such a geopolitical Euro-Russian shuddering of Macedonia only the human and political factor of Albanian leaders has been and continues to be the strongest and consistent pro Euro-Atlantic factor. However and unfortunately the human and Albanian political factor in Macedonia continues to be weak, divided, confused and with a leadership that is not only incapable but also morally filthy.

The face of crisis in Macedonia may be hiding within its early elections; but only if these elections will be free and fair. In order to ensure free and fair elections it is necessary to have a large and energetic international presence; among the highly influential international actors are the European Union and the United States of America.

This is the reason why there is an immediate need to secure a greater presence and a more energetic intervention of United States and European Union in order to ensure free and fair elections as well as bring Macedonia out of a crisis spiral where it is succumbed for almost a decade. Macedonia continues to tumble and remain at the cross roads. What will be its future like?!

Translation from Albanian language: Peter Tase

The search is on. In 2015, international search funds reached a new peak of activity — with 11 new funds raised and six acquisitions completed within the calendar year.

The third biennial study of international search funds — published in 2016 by IESE in partnership with Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) — surveys 45 first-time funds outside the United States and Canada, tracking their development in 14 countries spanning four continents.

And on October 27-28, 2016, the 2nd International Search Fund Conference at IESE brings together search fund entrepreneurs and investors. The conference is also designed to introduce the funded search model to aspiring entrepreneurs and investors interested in a new entrepreneurial investment model.

International Search Fund Activity by Year

Together, the conference and the published report help deepen understanding of a new asset class, one that is still relatively unknown outside the United States, where it was first developed more than 30 years ago. Search funds are investment vehicles to finance entrepreneurs (often fresh from business school) as they hunt for opportunities to acquire and grow existing companies. Typically, about 10 to 15 investors put money up to pay a modest salary to a recent MBA or two as they search for a promising company to buy, operate, and, ultimately, offer an exit opportunity for the fund investors.

When it works out well, young entrepreneurs get the opportunity to put their studies into practice at the helm of a company and investors are rewarded with a healthy yield.

A Winning History, With Results

Stanford GSB has been analyzing search funds since 1996, publishing a biennial report since 2001. In 2011, IESE set up the International Search Fund Center to work with international searchers and conduct a separate analysis of the growing cohort of funds located in Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

From 2010 on, Stanford GSB tracked only those funds in the United States and Canada. Its 2016 analysis of 258 qualifying funds through December 2015 found that the aggregate pre-tax internal rate of return (IRR) was 36.7 percent. At the same time, the aggregate pre-tax return on invested capital (ROI) was 8.4x for this asset class.

IESE’s 2016 analysis, following the same metrics, found that international funds’ IRR was very similar at 33.4 percent. However, the international ROI was lower at 2.8x, probably due to shorter holding periods. Indeed, more than three-quarters of the 45 funds analyzed by IESE were formed after 2007, and only about half of those funds acquired a company. IESE’s authors warn that it is still “too early to draw firm conclusions” about the asset class.

Instead of studying results at this early stage, the IESE report emphasizes the characteristics of international search funds: Who, what, where, when, why and how are all explored in surveys.

Characteristics of the Search

The report, co-authored by Lenka Kolarova, Peter Kelly, Antonio Dávila and Rob Johnson, is based on surveys completed every two years by the searchers. Who are the searchers? Eighty-nine percent graduated from an MBA program and 75 percent started raising their search fund within two years of graduation. In other words, they are relatively young and well-trained, consistent with the search fund model. Search-fund pioneer and professor H. Irving Grousbeck described it to MBAs as “the most direct route to owning a company that you yourself manage.”

Survey questions cover the four main stages of the search-fund life cycle:
1. Raising a search fund
2. Search and acquisition
3. Operation
4. Exit

Raising the Funds

The study suggests that international searchers are starting to raise money faster and raise more of it. The median amount raised has risen from $282,500 to $383,395 per searcher — and note that 40 percent of funds are run by pairs of searchers, working in partnership.

Furthermore, the time required to raise funds decreased from six months to between four and five months (median time). This is still longer than the three months reported by Stanford GSB for U.S. and Canadian funds, as international searchers tend to lack access to serial search-fund investors and must spend more time seeking new sources of support and explaining the model.

Searching and Acquiring

Mapping the 45 international search funds as of December 2015, 12 were located in the United Kingdom (where the oldest fund was founded in 1992), nine in Continental Europe, 11 in Mexico, seven in the rest of Latin America, three in Asia, two in the Middle East and one in Africa.

International searchers had a diverse range of professional experiences and generally took “opportunistic” approaches to evaluating target acquisition companies. That said, the survey found a preference for acquisitions in business services, IT, health care and education — in descending order of popularity.

Running the Company

The searcher (or pair of searchers) ends up being the owner-operator of the company acquired. According to the search model, this role helps ensure that searchers are “more highly motivated to make the business succeed” than salaried executives.

The operational role of the searcher is similar across North American and international funds. However, unlike their U.S. counterparts, European companies acquired generally have a board of directors. This 2016 report was the first to include questions about the quality of the board. Initial results were positive: searchers rated their boards 8/10 (median score) for effectiveness (10 being best).

Performing Financially and Exiting

As mentioned above, international search funds have achieved an aggregate return on investment (ROI) of 2.8x, and internal rate of return (IRR) of 33.4 percent. But the co-authors repeatedly warn that it is still too early to draw conclusions, with many acquired companies operating for less than a year and only seven exit events studied.

To know what happens next, 2016 data collection is well underway. The 2018 edition of this study should help the international business community to better understand how search-fund trends could impact the next business generation.

In the meantime, the search continues: despite the obstacles they face, more international investors and entrepreneurs than ever hope to maximize profits, growth and professional development using this innovative model.

Methodology, Very Briefly

This study is drawn from a pool of 45 first-time search funds, the earliest of which was formed in 1992. It only considers first-time search funds, excluding self-funded searches and second-time search funds.

Each searcher, or pair of searchers, was asked to complete a survey that included questions about their personal background and professional profile. They were also asked about the fundraising process and the geographic focus, target industries and company characteristics of their search fund. When possible, searchers were also asked about acquisitions, operations, liquidity events, and returns or valuation (and implied return).

On Tuesday, October 18, 2016 in New York City, Macedonian Human Rights Movement International President, Bill Nicholov, met with Ambassador Matthew Nimetz, Special Envoy of the United Nations Secretary-General on the name issue. MHRMI called for Mr. Nimetz to resign and, as his predecessor Robin O’Neil did, to publicly denounce the name negotiations.

MHRMI explained that there is no solution to a 25-year old artificially created dispute, in which one party ceases to recognize the name, identity, ethnicity or language of the other party and actively, transparently and admittedly tries to destroy it. MHRMI expressed disgust that the United Nations continues to entertain the notion of forcing Macedonia to change its name, much less let it linger for 25 years, as it is a blatant attack on the sovereignty of Macedonia and the most basic human right, self-determination, of the Macedonian people. For the first time in history, the UN is allowing one country to name another. In addition, MHRMI stressed that Macedonia and Macedonians have always been known as such, and did not arbitrarily “choose” our name, and therefore cannot choose to abandon it. Despite claims to the contrary, it is, in fact, Greece that is trying to appropriate Macedonia’s name, as is clearly evident by its 1988 change in policy from denying Macedonia’s existence to claiming it as its own.

Since Greece insists on discussing history as a pretext for its claims, MHRMI clarified that neither Mr. Nimetz, nor the United Nations, can begin from the pro-Greek argument that Macedonia is “new”, while Greece is “old”. This is not only false, but it sets a dangerous precedent as it aids Greece in setting the tone for its false claim to Macedonia. Since the creation of Greece in 1830, it had never called for Macedonia to be incorporated into the Greek state, clearly indicating that it never had any claims on Macedonia. On the contrary, since Macedonia’s partition in 1913 among Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and later Albania, Greece has tried to eradicate Macedonia’s very existence, as did each of the other countries.

MHRMI highlighted that adding any type of geographical, or other qualifier, such as “Republic of Northern Macedonia”, “Democratic Republic of Macedonia” or “Republic of Slavic Macedonia”, is extremely offensive and would only aid Greece in its attempts to change the ethnic identity of Macedonians. One cannot change a country’s name without changing the identity of its people. Furthermore, it would also ensure Greece’s goal of denying the existence and persecution of its large Macedonian minority, a point publicly admitted by former Greek Prime Minister Constantin Mitsotakis in 1995. Macedonians in Greece and throughout the Balkans are advocating for their human rights as Macedonians, nothing else.

To even indulge Greece’s nonsensical arguments in creating the nonsensical name dispute — their claim that the Republic of Macedonia’s name “creates confusion” with the “province of Macedonia” — is disingenuous, as the word “Republic” indicates statehood. So, adding a qualifier only serves to be redundant, as well as blatantly racist.

MHRMI made clear the opinion of former US Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger, that “The name dispute is unnecessary and unfounded, since Macedonia was called the same in the time of former Yugoslavia and this did not cause any problems then…Greece claims that Macedon or Macedonia, as well as Alexander of Macedonia are its own. This is a false claim and it is time someone confirms this….The Greek claim about Macedonia is based on historically incorrect information and is therefore not fact-based.” Mr. Eagleburger added that it is “not wise for a foreigner to interfere with the internal affairs of another state.”

MHRMI reiterated its point that Greece, the oppressor, does not need to recognize Macedonia and Macedonia does not need to recognize Greece. As is current practice, Macedonia and Greece can continue to refer to each other as “Party of the First Part” and “Party of the Second Part”, or anything else, such as “Country A” and “Country B”. Furthermore, Greece violated the terms of the 1995 Interim Accord by denying Macedonia’s entry into NATO, thus negating the Accord’s validity. Macedonia subsequently won the related International Court of Justice case, yet there are no repercussions against Greece. MHRMI called on Mr. Nimetz and the UN to immediately declare the Accord null and void and to announce that Macedonia has a technical reason to end the negotiations.

As stated to Mr. Nimetz, what is clearly evident, as has been MHRMI’s position since Macedonia declared independence in 1991, is that all the power rests in Macedonia’s hands. If Macedonia ends the negotiations, the name dispute will be resolved. The reason that the West calls for a name change is because Macedonia negotiates. This has never been more clear, and MHRMI is calling on all Macedonian political parties to publicly and immediately denounce the nonsensical name negotiations and pledge that, if elected, never to engage in any discussion about Macedonia’s name.

In conclusion, MHRMI reminded Mr. Nimetz of the statement by the first UN mediator for the name dispute, Robin O’Neil, that “Macedonia must not and will not change its name in order to appease Greece. If Macedonia succumbs to pressures and changes its name, such events will only give more firepower to Greece until it reaches its final goal – Macedonia to vanish from the map.” MHRMI reiterated its call for the United Nations to respect its own principles of human rights and to immediately and permanently end the name negotiations.

*Macedonian Human Rights Movement International (MHRMI) has been active on human and national rights issues for Macedonians and other oppressed peoples since 1986.

By Ahmad Khan

There have been repeated confirmed reports that India is constructing a new nuclear city at Challakere, Karnataka. The city-size complex will produce highly enriched uranium to not only fuel its nuclear powered submarines, but also feed its thermonuclear bombs.

The local population has protested against the construction. David Albright and Serena Kelleher-Vergantini of the Washington-based think tank ISIS has done a detailed assessment from satellite imagery captured by the US. In 2014, Albright and Kelleher-Vergantini reported that an area of 10,000 acres in the Chitradurga district of Karnataka was being mysteriously fenced off between 2009 and 2010. In the new nuclear city, a Special Material Enrichment Facility (SMEF) will be built by 2017. The facility will be used for both civilian and military purposes; however, it will ostensibly double the present uranium enrichment capacity in India.

Investigative journalist Adrian Levy had published detailed stories based on satellite imageries and interviews with local residents and some former Indian nuclear scientists on the construction at Challakere. The Indian government has not yet denied any report published by ISIS or Adrian Levy. It is generally believed that the state’s nuclear activities remain highly concealed. Local media has also reported the allocation of place, fencing and beginning of construction work at the site. It would also be difficult to hide these developments from the US-based global enterprise of intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance satellite systems.

At present, India has two enrichment facilities; one is at the Rare Materials Plant (RMP) and the other at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. One assessment by IHS Jane’s suggests that the total capacity of the RMP facility is 42,000 separating work units (SWU) per year. SWU is a unit of process to separate isotopes of uranium from natural ones during enrichment. India claims that the RMP facility is dedicated to enrich uranium to fuel their existing and upcoming fleet of four to six nuclear submarines. But the assessed capacity of RMP is beyond the fuel requirement.

India has a long-term plan to build its nuclear triad. To that purpose, it began its nuclear submarine program somewhere between the late 1980s and early 1990s. Initially, India received help from Russia and was finally able to build and operationalize its first nuclear-powered submarine INS-Arihant in 2015.
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It is generally thought that the SMEF will increase the existing enrichment capacity from 42,000 to 100,000 SWU/yr. Intrinsically, the excessive enrichment facility, other than making nuclear fuel for a submarine fleet, would be used for making thermonuclear weapons.

It is clear the India has only one operational third-generation nuclear-powered submarine at the moment and it is aiming to induct six more. The enrichment capacity to produce fuel for an entire nuclear-powered submarine fleet in the next ten years is less than half of the existing enrichment capacity of India.

There is empirical evidence that India had nuclearized South Asia and has triggered an arms race in which Pakistan was compelled to seek a balance and deter New Delhi from coercion. There have been ominous developments that should raise alarms globally, such as developing multiple, independently targetable re-entry vehicles, a large arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, placing weapons on launch on warning status, bringing nuclear weapons into the Indian Ocean and a ballistic missile defence shield. It is both the intent and nuclear capability that counts.

Sartaj Aziz has offered India a bilateral arrangement for not conducting a nuclear test. Besides that, Pakistan has offered several restraint-and-confidence building measures as a prelude to conflict resolution in South Asia. Unfortunately, this outreach has fallen on deaf ears and Islamabad is experiencing CBM fatigue, hubris and intransigence from India.

New Delhi has outrightly rejected Pakistan’s proposal for a bilateral nuclear non-testing agreement and it seems improbable that India will sign one. It would not be difficult to see that if India agrees to sign the agreement, that would not only end the chances of further testing of Indian nuclear weapons, but would also give rise to questions on the purpose for expanding the enrichment facility and its existing HEU stock.
India has the largest unsafeguarded nuclear program among the non-NPT states. A new nuclear city at Challakere would be another facility outside the IAEA safeguards. At present, it has rigorously pursued its membership for the nuclear supplier group (NSG). The development at Challakere would be a major challenge for the champions of non-proliferation efforts and for those who are supporting India’s quest for NSG membership. Seeing India’s force posture developments and its nuclear policy, the world should rescind its extra-ordinary cooperation in the NSG and deny membership of the Group.

*Ahmad Khan is a visiting fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad@ahmadkhan000

1. Rajaraman, an emeritus professor of Physics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India and co-chairman of the International Panel on Fissile Material, wrote that HEU produced from the RMP facility could have been used in the 1998 nuclear tests as part of a thermonuclear device. In 2011, K. Santhanam, a former senior scientist and DRDO representative at Pokhran II, admitted that the yield of thermonuclear device was much below expectations and the test was perhaps more a fizzle than a big bang. Therefore, the statements of these two prominent Indian nuclear scientists suggest that the new nuclear city would give India a strong incentive to produce HEU for developing thermonuclear weapons as Santhanam’s claim would be an attempt to build a rationale for India to test thermonuclear devices in future. In addition, P. K. Iyengar, who was also a key member of the Pokhran-I test in 1974, told a correspondent of Indian magazine Outlook that after the 1998 test he met the BJP leadership in 2000 and stressed that they needed more tests to develop the thermonuclear weapons.