By Cheryl Pellerin

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is making available to military amputees the first production versions of a groundbreaking upper-limb prosthesis, according to a DARPA press release.

Dr. Justin Sanchez, director of DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office, delivered the first two advanced “LUKE” arms from a new production line during a ceremony — evidence that the fast-track DARPA research effort has completed its transition into a commercial enterprise, DARPA officials said.

The ceremony took place at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

“The commercial production and availability of these remarkable arms for patients marks a major milestone in the [DARPA] Revolutionizing Prosthetics program and most importantly an opportunity for our wounded warriors to enjoy a major enhancement in their quality of life,” Sanchez said, “and we are not stopping here.”

The RP program is supporting initial production of the bionic arms and is making progress restoring upper-arm control, he added.

“Ultimately we envision these limbs providing even greater dexterity and highly refined sensory experiences by connecting them directly to users’ peripheral and central nervous systems,” Sanchez said.

Arms for Service Members

As part of the production transition process, DARPA is collaborating with Walter Reed to make the bionic arms available to service members and veterans who are rehabilitating after suffering upper-limb loss, DARPA says.

LUKE stands for “life under kinetic evolution” but is also a passing reference to the limb that Luke Skywalker wore in Star Wars: Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back.

The limbs are being manufactured by Mobius Bionics LLC, of Manchester, New Hampshire, a company created to market the technology developed by DEKA Integrated Solutions Corp., also of Manchester, under DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics program.

The prosthetic system allows very dexterous arm and hand movement with grip force feedback through a simple intuitive control system, DARPA says.

The modular battery-powered limb is near-natural size and weight. Its hand has six user-chosen grips and an arm that allows for simultaneous control of multiple joints using inputs that include wireless signals generated by innovative sensors worn on a user’s feet.

Revolutionizing Prosthetics

The technology that powers prosthetic legs has advanced steadily over the past two decades but prosthetic arms and hands are a tougher challenge, in part because of the need for greater degrees of dexterity, DARPA says.

When the LUKE arm first went into development, people who had lost upper limbs had to use a relatively primitive split-hook device that hadn’t changed much since it was introduced in 1912.

DARPA launched the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program with a goal of getting U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for an advanced electromechanical prosthetic upper limb with near-natural control that enhances independence and improves quality of life for amputees. LUKE received FDA approval less than eight years after the effort began, DARPA says.

Under a recently finalized agreement between DARPA and Walter Reed, DARPA will transfer LUKE arms from an initial production run to the medical center for prescription to patients. Mobius Bionics will train the Walter Reed staff to fit, service and support the arms.

Concluding the main part of its 71st session, the United Nations General Assembly last night adopted 15 texts – 14 resolutions and one decision – recommended by its Fifth Committee which is responsible for administration and budgetary matters.

Actions taken by the General Assembly – the universal body that comprises all 193 UN Members States – included revising the Organization’s budget for the 2016-2017 biennium to $5.61 billion and approving $639.53 million to keep the 33 UN special political missions running smoothly.

In another text, the General Assembly called for $1.57 million gross ($1.46 million net) before recosting to continue improving UN’s administration of justice system. The call had been deemed necessary after an independent review last year concluded that, despite increasing transparency, only about half of the workforce had access to the system and many were unaware of it.

The Assembly also adopted a wide-ranging human resources resolution aimed at finishing major reforms begun half dozen years ago. It also tasked the Secretary-General to investigate the reasons for delays at each stage of the staff selection and recruitment as well as made some changes to recruitment processes on a provisional basis as a pilot phase.

Also yesterday, the General Assembly adopted 11 resolutions from its plenary and First Committee (dealing with disarmament and international security matters) tackling a wide range of issues, including nuclear disarmament, oceans and international law.

Spanish exports of goods grew by 0.9% between January and October 2016 compared with the same period of the previous year, amounting to 210.29 billion euros, an all-time high since records began. Imports fell by 1.6% to 225.35 billion euros.

Consequently, the trade deficit for the first ten months of 2016 stands at 15.06 billion euros, 26.6% less than in the same period of 2015 and the second best balance in these months since 1997, only bettered by 2013. Spanish exports outperformed those of the Eurozone and the European Union.

By volume, exports grew by 3%, since prices measured by Unit Value Indices fell by 2% while imports grew by 2.4% due to prices falling by 3.8%.

The coverage rate (exports over imports) stood at 93.3% (2.3 percentage points higher than in January-October 2015). It is the second best figure since records began, only bettered in 2013.

The non-energy balance posted a deficit of 1.8 billion euros (2.16-billion euro surplus in the cumulative figure to October 2015) while the energy deficit fell by 41.6% due to the substantial decline in energy prices.

The positive trend in Spanish exports between January and October contrasts with the trend in surrounding areas: in the Eurozone exports fell by 0.4% and in the European Union by 1.2%. Exports were also down in France (-2.2%) and the UK (-3.2%), while growth in Germany (0.3%) and Italy (0.2%) was positive, but less so. Meanwhile exports from the USA (-4.6%), China (-6.9%) and Japan (-9.3%) also declined.

Economic sectors

All main sectors reported export growth. Capital goods (accounting for 20.1% of the total) grew by 1.5%; the automotive sector (18% of the total) grew by 7.4%, and food, drink and tobacco (16.7% of the total) grew by 5.9%.

The main positive contributions to exports came from the automotive sector (contributing 1.3 percentage points), food, drink and tobacco (0.9 points), consumer manufactures (0.5 points), and capital goods (0.3 points). The sectors that most dragged exports came from other goods (-1.6 points), non-chemical semi-manufactures (-0.4 points), raw materials (-0.1 points), and chemical products (-0.1 points).

With regard to imports, the consolidation of the recovery of the Spanish economy is driving growth in most sectors. Imports of capital goods (21.7% of the total) increased by 7.3%, automotive imports (13.8% of the total) grew by 4.4%, purchases of consumer manufactures (up by 6.4%), food, drink and tobacco (up by 4.1%), and durable consumer goods (up by 8.6%).

The main positive contributions to imports in January-October came from capital goods (a contribution of 1.4 points), consumer manufactures (0.8 points), the automotive sector (0.6 points), and food, drink and tobacco (0.5 points). The greatest negative contributions were from energy products (-4.2 points), chemical products (-0.5 points), and raw materials (-0.4 points).

By Raghida Dergham*

The trio “guaranteeing” a political settlement in Syria has now destroyed the foundations of what were known as the Geneva Communique and the Vienna Process. This is the same trio dominating the Syrian battlefield, and that considers the military equation to be ready for starting a three-way division of the pie while excluding the US, Europe, the Gulf Arab countries and the UN.

The foreign and defense ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey met this week after the fall of Aleppo to draw a political roadmap that overrides previous accords that had called for a transition in Syria by means of a governing body with full powers, culminating in presidential elections.

What the trio really guarantees, however, is the survival of Bashar Assad as president with full powers, to comply with Russian, Iranian and Turkish demands.

Arab countries have been excluded from the Syrian issue, particularly the Gulf states, which had special relations with Turkey. It was at some point thought that a Turkish-Saudi-Qatari trio was intent on arming moderate opposition and preventing the fall of Aleppo. Clearly now, Turkey has withdrawn from this defunct trio, defecting instead to the Russian-Iranian axis in a cynical strategic shift.

Ankara has disbanded the strategy established in the past with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, while helping cement the Russian-Iranian roles in Syria, guaranteeing itself a seat at the table of winners. Turkey has thrown out its commitments and promises to the two Gulf countries.

Both Turkey and Egypt, as the Gulf countries now understand, have defected to the Russian camp, providing Sunni cover to Moscow to evade the accusation of a Russian-Shiite alliance in the battle for Aleppo, one of the largest Sunni Arab cities.

What is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s planning after Aleppo? What is Turkey’s next move after the deal with Russia on Aleppo and the Kurds in Syria? What of Iran’s plans after the capture of the city? What will the Gulf countries, European powers and the US do?

The exclusion of the US from the Moscow meeting between Russia, Iran and Turkey follows America’s self-exclusion in Syria, and the desire of the administration of President Barack Obama to be excluded. The tripartite meeting also comes in preparation for the era of President-elect Donald Trump, to pave the way for dealing with him from a launching pad on Syrian soil.

The broad title of the coming phase, according to the conviction of Russia, Iran, Turkey and Egypt, is Putin-Trump. Russia’s president succeeded in presenting himself as the No. 1 partner for Trump on the basis of their mutual desire for coexistence and deal-making. Iran decided that getting on board the Russian motorcade is the shortest way to the White House, presenting itself as a strategic ally and battlefield partner that is indispensable for Russia.

Egypt has seen a strategic opportunity in the relationship between Putin and Trump, reinforced by good economic ties with China, and got on board the Russian bandwagon in Syria. Turkey found that its interests are best served by joining the Russian convoy traveling from Aleppo to the White House, with a message of reassurance to Trump.

The US, which is voluntarily absent from Syria, appears marginalized and weak. It is contenting itself with the smile of the weak Secretary of State John Kerry, and his handshake with his seasoned counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

The Obama administration leaves Washington haunted by Aleppo.

The outgoing US president helped in the making of the tragedy in Syria by refraining to engage and by dissociating the US from Syria, paving the way for Russia to rebuild its influence in the Middle East. At the same time, Obama rewarded Iran and blessed its intervention in Syria, even before repealing the UN Security Council resolutions prohibiting Iran’s foreign military presence.

These resolutions were later repealed as part of the package deal with Iran over its nuclear program, which led to an obsessive fixation by Obama with safeguarding it, often at the expense of fundamental US values. He leaves the White House in a few weeks, dragging along two of his red lines that he had backtracked from: His warning regarding the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons and his call for Assad to step down.

Trump has started exercising presidential powers before his official inauguration. It was for his sake that Putin rushed to benefit maximally from the extra time allowed by the transition between US administrations, escalating militarily in Aleppo and coordinating politically and militarily with Turkey and Iran. Putin wanted to give Trump a precious gift made in Syria, packaged in the guise of eliminating Daesh, Al-Nusra Front and other terrorist groups.

Putin gifted Trump the achievement of the battle of Aleppo, so that the new president does not inherit this problem. Putin has decided that his friend Trump does not like complex problems, and prefers clever games and making deals. For this reason, Putin wanted to finish “purging” Aleppo before Trump entered the White House.

However, Putin’s strategy is not restricted to these courtesies toward Trump. He is preparing for grand bargains after cementing Russia’s resumed great power role in the international arena via the Syrian gateway. The Russian victories in Syria come amid growing hostility toward a resurgent Russia in the Middle East.

Putin, no matter how much he denies this, remains the Russian president who concluded a deal of strategic importance with Iran, especially in Syria. He did this while proclaiming that he was against radical Islamism and the rise of Islamism to power. It turned out he meant Sunni, not Shiite, Islamism. Indeed, Iran was the first theocracy in the region.

In other words, Putin brought Russia to the Middle East through a sectarian gate, radically fueling Sunni-Shiite strife as many a US administration had done. Russia’s return to the Arab region and its role in Syria were not welcomed by Arabs, on the contrary. Thus many questions surround Russia’s investment in the region, and the specter of retaliation will haunt it.

As such, the Russian-Iranian relationship will be subject to much scrutiny, as it has been clear for some time now that their partnership in Syria amounts to a full alliance. This is a clear message to Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, which Moscow see as divided and divergent when it comes to relations with Russia as well as with Iran.

For this reason, for example, Russia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have established special relations despite differences on Iran.

Furthermore, Russian-Saudi relations did not collapse because of Russia’s clear bias in favor of Iran, strategically and in Syria, as this was offset in the Yemeni theater, where Russia has refrained from intervening or obstructing.

What kind of relationship will Moscow and Tehran have after Aleppo? The foundations of their strategic alliance will survive, but there will be some divergence on certain principles that they will have to address to protect the alliance.

Indeed, Russia seeks to end its direct (and vital) military role in Syria, while Iran is bent on expanding its military role there. Russia wants to strengthen the Syrian regular army as the cornerstone of the state and the regime, while Iran wants to implement the Revolutionary Guards model in Syria and Iraq, to weaken the regular army in favor of paramilitary groups.

These are radical, not cosmetic differences, but they do not mean that the alliance is brittle. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Al-Quds Force, went on a victory parade in Aleppo, to the embarrassment of Russia, whose generals were not happy.

However, decision-makers in Moscow will not protest publicly because they know Iran has resolved to purge Daesh from Syria and Iraq and to restore the Shiite Crescent project, the implementation of which is a strategic priority for Iran, proceeding with Russian and American consent.

Turkey has a different priority: Safeguarding the regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, even if he had to renege on every single promise he had made. Turkey has blocked all roads for the delivery of weapons and influence from the Gulf states to Syria, after the same happened in Iraq with US-Iranian partnership.

Ankara has staked its supreme interests on Russia, abandoning in practice its call for Assad to be toppled. By joining forces with Russia and Iran, it is even guaranteeing Assad’s legitimacy. This forces the Gulf states to reconsider their positions, now effectively restrained by the collapse of what was once a joint Turkish-Saudi-Qatari strategy.

Russia has gained a lot from Turkey after the deal between Putin and Erdogan, possibly including the latter’s renunciation of his scheme to empower the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East and Asia. Indeed, the statements issued by the trio clearly emphasized a secular Syria, which was traditionally opposed by Turkey.

Interestingly, the trio spoke of Syria’s territorial integrity at a time when Iran is active on the ground in altering the region’s geography to establish contiguity with Hezbollah in Lebanon, while Turkey opposes the emergence of a Kurdish entity in Syria even as statehood in Iraqi Kurdistan has become inevitable.

The grey area in Syria remains large. However, it is clear that Russia has resolved to draft a military and political roadmap that upends old agreements and paves the way for a new kind of Russian-American partnership that will give a whole different meaning to the term “grand bargain.”

*Raghida Dergham is columnist, senior diplomatic correspondent, and New York bureau chief for the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper since 1989.

By Elise Harris

Two days after the announcement that Pope Francis has established a group to look into the circumstances regarding the recent dismissal of the Order of Malta’s former Grand Chancellor, the Knights responded – saying the decision was an internal matter.

The response follows the forced resignation of leader Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager, which some attribute to controversy regarding the order’s charity branch being allegedly involved in distributing condoms in Myanmar to prevent HIV.

On Dec. 22 the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had formed a group of five “senior officials” tasked with “gathering any liable factors” and to “fully and quickly inform the Holy See on the matter that has recently affected the Grand Chancellor of the Order, Mr. Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager.”

Members of the group include Archbishop Silvestro Tomasi, Fr. Gianfranco Ghirlanda S.J., Belgian lawyer Mr. Jacques de Liedekerke, Mr. Marc Odendall and Mr. Marwan Sehnaoui.

In response to the formation of the group, the Knights of Malta issued a Dec. 24 statement saying the replacement of a Grand Chancellor is “an act of internal governmental administration” that falls solely in the Order’s competence.

“The aforementioned appointment is the result of a misunderstanding by the Secretariat of State of the Holy See,” the statement continued.

It noted that the Order’s Grand Master, Matthew Festing, wrote a letter to Pope Francis yesterday explaining why the Holy See’s suggestions were therefore “unacceptable,” while at the same time assuring the Pope of his “filial devotion.”

According to a previous, Dec. 13 statement from the Order, Albrecht von Boeselager and his position as Grand Chancellor was the subject of an “extremely grave and untenable situation” Dec. 6, just a few days earlier.

Festing then called Boeselager to take part in a meeting with the Order’s Grand Commander, Ludwig Hoffmann von Rumerstein, and Cardinal Raymond Burke, the Order’s papal representative, in order to ask for his resignation.

After twice refusing to submit his resignation, Boeselager was, “with the backing of the Grand Master and the Sovereign Council and most members of the Order around the world,” forced to resign as part of a “disciplinary procedure” which can result in the suspension of a person’s membership in the Order.

The reason for Boeselager’s removal, the statement read, “was due to severe problems which occurred during Boeselager’s tenure as Grand Hospitaller of the Order of Malta, and his subsequent concealment of these problems from the Grand Magistry, as proved in a report commissioned by the Grand Master last year.”

A day later, Dec. 14, the appointment of John Edward Critien as the Grand Chancellor ad interim was announced by the order.

While the real reasons for Boeselager’s removal are still unknown, many have speculated that it is due at least in part to a program the order’s charity branch took part in several years ago offering aid to sex slaves in Myanmar.

Part of the aid included giving condoms to the women in order to protect against HIV. However, Boeselager argued at the time that the condoms were distributed by other aid programs, and not his own.

The Vatican was informed about the incident and the order’s involvement in the program ceased. An ethics committee was then launched in order to ensure that similar mistakes weren’t made in future projects.

Pope Francis’ establishment of the group, then, seems to be aimed at gathering an accurate reading of the facts. Whether or not he will respond to Festing’s letter is yet to be seen.

Scientists at the Pharmaceutical Artificial Intelligence (pharma.AI) group of Insilico Medicine, Inc, have announced the publication of a seminal paper demonstrating the application of generative adversarial autoencoders (AAEs) to generating new molecular fingerprints on demand.

The study was published in Oncotarget on 22nd of December, 2016. The study represents the proof of concept for applying Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to drug discovery. The authors significantly extended this model to generate new leads according to multiple requested characteristics and plan to launch a comprehensive GAN-based drug discovery engine producing promising therapeutic treatments to significantly accelerate pharmaceutical R&D and improve the success rates in clinical trials.

Since 2010 deep learning systems demonstrated unprecedented results in image, voice and text recognition, in many cases surpassing human accuracy and enabling autonomous driving, automated creation of pleasant art and even composition of pleasant music.

GAN is a fresh direction in deep learning invented by Ian Goodfellow in 2014. In recent years GANs produced extraordinary results in generating meaningful images according to the desired descriptions. Similar principles can be applied to drug discovery and biomarker development. This paper represents a proof of concept of an artificially-intelligent drug discovery engine, where AAEs are used to generate new molecular fingerprints with the desired molecular properties.

“At Insilico Medicine we want to be the supplier of meaningful, high-value drug leads in many disease areas with high probability of passing the Phase I/II clinical trials. While this publication is a proof of concept and only generates the molecular fingerprints with the very basic molecular properties, internally we can now generate entire molecular structures according to a large number of parameters. These structures can be fed into our multi-modal drug discovery pipeline, which predicts therapeutic class, efficacy, side effects and many other parameters. Imagine an intelligent system, which one can instruct to produce a set of molecules with specified properties that kill certain cancer cells at a specified dose in a specific subset of the patient population, then predict the age-adjusted and specific biomarker-adjusted efficacy, predict the adverse effects and evaluate the probability of passing the human clinical trials. This is our big vision”, said Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, CEO of Insilico Medicine, Inc.

Previously, Insilico Medicine demonstrated the predictive power of its discovery systems in the nutraceutical industry. In 2017 Life Extension will launch a range of natural products developed using Insilico Medicine’s discovery pipelines.

Earlier this year the pharmaceutical artificial intelligence division of Insilico Medicine published several seminal proof of concept papers demonstrating the applications of deep learning to drug discovery, biomarker development and aging research.

Recently the authors published a tool in Nature Communications, which is used for dimensionality reduction in transcriptomic data for training deep neural networks (DNNs). The paper published in Molecular Pharmaceutics demonstrating the applications of deep neural networks for predicting the therapeutic class of the molecule using the transcriptional response data received the American Chemical Society Editors’ Choice Award. Another paper demonstrating the ability to predict the chronological age of the patient using a simple blood test, published in Aging, became the second most popular paper in the journal’s history.

“Generative AAE is a radically new way to discover drugs according to the required parameters. At Pharma.AI we have a comprehensive drug discovery pipeline with reasonably accurate predictors of efficacy and adverse effects that work on the structural data and transcriptional response data and utilize the advanced signaling pathway activation analysis and deep learning. We use this pipeline to uncover the prospective uses of molecules, where these types of data are available. But the generative models allow us to generate completely new molecular structures that can be run through our pipelines and then tested in vitro and in vivo. And while it is too early to make ostentatious claims before our predictions are validated in vivo, it is clear that generative adversarial networks coupled with the more traditional deep learning tools and biomarkers are likely to transform the way drugs are discovered”, said Alex Aliper, president, European R&D at the Pharma.AI group of Insilico Medicine.

Recent advances in deep learning and specifically in generative adversarial networks have demonstrated surprising results in generating new images and videos upon request, even when using natural language as input.

In this study the group developed a 7-layer AAE architecture with the latent middle layer serving as a discriminator. As an input and output AAE uses a vector of binary fingerprints and concentration of the molecule. In the latent layer the group introduced a neuron responsible for tumor growth inhibition index, which when negative it indicates the reduction in the number of tumour cells after the treatment. To train AAE, the authors used the NCI-60 cell line assay data for 6252 compounds profiled on MCF-7 cell line. The output of the AAE was used to screen 72 million compounds in PubChem and select candidate molecules with potential anti-cancer properties.

“I am very happy to work alongside the Pharma.AI scientists at Insilico Medicine on getting the GANs to generate meaningful leads in cancer and, most importantly, age-related diseases and aging itself. This is humanity’s most pressing cause and everyone in machine learning and data science should be contributing. The pipelines these guys are developing will play a transformative role in the pharmaceutical industry and in extending human longevity and we will continue our collaboration and invite other scientists to follow this path”, said Artur Kadurin, the head of the segmentation group at Mail.Ru, one of the largest IT companies in Eastern Europe and the first author on the paper.

Tunisia arrested the nephew of the suspected Berlin truck attacker and two other jihadist suspects who are “connected” to the Tunisian assailant Anis Amri, the interior ministry said Saturday, December 24, AFP reports.

A statement said the three suspects, aged between 18 and 27, were arrested on Friday and were members of a “terrorist cell… connected to the terrorist Anis Amri.”

It made no direct link between the suspects and Monday’s deadly attack on a Berlin Christmas market.

The interior ministry said that Amri had sent money to his nephew and encouraged him to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State group.

“One of the members of the cell is the son of the sister of the terrorist (Amri) and during the investigation he admitted that he was in contact with his uncle through (the messaging service) Telegram,” it said.

Amri allegedly urged his nephew to adopt jihadist “takfiri” ideology “and asked him to pledge allegiance to Daesh (IS),” it said.

The nephew also told investigators that Amri “sent him money through the post… so that he could join him in Germany,” the statement added.

The unnamed nephew was reported in the statement to have said that his uncle was the “prince” or leader of a jihadist group based in Germany and know as the “Abu al-Walaa” brigade.

Amri, 24, is believed to have hijacked a truck and used it to mow down holiday revellers at a Berlin Christmas market on Monday, killing 12 people in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.

He was shot dead after pulling out a pistol and firing at two Italian policemen who had stopped him for a routine identity check Friday near Milan’s Sesto San Giovanni railway station.

He lightly wounded one of the policemen before being killed by the other.

The Tunisian interior ministry did not specify where the three suspects were arrested but said that the “terrorist cell” was “active” between Fouchana, south of Tunis, and Oueslatia, hometown of Amri’s family in central Tunisia.

Money and the military define the Cabinet of Donald Trump’s presidency. For a man who ran to help the “forgotten Americans”, there are few “forgotten” people in his team. Most of the Cabinet appointees have experiences far from the crises that wrack rural and industrial America. Amongst the billionaires are mostly people who inherited their money. They do not have the spark of entrepreneurism that is one of the core values of American society. The ex-military men are all generals, people who have long looked at war from the control room and not from the battlefield. Their sensibility is not that of the retired warrior who worries about war. These are men of great braggadocio; for them the battlefield is not a place of great pain but one of honour. For them, battle is worthy. For the billionaires, free-market capitalism is good. Neither the world of money nor the world of the military is prepared to address the actual grievances of the population or the transformation of America’s place in the world. This is a government of fables. It is appropriate that it is led by Trump, a man made more by the world of entertainment than by the world of governance. Glitz is the order of the day. Rhetoric will stand in for policy. Drama is guaranteed.

Civilian control over the military is a fundamental aspect of the United States government’s culture. When President Dwight Eisenhower—a former general—chose General George C. Marshall to be his Secretary of Defence in 1950, the U.S. Congress worried about undue military influence on policy. The National Security Act of 1947 had prohibited military officers from being in charge of the Defence Department. Eisenhower, a war hero, asked Congress for a waiver, which it provided. But in the waiver, Congress said that this was an exception and that it hoped never to have to provide such leeway again.

A decade later, in his farewell speech, Eisenhower bemoaned the increased power of the military and of military industry over the U.S. government. He called this the “military-industrial complex”, which was the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry”. “The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the federal government,” the old military hero said plaintively. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Matters are graver now. The military-industrial complex is larger and more firmly rooted in the economy, politics and the culture of the country. Patriotism is now defined largely as fealty to the military and is reflected in virtual worship of the national flag.

Generals

In this context, Trump has chosen three generals to be in his Cabinet, giving all the major departments in charge of security to men of the armed forces. General James “Mad Dog” Mattis of the Marines will take charge of the Defence Department, Army Lt General Michael Flynn will be Trump’s National Security Adviser and General John Kelly of the Marines will be at the helm of Homeland Security. It is likely that others will join them in the Cabinet, such as Admiral Michael Rogers for Director of National Intelligence and General David Petraeus at the State Department. It appears as if Trump is not assembling a Cabinet so much as a junta.

Senator Chris Murphy of the Foreign Relations Committee admits to being concerned about this number of military men in the Cabinet. They are men of merit, he concedes, but one of the lessons learned over the past 15 years is that “when we view problems in the world through a military lens, we make big mistakes”. If a hammer is the instrument held by the government, it will go in search of a nail. Other tools are needed to solve problems. These are not in hand. Hammers are everywhere. But even Murphy’s statement about their merit is questionable. Flynn and Mattis hold strong views against Islam, while Flynn is prone to the wildest conspiracy theories. This does not bode well for the man who is tasked with separating the wheat from the chaff that comes to the President’s desk. If Trump is unpredictable, so too is Flynn. Military men will surround Trump but not those of the most rational disposition.

Billionaires

Trump’s campaign rhetoric was plainly oppositional. It sparked a sense that this billionaire had heard the pain of the “forgotten American”. Trump suggested that he would use his business savvy to bring back work for Americans and to turn around a sagging U.S. economy. To help him, Trump has turned to the business class. Amongst his major picks are some of the richest people in the U.S. The total net worth of the first half of Trump’s Cabinet is over $14.5 billion—30 times more than the net worth of the men and women in George W. Bush’s Cabinet. In other words, half of Trump’s Cabinet is worth 30 times the entirety of Bush’s Cabinet. Plutocracy, not democracy, is the order of the day.

The men who will manage the U.S. economy are all from amongst the wealthiest families. The Commerce Department will be led by Wilbur Ross, the “king of bankruptcy” (worth $2.9 billion), and assisted by Todd Ricketts, heir to the discount brokerage fortune of his father (worth $5.3 billion). The Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin (worth $46 million), worked at Goldman Sachs and then invested in two of Trump’s projects at his own boutique investment firm. Neera Tanden, president of the liberal think tank Centre for American Progress, said that these appointments were “a betrayal of his [Trump’s] message to working-class voters. Trump claimed he would fight the global elite billionaire class”, but instead he has filled his Cabinet with the wealthy.

Behind the scenes, in Trump’s transition team, are even more wealthy men and women. Leading the pack is Stephen Schwarzman of the private equity firm Blackstone. His net worth is $9.9 billion. Schwarzman leads a group that includes the CEOs of JP Morgan Chase, BlackRock, Disney, Walmart, IBM and General Motors. It is this group that has pushed for deregulation and for a tax regime that advantages corporations and the very rich. The stock market has had several record days in anticipation of greater corporate earnings during the upcoming Trump years.

Even in the human services section, Trump has chosen very wealthy people who have little understanding of or sympathy for the “forgotten Americans”. Betsy DeVos, heir to the Amway fortune (worth $5.1 billion), is to head the Education Department. She is against public education and wants more private initiative. This is not going to be favourable for the working class and the working poor. Ben Carson (worth $26 million), who ran for President, will head the Housing and Urban Development Department. He believes that social welfare programmes, including housing programmes for the poor, create dependency and should be curtailed. Neither Betsy DeVos nor Carson is in line with the mission of the departments that each will run. The “forgotten Americans” will not be at the top of their agenda. Their task will be cost-cutting.

Trump’s form of nationalism is incoherent. Hope for the “forgotten Americans” comes more in the unsustainable claims made by Trump. Promises of jobs, good infrastructure and decent public services are easy to make and hard to deliver upon. His team is averse to major public expenditure to produce the kind of society he said he would produce. They are keener on tax cuts and less regulation, the very policies that will sharpen the social divide in the U.S. Trump’s nationalism is not rooted in social and economic policy. If it were, Trump would be forced to reconsider the tax cuts to the wealthy and the deregulation of the economy. Greater stress on working people is hardly the medicine for social inequality. Trump’s nationalism emerges out of cultural claims about who is an American. It is the reason why there is so much hateful rhetoric against immigrants and Muslims, people who are said not to be Americans.

Stephen Bannon, Trump’s adviser, gave a speech to the Vatican in 2014 where he bemoaned the excesses of free-market capitalism and of crony capitalism. Profit and corruption, he said, should not define the economy. Other values need to be promoted, values of nation and religion. Bannon argued that the antidote to free-market and crony capitalism is “Judeo-Christian capitalism”. “People are looked at as commodities,” Bannon complained of the current order. He wants “Judeo-Christian” values to constrain the profit motive. The road to this kind of “Judeo-Christian” capitalism, Bannon said, was to be through the production of a “church militant”, which would be strengthened by a war against Islam. The leap from the problems of free-market and crony capitalism to a war against Islam is confounding. It is what anchors Bannon’s views. To bring the wealthy and the generals into the Cabinet goes along the grain of this kind of approach. Problems of the “forgotten Americans” will not be solved by compassionate social policy. They are to be solved by more social inequality and more wars.

This column originally appeared on Frontline (India.)

“You don’t have any other society where the educated classes are so effectively indoctrinated and controlled by a subtle propaganda system – a private system including media, intellectual opinion forming magazines and the participation of the most highly educated sections of the population.

Such people ought to be referred to as “Commissars” – for that is what their essential function is – to set up and maintain a system of doctrines and beliefs which will undermine independent thought and prevent a proper understanding and analysis of national and global institutions, issues, and policies.” — From Language and Politics, Noam Chomsky

The headless body of a Rohingya Muslim man has been discovered days after he spoke to reporters about the unrest in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The family of the victim had raised concerns after he spoke to Burmese journalists about attacks on security forces (Official Report). Myanmar’s Rakhine province has been under total lockdown for over two months now since militants attacked security posts. The man had spoken to reporters about army repression and how local villagers had been involved in the attack. Amnesty International has accused Burmese security forces of rape, murder and torture in Rakhine, home to world’s most persecuted minority group, the Rohingya Muslims.

Media persons trying to cover the news are scared of more violence erupting post their interactions with the Rohingya Muslims and local Villagers.

There is nobody to take a stand.

More than 30,000 Rohingya Muslims have already fled and thousands of stateless Rohingya Muslims are trying to reach Bangladesh amid reports of abuse by the Burmese army. A United Nations official was recently quoted saying that Myanmar’s western Rakhine (formerly Arakan) State has been witness to Burmese authorities carrying out a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims with military atrocities continuing in the garb of combating Islamic militants in the region. Thousands of Rohingya Muslims are fleeing the country and entering into Bangladesh to save their clan from getting extinct.

The alleged charges against the Burmese army are very serious – rape, mass slaughter, burning entire villages and loot, all extremely serious human rights violations. However Bangladesh has not labelled the Rohingyas as refugees and the Bangladeshi establishment is drafting policies to stop the Rohingyas from entering their borders.

The 1.1 million Rohingyas are viewed as one of the worlds’s most persecuted minorities. Thousands of Rohingya Muslims have been crossing the border for decades to seek refuge in one of several refugee camps near Cox’s Bazaar, a major population centre. However moves to staunch the flow of these migrants continue by the Bangladesh government.

In 1962, after General Ne Win’s Coup, the condition of the Rohingyas worsened. Win’s policy of “Myanmarisation” or racial purity of the Bama ethnic group led to increasing tortures on the Rohingyas. The Burma Citizenship Law (1982), was passed during the Ne Win period wherein the Rohingyas were not listed as one of the country’s 135 “national races” entitled to Burmese citizenship.

The Rohingyas are considered to be illegal immigrants by Bangladesh and there is serious resistance to the Rohingyas mixing with the extant Bangladesh demography.

Aung San Suu Kyi who is considered as the democratic face of Myanmar, has made few statements on the crisis. This is indicative of the tenuous hold on a semblance of democracy that she is maintaining. It is an acknowledged fact that the transition to a democratic set up has been more lip service than anything else, and Suu Kyi is well aware of how quickly things could revert to the earlier military ‘junta’ that ruled over Myanmar for decades and still maintain a stranglehold over politics in the country. The military still controls the key Ministries of Home Affairs, Border Affairs and Defence with activists like Suu Kyi playing minor roles in decision making processes. Owing her well known public persona, it is convenient to keep her as the facade for international interactions such as those with President Obama. This gives a tinge of legitimacy to the state of affairs in Myanmar today, which was under crippling sanctions by the international community during the rule of the military junta.

Theorizing Mediatized Conflict as in the case of Rohingya Muslims is an arduous task since there is a very thin line between fact and fiction shown on television news these days. With the commercialisation of the broadcast industry and the entry of corporate houses in mainstream media world, profit making and not ethical news reporting has become the new motive.

Profits are made through sensationalism for which often catchy headlines and news production with images, animations and dramatic recreation of events are used for higher TRP’s. This negative role of media today however is a new characteristic feature of the news industry. Ethical journalism has been replaced by sensational breaking news and exclusive phenomenon.

But the media often referred to as the fourth estate is a powerful tool that can bring about great revolutionary changes in the society.

Conversely, as is evident from the case of beheading cited above, the media’s reach can negatively impact a sensitive society such as Myanmar, with instant reprisals coming forth to the already beleaguered Rohingya community. It is this inherent fear that is stopping the Rohingya Muslims from interacting with the reporters.

In a bid to legitimize its actions in the international media the Burmese authorities have labelled the Rohingyas as jihadists. With increasing focus on the radical Islamic threat in the west, this is a subtle subterfuge to shift the pivot of media attention from the serious humanitarian crisis facing the Rohingyas; being denied food, medical aid and the right to live in dignity in the conflict torn zone, the Rohingyas are staring at extermination in the presence of a couldn’t care (or wouldn’t care) less world.

In a world torn by conflicts perceived as much more serious and apocalyptic, it seems the plight of the Rohingya Muslims has taken a back burner. When reporting from a conflict zone results in barbarous beheadings, then it is high time the world stood up and took notice of what is going on. Highlighting the case of the downtrodden still remains an important facet of media reporting. When their actions result in such extreme reactions, it becomes imperative to do something about it.

The month of December looked to be a month of reconciliation among major nations in East Asia with significance beyond their national boundaries.

First, Shinzo Abe hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in his Yamaguchi prefecture hometown in an attempt towards reconciliation since World War II and then shakes hands with US President Barack Obama at Pearl Harbour weeks after the US marked the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack there reciprocating Obama’s visit to Hiroshima’s atomic bomb sites in May 2016, thereby demonstrating mutual forgiveness.

Russia and the US are the two major countries that had fought Japan in World War II. While the US signed the security treaty with Japan after the War and has been providing the nuclear security umbrella since then, Russia is one of the few countries which never signed a peace treaty with Japan after 1945 because in the war’s final days then Soviet Union occupied four then-Japanese islands just north of Hokkaido, to the country’s northernmost main island.

The question that arises is: how much success was achieved in this reconciliation process? Hardly any. While no concrete agreement was reached with Russia, things remained unclear with the US since Obama will relinquish office soon. His successor, Donald Trump who would assume office in early 2017 has been making statements whose long-term significance remains unclear at the moment. While his telephone talk with the Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen infuriated China, Trump has questioned the US commitment to the ‘One China’ policy in order to get some trade concessions from Beijing.

As regards Japan and South Korea as allies of the US since the World War II, Trump has asked for the allies to share greater financial burden if they expect the US to continue giving guarantee about their security. He has even suggested that the allies might even think of developing their own nuclear weapons in order to protect their security, a stance that would bury Obama’s vision of a nuclear-free world to the dustbin of history.

In a Twitter post, Trump even called for strengthening and expanding the US’ nuclear capabilities “until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes”. Such posturing has raised and alarmed nuclear non-proliferation experts, who fear could fuel global tensions. Whether such developments are to be seen as examples of reconciliation or potential destabilizing symptoms are open to interpretations.

So far as Japan’s relations with Russia is concerned, the Kurile Islands chain that separates the Sea of Okhotsk from the Pacific Ocean in the southern tip of Japan have serious sentimental significance for Japan and probably some economic value of providing fishing rights. But for Russia, the islands are strategically valuable if the installation of missile defense systems on two of the islands are kept in mind, which is why Russia is never keen to cede the territory. Given this interest by either side, real reconciliation seems to be a far cry no matter how much Abe tried to honour Putin with personalized treatment in an onsen (hot spring) rather than in office to get some tangible outcome.

Where do these changing equations leave China? While China-Russia relations seem to have warmed, the logic behind this seems to be the common concern with the US and therefore defiance against the US and the European Union. While Russia might not be comfortable with an emergent powerful China as its neighbor, Japan looks tempted to make a new friend in Russia as a bulwark against an unpredictable China.

But the next inevitable question that arises is, why Japan wants to invest in Russia despite that it joined the West to impose sanctions against Russia in response to its aggression in Ukraine. Abe is not sure if Trump would continue or eliminate those sanctions, which is why he broke protocol to become the first foreign leader to meet him in New York on 17 November.

Trump is not a popular leader in Japan and as the Prime Minister of the country, Abe needed to gauge the likely policies that Trump would pursue.

In a joint telephone survey conducted from 2 to 4 December in Japan and from 28 November to 4 December in the US by The Yomiuri Shimbun and the US survey forum Gallup, 40 per cent expect Japan-US relations to deteriorate during Trump presidency. In Japan, 1,060 randomly selected people responded and 1,027 people in the US responded to the survey during the above period.

Of this, 57% of the Japanese respondents and 48% of the American respondents considered current Japan-US relations to be “good” or “very good”. The previous poll taken in November 2015 showed similar percentage point with 58% of respondents in Japan and 49 % in the US saying relations were good. However, the 2016 poll said bilateral relations will deteriorate greatly or to some extent, an increase of 7% in Japan and 14% in the US.

The reason behind this change seems to be because of Trump’s remarks on the alliance relationship itself by demanding from Japan greater sharing of cost of hosting US forces and his expressed intention to withdraw the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact, both of which if taken to their logical conclusion, could dramatically overhaul Japan’s foreign policy itself. In that case, the attempt towards reconciliation would have been suddenly reversed. No country seems is prepared now to such an eventuality.

On the question of sharing costs, 60% of Japanese respondents said the costs should be kept at “current level” and only 4% said Japan should “pay more”. The percentage point in the US was, 48% for keeping at the “current level”, and 42% said Japan should “pay more”. Trump’s suggestion to Japan that it might consider developing nuclear weapons to deter wars did not find favour as 72% of Japanese respondents said it was “not necessary”, while 54% in the US said it was “not necessary” and 46 % answered it was “necessary”.

Another poll by Nikkei Inc/TV Tokyo also showed that majority of Japanese was disappointed with Trump’s win, though many did not see it affecting bilateral relations. The telephone survey result post-Trump victory for over three days showed that 56% of respondents said they were disappointed with Trump’s win, while only 20% saw it as a positive development.

Disapproving Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric on the campaign trail, 62% of women were critical of him, compared with 51% of men who saw the victory in favourable terms. On the question of Trump calling Japan to shoulder a heavier financial burden for maintaining the US military presence in Japan, a majority of 51% responded that the current framework should not be altered, with 34% saying that Japan should pay less and 5% that it should pay more. A plurality of respondents, or 46%, foresaw no change in bilateral relations under Trump administration, while 34% expect ties to deteriorate and 6% expect an improvement.

A sizable section of Japanese academics also expressed ‘surprise’ to hear the final election result as it was widely believed that Hillary Clinton will win and ‘shock’ because they were not familiar to hear Trump’s “rude an abusive language, his discriminatory attitude against minorities and foreigners, his prejudice of looking down women, and above all his violent messages to deny globalization and internationalization”.

Had Clinton won, probably the importance that Abe-Putin meeting received would not have been the case. Abe had almost succeeded in Japan in selling the idea of benefit that Japan’s entry into the TPP would bring for the country. The TPP was the centerpiece of Obama’s Asia strategy and Japan saw it as a means to prevent China from becoming the rule-setter in Asian trade. If Trump kills the TPP, China will feel emboldened to replicate the TPP idea its way what Obama intended to do in his way.

Finally, if Japan and Korea are to pay more for their defence, if the TPP becomes dead, if Russia-China relations warm up further, if US-China relations deteriorate over the Taiwan issue and Trump questioning the “One China” policy, and Trump undertakes more drastic policy changes, where does Japan finds itself in such a changed situation? Abe’s political future could come under threat. Abe might as well feel tempted to push his political goal further to amend Article 9 of the Constitution to achieve his long term goal to make Japan a ‘normal’ state.

With an eye on China and North Korea and coupled with the emerging new situation, Japan’s Cabinet approved on 22 December 2016 a record defence budget, while keeping intact the 1% of GDP on defence spending limit. According to the World Bank, China in contrast spends about 2% of its GDP on defence and the US around 3.3%. Even with a lower level of spending than China, Japan has produced a military that is shaping up to be among the world’s best. And this despite the Constitutional limitation that the country’s forces would be for defensive purposes only. Though Abe would try to maintain the existing course in the country’s relations with the US, given Trump’s unconventional policy utterances, a possible review of Japan’s foreign policy priorities could be thinkable. Asian politics seem to be heading towards turbulent times.

The author is currently ICCR India Chair Visiting Professor at Reitaku University, JAPAN. Disclaimer: The views expressed are author’s own and do not represent either of the ICCR or the Government of India.

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Egyptian Interior Ministry security forces stormed into prison cells attacking and injuring hundreds of political prisoners at Borg al-Arab Prison in Alexandria during the week of November 13, 2016, Human Rights Watch said Saturday.

The attacks came after prisoners protested poor conditions and humiliating treatment, according to HRW, adding that Egypt’s prosecutor general should order a prompt and transparent investigation into the events and hold those officers responsible for abuse to account.

Families and lawyers of prisoners said that prison guards attacked the inmates in their cells with batons, sticks, teargas, and pepper spray, causing burns and fractures. One prisoner appears to have sustained some form of brain trauma, causing memory loss. Lawyers said the prisoners believed the Interior Ministry’s Central Security Forces probably provided support.

“Instead of investigating complaints of abusive treatment and poor conditions, Egyptian authorities attacked and beat the prisoners” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Egyptian authorities are responsible for the wellbeing of everyone in their custody and have a duty to investigate if prison or security officials cause them harm, and to hold those responsible to account.”

Following the attacks, on at least three days, prison authorities transferred at least 250 inmates, including some who were injured, to three other prisons – Minya, Gamasa, and Wadi al-Natroun – all far from Alexandria, which inmates and their families consider a punishment.

Human Rights Watch spoke with the sister of one inmate, the father of three other inmates, lawyers for 10 inmates, and a lawyer who is also a prominent Alexandria rights activist and reviewed Facebook posts by family members of several other inmates who had been beaten. The family members said that the authorities threw away inmates’ belongings, including utensils, hygiene products, clothes, and medicine, and then transferred them and dozens of other inmates, in batches to other prisons. The prison authorities handcuffed and blindfolded inmates in their cells before forcing them into transfer vans. The family members and lawyers told Human Rights Watch that security forces beat inmates when they arrived at the prisons in Gamasa and Minya.

Neither the Interior Ministry nor the Prosecutor General’s office released any statement on the events and the prosecutor general has not responded to a December 16 letter from Human Rights Watch requesting information.

By Semra Musai

The junior ruling party in the last government, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, which won 10 of the 120 seats in parliament in the December 11 polls, has said it will wait for the final official election results before inviting all the main ethnic Albanian parties to discuss a common platform.

“First we will negotiate with the Albanian parties and afterwards with the Macedonian parties,” DUI spokesperson Bujar Osmani said.

The official results should be known after Sunday’s re-run in one polling station, which could change the overall election result by potentially evening out the number of seats won by the main ruling VMRO DPMNE party and main opposition Social Democratic Union, SDSM.

A new Albanian party, Besa Movement, which won five seats in the elections and so became the second biggest party in the Albanian bloc, said it had not received any offer from the DUI as yet.

“We have not had any invitation [from the DUI]. We have our platform and goals over which we are ready to cooperate with every political party in Macedonia,” Bilall Kasami, the head of Besa, said on Thursday.

Ziadin Sela, head of the DPA – Movement for Reforms, said it was a historic chance to unite on a platform which would advance the position of all Albanians who make up about a quarter of the population of the country.

DPA – Movement for Reforms won three seats in the election.

“The DUI should invite all [Albanian] party leaders to a joint table so we can act mutually and impose [demands] on the Macedonian bloc. It is a historic moment for us to solve some open issues that are important for Albanians,” Sela told Alsat TV.

Ethnic Albanian parties in Macedonia appear to hold the key to the formation of a new government that will need the support of at least 61 of the 120 MPs in parliament.

VMRO DPMNE and the SDSM have 51 and 49 seats respectively, if Sunday’s election re-run in one polling station does not change the result.

Many observers have called on Albanians parties to be careful about committing themselves to a new government, if they want to advance the Albanian agenda in the country.

The DUI’s platform for the new government calls for Albanian to be made an official language on the entire territory of the country. Albanian is currently an official language only in those areas where Albanians make up a significant proportion of the population.

The DUI also seeks decision-making based on ethnic consensus in every institution, including parliament, as well as economic equality for Albanians, meaning a proportional division of the country’s budget along ethnic lines.

Other requests are to prolong the mandate of the Special Prosecutor, a body formed last year to investigate high-level crime.

Besa also has three preconditions for the new government and says it will not join any government containing politicians who are in any way incriminated or even suspected of offences by the Special Prosecutor.

Besa also wants a redefinition of the juridical and constitutional system of the country, and says any new agreement on a government coalition must be transparent.

DPA – Movement for Reforms is committed to what it calls a bi-national state as well as a law making the Albanian language official throughout the entire country and equal allocation of budget funds.

The Democratic Party of Albanians, DPA, which won only two seats, has not clarified its position although its leader has indicated it will support Besa’s negotiating positions.

Peter Vanhoutte , an EU expert engaged in the negotiations between the country’s main four parties on the so-called Przino Agreement, called on Albanian parties not to participate once again in a government where they risk being “completely sidelined”.

“Yes, you had some Ministers and even a deputy Prime Minister. But for all important decisions, you were overruled by your coalition partner,” Vanhoutte stressed, addressing the past experience of the DUI.

Observers say the ruling VMRO DPMNE party of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski will have a harder time negotiating terms with Albanian parties this time, as so much of its election campaign focused on chanelling anti-Albanian sentiment.

The SDSM on the other hand at these elections for the first time in Macedonian history attracted the votes of tens of thousands of Albanians, calling for unification against VMRO DPMNE whom they accused of authoritarian rule.
– See more at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/macedonia-albanians-mull-joint-platform-for-government-12-22-2016#sthash.OYZjf4y2.dpuf

The European Commission adopted this week a package of measures to strengthen the EU’s capacity to fight the financing of terrorism and organized crime, delivering on the commitments made in the Action Plan against terrorist financing from February 2016.

The proposals being presented by the Commission are aimed at completing and reinforcing the EU’s legal framework in the areas of money laundering, illicit cash flows and the freezing and confiscation of assets. Presented alongside the third Progress Report on the Security Union, the proposals will ensure a strong and coordinated European response in the fight against terrorism financing, bringing the EU one step closer towards an effective and genuine Security Union, according to the European Commission.

The proposals were prepared by a project team led by First Vice-President Frans Timmermans and Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, working with Commissioners Dimitris Avramopoulos, Pierre Moscovici, Věra Jourová and Julian King.

According to First Vice-President Frans Timmermans the  proposals, “strengthen our legal means to disrupt and cut off the financial sources of criminals and terrorists. We must ensure we have the right tools in place to detect and stop suspicious financial flows and to support better cooperation between law enforcement authorities so that we can better protect the security of European citizens.”

Along the same vein, Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said, “Terrorism remains a major threat to our safety. We must stay a step ahead to stop terrorists in their tracks and the fight against terrorism financing is part of it.”

According to Dombrovskis, this explains why the Commission is “proposing that money laundering be subject to effective criminal sanctions right across the EU. We are proposing cross-border freezing and confiscation of criminal assets within the EU, and putting an end to criminals circumventing cash controls at the EU’s external borders.”

The proposals, as highlighted in the third Progress Report towards an effective and genuine Security Union, the European Commission is strengthening the capacity of the EU to fight terrorism and organized crime, making it harder for terrorists and criminals to finance their activities while making it easier for the authorities to detect and stop their financial movements, according to the European Commission.

The Commission added that detecting suspicious financial flows and cutting off the sources of financing is one of the most effective ways to stop potential terrorist attacks and criminal activities. The tracking of financial flows can also provide police and law enforcement authorities with crucial information and effective tools for their investigations.

The European Commission is proposing a new Directive to criminalize money laundering and to provide competent authorities with adequate criminal law provisions to prosecute criminals and terrorists and put them behind bars. The proposed measures will:

• Establish minimum rules concerning the definition of criminal offenses and sanctions related to money laundering, closing gaps to prevent criminals from exploiting differences between different national rules.
• Remove obstacles to cross-border judicial and police cooperation by setting common provisions to improve the investigation of offenses related to money laundering;
• Bring the EU norms in line with the international obligations in this area, as set out in the Council of Europe Warsaw Convention and Financial Action Task Force recommendations.

To provide competent authorities with the adequate tools to detect terrorists and those who support them financially, according to the Commission the new Regulation on cash controls presented today will:

• Tighten cash controls on people entering or leaving the EU with €10,000 or more in cash;
• Enable authorities to act on amounts lower than the customs declaration threshold of €10,000, where there are suspicions of criminal activity, and
• Improve the exchange of information between authorities and Member States;
• Extend customs checks to cash sent in postal parcels or freight shipments and to precious commodities such as gold, and to prepaid payment cards which are currently not covered by the standard customs declaration.

Freezing terrorists’ financial resources and confiscating their assets

Freezing or confiscating financial assets quickly across borders will prevent terrorists from using their funds to commit further attacks. The proposed Regulation on mutual recognition of criminal asset freezing and confiscation orders will:

• Offer one single legal instrument for the recognition of both freezing and confiscation orders in other EU countries, simplifying the current legal framework. The Regulation would apply immediately in all Member States;
• Widen the scope of the current rules on cross-border recognition, to include confiscation from other people connected to the criminal, and would cover confiscation in the case the criminal is not being convicted for example due to escape or death;
• Improve the speed and efficiency of freezing or confiscation orders thanks to a standard document and an obligation on the part of competent authorities to communicate with each other. The rules set clear deadlines, including shorter deadlines for freezing orders;
• Ensure victims’ rights to compensation and restitution are respected. In cases of cross-border execution of confiscation orders, the victim’s right has priority over the executing and issuing States’ interest.

(Najaf, Iraq) — A week has passed since my arrival in Iraq.  Once again we come desiring to strengthen the bonds of human friendship, bonds which threaten to break as the opportunities to visit each other become less and less possible.

A few days prior to my departure, I attended a Veterans for Peace holiday party in New York City where I live. Most members of this chapter were in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. The chapter invited the Vietnamese ambassador to the U.N. to their gathering. In a moving message she stressed that the war has been over for forty years now, and that it was hard to find remnants of the war in her country. “It is hard however for us to forget” she said. “We remember so that it won’t happen again.”

Her words struck a deep chord in me, as I would soon be going to a country where the war is far from over. It rages on.

With families living on roadside near Najaf, Iraq. Photo by Cathy Breen.

Two days into my trip I was able to visit some of the internally displaced families between Najaf and Karbala. The whole roadside, approximately 70 miles, is filled with displaced families living on either side of the street in empty buildings next to mosques, or in tents and makeshift structures. I remember seeing these conditions on my last trip from Najaf to Karbala in April of 2015.  I’ve heard that an estimated 100,000 displaced people are lodged here.

Two young men, members of a group called Moja (which means wave of change) drove us to the displaced families. Moja is a group of over 100 students that formed three years ago in reaction to “the corrupted world around us.”  Yasser, who graduated from dental school last year, was my translator.  As we drove, he began to explain the purpose of Moja. “The country is sick. Moja is a response to fix the ignorance around us, the corruption. It is an act of survival. We have two choices. One is to just watch the country burn and burn, being uninvolved and unconcerned with the issues. Or we can challenge the obstacles facing us. We want to do something. We want to encourage people to read, encourage people to a new awareness.”

Moja has sister groups in Baghdad and Mosel. In Najaf, Yassar explained, they had a reading festival, the “I am Iraqi, I read” project. Over 1,000 gathered in a park to read together. “The most important thing is not just reading, it is lowering the level of hatred between Sunni and Shia. Also we have thirty-two female members of Moja.  I am very proud of them. They are more important than the male members. Najaf is very conservative. Moja gives them a chance to engage in civil initiatives.”

Yassar related how the Moja group in Mosel, primarily Sunni, collected clothes for the needy in Najaf, a Shia city. The clothes arrived in packages that said “from your friends in Mosel.”

My heart soared as I listened to this animated young man. I would later learn that just two weeks ago, Moja carried out a project called: “From Najaf, a message to Mosel.”  Over a three-day period, about 1,000 handwritten letters were gathered from ordinary people in Najaf, on the streets, in the shops, in the universities as well as from professionals and clerics. These letters were handwritten to ordinary people in Mosel, people under siege, and surrounded by ISIS and Iraqi forces. In effect, they told the people not to lose hope. They were dropped from Iraqi Air Force planes over Mosel. Some messages were also filmed and sent over social media. One message was: “Let us think of ways to end this dilemma in Iraq. The enemy is trying to divide us. Let us try to get together as one people who love each other, undivided, trying for a better tomorrow.”

It is cold now, two and three blanket weather. Arriving at our destination, we were led into a room in a cement building and invited to sit on thin floor mats forming an L-shape. The room was completely barren except for the mats. There were adjoining rooms, I believe, and the space was shared by 3 different couples with 13 children among them. These families were from Telafar in the north and are of Turkish origin. They had fled Telafar when ISIS took over about three years ago.

They get food rations from the UNCHR, but only rice, oil, sugar and flour. No lentils, tea, dried milk, fresh vegetables, fruit or meat.  One of the fathers works in construction when he can get work, maybe 6 days in a 2 month period.  He earns $20 a day. It is hard work. Alongside of mosques, the displaced are allowed to live rent free. School is provided in containers, referred to as “caravans.” These containers are common among the displaced people throughout Iraq.

Nearby we visited a second set of 3 families.  They fled from Mosel and had come 2 ½ years ago, part of a small Shia population there.  Their living space was separated by blankets or large cloths serving as walls.  Crowded with an almost total lack of privacy, they face real hardship.

We heard from some families that a government organization provided them with kerosene heaters, but others said they were unable to get on the lists, and had no heaters.  Also one set of families told us that a doctor comes around monthly, but others told us they had no health care at all. They need to buy water to drink. This costs about $1 a day in the winter and $3 a day in the summer. The greatest needs were for clothes for the children, blankets, heaters and milk.

With no hope of being able to return to their homes in the near future, and with no place or family to go to, people seem resigned to their fate. “We are sick with pain,” one man told us.

Yet signs of hope persist.

Yassar was able to hook one man up with dental care, and he encouraged the families to send their children to the University Dental clinic saying “My colleagues are waiting there for you.”

As evening descended, word had spread that we were there. A man with a faulty prosthesis came seeking help. He said he had been hit by a US bomb. Another two men came who’d been injured by car bomb explosions. One soft-spoken gentleman was blinded in one eye and could only ambulate by using a walker. I asked if we could have our picture taken and he agreed. I told him I would tell his story. We could have stayed on and on as people were eager for a visit. When we left, we didn’t feel like strangers. We bade one another heartfelt goodbyes. I felt grateful for being welcomed, and the people we met appreciated that we had listened to them. In each place I assured people that they are not forgotten, that many people want to hear their stories and long to end all wars.

*Cathy Breen, (newsfromcathy@gmail.com) helps coordinate Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org)

By Giancarlo Elia Valori*

As is well known to all serious scholars and experts of the Uyghur and Xinjiang issue, the tensions with the Chinese State began long before the Communist Revolution and increased and changed after the quick and often destructive transformations of the Chinese para-Soviet system.

In fact Mao turned the Russian-styled economic and political centralism into a strictly Han-Chinese traditional nationalism – having also an ethnic nature – not in line with the Soviet “proletarian internationalism” that China had no intention of following.

Mao and his successors did not want to tire out the weak Chinese economy of the time, in the mad belief – only to the Soviet benefit – they could manage a “Cold War” with the West.

Furthermore China started to use Xinjiang as the centre for nuclear tests and the exploitation of local raw materials.

Moreover, after Tiananmen Square events, strong political and ethnical-autonomistic centripetal tensions began throughout China.

Hence, for China, the Uyghur issue became a theme to be tackled between the whole Chinese world and the new post-Soviet and Asian countries arising after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which also had its own sound Uyghur- Turkmen minority.

In that case the many post-Communist Asian republics, still having a centralized economy, accepted China’s aid, including a geopolitical chip, namely a specific treatment compared to the Asian Turkmen populations.

If the Uyghur movement leaders understood this range of strategic issues, not as simple police reports, much progress could be made by both opposing parties.

Later the extraordinary growth of the Chinese economy after Deng Xiaoping’s reforms further increased the sense of alienation of the non-Han peripheral areas’ populations.

They grew ever poorer and felt to be left abandoned and at the sidelines of the mass enrichment process generated by China.

Nevertheless currently both the West and China have realized that the increase of widespread wealth created ethno-religious and economic centripetal tensions.

This is certainly a mortal danger for the whole Chinese political system, which either stands together or collapses miserably. Do the Uyghurs want this? I do not believe so.

I think they want a better life, like everyone else, if they reassure China that there are no global entities or interests manoeuvring them – as it currently happens.

Hence this reveals the geopolitical interest of many countries in increasing tensions between the periphery and the centre of Chinese power.

If Communist China became an easily controllable regional power, without large reserves of raw materials, and without the military assertiveness and monetary autonomy it has today, the United States, at first, and also the tired EU would be very happy.

They would have a great country to manage according to their interests, by acquiring raw materials and manufactured goods at the lowest price and making them be paid with fully asymmetrical monetary relations and dealings.

However, at that juncture, who can stabilize the Middle East and who has the capital to penetrate into Africa? The poor Europe or the new China?

Or would it be another failure of the United States, sensitive to the issue of “human rights”, but unable to interpret and understand the world’s great changes and always unable to “finish the job”?

This is why there is no reason for China to put pressure on me and on my ideas.

In spite of Dolkun Isa’s malicious and artful statements, these ideas are typical of a standard analysis of the local strategic context.

This is the reason why the Uyghur issue should be studied with no ethnic and political blinkers, but considering its great strategic relevance, as the first China’s part which would like to go away from the Centre, by possibly integrating itself with the pan-Turkish area or with the Saudi or Emirates’ Islam. Indeed, on the one hand, the Emirates seem to financially help the poor Westerners and, on the other, to fund and manage the global jihad, ranging from ISIS to the underground networks in Europe and North Africa.

Again in this case, there are now evident and well-known signs of the involvement of part of the Uyghur movement in this global jihad process.

Human rights are very important, but should be interpreted in the right context and not used as a decoy.

This can be good only for the very naïve European members of Parliament, for whom not even the classic misinformation is needed.

Those who think that I am spreading misinformation about the Uyghur issue forget that, due to my specific knowledge of Chinese issues, I am well aware of the complexity and multiple geostrategic, ethnic, economic and political meanings of the Xinjiang issue.

Moreover, Dolkun Isa’s words can make us infer that China and others are misinforming about the Uyghur issue, but not the World Uyghur Congress (WUC).

It is the classic statement of those who are about to spread their own misinformation.

Furthermore, nobody from WUC has so far denied the link existing between the Uyghur insurgency and their organization.

Certainly Germany will have accepted WUC’s presence in Munich for the well-known reasons and psychological complex about its past. Germany, however, has never relinquished its pro-Islamic policy in the East, ranging from the Fertile Crescent to the Far East.

Hence strategic concepts are not made only for mere statistics on “repression”, which do not provide specific data on what and who has been “repressed.”

Obviously the Chinese hand is hard, but for reasons which are mostly understandable at political and strategic levels.

And this has very little to do with the myth of “human rights”, which are often coveted everywhere but by only paying lip service to them.

Indeed, to be honest, as an old expert of psywar, much of the news spread by WUC seems to be really manipulated and magnified.

Obviously Germany has accepted WUC’s presence both to counter the current policies of other countries, especially the United States, and to curb the still-existing British post-war dominance in those regions.

I am referring to the Greater Middle East, which is the starting point of the line connecting the Uyghur movement to those that supports it in Turkey, for Panturanic aims and designs, and to create an Islamist buffer area to be radicalized against China, where needed, as is the case with Saudi Arabia and its local allies.

The jihad is always a threat, even when it is silent. And, anyway, it becomes the platform of various powers, not all necessarily Islamic.

As to the trips reported by Dolkun Isa, they have been reported to me by multiple sources that I checked and related one another.

I have no desire to be a policeman, but I only want to understand the network that WUC and those who fund it want to create within the ethnic, religious and political networks which could support it.

Finally, I strongly suspect that WUC, and its global supporters, mainly want to ensnare the many members of Parliament who talk about human rights according to the lobbies putting pressures on them.

About the author:
*Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders. Mr Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York. He currently chairs “La Centrale Finanziaria Generale Spa”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group and member of the Ayan-Holding Board. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title of “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France.

Source:
This article was published at Modern Diplomacy

By Himani Pant

“No, this is not Sarajevo 1914…for Ankara and Moscow will not wage war. Quite the contrary, they may even get closer” tweeted Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyol as the conspiracy theories about Russia-Turkey relations began circulating post the assassination of Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, on 19 December. The ambassador was shot allegedly by a police officer named Mevlut Mert Altinas while he was delivering a speech at an art exhibition in Ankara. The attack came after days of protests in Turkey over Russia’s role in Syria and a day prior to Turkey’s foreign minister’s scheduled visit to Moscow for a meeting with Russian and Iranian diplomats on the situation in Syria.

As the Syrian crisis unfolded, tension between Russia and Turkey grew. While Russia backed Assad, Turkey agitated for regime change in Syria. With the worsening of situation and the emergence of Islamic State as the principle opposition to the Syrian regime, the Kurdish population began to rise against the Islamic State. As the Kurd solidarity increased, Turkey’s stakes in Syria got complex. A major cause of concern for Ankara is that the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) is an affiliate of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it regards as a terrorist organization. Turkey fears that the PYD’s success in Syria will strengthen the PKK in its fight against Turkey.

While the Russian airstrikes had already increased tension between Turkey and Russia, things got worse in November 2015 when the former shot down an SU-24, claiming that the fighter jet had entered its air space in spite of several warnings. Both, however, restored ties after President Erdoğan sent a letter of ‘regret’ to President Putin, describing Russia as “a friend and strategic partner”. He also expressed his condolences to the family of the Russian pilot and promised to punish the guilty. He further agreed to payment of compensation for the fighter jet and to the family of the pilot. Currently, at least one of these conditionalities remains unfulfilled.

The rapprochement has not gone down well with many in Turkey who oppose Russia because of its support for Bashar al Assad’s regime, whose main supporter is Shia Iran. Turkey, on the other hand, sides with Sunni rebels, who are backed by a majority of the conservative Sunni Arab monarchies. Erdoğan’s own party (Justice and Development Party) supporters are not too pleased with Turkey giving in to Russia’s demands. The sentiment also echoes in the words of Karlov’s assassin who, according to reports, shouted, “Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria…those who have a part in this atrocity will all pay for it, one by one” immediately after killing the ambassador.

The current episode will however not rupture the ties between the two as it did post the downing of Russian plane last year. Russia is now looking for a way-out of the Syrian conflict. With the newly elected US President Donald Trump having shown the inclination in cooperating with Russia, there is an opportunity for Moscow to end the conflict on favourable terms both for Mr. Assad and for Russia’s broader interests in the region.

Signs of a Russian-Turkish rapprochement were visible just a day following the ambassador’s assassination at a meeting of foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey held in Moscow. The trio agreed in “the Moscow Declaration” that there could be no military solution to the Syrian conflict. Instead, they believed that the UN could play an essential role to resolve this crisis in accordance with the UNSC resolution 2254. Also taking note of the International Syria Support Croup (ISSG), they urged all members of the international community to cooperate in good faith in order to cooperate in implementing agreements contained in these documents.

Going by past example, it was the shooting of the pilot that had incensed Moscow more than the downing of the plane. In this case too, it would be premature to conclude that the Russian leader would seek no compensation for the assassination of one of his diplomats.  This would inevitability (further) weaken Erdoğan’s position vis a vis Putin while negotiating on Syria. The failed coup in July has already unraveled the divide between the President and military. Many army generals were imprisoned by Erdoğan in a bid to remove threat to his power. The current assassination by a security officer is an indication of Erdoğan’s lack of control of the “security within his borders”.

With lack of support within, the Turkish leader would have a tough choice to balance his domestic interests while improving relations with Russia and Iran, especially at a time when its relations with the West are deteriorating.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India have laid down code of conduct for it’s members, that are described in the Chartered Accountant Act 1949 and the Chartered Accountants (Procedure of investigation of Professional and Other Misconduct and Conduct of cases) Rules 2007. Essence of the code of conduct is the stress on adherence to the dictates of the profession honestly in letter and spirit.

Those who successfully pass out the Chartered Accountants examination become the member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and are expected to strictly adhere to the conduct stipulated in the above Act and Rules.

Visible fall in standards

Unfortunately, there appear to be significant fall in the standards of Chartered accountants of India, which is evident from the frequent published reports of Chartered Accountants conniving with the tax evaders, black money holders and even criminals to enable them to evade taxes and accumulate black money.

It appears that section of Chartered Accountants think that their loyalty to the client is the primary focus of the profession and not to the law of the land.It is unfortunate that such Chartered Accountants think that helping the client to reduce the amount of tax payment by circumventing the law or enabling the client to evade the tax by misinterpreting the law and making false entry in the account books is the be all and end all of their profession.

While several instances can be readily pointed out to highlight the falling standards of the Chartered Accountants, the misdeed of Price Water House in helping Satyam Computers to evade taxes is a glaring example.

Of course, the conduct of all Chartered Accountants are not questionable.

But, it is widely suspected that a notable section of them do not adhere to the code of ethics in letter and spirit laid down by the Institute of Chartered accountants of India. It appears that the day is not far off when the residents and offices of some Chartered Accountants will also be raided by the income tax department , as it is now happening in the case of black money holders and corrupt persons.

Watch dogs of other professions

Today, it is seen that the standards of several professions like lawyers, doctors and even professors apart from judges have fallen visibly low, as black sheep are increasingly found amongst them. It is known that several doctors accept only cash payment towards their professional fees and evade taxes. Several lawyers who speak eloquently about the supremacy of law in many forums are known to insist on cash payment to reduce their tax payment. . Several educational institutions are now perceived to be dens of corruption. There are judges who have been caught for misdemeanors.

Amongst the various professionals, the Chartered Accountants are supposed to be watch dogs of economic and tax transparency and they are supposed to oversee the fair conduct of other professions as far as their fair accounting practices and tax computations are concerned. If the chartered accountants would strictly and honestly adopt the code of ethics and conduct expected of them, the other professionals would find it hard to evade taxes, as all tax evaders avail the services of Chartered Accountants for compilation of accounts and calculation of tax amount.

It is said that behind every tax evader, there is a chartered accountant.

Institute should see the writing on the wall

When Chartered Accountants fail to live up to the expectations ,the basic structure and objectives of tax regime get uprooted.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India thought it fit to issue warning to the Chartered Accountants against criticizing government’s demonetisation policy ( which warning , it withdrew later due to protest from some chartered accountants),But,it has not occurred to the institute to express concern about the steadily diminishing reputation of chartered accountants’ profession in India.

One only hopes that the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India would see the writing on the wall and would not further delay taking some measures to put down firmly the chartered accountants who are dishonest and fail to adhere to the code of ethics laid down by the institute in letter and spirit. So far, the Institute is largely conspicuous by it’s silence in this matter.

Some chartered accountants protested to the Institute about it’s warning that the chartered accountants should not criticize the demonetization policy. However, they have not cared to urge the Institute to ensure that the chartered accountants adhere to the letter and spirit of the ethics of the profession.

Once reputation is lost, it is so difficult to build it again. This is so in the case of individuals as well as any profession.

Let not the reputation be lost

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India would be doing a grave mistake and would fail in it’s responsibility towards the country, if it would continue to refrain from condemning and disciplining the erring chartered accountants in the manner that it should.

By J Nastranis

In a major move ahead of joining the UN Security Council as its non-permanent member on January 1, 2017 for two years, President Nursultan Nazarbayev has offered the Kazakh capital of Astana as the venue for peace talks between the conflicting parties in the Syrian conflict.

According to official sources, the offer follows “a significant agreement between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan who had agreed to push Syria’s warring factions towards new negotiations”.

“The latest reports of the successful evacuation of many civilians in Aleppo are, of course, welcome,” said The Astana Times in an editorial on December 21. “However, it would be wrong to see this as a sign that the conflict in Syria is coming to an end,” it added, stressing the need for peace talks.

Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, confirmed in the press briefing at the UN Headquarters on December 21 that Staffan de Mistura, United Nations Special Envoy for the Syria crisis, had mentioned February 8, 2017 as the date for the talks to resume in Geneva.

Asked “What does the UN think of Kazakhstan’s suggestion of hosting the talks in Astana?” Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, told media representatives on December 20: “Obviously, I think it is something we’re looking into, and we’ll get back to the Kazakh authorities.”

Kazakh official sources are of the view that Astana is “a natural home” for peace negotiations on Syria, particularly in view of the role that Kazakhstan has already played in mediation attempts.

In May 2015, Kazakhstan hosted the first round of talks involving representatives of the Syrian opposition committed to finding a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

In October 2015, the second round of these talks took place. According to The Astana Times, a number of important agreements were reached during these discussions, including on humanitarian issues. Apparently, a consensus was established to create corridors to support the safe passage for the millions of refugees leaving the country.

Apart from referring to practical experience of hosting highly important peace negotiations, the editorial said: Kazakhstan has remained a neutral mediator throughout the Syrian crisis, which has ensured its government is trusted by all sides involved in the conflict.

“A trust built on the reputation the country has developed as an honest broker in international diplomacy across such issues as the Iran nuclear talks and Ukraine crisis.”

The editorial quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov stating recently, “Astana has already hosted meetings between representatives of Syria’s opposition; Kazakhstan has certain experience.” He concluded: “Astana may play a good role in this process.”

The Astana Times said: “All sides must now urge the Syrian government and recognised Syrian opposition groups to accept this important proposal (by Kazakh President).”

The newspaper added: Early indications are that the murder of Russian Ambassador in Turkey Andrey Karlov on December 19 would not derail the agreement reached between Moscow and Ankara “nor would deter them in their determination to seek the quickest end to hostilities in Syria”.

It’s not the first time that Kazakhstan has pressed the need to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict, arguing that military options would only exacerbate the situation.

Back in 2012, President Nazarbayev urged the parties to the Syrian conflict to sit down at the negotiating table, saying: “Kazakhstan has repeatedly voiced its support for the efforts aimed at a peaceful settlement of the crisis situations in Syria.”

Explaining Kazakh approach, the Editorial said, the most urgent task must be to end all military activity in Syria and resume negotiations between the Syrian government and the opposition. It is important to act to bring all sides together, it said.

Besides, Kazakhstan is committed to doing that, offering the world a neutral and experienced base in which to begin these vital talks. “These negotiations have the potential to bring hope for a better future to millions across the world. The international community must now set aside their differences and work together to ensure this opportunity is not lost.”

The United Nations estimates that since the Syrian Civil War grew out of the unrest of the 2011 Arab Spring and escalated to armed conflict, 400,000 people have been killed, including around 16,000 children.

Singer George Michael has died aged 53, his publicist has said.

The star, who launched his career with Wham in the 1980s and later continued his success as a solo performer, is said to have “passed away peacefully at home”.

Thames Valley Police said South Central Ambulance Service attended a property in Goring in Oxfordshire at 13:42 GMT.

Police say there were no suspicious circumstances.

Michael, who was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou in north London, sold more than 100m albums throughout a career spanning almost four decades.

In a statement, the star’s publicist said: “It is with great sadness that we can confirm our beloved son, brother and friend George passed away peacefully at home over the Christmas period.

“The family would ask that their privacy be respected at this difficult and emotional time. There will be no further comment at this stage.”

By Elise Harris

After taking up a collection earlier this year to aid families affected by the ongoing crisis in Eastern Ukraine, Pope Francis has decided to distribute an initial sum of 6 million euros to different charity projects as a Christmas gift.

“In the name of the Holy Father, at Christmas the first installment of the aid for the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine will be paid,” a Dec. 23 communique from the Pontifical Council Cor Unum read.

The sum of nearly 6 million euro is only part of the 12 million that’s been collected since April, and is destined for more than 2 million people “without distinction of religion, faith or ethnic background.”

It will go to projects that assist people currently living in the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, Kharkiv and Dnepropetrovsk, which have been hit hardest by the conflict.

The funds were raised in large part as the result of Pope Francis’ decision to take up an April 24 collection in all the Catholic parishes of Europe to promote humanitarian support for all those suffering or displaced due to the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

After the collection, the Pope in June entrusted the Vatican’s charity council Cor Unum, with the task of forming a committee, which was given a year-long mandate, to decipher the most urgent needs and to get the help to where it’s most required.

Led by Bishop Jan Sobilo, auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Kharkiv-Zaporizhia, the committee, headquartered in Zaporizhia, has been working alongside the Apostolic Nuncio in Ukraine, Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti.

According to the communique, from the moment the committee began their work in July members have “chosen and evaluated the aid projects” presented to them by both Christian charity organizations and by international agencies.

Now, having made their decisions, the committee will use the funds to finance 20 “large-scale” projects with individual contributions of up to 250,000 euros, as well as 39 initiatives “of solidarity” for amounts of up to 20,000 euros.

The total sum of 6 million, according to the communique will be distributed with the help of the apostolic nunciature in Ukraine and will support projects that offer assistance “in the areas of food, housing, medicine and hygiene.”

Conflict erupted in Ukraine in November 2013, when the former government refused to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union, leading to months of violent protests.

Tensions deepened in February 2014, when the country’s former president was ousted following the protests, and a new government appointed. In March of that year, Ukraine’s eastern peninsula of Crimea was annexed by Russia, and pro-Russian separatists have since taken control of eastern portions of Ukraine.

Several attempts at a ceasefire have fallen through, and fighting continues to ravage Ukraine’s eastern regions.

According to a recent report from the Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations for Human Rights (OHCHR), from its beginning in April 2014 to December 2016, the conflict has so far caused 9,758 deaths and 22,779 wounded.

More than 2 million others have been forced to flee due to violence and a lack of basic humanitarian necessities such as food and medicine. Those who have fled to other areas of the country often can’t find work or adequate housing, leaving them largely dependent on charity.