US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis met with Spanish Defense Minister Maria Dolores de Cospedal at the Pentagon, where he expressed appreciation for the U.S.-Spain relationship as well as the NATO alliance that bonds the trans-Atlantic community.

Following is the transcript of the joint press conference, as released by US Defense Department.

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE JIM MATTIS:  Please, everyone, have a seat.

Thank you, ambassador, for coming over in your last week.  (Laughter.)

Good morning, and welcome to you, Madam Minister.  It’s good to see you again on this side of the Atlantic this time, and to have your delegation here, to include your ambassador.  Thank you very much for coming

It really is a pleasure for us to host you here in Washington, and to show appreciation for the connection between our two countries and certainly for the NATO alliance that bonds the trans-Atlantic community so tightly and so well together.

These are two democracies that are bonded by the alliance, but we are committed to the common defense as well.  And in this regard, standing together with our alliance partners against growing threats against Europe, both from the eastern flank, but I think a clear and present danger from the southern flank that you deal with as a front line state right now.  And we are keenly aware of the security challenges that you face along the southern tier.

Your forces are also showing leadership in multinational operations and making a difference, and this is part of what an alliance does.  We all step up together.  In Iraq, there’s more than 500 of your forces who are countering ISIS by strengthening the Iraqi army and police, and ultimately this is the way we help these nations is by helping them grow their own internal security, not by us being there forever.

In Latvia, supporting the enhanced forward presence, again Spain has stepped up, as always.  In Lebanon, you have a very large deployment to that — that unfortunate country caught in the midst of so many problems, with your robust contingent there.  And Africa, we find your forces engaged across Africa, and again showing a responsibility to help the security of all nations in that region.

But also thank you for hosting our forces in Rota and Moron.  I know that they must like it there because our reenlistment rates — our reenlistment rates are very, very high for the forces that are so fortunate to serve in Spain, because I think the hospitality of the Spanish people proves that this is more than just a military alliance.

And in this regard, Madam Minister, I understand you’re coming directly here to the Pentagon from Arlington Cemetery, where you laid a wreath in respect for our fallen.  And I just — I would just say that that, too, shows the depth of our commitment to one another and the respect we have for each other.

So thank you again, Madam Minister.  I look forward to our discussion.  If you’d like to say a few words in front of the press here, please feel free.

SPANISH MINISTER OF DEFENSE MARIA DOLORES DE COSPEDAL:  (inaudible) — Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for your warm welcome, and also for your — (inaudible).  We are — (inaudible) — very well — (inaudible) — I say, all of us say — know the United States and Spain have a — have enjoyed a very strong — (inaudible) — cooperation in defense for more than — (inaudible) — for us to our principles.  (inaudible) — on the — (inaudible) — is to reinforce our common bonds with practical missions.

And from this point of view, for me — my purpose –for this visit and in this meeting is to –see what else can do together — (inaudible) — and for the future.

Of course, it will — (inaudible) — very important and — (inaudible) — military facilities in my country, we think, but we would like to be much more for the United States, more — (inaudible).  (inaudible) — said that we shared very important number of key security challenges.  Spain is completely committed with the fight against — (inaudible) — terrorism.

We’re completely convinced about that, and we are working very — active in that pursuit.  (inaudible) — we are also making a very big effort in our — (inaudible) — mission, and our — (inaudible) — contribution — our operational contribution is very important for us.

We also support and promote the stability and security –in the Atlantic area.  So, along with our European allies, we would like to reinforce our trans-Atlantic links with the United States, because we think — I think it’s — (inaudible) — important for our common interests.  And this meeting is very important and significant for us.

Thank you very much.

SEC. MATTIS:  Thank you for your words.

And thank you to the press for coming by.  That is all for you.

The latest leaks from WikiLeaks’ Vault 7 is titled “Dark Matter” and claims that the CIA has been bugging “factory fresh” iPhones since at least 2008 through suppliers.

Following is the full press release from WikiLeaks:

Today, March 23rd 2017, WikiLeaks releases Vault 7 “Dark Matter”, which contains documentation for several CIA projects that infect Apple Mac Computer firmware (meaning the infection persists even if the operating system is re-installed) developed by the CIA’s Embedded Development Branch (EDB). These documents explain the techniques used by CIA to gain ‘persistence’ on Apple Mac devices, including Macs and iPhones and demonstrate their use of EFI/UEFI and firmware malware.

Among others, these documents reveal the “Sonic Screwdriver” project which, as explained by the CIA, is a “mechanism for executing code on peripheral devices while a Mac laptop or desktop is booting” allowing an attacker to boot its attack software for example from a USB stick “even when a firmware password is enabled”. The CIA’s “Sonic Screwdriver” infector is stored on the modified firmware of an Apple Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter.

“DarkSeaSkies” is “an implant that persists in the EFI firmware of an Apple MacBook Air computer” and consists of “DarkMatter”, “SeaPea” and “NightSkies”, respectively EFI, kernel-space and user-space implants.

Documents on the “Triton” MacOSX malware, its infector “Dark Mallet” and its EFI-persistent version “DerStake” are also included in this release. While the DerStake1.4 manual released today dates to 2013, other Vault 7 documents show that as of 2016 the CIA continues to rely on and update these systems and is working on the production of DerStarke2.0.

Also included in this release is the manual for the CIA’s “NightSkies 1.2” a “beacon/loader/implant tool” for the Apple iPhone. Noteworthy is that NightSkies had reached 1.2 by 2008, and is expressly designed to be physically installed onto factory fresh iPhones. i.e the CIA has been infecting the iPhone supply chain of its targets since at least 2008.

While CIA assets are sometimes used to physically infect systems in the custody of a target it is likely that many CIA physical access attacks have infected the targeted organization’s supply chain including by interdicting mail orders and other shipments (opening, infecting, and resending) leaving the United States or otherwise.

(RFE/RL) — London police have named the suspected assailant in the March 22 Westminster terrorist attack as 52-year-old Khalid Masood, a British-born man thought to have resided most recently in the West Midlands, a metropolitan county that includes the city of Birmingham.

Meanwhile, authorities say eight people who were arrested in raids across the United Kingdom on March 23 are being held on “suspicion of preparing terrorist acts.”

They include seven suspects detained in the city of Birmingham and one arrested in east London.

Police on March 23 said Masood, who was shot dead by police within the security perimeter of the British Parliament in the midst of the terrorist attack, also was known by several other aliases.

They said Masood had not been the subject of any current investigations by British authorities and there was “no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May told the House of Commons earlier on March 23 that the attacker was “a peripheral figure” known to security authorities and had been investigated for violent extremism.

Police said they were working on the assumption that Masood was inspired by Islamist terrorism. They said he did not have any convictions on terrorism charges.

Authorities confirmed that Masood had previous convictions for assaults, including grievous bodily harm, possession of offensive weapons, and public disorder.

His first conviction was in November 1983 for criminal damage and his last conviction was in December 2003 for the illegal possession of a knife.

Masood was shot dead by police on March 22 after a car he is believed to have been driving rammed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing two people and injuring at least 30. He is then suspected of fatally stabbing a police officer within the British Parliament’s security perimeter.

The so-called Islamic State (IS) claimed the assailant was one of its “soldiers.”

The extremist group said on March 23 through its unofficial news agency, Amaq, that the attacker “carried out the operation in response to calls to target citizens” of countries in the international anti-IS coalition.

Meanwhile, three of the four victims who died as a result of the attack have been publicly identified.

The two pedestrians killed on the bridge were Aysha Frade, a 43-year-old British woman who worked as an administrator at a college near Parliament, and Kurt Cochran, an American tourist from the state of Utah who was celebrating his 25th wedding anniversary in London with his wife.

Also killed was 48-year-old police officer Keith Palmer, a 15-year-veteran of Britain’s parliamentary and diplomatic protection forces who was on duty at Parliament when he was stabbed to death.

Police late on March 23 said a 75-year-old man who was injured in the attack so died of his wounds.

“The man had been receiving medical treatment in hospital following the attack and life support was withdrawn this evening,” police said.

They did not immediately provide details on how he sustained his injuries or information on his background.

Victims who were injured on Westminster Bridge came from 12 countries.

They included teenaged schoolchildren from France, a Romanian couple, and others who traveled from as far as China to explore London.

Authorities said that seven of the injured victims who were taken to hospitals were in critical condition, including a woman who was pulled alive from the River Thames after falling from Westminster Bridge.

British investigators said earlier that while Masood is thought to have carried out the Westminster attack on his own, they have not ruled out the possibility that others may have been involved.

The seven suspects arrested in Birmingham on March 23 included a 58-year-old man at one address, a 23-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman at another address, and four people at a third address: a 26-year-old woman and three men aged 28, 27, and 26. The woman arrested in East London was 39 years old.

Britain’s top counterterrorism officer, Mark Rowley, said there were searches of six different addresses in London, Birmingham, and Wales.

But he would not disclose further details, saying the investigation was ongoing.

“To be explicit: At this stage, we have no specific information about further threats to the public,” Rowley said at a news conference.

May reiterated to the House of Commons on March 23 that the government will not raise its terrorism threat level following the attack. Instead, she said Britain’s terrorism threat level will remain at “severe” — the second-highest level — which means an attack is highly likely.

The BBC reported that the vehicle used in the attack was rented last week from a branch of Enterprise car rentals in Birmingham, about 165 kilometers northwest of London.

More than 100 civilians were killed in a powerful explosion in a residential area of Mosul, Iraq, on Wednesday, an army officer and an activist said.

Brigadier Mohammed al-Jabouri, a commander in the military campaign to retake Mosul from Daesh “the Islamic State” extremist group, said on Thursday that 108 bodies have been retrieved.

Information about the blast, believed to have taken place late Wednesday, only emerged Thursday.

Al-Jabouri told dpa that the explosion in the area of Mosul al-Jadida, close to western Mosul, was a result of booby traps set by Islamic State.

Independent activist platform Mosul Eye put the toll at 130, including children and women, and spoke of a double bombing in the area.

It said that Iraq’s federal police forces also fired rockets at the site.

Original source

By David Davidian*

Just as Niccolo Machiavelli noted the unreliability of mercenaries [1] and interpretations of Sun Tzu [2] claiming a mercenary’s real value is not more than half a native soldier, one can extrapolate from these observations to deduce that the most effective arms industry is indigenous. While this may not be much of a revaluation, its implementation, especially in developing countries (and even developed countries), is becoming exponentially difficult.

The gap between the necessity for manufacturing indigenous arms and the ability to deliver them is widening and has been since the end of WWII. This gap is not between first- and third-world states. To be more precise, if one looks at the history of weapons development since the end of WWII, one sees that countries that have had uninterrupted arms development are those that have been able to build upon and maintain military research and development programs and can deliver continuously advanced weaponry to the field. It is nearly impossible for a newly established state or an established state that wishes to enhance its defensive capabilities with serious indigenous development to do so at the same rate as established state industries, for the ever-increasing rate of change in technology is fostered by “ascendant-class states”. An exception to this may be Israel, but this is due to its extensive ties with the US military industrial complex. The widening of the technology barrier is in the interest of ascendant-class states such as the US, Russia, and China as they are the leading arms exporters to the “dependent-class states”.

Where has this left the dependent-class states, specifically those that have budgets, technology, development and management capabilities, and inevitably the political necessity for weapons? Given a fortuitous combination of items from the preceding list the best bang-for-the-buck is to develop nuclear weapons. Israel’s nuclear program [3] began as far back as the 1950s, accelerating after the 1967 Six Day War. Some states move from dependent-class to the nuclear club sometimes at the expense of feeding their own people. North Korea is an example. If Iran were not effective in its indigenous weapons program and uranium enrichment capabilities, it might be relegated a Middle East backwater subject to a Persian Spring.

We have seen this spelled out clearly with India and Pakistan. Both have nuclear weapons. India claims to have hydrogen bombs [4] of varying yields, yet it must import its best fighter jets as does Pakistan. While joint development or licensing of technology seems a reasonable compromise in some scenarios, ascendant-class states limit the amount of technology that is exposed. Many examples can be cited, but earlier this month joint development of an Indian-Russian fifth generation fighter jet stalled over Russian concerns that its stealth technology would be compromised. [5] Pakistan was hoping it would acquire the capability to build a state-of-the-art fighter jet from scratch in their joint JF-17 Thunder program with China. This didn’t happen. “…PAF [Pakistani Air Force] understood that it cannot build a backbone fighter via imports.” [6] A licensing agreement between Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry and Aeronautics Defense Systems of Israel for the local assembly of Aerostar and Orbiter UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) in Baku still has 70% of the components produced in Israel. [7] These are strong reminders of what Machiavelli and Sun Tzu observed hundreds and thousands of years ago, respectively. The dependence resulting from not reinventing one’s own wheel can be a gating factor as the ascendant-class can modulate the game.

What of those states that have limited resources, and/or never had or lost their research and production capabilities to sustain a limited indigenous arms industry? These states would rank below dependent-class status. In some cases, it makes little sense in both time and effort to match technology-for-technology with a state’s perceived enemies. For example, if state A has advanced tanks or other heavy weaponry, rather than to match or exceed it in quantity and/or quality, state B could use ultra-sensitive vibration and triangulation processing to locate tanks in motion from many kilometers away and target them with standard artillery. When the enemy’s advanced tank is disabled and captured, further inspection and investigation could provide methods for more effective destruction. Most offensive military UAVs have anti-radiation protection. However, a UAV must either be directed or self-identify a target. Considering that the methods available for targeting are based on technologies associated with radar, ladar, electro-optical sensors, GPS, etc., rather than to match the enemy’s advanced UAV systems, creating ways of disabling or degrading their tracking and target acquisition may be the way to go in defending against such technologies. Inexpensive, yet effective, (non-nuclear) directed EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) systems may be enough to temporarily degrade or at least cause directional errors large enough to divert the UAV. Wide field laser weapons [8] meant to blind soldiers (banned by the UN) could damage electro-optical sensors, adapted for use in combination with other defense mechanisms. Such techniques can be an alternative to developing a top of the line military UAV industry.

Then, there is cyber warfare. Some call this the great equalizer because cyber attacks are anonymous, effective, deniable, and entire state infrastructures can be taken down with a keyboard. The United States, China, Russia, and Israel are on cyber warfare technology’s leading edge. Some of this is very overt. Job postings for several years in the United States include a new position called an “ethical hacker”. Targeted cyber weapon efforts such as Stuxnet [9] require the prowess of a sizable state. This is due to the combination of wide systems expertise, cyber hacking technology, and human intelligence required to stage such a debilitating weapon. Less challenging, yet devastating, attacks can be the work of a single cyber soldier. Cyber warfare attacks have been reported on infrastructures in Syria, Ukraine, Estonia, Burma, Iran, Japan, Israel, South Korea, US, Georgia, etc. If there is such a thing as collateral damage from cyber attacks, the following story should shed light on this. While I was on a visit to the Republic of Georgia in 2008, hostilities between Russia and Georgia commenced. The Russians began the equivalent of a denial-of-service attack on the Georgian internet infrastructure. This resulted in the inability of Georgians to access facilities such as email; but, most importantly, accurate information simply wasn’t available. One might as well have been in the dark ages, for local TV reverted to showing black-and-white movies of Georgians defeating the Persians hundreds of years earlier. Russian cable channels were severed. Rumors became “reality”: flour imports were rumored halted, which caused a run on bakeries at 2pm one morning; word on the street was the country was low on beans, and within hours the price of beans in Tbilisi stores became astronomically high; Russian fighter jets were launched from air bases in Armenia (this was specifically announced as false on Georgian TV). If collateral cyber damage from not having internet access to at least neutral information were actually planned, it alone could cause erroneous decisions to be made based on false or incomplete information.

Georgia did not need a classical army of soldiers, weapons and tanks to mitigate this denial-of-service attack. I am sure lessons learned will be implemented as the boundary between ascendant-class and dependent-class or below is not easily defined in cyber warfare.

Finally, there are non-state actors. Non-state actors are either given weaponry or must secure them financially. As proxies for regional or international powers, non-state actors are subject to the vagaries of their patrons. However, as the line between state-of-the-art state-sponsored hackers and those of an astute individual is blurred, the capability of non-state actors to create infrastructure chaos is real. Six months ago, Syrian hackers claimed responsibility for hacking into Belgian news sites. Only last month, it was reported that ISIS-affiliated hackers attacked various governmental sites in the UK. [10] It could take only a few more keystrokes to hack into UK’s power distribution grid even though it is actively protected against such attacks. Military and defense secrets are the most fleeting of all.

The world is increasingly technologically complex. It would be remiss of established states not to maximize their indigenous defense capabilities – if – such states are determined to minimize their dependence on the ascendant-class. Minimum dependence enhances the ability to defend one’s own interests.

About the author:
*David Davidian is an Adjunct Lecturer at the American University of Armenia. He has spent over a decade in technical intelligence analysis at major high technology firms.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

Notes:
[1] The Prince, page 20

[2] Art of War; 9. The Army on the March

[3] Israel’s Worst-Kept Secret

[4] Nuclear Anxiety: The Overview; India Detonated a Hydrogen Bomb, Experts Confirm

[5] Full tech transfer could derail Indo-Russian fifth-gen fighter program

[6] What did Pakistan gain from the JF-17?

[7] Azeris get Israel UAVs built under license

[8] How the US Quietly Field Tests ‘Blinding’ Laser Weapons

[9] An Unprecedented Look at Stuxnet, the World’s First Digital Weapon

[10] Isis-linked hackers attack NHS websites to show gruesome Syrian civil war images

By Mohammed Rasooldeen

The GCC made a call for closer cooperation with the EU in its economic transformation plan at a meeting held at the GCC Secretariat in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg, assistant secretary-general for political negotiations and affairs of the GCC, made the call at the opening of a EU-GCC forum on the achievements and lessons learnt from EU integration held to mark the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome.

The evening event was attended by EU and GCC ambassadors and other diplomats from various missions in the capital.

Aluwaisheg pointed out that the GCC countries have ambitious plans to diversify their economies to overcome the challenges. “We sincerely trust that the EU countries will cooperate with the GCC nations to help them utilize new revenues for government and turn them to a normal economy, which would lead them to better prosperity,” he added.

The EU-GCC cooperation, he hoped, would help maintain security and prosperity in the region.

Ambassador Michele Cervone d’Urso, head of the EU delegation headquartered in Riyadh, said: “We have invited EU ambassadors, together with the GCC (secretary-general), to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the treaty of Rome, which was signed by the six founding member states of the European Economic Community (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands), on March 25, 1957.”

He added: “The GCC member states are important strategic partners to the EU, the EU cares about these countries and their people and provides its political support to them. We want to further expand and consolidate our cooperation to bring our people, our civil society, our authorities and our governments closer together. This is what our aim is “promote mutual understanding and narrow the gaps.”

The EU and its member states are the world’s leading aid donors, providing more than half of total official development assistance in 2015.

“The European Union also stands ready to help those affected by natural and man-made disasters. Humanitarian crises continue to take a heavy toll internationally, and in 2016 the EU allocated relief assistance of over €1.5 billion for food, shelter, protection and health care to 120 million people in over 80 countries,” the EU head said.

In his speech, Italian Ambassador Luca Ferrari said: “The GCC, like the EU, is becoming a supranational institution, strongly contributing to the progress of its member states. And we have today a great opportunity to reflect and share our common experience.”

By Oubai Shahbandar*

Tehran is now sending advanced weaponry and seasoned advisers to support Houthi extremists in Yemen, according to recent revelations first reported by Reuters. The effort is led by Iran’s Qods Force, which has overseen the training and arming of Shiite extremist proxies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Using that expertise and lessons learned in the battlefield, Qods Force operatives are now leveraging their resources to significantly escalate the quality and quantity of military support to Houthi militants.

Qods Force leader Qasem Soleimani was reported to have met with senior officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Tehran recently to map the newly accelerated effort to “empower” Houthi forces via training, financial support and enhanced weaponry intended to shift the balance of power in Yemen.

Iran’s plan there is straightforward: Replicate the Lebanese Hezbollah model of training, and indoctrinate and financially sustain militants who pledge allegiance to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as their “source of emulation” (marja e-taqlid).

The Obama administration had long ignored warnings by the Arab Coalition that Soleimani and his Qods Force were trying to open a new front against Saudi Arabia and Arab allies. With recent revelations of Iran’s strategic aims in Yemen out in the open, it is incumbent on the Trump administration to establish a strategic doctrine to counter Iran’s efforts in Yemen.

Just as importantly, a policy of linkage is needed given the multiple fronts in which Iranian subversion is active. Tehran is seeking to provide Afghan and Shiite Arab veteran fighters and specialists to train and advise Houthi extremists. This will include Iranian-Arab and Afghan proxies that have fought on behalf of Khamenei in Syria.

Iran does not differentiate between the frontlines in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. Accordingly, the Arab Coalition and the US must link efforts to roll back Qods Force infiltration in Yemen with Iran’s operations in the Middle East as a whole.

According to a weapons expert quoted by Reuters: “Recent transfers of arms and munitions have also included drones, fitted with high-explosive warheads and used by Houthis to engage high-value targets such as radar and Patriot missile batteries.” This is a clear game-changer as the Qods Force attempts to also smuggle long-range missiles to Houthi militants that can potentially target Riyadh.

Drone attack boats, such as the one that hit an Arab Coalition frigate in January filled with high explosives, is another capability being transferred by Iran to the Houthis, according to reports quoting the US Navy.

In other words, the Qods Force is raising the ante and going “all in” in Yemen. This escalation was predictable because Iran is not deterred in a conventional sense. It does not currently fear military retaliation for its covert exploits in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and throughout the Arabian Gulf. Another lesson learned is that the Qods Force does not give up easily.

Despite multiple successful interdictions of Iranian military shipments to their proxies, they continue unabated. The Qods Force is punch-drunk from its battlefield successes in Iraq and Syria, and is now seeking to replicate that in Yemen and bring the war directly home to the Arab Coalition.

Soleimani must be designated an international terrorist and dealt with accordingly. There is no other way around what, to many, is an uncomfortable fact: He has managed to evade and stay ahead of the competition for over a decade.

A recent report published by Al-Monitor offered an interesting insight into Soleimani’s thinking: When he was sent to Syria to assess the military situation in 2013, he reported back that the Assad regime was likely to lose and had lost control of 75 percent of the country, but he did not see the situation as hopeless; he doubled down.

Qods Force military activity in the Middle East is no longer part of a “cold war.” A newly emboldened Tehran hardly goes to much effort to deny its malign activity anymore, as it did in 2005.

It is time that Iran pays an equitable price for its expanding militant proliferation. Soleimani and his direct subordinates must be as hunted as any other international criminals. Could doing so raise the risk of direct escalation with Iran? Perhaps, but not doing so will likely be much more destabilizing and existentially threatening.

*Oubai Shahbandar is a former Department of Defense senior adviser, and currently a strategic communications consultant specializing in Middle Eastern and Gulf affairs.

The Beijing International Film Festival has added some iconic art house fare to its lineup, The Hollywood Reporter reveals.

The government-backed event announced this week that it will screen a special retrospective of the work of David Lynch during its 7th edition, which runs April 16-23 in the Chinese capital.

Lynch films to be included in the program include Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire — none of which were previously exhibited theatrically in the country. The documentary, David Lynch: The Art Life, by directors Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes and Olivia Neergaard-Holm will also be shown.

Lynch, currently gearing up for the wildly anticipated Showtime reboot of Twin Peaks on May 28, will not attend the festival, organizers said.

Acclaimed Danish filmmaker Bille August will be in Beijing, however. The two-time Palme d’Or winner and one-time Oscar winner has been named head of this year’s competition jury. August will lead the international panel that presents the event’s Tiantan Award to one of 15 competition films (lineup TBC).

A retrospective of August’s work will also be screened at the festival, along with a selection of films from the award-winning actress turned director Sylvia Chang, and Italian cinema icon Michelangelo Antonioni.

Barry Jenkins’ Oscar best picture winner Moonlight was tipped to receive its Chinese premiere at the event, but festival organizers tell THR the plan has not received full approval yet.

One slightly politically charged film — Netflix’s elephant conservation documentary The Ivory Game — has scored a confirmed out-of-competition slot. The selection of the film comes on the heels of China’s recent decision to ban the ivory trade by the end of this year.

Altogether, 500 films will be screened at 30 cinemas across Beijing during the 16-day event, including 2017 Berlin Golden Bear winner On Body and Soul by Ildiko Enyedi and The Other Side of Hope from Aki Kaurismaki, winner of this year’s Silver Bear for best director.

Also screening: a broad selection of classics — including The Leopard (1963), Gone with the Wind (1939), and Doctor Zhivago (1965) — and festival favorites from 2016, such as, Paul Verhoeven’s psychological thriller Elle, Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women, Francois Ozon’s Frantz, Pedro Almodovar’s Julieta, Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson and The Unknown Girl from the Dardenne Brothers.

Filmgoers more inclined towards popcorn fare will also have options: the entire The Fast and the Furious and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises are set to screen out of competition.

More than 45 million couples worldwide grapple with infertility, but current standard methods for diagnosing male infertility can be expensive, labor-intensive and require testing in a clinical setting. Cultural and social stigma, and lack of access in resource-limited countries, may prevent men from seeking an evaluation.

Investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital set out to develop a home-based diagnostic test that could be used to measure semen quality using a smartphone-based device. New findings by the team indicating that the smartphone-based semen analyzer can identify abnormal semen samples based on sperm concentration and motility criteria with approximately 98 percent accuracy are published online on March 22 in Science Translational Medicine.

“We wanted to come up with a solution to make male infertility testing as simple and affordable as home pregnancy tests,” said Hadi Shafiee, PhD, a principal investigator in the Division of Engineering in Medicine and Renal Division of Medicine at BWH. “Men have to provide semen samples in these rooms at a hospital, a situation in which they often experience stress, embarrassment, pessimism and disappointment. Current clinical tests are lab-based, time-consuming and subjective. This test is low-cost, quantitative, highly accurate and can analyze a video of an undiluted, unwashed semen sample in less than five seconds.”

The analyzer consists of an optical attachment that can connect to a smartphone and a disposable device onto which a semen sample can be loaded. The new test utilizes the advancements in consumer electronics and microfabrication. A disposable microchip with a capillary tip and a rubber bulb is used for simple, power-free semen sample handling. The team also designed a user-friendly smartphone application that guides the user through each step of testing, and a miniaturized weight scale that wirelessly connects to smartphones to measure total sperm count.

To evaluate the device, the research team collected and studied 350 clinical semen specimens at the MGH Fertility Center. Overall, the smartphone-based device was able to detect abnormal semen samples based on WHO thresholds on sperm concentration and motility (sperm concentration < 15million sperm/ml and/or sperm motility < 40%) with an accuracy of 98 percent. The team also evaluated how well both trained and untrained users performed the test using the smartphone-based device.

“The ability to bring point-of-care sperm testing to the consumer, or health facilities with limited resources, is a true game changer,” said John Petrozza, MD, a co-author of the study and director of the MGH Fertility Center. “More than 40 percent of infertile couples have difficulty conceiving due to sperm abnormalities and this development will provide faster and improved access to fertility care. By working with Dr. Shafiee and his lab at BWH, and utilizing our clinical fertility expertise here at MGH, we have really been able to create a product that will benefit a lot of people.”

Shafiee’s team, which focuses on developing new technologies using microfluidics, sees many applications for the technology. In addition to at-home male fertility testing for couples trying to conceive, the device could also be used by men who have had a vasectomy. Usually, men must go to office visits with a urologist for several months after the surgery to ensure that the operation was successful; the new test may allow them to be monitored at home. The test could also be used by animal breeders to confirm the virility of a sample. Beyond semen analysis, the device is also compatible with testing blood and saliva samples. Shafiee looks forward to exploring these applications in the near future.

“My job is to try to understand some of the problems patients and physicians face in the clinic and to help develop new solutions. We are always thinking about what’s next and how to develop something new,” said Shafiee.

The smartphone-based analyzer for semen analysis is currently in a prototyping stage. The team plans to perform additional tests and will file for FDA approval.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM constellation of satellites provide data on precipitation rates and totals. Recently the GPM core observatory measured the heavy rainfall that caused extensive flooding and loss of life in Peru.

Extreme flooding and frequent landslides that occurred in March have forced many from their homes. An El Niño-like condition with warm ocean waters developed near Peru’s coast. This extremely warm water off Peru’s western coast has been blamed for promoting the development of these storms. Equatorial sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are about average elsewhere in the central and east central Pacific.

When the GPM core observatory satellite flew above Peru on March 20, 2017 at 0826 UTC (4:26 a.m. EST) GPM identified locations of storms that were dropping heavy rainfall over northwestern Peru. Data collected by GPM’s Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) instruments during this pass revealed that very heavy precipitation was falling in that area. GPM’s radar (DPR Ku Band) data indicated that some storms were dropping rain at the extreme rate of greater than 137 mm (5.4 inches) per hour. These extreme rainfall rates were found in the line of storms extending southwestward from Peru’s coast.

The GPM satellite’s Radar (DPR Ku Band) were also used to examine the 3-D structure of precipitation within the storms near and over northwestern Peru. GPM’s examination showed that several storms located in the Pacific had cloud tops that were reaching altitudes above 13 km (8.1 miles). GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA.

Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) data were used to show rainfall in areas that were not covered by the GPM core observatory satellite swath. Those estimates are the result of unifying precipitation measurements from a constellation of research and operational satellites. Those rainfall estimates were generated by NASA’s Precipitation Processing System every half hour.

That data was made into an animation at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and showed real-time IMERG rainfall estimates based on data collected during the period from March 14 to 21, 2017. The animation of seven days of data showed scattered storms developing over Peru and Brazil and moving over Peru. The animation showed rainfall rates between 25 mm (~1 inch) and 50 mm (~2 inches) per hour in many storms.

On March 18, Peru’s National Meteorological and Hydrological Service noted that from March 19 to 25, “rains will intensify on the north coast and the entire western slope of the Sierra. On the north coast (La Libertad, Lambayeque, Piura and Tumbes) heavy rains accompanied by [lightning] will intensify between March 19 and 23. In the interior of Piura and Lambayeque, the rainfall is expected to exceed 150 mm per day (~6 inches); while in the coastal zone of Piura, Lambayeque, Tumbes and the interior of La Libertad, it could exceed 50 mm per day (~ 2 inches). “

It may have replaced the dwindling eastern wolf atop many food chains, but the eastern coyote lacks the chops to become the big-game hunter of an ecosystem, new research led by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln ecologist shows.

Eastern wolves once roamed forests along the Atlantic coast, preying on moose, white-tailed deer and other hooved mammals collectively known as ungulates. As the wolf population plummeted via the rifle and the trap, however, the eastern coyote inherited the status of apex predator in those habitats.

But a study from John Benson and colleagues provides evidence that the eastern coyote hunts moose and other large prey far less frequently than does the eastern wolf — instead preferring to attack smaller game or scavenge human leftovers.

The findings help resolve long-standing questions about whether eastern coyotes have filled the ecological niche left vacant when the eastern wolf became threatened, Benson said.

“Wolves rely on large prey to survive,” said Benson, assistant professor of vertebrate ecology who conducted the research as a doctoral student at Trent University. “But the smaller size of coyotes appears to give them dietary flexibility to survive on a wider variety of food and prey sizes, making them less predictable predators of large prey.

“Having a top predator that preys consistently on large animals like deer and moose may be an important part of maintaining stable predator-prey dynamics and healthy, naturally functioning ecosystems.”

After GPS-tracking 10 packs of eastern wolves and analyzing their kill sites in Ontario, the team estimated that the wolves consumed 54 percent of their ungulate meat from moose and 46 percent from white-tailed deer. By contrast, eight packs of eastern coyote ancestry that occupied separate but neighboring territories got just 11 percent of their ungulate meat from moose and 89 percent from deer.

The eastern wolf weighs between 50 and 65 pounds; the eastern coyote typically hits 40 to 50. Though the extra weight gives eastern wolves a greater chance of killing a moose – or at least surviving the encounter – it also demands the greater caloric intake that moose and other meaty prey can provide.

Because wolves need to feed on large prey, their populations tend to rise and fall together, Benson said. Wolves may kill many moose during a winter, for instance, depleting their numbers. With fewer moose available, the wolf population declines, boosting the moose population, which in turn boosts the wolf population, and so on.

Yet the buffet-style menu of the eastern coyote means that its numbers can remain steady or even rise without large prey if alternative food is abundant. This opportunistic diet, Benson said, might also be driving erratic population swings among those lower on the food chain.

“It’s important to understand the role that wolves play in ecosystems and to not assume that smaller predators … perform the same ecological functions,” Benson said. “If coyotes start hammering white-tailed deer, and deer start to decline, then (coyotes) can just eat rabbits or squirrels or garbage but continue to prey on deer, too. So we think that could be a destabilizing element.

“There are some areas where you’ve got way too many white-tailed deer in the east, and then you’ve got other areas where hunters are concerned because the deer are declining. That speaks to the fact that coyotes are an unpredictable predator.”

The study is timely: Canada recently designated the eastern wolf as threatened, with the vast majority of eastern wolves living protected in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park.

Human-caused mortality has limited efforts to expand the population beyond Algonquin Park, Benson said, which is made worse by the fact that wolves there are likely naïve to the dangers posed by humans. Another issue: Eastern wolves readily breed with eastern coyotes in the wild, making it difficult to maintain a pure lineage.

“Is there a way to get them to expand numerically and geographically outside of the park? We’re not sure at this point,” said Benson, who provides advice to a team now developing a recovery plan. “One thing that can be managed is human-caused mortality, so if we can provide additional protection, that should put them on equal demographic footing.

“It’s an incredibly challenging situation that is complicated by the interactions of these wolves with coyotes and humans. If the park stays the same, there’s no immediate reason that they would go extinct. However, we wouldn’t want to go forward with that as our only plan because it offers little chance for expansion.”

Though large-scale reintroduction across eastern North America will probably not occur soon, Benson said the study emphasizes the value of preserving delicate predator-prey balances that ecosystems have calibrated over millennia.

“Our work suggests that there’s an ecological role that wolves play that won’t be played by other animals,” he said. “That’s probably a role that’s worth conserving on landscapes, even outside protected areas. If we’re interested in restoring landscapes to a more natural, functioning ecosystem, this would be an important part of that.”

A review of workers’ compensation claims indicates that workers in Oregon’s seafood processing industry are suffering serious injuries at higher rates than the statewide average, and the rate of injuries appears to be on the rise, researchers at Oregon State University have found.

Researchers examined 188 “disabling” claims, or claims from employees who missed work, were hospitalized overnight or whose injuries left them permanently impaired. They found that the average annual rate of claims was 24 per 1,000 workers, said Laura Syron, a doctoral student in OSU’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences and lead author of the study.

“Fortunately, Oregon’s seafood processing industry did not experience any fatalities during the study period, but the rate of injuries during that period is higher than Oregon’s all-industry average,” Syron said.

“This is an industry that merits more research and more support. Our goal is to use this information to assist seafood processing companies in the Pacific Northwest with protecting workers’ safety and health.”

The study is believed to be the first to examine worker safety and health in Oregon’s seafood processing industry. The findings were published this month in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

OSU researchers collaborated with the Oregon Health Authority on the study. Co-authors of the paper are Laurel Kincl, an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health; Ellen Smit, an associate professor of epidemiology; environmental and occupational health doctoral student Liu Yang; and Daniel Cain, with the state of Oregon.

The study is part of a broader effort at OSU to understand and address hazards in the maritime industry.

“This important work compliments injury prevention my colleagues and I are conducting with commercial fishing fleets in the region,” said co-author Kincl, who is Syron’s advisor.

Seafood is the most-traded food commodity internationally, and the value of processed seafood products in the U.S. topped $10 billion in 2015. The dangers of commercial fishing have drawn a lot of attention over the years through reality television programs and highly-publicized disasters and safety incidents.

But there is limited research on occupational health and safety in onshore seafood processing, a food-manufacturing industry that includes cleaning, canning, freezing and other packaging and preparation. In Oregon, employment in the seafood processing industry grew steadily between 2010 and 2013, with 1,240 workers employed in the industry in 2013.

“Processing is a critical component of the seafood supply chain, and it does not get as much attention as the fishing itself,” Syron said. “Processing adds value to the product and it is also demanding work that can lead to significant injuries.”

The researchers’ review of workers’ compensation disabling claims accepted for compensation between 2007 and 2013 showed the rate of injuries among workers in the industry was more than twice that of Oregon industries overall. The most common injuries included traumatic injuries to muscles, tendons, ligaments or joints. The most frequent events that resulted in injuries were overexertion and contact with equipment or objects.

“The workers’ compensation data gives us insight into the most severe incidents and those that cost employers the most money,” Syron said.

The workers’ compensation disabling data doesn’t provide enough detail about the circumstances of the workers at the time of their injuries, so that is one area that warrants further study before prevention recommendations could be made, she said.

For her doctoral dissertation, Syron plans to examine seafood processing in Alaska, where seafood is an economically and culturally important natural resource. In that research, Syron will continue to explore injury reports in both at-sea and on-shore facilities. With interviews, she hopes to learn from companies’ safety and health managers and directors, whose roles are dedicated to protecting workers’ well-being.

Nanocars will compete for the first time ever during an international molecule-car race on April 28-29, 2017 in Toulouse (south-western France).

The vehicles, which consist of a few hundred atoms, will be powered by minute electrical pulses during the 36 hours of the race, in which they must navigate a racecourse made of gold atoms, and measuring a maximum of a 100 nanometers in length. They will square off beneath the four tips of a unique microscope located at the CNRS’s Centre d’élaboration de matériaux et d’études structurales (CEMES) in Toulouse.

The race, which was organized by the CNRS, is first and foremost a scientific and technological challenge, and will be broadcast live on the YouTube Nanocar Race channel. Beyond the competition, the overarching objective is to advance research in the observation and control of molecule-machines.

More than just a competition, the Nanocar Race is an international scientific experiment that will be conducted in real time, with the aim of testing the performance of molecule-machines and the scientific instruments used to control them. The years ahead will probably see the use of such molecular machinery—activated individually or in synchronized fashion—in the manufacture of common machines: atom-by-atom construction of electronic circuits, atom-by-atom deconstruction of industrial waste, capture of energy.

The Nanocar Race is therefore a unique opportunity for researchers to implement cutting-edge techniques for the simultaneous observation and independent maneuvering of such nano-machines.

The experiment began in 2013 as part of an overview of nano-machine research for a scientific journal, when the idea for a car race took shape in the minds of CNRS senior researcher Christian Joachim (now the director of the race) and Gwénaël Rapenne, a Professor of chemistry at Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier.

Three years later, the nanocars are operational and ready to face off on the circuit’s gold surface. There were numerous challenges in organizing this race, from selecting the racecourse, which must accommodate all types of molecule-cars, to adapting the scanning tunneling microscope. The participating teams also had to overcome a series of difficult tasks (depositing and visualizing the molecules beneath the microscope), as well as meet numerous criteria (the molecules’ structure and form of propulsion) in order to participate in this race. Of the nine teams that applied before the end of May 2016, six were selected, and four will take their place at the 4-tip microscope’s starting line on April 28, 2017 for the 36-hour race in Toulouse.

The challenges facing researchers in the race will be so many steps forward in novel fields in chemistry and physics. In the process, each team will build up new skills, data, and know-how that will one day contribute to the development of surface chemistry (which enables chemical synthesis directly on a particular surface), or in the new science of surfaces known as membrane science, which makes it possible to deposit a molecule-machine on the surface of a cell, or to control the movement of a single molecule in a liquid.

The CEMES-CNRS microscope is the only one in the world allowing four different experimenters to work on the same surface. The development of such multi-tip microscopes will enable synchronizing a great number of molecule-machines in order to increase capacity, for instance for storing energy or capturing it from a hot metallic surface. A genuine “atom technology” is dawning.

The rules of the race:

• The racecourse: 20 nm + one 45° turn + 30 nm + one 45° turn + 20 nm, for a total of 100 nm
• 36h maximum duration
• Authorization to change one’s nanocar in case of an accident
• Pushing one’s nanocar is forbidden
• One sector of the gold surface per team
• Maximum 6 hours to clean one’s portion of the course before starting
• No tip changes allowed during the 36 hours

Action is needed to monitor and control the emerging Internet of Toys, concludes a new report by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC). Privacy and security are highlighted as main areas of concern.

Large numbers of connected toys have been put on the market over the past few years, and the turnover is expected to reach €10 billion by 2020 – up from just €2.6 billion in 2015.

Connected toys come in many different forms, from smart watches to teddy bears that interact with their users. They are connected to the internet and together with other connected appliances they form the Internet of Things, which is bringing technology into our daily lives more than ever.

However, the toys’ ability to record, store and share information about their young users raises concerns about children’s safety, privacy and social development.

A team of JRC scientists and international experts looked at the safety, security, privacy and societal questions emerging from the rise of the Internet of Toys. The report invites policymakers, industry, parents and teachers to study connected toys more in depth in order to provide a framework which ensures that these toys are safe and beneficial for children.

Robotification of childhood

Robots are no longer only used in industry to carry out repetitive or potentially dangerous tasks. In the past years, robots have entered our everyday lives and also children are more and more likely to encounter robotic or artificial intelligence-enhanced toys.

We still know relatively little about the consequences of children’s interaction with robotic toys. However, it is conceivable that they represent both opportunities and risks for children’s cognitive, socio-emotional and moral-behavioural development.

For example, social robots may further the acquisition of foreign language skills by compensating for the lack of native speakers as language tutors or by removing the barriers and peer pressure encountered in class room. There is also evidence about the benefits of child-robot interaction for children with developmental problems, such as autism or learning difficulties, who may find human interaction difficult.

However, the internet-based personalization of children’s education via filtering algorithms may also increase the risk of ‘educational bubbles’ where children only receive information that fits their pre-existing knowledge and interest – similar to adult interaction on social media networks.

Safety and security considerations

The rapid rise in internet connected toys also raises concerns about children’s safety and privacy. In particular, the way that data gathered by connected toys is analyzed, manipulated and stored is not transparent, which poses an emerging threat to children’s privacy.

The data provided by children while they play, i.e the sounds, images and movements recorded by connected toys is personal data protected by the EU data protection framework, as well as by the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, information on how this data is stored, analyzed and shared might be hidden in long privacy statements or policies and often go unnoticed by parents.

While children’s right to privacy is the most immediate concern linked to connected toys, there is also a long term concern: growing up in a culture where the tracking, recording and analyzing of children’s everyday choices becomes a normal part of life is also likely to shape children’s behavior and development.

Usage framework to guide the use of connected toys

The report calls for industry and policymakers to create a connected toys usage framework to act as a guide for their design and use.

This would also help toymakers to meet the challenge of complying with the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which comes into force in May 2018, which will increase citizens’ control over their personal data.

The report also calls for the connected toy industry and academic researchers to work together to produce better designed and safer products.

Advice for parents

The report concludes that it is paramount that we understand how children interact with connected toys and which risks and opportunities they entail for children’s development.

“These devices come with really interesting possibilities and the more we use them, the more we will learn about how to best manage them. Locking them up in a cupboard is not the way to go. We as adults have to understand how they work – and how they might ‘misbehave’ – so that we can provide the right tools and the right opportunities for our children to grow up happy in a secure digital world”, said Stéphane Chaudron, the report’s lead researcher at the Joint Research Centre (JRC).

The authors of the report encourage parents to get informed about the capabilities, functions, security measures and privacy settings of toys before buying them. They also urge parents to focus on the quality of play by observing their children, talking to them about their experiences and playing alongside and with their children.

Protecting and empowering children

Through the Alliance to better protect minors online and with the support of UNICEF, NGOs, Toy Industries Europe and other industry and stakeholder groups, European and global ICT and media companies are working to improve the protection and empowerment of children when using connected toys. This self-regulatory initiative is facilitated by the European Commission and aims to create a safer and more stimulating digital environment for children.

Religious authorities in Myanmar’s Mandalay have warned the outspoken and controversial leader of an ultra-nationalist Buddhist movement to not give sermons under a one-year ban on making public speeches because of his repeated hate speech and anti-Muslim rhetoric, a religious official said March 20.

The Mandalay Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee informed Wirathu, vice chairman of the Ma Ba Tha Buddhist organization, that if he does not follow an order issued by the State Sangha Maha Nayaka (Ma Ha Na), it will take action against him, committee secretary Razeinna told Radio Free Asia.

The State Ma Ha Na is a government-appointed body of high-ranking Buddhist monks that oversees and regulates the Buddhist clergy in Myanmar.

On March 10, the Ma Ha Na barred Wirathu, who frequently speaks out against Muslims, from making public speeches for one year because he “repeatedly delivered hate speech against religions to cause communal strife and hinder efforts to uphold the rule of law,” according to a statement issued by the religious body.

The statement did not state what punishment he would receive.

“We called U [honorific] Wirathu and read him the order from the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee’s order and asked him to sign that he is aware of it because he said he didn’t know the committee had banned him from making sermons,” said Razeinna.

“We told him that we will take action against him if he doesn’t follow the order from the State Sangha Maha Nayaka,” he said.

After the ban was issued, Wirathu attended sermons in Ayarwaddy and Mandalay regions and northern Myanmar’s Kachin State where he stood with his mouth taped shut in protest against the order.

By Mushfig Bayram

Out of around 70 people in mobs incited by officials who twice exhumed a deceased Protestant’s body in Kyrgyzstan, only four were given suspended sentences. None were given the jail sentences of between three and five years the law requires. No officials were tried.

The criminal cases brought after two mobs incited by officials in October 2016 twice exhumed the body of Kanygul Satybaldiyeva have ended, with just four suspended sentences and one acquittal. No officials have been tried or convicted and no further criminal cases or investigations are underway.

The deceased Satybaldiyeva was a member of the Isa Mashiyakh (Jesus Christ) Protestant Church, in the south-western Jalal-Abad Region’s Ala-Buka District. Her family still do not know for certain where she is buried, officials having claimed that she has been buried secretly in open countryside.

On 27 February 2017 Judge Gulmira Kodjobekova of Ala-Buka District Court gave three-year suspended prison sentences to two Ala-Buka residents – not the jail sentences of between three and five years the law requires. Judge Kodjobekova also presided over the first trial in January, which ended with one acquittal and two suspended sentences.

Judge Kodjobekova has now been promoted to a new judicial post in the capital Bishkek.

The February convictions brought the total number of convictions to four people out of about 70 possible defendants. No officials have been either tried or convicted for their part in the events, including those named by witnesses and human rights defenders as inciting the events. Contrary to the law, no jail sentences have been imposed (see below).

Officials have either refused to answer questions about their role, or claimed that officials who witnesses state incited mobs are innocent of any crime (see below).

Satybaldiyeva’s daughter told Forum 18 that “mobs dug up the body of my mother in two villages. Many officials witnessed the exhumations and did nothing to stop it. And the end result is that four people received suspended sentences” (see below).

Record of impunity

Kyrgyzstan has a record of impunity for officials committing serious crimes, including torture. The United Nations (UN) Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (SPT) found in 2012 during a visit that “torture and ill-treatment is prevalent in the country”, caused by among other factors “the impunity and general lack of accountability of officials”.

Coercion, mob violence, impunity

Satybaldiyeva died of natural causes on 13 October 2016 and on 14 October a small group of family and friends tried to have her buried. However the village imam and a mob prevented them from doing so. This was even though her daughter tried to obtain her mother’s burial by, under coercion from state-appointed District Chief Imam Shumkar Chynaliyev, claiming that her decision to become a Christian had been a mistake. But the mob still refused to allow the burial and dug the body up, and Imam Chynaliyev and other officials did nothing.

On 15 October Satybaldiyeva’s family and friends buried her in a different cemetery with respect and according to her own Christian burial rites. But on 17 October a mob of 30 people – in the presence of ordinary police, the National Security Committee (NSC) secret police, and Ala-Buka District Administration officials – dug up Satybaldiyeva’s body. Officials then took the body away to an undisclosed location, without the family’s presence or consent.

Sonunbek Akparaliyev, the Akim (Head of Administration) of Ala-Buka District, was stated by witnesses to have incited this second mob. Human rights defenders, some of whom wished to remain anonymous for fear of state reprisals, also stated that state-appointed imams Chynaliyev and Tynchtyk Orozmatov (of Sary-Taala village where Satybaldiyeva lived) also incited mobs in the two villages to dig up the body. None of these officials have been put on trial (see below).

After the second mob exhumation, officials then claimed that Satybaldiyeva’s body had been buried secretly in open countryside. With great reluctance they eventually showed her daughter where they claimed to have buried the body. But her daughter saw no evidence that her mother’s body was in the place where officials claimed it was.

No officials, and only three out of around 70 possible defendants were put on trial in January 2017. Of the three put on trial, one was acquitted. The two convicted were given only suspended sentences, and not jail sentences as Criminal Code Article 263 (which they were tried under) requires.

Judge Kodjobekova of Ala-Buka District Court refused to tell Forum 18 why she did not act according to the law. Human rights defenders and the family condemned the trial and punishments as “not appropriate and not effective”.

Long-standing and continuing problem

The government has long failed to ensure that people may exercise their right to bury their dead with the religious ceremonies and in the cemeteries they would wish. Protestants, Baha’is, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Hare Krishna devotees have complained about this problem, which causes families and communities great distress.

These freedom of religion and belief violations still continue throughout Kyrgyzstan in 2017.

“An attitude of intolerance”

An Ahmadi Muslim, who wished to remain unnamed for fear of state reprisals, told Forum 18 on 17 March that one contributory factor may be “public hate speeches against the so-called ‘non-traditional’ religions”.

The individual noted that after the December 2015 murder of Ahmadi Muslim Yunusjan Abdujalilov, “the village imam warned people not to attend the funeral. Because of this many villagers did not attend it”. However, Ahmadi Muslims and other villagers did attend the funeral.

“An attitude of intolerance against members of other religious communities is encouraged by the likes of former Chief Mufti Chubak azhy Zhalilov,” the Ahmadi Muslim noted. The former Chief Mufti called for people to “totally boycott Ahmadis and isolate them from society by: not marrying them; not allowing them to be buried in cemeteries; and not employing them”. No action has been taken against him, the Ahmadi noted.

The authorities have repeatedly ignored or even encouraged such hostility to people exercising their freedom of religion and belief.

Judge breaks the law

On 27 February Judge Kodjobekova of Ala-Buka District Court gave three-year suspended prison sentences to Syrgabek Turgunbay uuly and Maksatbek Koychumankulov. Both men are from Ala-Buka District.

The two men were tried under Criminal Code Article 263 (“Defilement of the body of a deceased person or a place of burial”), Part 2, which specifies only one possible punishment for those convicted: “deprivation of liberty for between three and five years”.

Turganbay uuly and Koychumankulov “will report to police for one year during which they must not violate the law. If they commit any violations during that period they will be imprisoned,” Nurlan Orozbekov, Chief of Ala-Buka District Court’s Chancellery, told Forum 18 on 14 March. Asked why they were not jailed for between three and five years as the law requires, Orozbekov replied “you need to talk to the Judge”.

Another official of the Court (who would not give her name) claimed to Forum 18 on 14 March that Judge Kodjobekova “is busy in a hearing” and did not know when the Judge might be available. Further calls to the Judge’s phone that day went unanswered.

Another Judge of the Court, Kambarbek Beysheyev, refused to say on 17 March whether more people will be tried for the crime, claiming that he cannot give details of the case. He also said that Judge Kodjobekova was recently appointed as the new Chair of a court in Bishkek.

No officials put on trial

During the 27 February trial, defendant Koychumankulov told the District Court that Ala-Buka Akim (Head of Administration) Akparaliyev and state-appointed District Chief Imam Chynaliyev “provoked the crowd to dig up the body”, Satybaldiyeva’s daughter Zhyldyz Azayeva, who was at both the 12 January and 27 February trials, told Forum 18 on 14 March. Koychumankulov also stated that neither official warned those who dug up the body that they were committing a crime.

Azayeva complained to Forum 18 that the “investigation of the case is over and the main responsible persons in the case, Akparaliyev and Chynaliyev were not punished or even fired from their jobs”.

She noted that “mobs dug up the body of my mother in two villages. Many officials witnessed the exhumations and did nothing to stop it. And the end result is that four people received suspended sentences.”

No actions after repeated complaints

Azayeva on 18 January filed a complaint to Ala-Buka Prosecutor’s Office. “I asked for two things to be done,” she told Forum 18. “We want the authorities to punish all those responsible for the exhumations, including both those who incited the mobs and asked them to dig up the body and those who did the exhumations. We also want my mother to be buried with all dignity in Ala-Buka’s central cemetery”.

No answer has been received to her previous complaints to the Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor-General’s Office.

Ala-Buka’s Chief Prosecutor Arslanbek Boybosunov on 18 January referred the complaint to Mirbek Isagaliyev, Chief of Jalal-Abad Regional Police Investigations Division.

Isagaliyev told Forum 18 on 14 March that Akim Akparaliyev and Imam Chynaliyev had both been questioned and “are not guilty”. Asked how the two men had justified their conduct, he replied: “I do not remember the details. Call me back later today”. Police Chief Isagaliyev did not answer any subsequent phone calls.

Asked by Forum 18 on 14 March why Akim Akparaliyev and Imam Chynaliyev were not held responsible for their actions, Chief Prosecutor Boybosunov replied: “Send your questions in writing”. He then put the phone down.

Orozbekov of Ala-Buka District Court’s Chancellery claimed to Forum 18 that both officials “were questioned as witnesses by the police and the Court. The Court did not find them guilty”. Yet witnesses from the hearings state that Akim Akparaliyev did not attend any of the court hearings.

“Why should we punish them?”

Bakhtybek Anarkulov, Deputy Head of Jalal-Abad Regional Administration, told Forum 18 on 14 March: “Why should we punish them [Akim Akparaliyev and Imam Chynaliyev]? They are not guilty of the crime.”

Anarkulov claimed in October 2016 of the secret reburial without the family’s presence or consent that he was “overseeing the whole process”, and that “we buried her with all dignity”.

Anarkalov then claimed of Akim Akparaliyev “why should he be responsible when he asked people not to dig up the body but they did not listen to him?”. Asked how Akparaliyev can continue his responsibilities as the chief official of the District when the local people apparently do not respect him and the law-enforcement agencies apparently do not obey his orders, Anarkalov did not respond. He then put the phone down and did not answer subsequent calls.

What steps are being taken on a national level?

Almas Kulmatov, Head of the Presidential Administration’s Ethnic, Religious Policy, and Cooperation with Civil Society Department, on 17 March claimed to Forum 18 he has sent a written reply to questions put to him on 18 January. Forum 18 asked:

– When will responsible state officials or imams be brought before the law in the Satybaldiyeva case?

– Will the authorities hand down more serious punishments against those who block the burials?

– What other measures are the central authorities taking to resolve burial problems?

Kulmatov had refused to answer these questions when they were originally put to him on 18 January.

Forum 18 told him that as of 17 March it had not received the written answers he claimed to have sent, and asked him to resend them. Kulmatov promised to resend them “before Monday” (20 March). He then refused to discuss burial problems, or any other freedom of religion and belief questions, with Forum 18 over the phone.

As of the end of the working day in Bishkek on 22 March, Forum 18 had not received the answers Kulmatov claimed to have written and sent.

Baha’is who wished to remain anonymous for fear of state reprisals told Forum 18 on 17 March: “The authorities promised us that they would allocate a plot of land for our burials half a year ago. But we still do not have our own cemetery. We continue our talks with the authorities.”

Protestants who wished to remain unnamed for fear of state reprisals told Forum 18 on 17 March that the state is not resolving the burial issue, and is not willing to allocate cemetery plots to them.

In light of the rapidly developing news stories surrounding President Donald Trump, his former advisor Paul Manafort, and the alleged connection through his previous work on behalf of Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska, I spoke briefly with Damien Sharkov at Newsweek about how Vladimir Putin and most Russian oligarchs align their interests.

Excerpt below:

Robert Amsterdam, an attorney who represented Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky during his case to keep his Yukos oil company from a state takeover, says that in Russia, having close ties between wealthy businessmen and the Kremlin “is not just normal, it is mandatory.”

“There are no major Russian oligarchs now that are not in some level of collaboration with the Russian government,” Amsterdam says. According to him, while some oligarchs are personally closer to Putin than others, most feel that their own interests tend to align with those of the current government.

“What you have happening in Russia is oligarchs spend money on initiatives to benefit Russia, which would in turn benefit them,” he says, though noting that he has “not kept tabs” on Deripaska.

Presidents of China and the US have little choice but to find a diplomatic solution to the growing threat of North Korea.

By Börje Ljunggren*

With the threat from North Korea’s nuclear breakout growing daily, repair of Sino-US relations has assumed new urgency. The meeting between the US and Chinese presidents, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, in April could bring their relations and the security situation in Northeast Asia to a new crossroads.

The gravity of the threat was highlighted when North Korea fired a rocket engine, with the capacity to propel an intercontinental ballistic missile, on March 18 while US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Beijing. In a short time, North Korea has become a de facto nuclear power conducting, just in 2016, two nuclear tests and 21 missile tests and this year at least six increasingly advanced missile tests.

Within a few years, the regime is expected to have missiles with nuclear warheads that could reach not only Seoul, 55 kilometers from the North Korean border, and Tokyo, but also American bases in Japan, Guam and, ultimately, the west coast of the United States.

Trump has tweeted that this won’t happen and on route to Beijing, Tillerson declared that the time of “strategic patience has ended” and that military action is an option. Later he also suggested, though, that China and the United States are at “somewhat of a historic moment” in their relationship.

East Asia is facing its most acute and trying security challenge in many years, and established major powers may not have viable solutions. Nothing less than a grand bargain is needed.

The international community has failed to contain a failed state, one as poor, backward and isolated as North Korea, and allowed a grave security dilemma to emerge.

North Korea’s nuclear development has, in fact, been on the international agenda for more than 20 years.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, on which the country was deeply dependent for its subsistence, substantial international humanitarian assistance staved off mass starvation. An ambitious Western initiative was launched in 1995 when the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO, was founded by the United States, South Korea and Japan to implement the 1994 US-North Korea Agreed Framework intended to freeze North Korea’s indigenous nuclear power plant development centered at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, suspected of being a step in a nuclear weapons program. KEDO’s principal activity was to construct two light-water reactor nuclear-power plants in North Korea to replace planned reactors. The project was ultimately terminated, primarily because of North Korea’s continued and extended failure to perform required steps in the project agreement.

During the last year of the Clinton administration, North Korea’s Kim Jong-il had an opportunity to put his country on a new path as the United States and North Korea reached an advanced stage in their bilateral negotiations. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made an historic visit to Pyongyang and President Bill Clinton stood ready to fly to Pyongyang to sign an agreement. But Kim dragged his feet and the opportunity was lost as President George Bush rather than Al Gore entered the White House and labeled the country part of an axis of evil along with Iran and Iraq.

All this happened in the era of comprehensive inter-Korean dialogue driven by the “sunshine policy” of South Korea’s President Kim Dae-jung, the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Kim was determined to make history, and in 1999 even went to Pyongyang for an inter-Korean summit. As chairman of the European Council, then Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson went to Pyongyang in spring of 2001, heading a troika including EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana and EU Commissioner Chris Patten. They held five hours of talks with Kim and a two-year moratorium on missile tests was agreed, but in late 2002 it became evident that North Korea still pursued its nuclear development program. A less than predictable and promising period abruptly ended.

As a way out of the impasse, the Six-Party talks were launched in 2003 with China as the convener and Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Russia and the United States participating. Certain results were achieved, but none lasted. North Korea went ahead with its nuclear program and in 2006 undertook its first nuclear test. No talks have been held since 2009.

Instead, the UN Security Council agreed to a sequence of sanctions, with Chinese consent. Sanctions have not, however, had the intended effects, as North Korea has since pursued its nuclear ambitions with increased single-mindedness.

Beijing and Washington have each accused the other of being the main cause for the lack of results. Beijing blames Washington’s unwillingness to enter into serious direct talks with Pyongyang, and Washington criticizes Beijing for failing to use its influence as North Korea’s economic life line. Steps have been taken, each too small and late.

Beijing contends that its ability to influence Pyongyang is much smaller than generally assumed. In the meantime, Beijing-Pyongyang relations have become increasingly strained. Even while Beijing strives to maintain the status quo, it would prefer that North Korea undertake economic reforms of the kind that China and Vietnam have pursued.  Mutual distrust has grown, and Kim Jong-un has not visited Beijing since assuming power in December 2011.

A string of North Korean missiles and tests, combined with Trump’s ascent to power, has created a new sense of urgency. Beijing does not want tensions to escalate on the Korean Peninsula, instead urging all parties to cool down. Signaling its preparedness to take further steps, Beijing has halted coal imports from North Korea, which generate close to one third of the nation’s foreign-exchange earnings.

From Beijing’s perspective, US plans to install a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile shield, THAAD, in South Korea constitutes a serious escalation, and as a consequence, relations between Beijing and Seoul have deteriorated.

South Korea’s internal politics with the exit of President Park Geun-hye’s, fresh elections in early May and a likely victory for liberal Moon Jae-in and his Minjoo Party may leave THAAD on the drawing board. The party’s longstanding view is that cooperation and active engagement, not military deterrence, is key to resolving North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Washington wants firm actions against Pyongyang, and Beijing wants talks that could produce a North Korean moratorium on tests, an end to annual US-South Korean military exercises and cancellation of THAAD. The Six-Party talks should be resumed, a non-option for the US. Some form of Three-Party talks – including the United States, China and North Korea – may be an alternative.

The meeting of the US and Chinese presidents in Florida may be more likely to produce tangible results than just a few weeks ago. While in Beijing, Tillerson vowed that the United States is ready to develop relations with China “based on the principles of non-confrontation, no conflict, mutual respect and win-win cooperation,” wording from a Chinese songbook.

North Korea will be high on the agenda during the meeting between leaders of the world’s two largest economies. Perhaps history can lay the foundation for a surprise grand bargain on Korea, making the East Asian Peace less fragile. Clearly, there is no military option – it could cost more than a million lives and do irreparable damage to US-Chinese relations.

*Dr. Börje Ljunggren is former Swedish ambassador to China and author of Den kinesiska drömmen – Xi, makten och utmaningarna (The Chinese Dream – Xi, Power and Challenges), April 2017.

Early information arising from a US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee investigation into possible United States government spying on Donald Trump and people associated with him appears to show that information about individuals associated with Trump and his presidential transition was collected through surveillance by, and was widely distributed in, the US intelligence community.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters Wednesday that “on numerous occasions the intelligence community incidentally collected information about US citizens involved in the Trump transition” and that “details about US persons associated with the incoming administration — details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value — were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.”

Nunez also stated in a press release Wednesday that he has “asked the Directors of the FBI, NSA, and CIA to expeditiously comply with my March 15 letter, and to provide a full account of” related surveillance activities.

Nunes’ discussion of the information being “incidentally collected” and then being widely distributed despite having little or no apparent foreign intelligence value highlights a reason to reject the common claim that people who have done nothing wrong have no reason to worry about mass surveillance. When you allow surveillance to run wild, then information that has nothing to do with the supposed purposes of the surveillance, such as protecting Americans from terrorist attacks, can be easily and frequently swept up and shared.

It is naïve to believe that none of the people who obtain the surveillance-derived information will then use it to their advantage, even if that results in harm to the people “incidentally” surveilled. It is also naïve to assume that surveillance efforts will not be adjusted here and there to make sure that more of the desired, but definable as “incidentally collected,” information is obtained and shared.

This article was published at RonPaul Institute

Much of the angst against Adityanath is drawn from the colonial “brown sahib” culture of political correctness.

By Sanjeev Ahluwalia

Utopian secularists are in convulsions at a “yogi” becoming chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Of course, they have cause to worry. It does not help that Adityanath Yogi, as he now calls himself, has a history of political activism. Can he change his spots and rule equitably? Only time will tell.

But all those who don’t subscribe to the Hindutva theology are bound to be fearful. And mere hope is not sufficient reassurance. The real question is why do we not have institutional safeguards to avoid an adverse outcome? Why are constraints on theocracy not specifically provided for by our Constitution and enshrined into workable instruments in our laws?

Location of Uttarakhand in India. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

We should have known better. We have reached the natural culmination of where we have been headed since the formal adoption of a democratic architecture.  There have been early signs. But these were ignored because they largely never affected the elite. That one-fifth of Indians remain wretchedly poor shows that democracy has managed inclusion very badly. The status of women is another example where democracy has failed to translate into equity.

But the good news is that, in both cases, we have learnt and gradually built in safeguards to ensure inclusiveness. The political representation of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes has helped. Assured political representation for women in legislatures is an ongoing exercise.

Odd as it may seem, we should welcome that the BJP has chosen pick Adityanath, the practising head of a mutt in Gorakhpur, as its chief minister. It would have been strategically better for the BJP to fudge and appoint a backward caste leader and continued to play the “game” of “political correctness”. That the BJP chose not to do so serves to highlight the existing yawning legislative gap between principle and practice. After all, the problems of Indian democracy can never be resolved unless we all speak and act from the heart, within the limits of the law.

Much of the angst against Adityanath is drawn from the colonial “brown sahib” culture of political correctness. This culture privileges convention and process versus the outcomes of law. Examples abound. Brown sahibs believe that due process must be adhered to. Never mind that, in doing so, a poor applicant or litigant can get beggared into giving up the fight.  In the Brown Sahib’s logic, principles are not iron-clad concepts which produce and are validated by outcomes. They merely prescribe and often justify the process – rarely the outcome. Consider how shallow is our application of the principle of “right to be heard” in our law or the right to vote or the right to property.

Our democratic architecture is inadequately developed to factor in the reality of India, with its multiple cleavages. If implicitly elitist rule has been possible over the last 70 years, it should not surprise us, if tomorrow brings implicitly theocratic rule. So for those of you who are uncomfortable with a Hindu yogi, a Muslim maulvi, a Sikh granthi or a Christian priest in a CM’s chair, here are three changes we need to introduce in our political architecture.

First, it is the privilege of the winning party or coalition to select any member of the legislature as CM. Can we not simply legislate that a religious head should never be selected as CM? Possibly not, because this would be a violation of the fundamental right to representation of a religious group. More practically, there is no watertight way of defining who is a “religious head”. Consider that Sadhvi Uma Bharti led the BJP to a three-fourths majority in 2003 in Madhya Pradesh and became CM. Unfortunately, she had to resign soon after because an arrest warrant was issued against her on a 10-year old charge of inciting a riot. This setback also robbed analysts of a case study on how religious activists wield political power. The outcomes may well have surprised cynics. But it is best to explicitly provide for safeguards to curtail the potential for even an “implicitly” theocratic State.

One option, applicable at the national level and in large heterogenous states (not Sikkim or in the Northeast), would be to prescribe that the CM, the home minister and the finance minister can never be from the same religion or caste.  These are the three core positions in the Cabinet. This would automatically require political parties to create a rainbow leadership and not a narrow gender, caste or religion-based party cadre. Of course, it will still be possible to co-opt “nominal” members of the appropriate profile. So we need to do more than just introduce end-of-the-pipe restrictions post-election.

Second, the Cabinet must reflect the gender, caste and religious profile of the relevant jurisdiction. This is necessary for adequate plural representation at the decision-making level.

Third, we must change the basis on which parties fight and win elections. Registered political parties must be required — by law — to nominate a rainbow of candidates, reflecting the gender, caste and religious demographics at three levels of government — local bodies, state or nation. This is necessary to ensure that the election rhetoric itself changes; votes are not sought on narrow or sectarian grounds and parties develop a pluralist voter base.

All three changes require specific changes to the Constitution so that “plurality” gets embedded in Parliament and in the executive.

It is over-the-top to believe that India or Uttar Pradesh can become a “theocratic” state just by having a “religious head” as its chief executive. As long as the Constitution remains liberal and non-discriminatory; the law is derived from the Constitution and the judiciary remains empowered, plurality and inclusiveness will remain enshrined in law. But additional safeguards are necessary to deliver inclusive policies and action on the ground. The BJP juggernaut is best placed, by using its massive majority, to display good faith by initiating these constitutional changes well before 2019.

This article originally appeared in The Asian Age.