Washington’s controversial recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has refocused attention on the long-running dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians, who see the eastern part of the city as the capital of their future state. Singapore must patiently and skilfully manage its relations with both sides.

By Ong Keng Yong*

On December 23, 2016, the 15-member United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted Resolution 2334 with a vote of 14–0. China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand were among those who voted in favour of it. The United States abstained.

Resolution 2334 reaffirms that “the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace”. The resolution demands that “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem”.

Significance of Resolution 2334

This is the first UNSC Resolution on Israeli settlements to be adopted in almost 37 years. While it did not include any sanction or coercive measure and was adopted under non-binding provisions of the United Nations (UN) Charter, Israeli newspaper Haaretz stated it “may have serious ramifications for Israel in general and specifically for the settlement enterprise” in the medium- to long-term.

The Israeli government accused the administration of US President Barack Obama of orchestrating the passage of Resolution 2334. Israel subsequently retaliated with a series of diplomatic actions against some members of the UNSC.

In international law, there is the Fourth Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949 which makes it illegal for nations to move their own civilian populations and establish settlements in territories acquired in a war. A majority of UN member states consider the Israeli settlements to be illegal on that basis.

On the other hand, Israel takes the view that these are not “occupied” but “disputed” territories because “there were no established sovereigns in the West Bank or Gaza Strip prior to the Six-Day War” in 1967. This Israeli argument was rejected by the International Court of Justice in 2004.

What’s at Stake

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is regarded as the most intractable dispute confronting the world today. In the early years, it was simply described as the fight between the Arabs and the Jews. Over the decades, the Israeli and Palestinian dimensions were cast as the international community tried to narrow the wide-ranging conflict and focused on the main protagonists and the key possible solution.

This involves the creation of two states: Israel and Palestine, existing side-by-side. Many scholars have characterised the conflict as a fight for control of land in what is today’s Israel, the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip facing the Mediterranean Sea. Others consider it a battle between Islam and Judaism as the respective holy places are in the contested area.

To further complicate the situation, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also seen as a proxy of big power competition for domination of a vital part of the world’s geography. Western powers, led by the US, have been locked in a contest for influence and alliances in the Middle East.

The Cold War atmospherics compounded the emotional, ethnic and religious elements of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle and often heightened tensions, leading to armed hostilities in the occupied territories as well as terrorist attacks inside Israel. The rich oil and gas resources in the region and the strategic sea lanes connecting the Middle East with Europe, Africa and Asia make this region critical to the interests of the big powers.

Overall, it has resulted in the prolonged state of war and human suffering in what historians call the Fertile Crescent (stretching from the eastern Mediterranean coast to the land fed by the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and onwards to the Persian Gulf). The turmoil in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq as well as the rise of Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terror groups can be linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in one way or another.

Indeed, many experts have argued that much of the trouble in the Islamic world and between Muslim and non-Muslim communities around the globe today can be traced to the deep-seated differences underlying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Singapore’s Position

In a reply to parliamentary questions on 14 January 2013, Singapore’s then Minister for Foreign Affairs, K. Shanmugam, provided a concise picture of Singapore’s stand on the issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He reiterated the country’s support for the right of the Palestinian people to a homeland. Singapore had previously issued a statement welcoming the proclamation of a Palestinian state in 1988.

The minister pointed out that there were approximately 19 resolutions on various Palestinian-related issues tabled each year at the UN General Assembly. Singapore had consistently voted in favour of all of them. Mr Shanmugam said that Singapore abstained on certain votes for specific UN resolutions to maintain a consistent principled position.

For example, Singapore believed that only a negotiated settlement consistent with UN Security Council Resolution 242 (adopted in 1967) could provide the basis for a viable, long-term solution. Resolution 242 called for the “establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East” that should include the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”.

Mr Shanmugam stressed that both Israel and Palestine had legitimate rights and shared responsibilities. They must both be prepared to make compromises in order to achieve a lasting peace. Any unilateral action, be it by Israel or Palestine, to force a settlement of the issue would hinder, rather than facilitate, the peace process.

Principles of International Law

According to Mr Shanmugam, Singapore’s position on Palestinian statehood is based on certain principles and international law. As with all resolutions tabled at the UN, Singapore would vote based on its own national interests as an independent and sovereign nation, regardless of the position of others.

He pointed out that Singapore’s position on this issue is well known to all parties and has not affected its close ties with ASEAN member states. ASEAN leaders had called on all parties to return to the negotiation table and resolve the conflict in accordance with the relevant UN resolutions.

Mr Shanmugam added that Singapore has been contributing to Palestine’s development primarily through technical assistance under the Singapore Cooperation Programme, training Palestinian officials in fields that Singapore is strong in, such as public administration and urban planning. The Singapore government believes this is the best way for Singapore to make a difference to Palestine’s development.

Singapore had also made voluntary monetary contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Most recently, on 20 February 2017, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong reiterated Singapore’s long-standing and consistent position on the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including Singapore’s support for Israel’s right to live within secure borders and in peace, and also the right of the Palestinian people to a homeland.

He called for restraint and compromise on both sides in order to achieve a lasting peace. He expressed Singapore’s hope that the Israelis and the Palestinians would resume direct negotiation to find a just, durable and comprehensive solution to this longstanding conflict. PM Lee’s policy statement was made during the official visit of Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu to Singapore in February.

Looking Ahead

The two-state solution is favoured by most member states of the UN, international bodies around the world and people in Israel and the West Bank/Gaza Strip. At the same time, the Israeli government demands recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and guarantee for its security.

The gap between the two positions is huge. In the circumstances, no quick resolution of the dispute is imminent. Singapore must manage its relations with both Israel and Palestine patiently and skilfully.

*The writer is Executive Deputy Chairman of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore and Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The full version of this article, which appeared in The Straits Times, was first published in Commentary, a publication of the National University of Singapore Society (NUSS).

Postpartum depression strikes nearly one in five new mothers, who may experience anxiety, severe fatigue, inability to bond with their children and suicidal thoughts. Such depression has also been associated with infants’ developmental difficulties. Although stress has been identified as a significant risk factor for postpartum depression, this complex disorder is still poorly understood. Now neuroscientists at Tufts University School of Medicine have generated a novel preclinical model of postpartum depression and demonstrated involvement of the neuroendocrine system that mediates physiological response to stress, called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which is normally suppressed during and after pregnancy. The findings in mice provide the first empirical evidence that disruption of this system engenders behaviors that mimic postpartum depression in humans.

This study, to be published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology and now available online, provides a much-needed research model for further investigation into the causes of and treatment for postpartum depression, which has largely relied on correlational studies in humans because of the scarcity of animal models.

Stress is known to activate the HPA axis, which triggers the fight or flight response seen in many species. During and after pregnancy such activation is normally blunted – helping to insulate developing offspring from stress – and dysregulation of the HPA axis has been suggested as playing a role in the physiology of postpartum depression.

The effects of stress on postpartum behavior are thought to be mediated by stress hormones because animal experiments show that stress and exogenous stress hormones can induce abnormal postpartum behaviors. However, clinical data on stress hormones in women with postpartum depression has been inconsistent. To date, research has not directly demonstrated a role for corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) — the main driver of the stress response, which is primarily secreted by a cluster of neurons in the hypothalamus called the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) — or for inappropriate activation of the HPA axis in postpartum depression.

“Some clinical studies show a relationship between CRH, HPA axis function and postpartum depression, but others fail to replicate these findings. Direct investigation into this relationship has been hindered due to the lack of useful animal models of such a complex disorder,” said Jamie Maguire, Ph.D., corresponding author on the new study, assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine, and a member of the Neuroscience and Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics program faculties at Tufts’ Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences.

“Using a mouse model that we developed, our new study provides the first empirical evidence supporting the clinical observations of HPA axis dysfunction in patients with postpartum depression and shows for the first time that dysregulation of the HPA axis and a specific protein in the brain, KCC2, can be enough to induce postpartum depression-like behaviors and deficits in maternal care,” she continued.

Maguire’s lab had previously shown a critical role for KCC2 in regulating CRH neurons and the physiological response to stress. The recent study investigated the specific role of KCC2 in regulating the HPA axis during and after pregnancy. Maguire and her colleagues assessed KCC2 expression in the PVN in virgin, pregnant and postpartum mice. They observed suppression (downregulation) of KCC2 in virgin mice exposed to stress but not in pregnant or postpartum mice. They propose that this contributes to the protective HPA hypofunction prior to birth, which is consistent with lower glucocorticoid levels observed in pregnant and postpartum mice and similar to findings in humans.

To further test the role of KCC2, the researchers developed mice that completely lacked KCC2 in CRH neurons and compared HPA axis function in these “knockout” mice with their normal (wildtype) littermates. Knockout mice demonstrated significantly more stress reactivity during the peripartum period, did not show the reduced anxiety typical of the postpartum period, and exhibited abnormal maternal care compared with postpartum wildtype mice. Utilizing novel chemogenetic strategies to specifically activate or silence the CRH neurons in the PVN, researchers were able to pinpoint these abnormal behaviors to the activity of these specific neurons, which govern the HPA axis.

Identifying molecular targets and biological markers for postpartum depression “Pregnancy obviously involves great changes to a woman’s body, but we’re only now beginning to understand the significant unseen adaptations occurring at the neurochemical and circuitry level that may be important to maintaining mental health and maternal behavior in the first few weeks to months following delivery,” said Laverne Camille Melón, Ph.D., first author on the paper and postdoctoral fellow in the Maguire laboratory. “By uncovering the role for stability of KCC2 in the regulation of CRH neurons, the postpartum stress axis, and maternal behavior, we hope we have identified a potential molecular target for the development of a new class of compounds that are more effective for women suffering from postpartum depression and anxiety.”

Melón and Maguire do not believe that HPA axis dysfunction is the only pathological mechanism at work. “Many psychiatric and neurological disorders are a constellation of symptoms and represent an unfortunate synergy of heterogeneous maladaptations. The mechanisms underlying one woman’s postpartum depression may differ from another’s,” said Melón.

The researchers hope that continued work will enable them to identify a biological marker that characterizes women who may be vulnerable to postpartum depression because of dysregulation of the stress axis, potentially leading to new treatment options.

“There is much more we need to learn,” said Maguire, “but we believe our model will be useful for testing novel therapeutic compounds for postpartum depression. Such studies could also be relevant to other conditions in which KCC2 deficits are implicated, such as epilepsy, chronic pain and autism, and to other stress and anxiety related disorders.”

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday turned up the rhetoric another notch as he demanded the FBI verify claims found in the dossier claiming to reveal collusion with Russia amid the 2016 presidential election.

“WOW, @foxandfriends ‘Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED.’ And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign!” the US leader tweeted.

In October, the Washington Post reported that lawyer Marc Elias, representing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, retained Fusion GPS in April 2016 to research Trump’s background.

However, a major conflict of interest appeared when it was revealed that the Clinton campaign and the DNC helped fund Fusion’s work through the end of October 2016, just days before Election Day, according to the Washington Post.

The flawed nature of the report – first published by BuzzFeed in January despite a paucity of evidence – has done little to tamp down claims that Trump somehow colluded with Russia to win the White House.

At the weekend, at the start of his winter break in Florida, Trump took direct aim at the FBI leadership in yet another Twitter barrage.

“How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin’ James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation,” Trump wrote from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

Trump was talking about Andrew McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe, who accepted $450,000 in campaign donations from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and more than $207,000 from the state Democratic Party when she ran for the Virginia state senate.

“In addition to his wife getting all of this money from M (Clinton Puppet), he was using, allegedly, his FBI Official Email Account to promote her campaign,” Trump tweeted. “You obviously cannot do this. These were the people who were investigating Hillary Clinton.”

Last month, the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained documents from the FBI that included a March 2015 email Jill McCabe sent to her husband’s FBI account.

The documents contained a draft press release announcing McCabe’s candidacy in the state Senate race. Another email, dated August 2015, appeared to show Andrew McCabe encouraging an individual – whose name was redacted – to visit his wife’s campaign website.

By Dr. Arshad M. Khan*

Delegates to the UN are generally referred to as diplomats. But, in the wake of the vote condemning the U.S. decision on Jerusalem, one has to wonder. The permanently scowling U.S. representative, Nikki Haley, threatened reprisals — “We will be taking names” — against those who did not support the U.S. position.

The vote was 128-9. Aside from the U.S. and Israel, the seven who voted with them consisted of five minuscule Pacific island nations, whose bread and butter comes from the U.S., plus Honduras and Guatemala. In Honduras, a stolen election had the opposition up in arms because it appeared from the results that the incumbent Juan Orlando Hernandez had lost to Salvador Nasralla. Following the UN vote, the U.S. threw its support behind Hernandez and Nasralla threw in the towel. Then there is Guatemala, where former generals from dictatorship days joining with President Jimmy Morales have made a smooth transition to civilian government and who the U.S. continues to support, rounding out the 9 votes. A co-founder of Morales’ Convergence Party, Ovalle Maldonado, is being investigated for the crimes of disappearances and money laundering. Now a fugitive, he is a former Colonel and a graduate of the School of the Americas and just one of many in a party ‘dominated by military officers’.

All the same, U.S. support constituted a pinprick of the world’s population. Consider on one side Nikki Haley and the U.S. with its immense economic and military power; on the other, Palestine relying only on the world’s conscience. Conscience won. In an earlier Security Council vote, the U.S. tallied 13-1 against, obliging it to use its veto.

Has the U.S. lost its clout? And what of Nikki Haley’s threats. They seem to have been forgotten by the time the next issue of North Korean sanctions was taken up. Approved and putting a strangle hold on oil, these still depend on China.

In fact, Nikki Haley’s foreign aid threat means little as foreign aid is mostly about the furtherance of U.S. policy. The principal recipients Israel and Egypt are unlikely to see cuts; the first because of its influential lobby and the other because of the peace treaty obligations. Afghanistan, the other major recipient, is busy fighting the Taliban; Jordan is fighting extremism and is like Egypt kept under control in the extent of its opposition to Israel. Then there is the Somalia conflict, and the aid recipients as a result include in particular Ethiopia used as a proxy there plus the peripheral states. Nigeria is fighting ISIS offshoots, and so it goes on.

Nikki Haley’s undiplomatic threat was not only empty but made the U.S. appear mean, nasty and child-like.

Worse have been Donald Trump’s threats against North Korea. “It can’t happen”, he tweeted about ICBM missiles early in the year; they now have them. Then there are his repeated military threats … also ignored by Kim Jong Un. Red lines have been drawn, crossed, and then no response because there is no military solution.

Often, as in chess, a certain tension is more effective in hampering opponents than the actual play out of a scenario. The U.S. chose the latter, and from Libya to Afghanistan (not to mention Vietnam) people have watched its lack of success; they have weathered the storm. It might still displace elected governments as in Ukraine, but the end result it less than satisfactory.

One might well ask, is the U.S. now in decline? The election of Donald Trump offers a clue.

About the author:
*Dr. Arshad M. Khan is a former Professor based in the US. Educated at King’s College London, OSU and The University of Chicago, he has a multidisciplinary background that has frequently informed his research. Thus he headed the analysis of an innovation survey of Norway, and his work on SMEs published in major journals has been widely cited. He has for several decades also written for the press: These articles and occasional comments have appeared in print media such as The Dallas Morning News, Dawn (Pakistan), The Fort Worth Star Telegram, The Monitor, The Wall Street Journal and others. On the internet, he has written for Antiwar.com, Asia Times, Common Dreams, Counterpunch, Countercurrents, Dissident Voice, Eurasia Review and Modern Diplomacy among many. His work has been quoted in the U.S. Congress and published in its Congressional Record.

Source:
This article was published at Modern Diplomacy

By Rafal Rohozinski*

Nuclear weapons formed the basis of strategic stability between the nuclear superpowers for the past seventy years. The threat of instantaneous and mutual annihilation helped concentrate minds, including the establishment of clear and unambiguous “rules of the game” among the nuclear superpowers. States continued to compete, but competition was never allowed to compromise overall strategic stability.

Nuclear deterrence was based on a simple calculus. Once launched, nuclear weapons were nearly impossible to stop and even limited use would result in civilization ending consequences. In former US President Reagan’s words, nuclear war was “unthinkable”. The knowledge that entire nations could be obliterated was a sufficient guarantor of strategic stability based on Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

The shared confidence in MAD that underpinned the nuclear regime started changing during the 1990s. New research and development into anti-ballistic missile systems improved raised concerns over the durability of nuclear deterrence. Specifically, the Russian government interpreted the placement of radars and ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe as an existential threat to Russia’s nuclear deterrence capability, and not a bulwark against supposed rogue states as alleged by the US and its allies.

Even so, MAD survived into the early twenty first century, keeping the nuclear threat on the back-burner. Cooperation between the major nuclear powers to disarm also reached an all-time high. Both the US and Russia focused on reducing their nuclear stockpiles with admirable results. Working with the United Nations, the focus was on the threat of loose nukes, rather than a confrontation between nuclear-armed foes. Tensions, which persisted, were treated by all sides as manageable and negotiable.

All of this changed with the Internet. The Internet shares a coincidental heritage with the nuclear age. Indeed, it was conceived as a decentralized and distributed communications network that could survive a nuclear war and preserve a command and control. In the post Cold War era, its principal significance is not so much military as the news backbone of the global digital economy. These two worlds  –  the nuclear and the digital –  are now converging. They are also giving rise new risks, three of which stand out.

The first risk relates to bringing nuclear command-and-control systems into the digital age. The existing nuclear weapons infrastructure is for the most part analog and predates the Internet era. As Russian and US nuclear command and control systems are modernized over the next few years their dependence on digital technologies will increase. Modernization necessarily increases complexity – and complexity creates new possibilities for error.

The planet came perilously close to a nuclear exchange on several occasions over the past half century. A nuclear calamity was only averted by the courageous actions of men such as Lt Col. Stanislav Petrov, who in September 1983 deliberately ignored sensor data that falsely reported the Soviet Union under a massive nuclear attack from America. With nuclear command and control systems increasingly dependent on artificial intelligence, there are less opportunities for human intervention.

There are also the risks of hacking and digital manipulation. The Stuxnet case is a reminder that this possibility is more science than fiction. The implanting of malware designed to destroy Iran’s capacity to separate uranium demonstrated emphatically the utility and feasibility of strategic cyber attacks. Interventions designed to disrupt and destroy the command and control systems of nuclear weapons are the Internet equivalent of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative. They dangerously entangle cyber warfare and nuclear stability. There are just 9 nuclear armed states, but over 140 countries are actively developing cyber warfare capabilities.

The second risk is that the world´s dependence on cyber actually increases the deterrence value of acquiring even a few nuclear weapons. Due to their blast, radioactive and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effects, nuclear weaponry is especially effective against states that are hyper-connected and reliant on digital technologies. They can disable and destroy electrical grids, data farms and computer and communication systems – wreaking havoc on everything from financial systems to water and food supplies.

A new suite of hydrogen bombs are being developed with the EMP impacts in mind. The weapons tested by North Korea are reportedly based on Russian design and intended to have an enhanced electromagnetic effects, a fact publicized by North Korea´s leadership. New research from Accenture strategy and Oxford Economics suggests that roughly 25% of all global GDP will be tied to the digital economy by 2020. The detonation of just one EMP in the upper atmosphere above North America or Western Europe could cripple their digital infrastructures for years. Even outgunned, North Korea is potentially holding world´s digital economy hostage.

The third risk is perhaps most unsettling risk is that nuclear first strikes are becoming thinkable as a viable option to stop the use of similar weapons by states like North Korea. Recall that nuclear deployment systems are based on electronics. These electronic systems may be resistant to offensive cyber attacks. It is not inconceivable that in a moment of crisis, EMP-enhanced nuclear weapons could be deployed to prevent a rogue nuclear state from launching its ballistic missiles. Such an action may even appear rational, or the lesser of two evils.

All of the risks outlined above are still hypothetical. But as the digital and nuclear worlds become increasingly entangled, reality is catching-up. The strategy of deterrence is being redefined and the implications are deeply worrying. The launch of cyber-attacks and precision nuclear strikes using EMP against the weapons systems of adversaries no longer seems as far-fetched as it once was. With nuclear war becoming thinkable again, we are clearly entering uncharted waters.

About the author:
*Rafal Rohozinski is the CEO of the SecDev Group, and a senior fellow for cyber security and emerging conflict at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Source:
This article appeared at Modern Diplomacy and was first published in at International Affairs

The Romans believed that war was to be waged with weapons, not with poison. The notion has gained moral authority in the warfare over the period of times. Modern efforts to ban chemical weapons dates back to the Brussels Declaration (1874), which prohibited the use of poisons and poisoned bullets in warfare. However, the serious efforts were made after world war two when the figure of human losses crossed 43.5 million dead, coupled with the drop of nuclear bomb by United States over Japan.

War ethics and principles of armed conflict were then sincerely debated to restore the dignity of humans. However, till date not all nations have been willing to cooperate with disclosing or demilitarizing their inventory of chemical weapons.

In July 2017 Foreign Office Spokesperson Nafees Zakria accused India of “using ammunition containing chemical agents and precursors to kill Kashmiri youth and destroy Kashmiris’ properties” He said charred bodies of Kashmiri youth were found in the debris of five houses destroyed by the Indian forces at Bahmnoo and Kakpora in Pulwama. “The bodies were so extensively burnt that they were beyond visual recognition”.  One owner of the house, Mr. Kifayat Ahmad, also included was suspected of chemical attack, as FO spokesperson said.

On December 11, 2017, while addressing a seminar on the occasion of International Human Rights Day organised by the Kashmir Liberation Cell, President of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Sardar Masood Khan has blamed India for using chemical weapons against innocent civilians of Kashmir under their control in Anantnag and Pulwama.
Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, had also pointed out the danger in 2001, in her article “Security Challenges in South Asia” published in The Nonproliferation Review. She said, “While both India and Pakistan committed not to produce chemical weapons under a joint declaration in August 1992, India continued to manufacture chemical weapons in violation of this declaration.  This was disclosed only in early 1997, months after India’s ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in September 1996.”

Chemical weapons are considered to be inhumane by most nations, governments and organizations undertook to locate and destroy existing chemical weapons. The international community continued to seek a total ban on chemical weapons. In 1948, the UN Commission for Conventional Armaments defined chemical and bacteriological weapons as weapons of mass destruction.

While applying little knowledge which I have about chemical weapons and carefully reading all the details and statements of influential individuals in relation to use of “Chemical Weapons” in Indian occupied Kashmir, I am view of that Indian security forces are not using chemical weapons but “incendiary weapons” as anti-personnel weaponry against Kashmirs. Such an act is grossly inhuman and unlawful as per UN conventions and International law.

Incendiary weapons, or incendiary bombs are designed to start fire or destroy sensitive equipment using fire. Though colloquially often known as bombs, they are not explosives but in fact use ignition rather than detonation to start and or maintain the chemical reaction. Napalm for example, is petroleum especially thickened with certain chemicals into a ‘gel’ to slow, but not stop, combustion, releasing energy over a longer time than an explosive device. Modern incendiary bombs usually contain thermite, made from aluminium and ferric oxide. It takes very high temperatures to ignite, but when alight, it can burn through solid steel.

Using these devices against humans is absolutely obnoxious. Protocol III of the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons prohibits the use of incendiary weapons against civilians. Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions even prohibits the use of air-delivered incendiary weapons against military targets located within concentrations of civilians.

Modern chemical weapons were introduced during World War I in an effort to reduce the deadlock of trench warfare. However, due to advancement in technology, the munitions have become more precise, and tactical advantage of chemical or incendiary weapons is eroded. Today, chemical or incendiary weapons horrify like anthrax more than they contribute to victories on the ground. These are being used in Indian administered Kashmir to create fear and weaken their “will to resist occupation”.

The new situation is at best “not normal” and Pakistan may also resort to manufacture of new deadly incendiary or chemical weapons in pursuit of Indian parity like development of nuclear weapons. Interest of other countries like North Korea and Iran cannot be ruled out. This would be a deadly arm race which would endanger international peace in general and people of South Asia in particular. Therefore, I second Dr. Maleha Lodhi’ who says, “The two countries should aim to immediately resume foreign secretary-level talks [on chemical weapons], following which a bilateral standing committee of experts could be set up to explore further steps and measures towards stabilizing the nuclear environment in South Asia.”

*The author, Atta Rasool Malik, hails from semi-tribal areas of Pakistan. He is a veteran and holds M Phil degree in ‘International Relations’ from National Defence University, Islamabad. His interest includes politics of South Asia and Islamic and Jewish theology.

It’s a common talking point of politicians around the world: Our roads are not good enough. In fact, according to the World Health Organization, road traffic injuries are a global public health concern. Well over 1.25 million people die each year in road traffic collisions — a statistic that is bolstered by dysfunctional roads, inadequate mass transit options, and malfunctioning or too few traffic signals.

This isn’t a new problem. One of the most important investments a nation can make is in its own infrastructure, but many nations are struggling to maintain safe roads. While it would be hyperbolic to say that the infrastructure in countries like the U.S. is outright “broken,” there needs to be a national consensus on priorities. Governments often struggle to find or allocate the funds necessary to meet the transportation needs of their people.

We have problems, and technological innovators are looking to provide the answers. Through cutting-edge technology, they aim to streamline transportation through automation, improved materials, and user-friendly services.

The Future of Transportation

Recent years have seen enormous leaps forward in transportation technology, including the interconnectivity of the internet of things and autonomous cars. Let’s break down each of these innovations and examine how they might positively or negatively impact the future of transportation:

• Smart cities: The internet of things has changed the face of the modern city. It connects countless devices and generates big data — information that can be used to inform urban planning and development. This could result in smarter investments in infrastructure and faster response times to traffic accidents, resulting in improved traffic safety. On the downside, there are serious privacy and security concerns inherent in the concept of a smart city. Big data is fueled by surveillance, and data breaches could leave citizens at risk for identity theft.
• Autonomous cars: Autonomous, or self-driving, vehicles are capable of transporting users without supervision. As they become more commonly used, they will streamline transportation by working synchronously. For example, as a vehicle learns about traffic jams, it can automatically reroute. These new models of cars rely on internet connectivity, though that opens the door to new risks; cybercriminals may be capable of remotely seizing control of a vehicle, which could put users at risk. Furthermore, unless the technology is perfected, there is no telling when the A.I. powering this innovation may make a poor judgement, leading to fatal consequences.
• Lightweight vehicle materials: With lightweight materials, automobile manufacturers can make a big impact on fuel consumption and reduce road damage. We’ve started to see a shift away from traditional cast iron and steel and toward magnesium aluminum alloys and carbon fiber. Key concerns in this transition are whether these new materials will be affordable enough for manufacturers (and therefore consumers), and if they will be durable enough to withstand traffic collisions while keeping passengers safe.
• On-demand ridesharing services: A number of relatively recent services, such as Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar, give consumers easy access to transportation. An obvious benefit of these services is that they reduce the number of vehicles on the road, reducing traffic congestion, traffic accidents, and wear on infrastructure. They also reduce the need for the development of additional parking in urban areas, which is more problematic than you might think. Parking fees constitutes a significant stream of revenue for government buildings and airports. Traditional taxi services have also seen a severe decline in recent years due to ridesharing services.
• High-speed trains: There is no doubt about it: Elon Musk is paving the way for the future of mass transit. SpaceX’s Hyperloop is a high-speed train that is designed to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco at a top speed of 760 mph; it can make the 350-mile trip in just over 30 minutes. This innovation could transform the face of public transition if it catches on. On the downside, it has proven to be an expensive venture. At $6 billion, very few cities would be able to seriously consider investing in their own “Hyperloop,” though the benefits could be enormous.

Environmental and Accessibility Concerns

Beyond looking at the financial responsibilities of municipal governments, citizens have other needs that must be considered. As the effects of climate change become increasingly apparent, it is integral that we keep environmental concerns in mind when planning and implementing new infrastructure. Furthermore, people with disabilities require improved access to transportation options. What can cities do to address sustainability and accessibility concerns?

Consumers today are aware of the causes and effects of climate change. They are compelled to buy eco-friendly products and use transportation options that limit their impact on the environment. Solar, hydrogen, and EV technology will give commuters plenty of options when it comes to reducing fuel consumption and carbon emissions. Local municipalities have already begun exploring using this technology in mass transit, and the wheels for sustainable transportation have already been set in motion.

Accessibility should guide transportation planning — especially in areas that are seeing rapid growth and development. Construction sites pose many risks to those that live and work nearby, and that danger is compounded when these areas are not designed to accommodate the elderly or those with disabilities. In the U.S. alone, nearly 5,000 construction workers and 100 pedestrians die in accidents at constructions sites each year, often due to negligence. Public transportation officials should place safety and accessibility above any other consideration.

Public transportation across the glove is in need of reform, and developers must ensure that they take appropriate action. The needs and desires of the public are being met with radical technological innovation. While time will separate the substanceless hype and practical advancements, there is no doubt that the face of public transportation is changing.

The recent Government of India’s move, such as continuing bankruptcy filings with the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for some of the largest Non performing Asset (NPAs) in the country, the move to delist the shell companies, recapitalisation announcements for banks to resolve the distressed asset situation, have received mixed reaction.

What root cause for distress in companies?

A careful study of the performance of the distressed companies reveal the fact that the root cause of distress in most enterprises is a combination of shortcomings in their underlying business models and inadequacies in technical and management capability and the operating practices .

In the case of most of the distressed companies, it is evident that the contributory causes are lack of awareness with regard to the developing and impending adverse scenario, the poor forward planning strategies, misplaced priorities and sometimes search for solutions to the problems elsewhere instead of internally and of course, unethical diversion of funds.

Succession in top management positions by blood relations such as sons and daughters, in laws and nephew/niece of owners without dispassionately assessing their experience, capabilities and domain knowledge to the needed level, have also pushed down several units rapidly towards slide.

Of course, the global commodity cycle bust, overcapacities and infrastructural issues could have played a big role causing price fall and the losses, leading to defaults in debt repayment. However, in many cases, such issues could have been reasonably tackled by alert, skilful and timely measures.

All said and done, the inability of the top management to meet the challenges is the basic and central reason that have resulted in distress in most of the companies. This is more than evident from the fact that in number of cases, amongst the companies operating in the same field almost in identical conditions, one or two units collapse whereas others forge ahead successfully.

Arguments against bankruptcy policy

The critics of bankruptcy policy argue that the .knee jerk approach to resolve the distressed assets issue by declaring the companies to be bankrupt may sometimes lead to inadvertent liquidation and closure of the units rather than reorganisation and improvement in conditions.

In number of cases, the physical assets of firms in distress conditions may provide potential opportunities to invest in new areas or effect significant improvement in ongoing operations, if utilised in the right and appropriate way. With appropriate interim turnaround strategies and management and capital deployment, number of units can be restructured and eventually put on the recovery path. While there are such prospects, the panicky reaction of the banks and financing institutions leading to liquidation would be counter productive.

In the absence of adequate and updated information and understanding about the distressed firm’s strength and weakness and opportunities ahead for the units, new owners who take over the distressed firms, may not be able to chalk out any meaningful corrective steps and implement appropriate remedial plans in reasonable time frame.

Any auction or bid-based approach may lead to heavy loss of funds for banks and financing institutions, as the winning bid may not likely be anywhere close to intrinsic value of the asset. The lack of enthusiasm or dynamism in the private sector for investments may limit the number of potential buyers, which will increase the discount on the asset, if attempts are made by the financial institutions for a quick sale.

In the anxiety to throw out defaulting promoters, the liquidating of potentially recoverable companies should not result in loss of jobs and upsetting the industry growth. Liquidations should be avoided to the extent possible.

Arguments in favour of bankruptcy policy

In the past, the distressed companies that have defaulted in repayment of loan have been treated with kid glove by banks and financial institutions.

In most cases, the financial institutions have taken “soft and compassionate view” towards the defaulting companies and provided more fund support and repeated rescheduling of the repayment, so that the distressed units can recover and become financially strong to service the debt. In a very few cases like Haldia Petrochemicals, West Bengal, where the recent fall in crude oil price in global market helped the unit to find its way, the additional fund support was found helpful.

However, in the case of several other companies, such kid glove strategies have not worked, but have only resulted with more mounting debt. In the case of such companies, the financial institutions chose the easy option of giving more fund support but did not attempt to take a deeper and closer look to assess the capability and integrity of the directors, and thus let them go scot free. The new bankruptcy law seeks to change this situation sharply for the better.

The ground realities are that the directors of the distressed units have failed and it would be a calculated risk to put continued faith on them to bring the units out of distress situation. Even in the case of the revived Haldia Petrochemicals, it has to be noted that the management of the unit changed while it was getting additional fund support from banks, which considerably helped in reviving the company.

It is necessary to assess and distinguish the cause for the distress situation faced by the units between genuine reasons and other reasons such as lack of managerial competence, unethical diversion of funds, splitting of the companies to uneconomic and unviable size to accommodate sons and daughters, as if it is a property division etc. Careful assessment of reasons for distress conditions may reveal startling facts.

Argument bankruptcy law will drive units to liquidation is negative and pessimistic view

The other argument, that by inviting bids to take over such units, it will result in loss of funds for the financial institutions, can not be accepted, since otherwise the financial institution may end up losing the entire funds extended by way of loan to the companies.

The other argument, that the present Indian investment climate is poor and therefore, there would only be a few investors who would be willing to take over such distress companies is also unacceptable view, since the investors these days come not only from India but also from abroad.

Bankruptcy law is the appropriate way

In any case, having given the loan to the distressed units earlier and with little hope of getting back loan with or without interest from such units at any time, the financial institutions need a way out.

Bankruptcy law is the best way that can give positive and quick result to find new owners to manage the units and direct them on the growth path.

It is seen that , several Indian companies have become sick but directors and project promoters of these units never became sick and they virtually remained unaffected by the dismal performance of the units,which have defaulted in the repayment of loan and interest amounting to several crores of rupees. Such promoters are primarily responsible for such conditions but, their affluent life style remain undisturbed.

This scenario will significantly change with the implementation of bankruptcy law, which is necessary.

A neurosurgical team at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University has successfully performed what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind brain surgery on a Northern fur seal named Ziggy Star in an attempt to address her worsening neurologic condition. Ziggy, an adult female, is recovering well at her permanent home at Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut.

“The ability to successfully complete this procedure with many unknown factors is due in large part to the collaboration among colleagues at Cummings and Mystic,” said Cummings lead neurosurgeon, Ane Uriarte, DVM, Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Neurology. “The combined expertise and skills from all our areas of specialty–from neurosurgery to anesthesia and zoological medicine–was critical to this success.”

Ziggy was first seen at the Henry and Lois Foster Hospital for Small Animals at Cummings Veterinary Medical Center at Tufts University in September for a condition that had progressed over several years and was causing severe neurologic episodes, difficulty moving, reduced training response, and cluster seizures. An MRI revealed an accumulation of cerebral spinal fluid in the brain, a condition known as hydrocephalus.

Mystic Aquarium took in Ziggy approximately four years ago after she was found stranded on the California coast and deemed non-releasable by the federal government. At the time, she had an MRI that showed some neurologic abnormalities. She received treatment, but her symptoms continued to progress at a concerning rate, with the seizures emerging more recently.

“The MRI taken recently by our team showed that the brain was disappearing due to the excess fluid, and it was significantly worse than the last study four years ago,” said Uriarte. “After discussion with Mystic’s veterinary team, we determined the best option to prevent further deterioration of the brain and to improve Ziggy’s symptoms was to surgically place a shunt to drain the excess fluid, relieving some of the pressure on the brain.”

While this surgical procedure could not reverse damage caused to the brain by excess fluid, if successful, it could stop the progression of Ziggy’s condition, improving her quality of life, level of responsiveness and mobility.

Though hydrocephalus is a fairly common condition in cats and dogs, veterinarians were unable to find documented cases of this particular disorder being surgically managed in pinnipeds–seals, sea lions and walrus. With no published research or documentation on similar procedures in pinnipeds, they relied heavily on their experience treating the condition in other animals, combined with extensive review of the skeletal structure of the fur seal to determine where to enter the skull and place the shunt.

The team present on the day of the surgery, conducted Nov. 20, included veterinary anesthesiologists, neurosurgeons and zoological medicine specialists from Cummings Veterinary Medical Center, as well as zoological medicine specialists from Mystic Aquarium who serve as Ziggy’s primary veterinarians. Ziggy’s trainers were also present, who helped to keep her calm and comfortable throughout transport and recovery. A boarded anesthesiologist who specializes in marine mammals was brought in by Mystic Aquarium as well. A marine mammal’s “dive reflex” can often lead to alterations in heart rate, blood pressure, and respirations when under anesthesia, which can make anesthesia more challenging than with a dog or a cat.

The surgical procedure, which lasted a little over an hour, involved placing a shunt catheter – a narrow tube — through the skull and into the brain. The catheter was then positioned underneath the skin through the neck and passed down to Ziggy’s abdomen. A valve controls the flow of excess cerebral spinal fluid from the brain to the abdomen, where it is absorbed by the body. Post-surgery, the veterinary team confirmed that the shunt was placed correctly via CT scan.

Ziggy had a slightly prolonged recovery after the procedure due to seizure activity that was successfully managed. She was transferred back to Mystic Aquarium on Nov. 21 once she was in stable condition.

Foster Hospital’s Medical Director Virginia Rentko, VMD, Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine, added, “It’s exciting to see our team translate their skills and experience in the treatment of such a unique patient. Taking on these challenging cases is an essential part of advancing veterinary medicine.”

Ziggy is currently living in an off-exhibit habitat at Mystic Aquarium, where she is being monitored through her recovery and rehabilitation.

“We continue to monitor Ziggy very closely,” said Jen Flower, DVM, MS, Diplomate of the American College of Zoological Medicine, Chief Clinical Veterinarian at Mystic Aquarium. “She is showing marked progress daily; eating a full diet; moving well within her habitat and showing normal swim patterns. No additional seizures have been noted post-operatively.”

Printed replacement human body parts might seem like science fiction, but this technology is rapidly becoming a reality with the potential to greatly contribute to regenerative medicine.

Before any real applications, “bioprinting” still faces many technical challenges. Processing the bio-ink and making it stick to itself and hold the desired printed gel structure have been proving particularly difficult especially in inkjet printing. Few methods currently exist for gluing bio-ink droplets together and these do not work for every kind of cell, motivating new alternative approaches.

Building on their previous work, researchers at Osaka University have now refined an enzyme-driven approach to sticking biological ink droplets together, enabling complex biological structures to be printed. They recently published their findings in Macromolecular Rapid Communications.

Lead author, Shinji Sakai said, “Printing any kind of tissue structure is a complex process. The bio-ink must have low enough viscosity to flow through the inkjet printer, but also needs to rapidly form a highly viscose gel-like structure when printed. Our new approach meets these requirements while avoiding sodium alginate. In fact, the polymer we used offers excellent potential for tailoring the scaffold material for specific purposes.”

Currently, sodium alginate is the main gelling agent used for inkjet bioprinting, but has some compatibility problems with certain cell types. The researchers’ new approach is based on hydrogelation mediated by an enzyme, horseradish peroxidase, which can create cross-links between phenyl groups of an added polymer in the presence of the oxidant hydrogen peroxide.

Although hydrogen peroxide itself can also damage cells, the researchers carefully tuned the delivery of cells and hydrogen peroxide in separate droplets to limit their contact and keep the cells alive. More than 90% of the cells were viable in biological test gels prepared in this way. A number of complex test structures could also be grown from different types of cells.

“Advances in induced pluripotent stem cell technologies have made it possible for us to induce stem cells to differentiate in many different ways,” co-author Makoto Nakamura said. “Now we need new scaffolds so we can print and support these cells to move closer to achieving full 3D printing of functional tissues. Our new approach is highly versatile and should help all groups working to this goal.”

Taking a higher dose of topiramate during the first three months of pregnancy may increase a baby’s risk of cleft lip or cleft palate more than when taking a lower dose, according to a study published in the December 27, 2017, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Topiramate is prescribed to prevent seizures in people with epilepsy. It is also used to prevent migraine headaches or treat bipolar disorder. In combination with phentermine, it may be prescribed for weight loss.

“While topiramate is not recommended for pregnant women, unplanned pregnancies are common, so it’s important to fully examine any possible risk,” said Sonia Hernandez-Diaz, MD, DrPH, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “Our study found that when pregnant women took topiramate during the first trimester, baby’s risk of cleft lip or palate was three times greater than if mom was not taking the drug. The risk was higher when the mother took high doses of the drug than when she took lower doses.”

For the study, researchers looked at Medicaid data and identified nearly 1.4 million women who gave birth to live babies over a 10-year period. Women who filled a prescription for topiramate during their first three months of pregnancy were compared with women who did not fill a prescription for any anti-seizure drug. They were also compared to women who filled a prescription for lamotrigine, another drug used to reduce seizures in epilepsy. There were 2,425 pregnancies in the topiramate group, 2,796 in the lamotrigine group, and more than 1.3 million in the group not taking anti-seizure drugs. Researchers then looked at how many women in each group gave birth to a baby diagnosed with cleft lip or cleft palate.

Researchers found that among the more than 1.3 million pregnancies in the group not taking anti-seizure drugs, 1,501 babies had cleft lip or cleft palate which translates to a risk of 1.1 per 1,000. For the 2,425 babies born to mothers who filled a prescription for topiramate during the first trimester of pregnancy, the risk of cleft lip or cleft palate was 4.1 per 1,000. The risk was 1.5 per 1,000 in the babies born to the 2,796 women taking lamotrigine.

Compared to the group not taking anti-seizure medications, women with epilepsy on topiramate had an eight times greater risk of giving birth to a baby with cleft lip or cleft palate, while the women taking the drug for other conditions had a 50 percent higher risk. Women with epilepsy took a higher dose of the drug than those with other conditions. The average daily dose for women with epilepsy was 200 milligrams, while the average for women without epilepsy was 100 milligrams. Additionally, the risk of cleft lip or cleft palate for those taking more than 100 milligrams for any reason was five times greater than those not taking anti-seizure drugs, while those taking less than 100 milligrams had a 60 percent greater risk than those not taking anti-seizure drugs. Results were similar when women taking topiramate were compared with those taking lamotrigine.

“Our results suggest that women with epilepsy on topiramate have the highest relative risk of giving birth to a baby with cleft lip or cleft palate, likely due to the higher doses of topiramate when used for controlling seizures,” said Hernandez-Diaz. “The best course may be to avoid prescribing high doses of topiramate to women of childbearing age unless the benefits clearly outweigh the risks.”

A limitation of the study is that topiramate doses were not randomly assigned to patients and therefore women on high doses may be different from those on low doses for reasons incompletely measured by the investigators, such as severity of epilepsy.

It is controversial whether Eurasian mid-latitude cold surges are becoming more likely as a consequence of Arctic warming. A strong cold surge occurred during 21st-25th January 2016 affecting most areas of China, especially Eastern China.

Daily minimum temperature records were broken at many stations. The area averaged anomaly of minimum temperature over the region (20-44oN, 100-124oE) for this pentad average was the lowest temperature recorded since modern meteorological observations started in 1960.

This cold event occurred in a background of warming winter trend and 2015/2016 is the warmest winter in terms of minimum temperature since 1960.

Given the vast damages caused by this extreme cold event in Eastern China and the previous mentioned controversy, it is compelling to investigate what role was played by human influences on this record-breaking cold event and to quantify how much anthropogenic forcing agents have affected the probability of cold events with an intensity equal to or larger than the January 2016 extreme event.

Collaborative efforts among scientists from Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAP, CAS), China Meteorological Bureau, Met Office Hadley Centre of UK, University of Reading and University of Edinburgh, investigated the effect of anthropogenic forcings on the likelihood of such a cold event.

They used the Met Office Hadley Centre system for Attribution of extreme weather and Climate Events and station observations.

“Anthropogenic influences are estimated to have reduced the likelihood of an extreme cold event in mid-winter with the intensity equal to or stronger than the record of 2016 in Eastern China by about 2/3,” said Cheng QIAN from IAP, the first author of the study.

“Still, we caution that even under human-induced warming, extreme cold events can still occur as a result of natural variability.”

By Mary Rezac

You’ve probably heard of Bruce Jenner.

Now referred to as Caitlyn Jenner, the high-profile Olympic athlete with a famously dramatic family had a very high-profile transition from male to female – including mutilple surgical alterations, a cover on Vanity Fair magazine and the now-canceled docu-series “I am Cait.”

You probably haven’t heard of Bruce Reimer.

Bruce and his twin brother Brian were born in Canada in the 1960s. At the age of seven months, the otherwise healthy boys were circumcised. But the doctors used a new method of circumcision, involving an electric cauterizing needle, on Bruce. An accident occurred, completely burning off the little boy’s penis.

Brian’s operation was canceled, but his parents were devastated.

The Reimers decided to take Bruce to Dr. John Money, a psychologist and sexologist at Johns Hopkins they had seen on T.V.

Dr. Money had a theory that aside from reproductive and urinary functions, gender was a social construct. Until the Reimer twins, he had largely worked with intersex cases – children born with ambiguous genitalia or abnormal sex chromosomes.

But the Reimer twins – otherwise healthy and biologically normative – were the perfect experiment on which to test his theory of gender fluidity. Brian would be raised as a boy, and Bruce would from now on be called Brenda, and raised as a girl.

The Reimers agreed, and insisted on girl’s clothes and socialization for Brenda throughout childhood. They never told the twins about the accident, or about Brenda’s biological sex.

The twins were brought in for a yearly observation with Dr. Money, who dubbed the case a wild success by the time the twins were nine years old.

“No-one else knows that she is the child whose case they read of in the news media at the time of the accident,” he wrote.

“Her behavior is so normally that of an active little girl, and so clearly different by contrast from the boyish ways of her twin brother, that it offers nothing to stimulate one’s conjectures.”

What the Doctor didn’t tell

Deacon Dr. Patrick Lappert is two things you wouldn’t necessarily expect to occur in tandem – a plastic surgeon, and a deacon for the Roman Catholic Church.

These two roles give him a unique understanding of the human person, both physically and metaphysically. They’ve also given him a unique perspective on transgendered persons, and the current cultural movement to support surgical sex changes.

Dr. Lappert was asked to speak at this year’s Truth and Love conference for Courage in Phoenix. He included the case of the Reimer twins during his talk, “Transgender Surgery and Christian Anthropology.”

The on-paper success of Brenda Reimer as a lovely and well-adjusted little girl did not match the lived reality of the child, Dr. Lappert said. Brenda Reimer was a rambunctious tomboy – shunned by the boys for wearing dresses, and by the girls for being too wild.

“She was very rebellious. She was very masculine, and I could not persuade her to do anything feminine. Brenda had almost no friends growing up. Everybody ridiculed her, called her cavewoman,” Brenda’s mother, Janet, recalled in an interview with BBC News.

“She was a very lonely, lonely girl.”

During the twins’ yearly checkup and observation, Dr. Money would force the twins to strip naked and engage in sexual play, posing in positions that affirmed their respective genders. On at least one occasion, this sex play was photographed.

By their teenage years, the twins were strongly opposed to going to their checkups with Dr. Money.

By age 13, Brenda was suicidal.

By 15, the Reimers stopped taking the twins to Dr. Money and revealed the truth to Brenda – he was biologically male. He fully embraced his male identity, chose the name David, and began hormone therapy and a surgical genital reconstruction. He dated and married a woman, whose children he adopted.

But the wounds of his traumatic childhood were deep for both David and his brother. Both suffered from depression. After 14 years, David’s wife divorced him. Then Brian died from a drug overdose. Not long after, in May 2004, David committed suicide. He was 38 years old.

Despite everything, Dr. Money never printed any retractions of his studies, or added any corrections.

“He never said a word, never took any of it back,” Dr. Lappert said.

Which is hugely problematic, because this study is still frequently cited as a successful gender transition by the medical community at large, including the society of plastic surgeons to which Dr. Lappert belongs, he said.

“I put this case out there as an example, to show you the foundation – the sand upon which this whole thing is built,” Dr. Lappert said.

“We have to understand this as we’re talking about the human person as a unity of spirit and form, that there is an integrity to the maleness and femaleness with which we are made.”

One of the biggest problems with transgender sex change surgeries is that they are permanent and irreversible in any meaningful way, Dr. Lappert said.

“There’s nothing reversible about genital surgery – it’s a permanent, irreversible mutilation of the human person. And there’s no other word for it,” he said.

“It results in permanent sterility. It’s a permanent dissolution of the unitive and the procreative functions. And even the unitive aspect of the sexual embrace is radically hindered if not utterly destroyed,” he said, because of the inevitable nerve damage that occurs during the surgery, and because the brain will always register the genital nerves as coming from their organ of origin.

In other words, nerves connected to a vagina will always register with the brain as a vagina, even if they are now part of a surgically constructed penis, and vice versa.

Another major issue is that sex change surgeries seek to solve an interior dysfunction with an external solution.

“Underneath it all, you’re trying to heal an interior wound with exterior surgery,” Dr. Lapper said.

The Hungarian government has slammed the “Obama-era State Department elite” for doing “grave harm to Hungarian-U.S. relations”, which will take years to repair.

Dr Zoltán Kovács, Hungary’s Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, made the remarks after former Deputy State Secretary Thomas Melia gave an interview to Hungarian weekly Heti Világgazdagság, in which the American claimed Hungary has been going in “the wrong direction” since Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s conservative government came to power in 2010. “We are just as frustrated as many Hungarians that the government has made the country less democratic, silencing critics, be it NGOs, journalists or others,” alleged Melia.

“He apparently missed the irony in his making this claim while giving an interview with an opposition-leaning magazine that happens to be one of the mostly widely read weeklies in the country,” Kovács observed acidly.

“The Hungarian voters swept the Orbán Government to power in the elections of 2010 with the largest popular mandate any political party has ever received since the fall of Communism,” the Hungarian recalled. “That was followed by another landslide victory in 2014 and a commanding popular mandate for another two-thirds majority.

“But Melia knows better than the Hungarian voter. The former executive of the National Democratic Institute, an NGO loosely affiliated with the Democratic Party, can barely conceal his wish for ‘an opposition that is capable of winning’ and patronizingly informs the reader that ‘it is the task of Hungarian voters and politicians to organize a better alternative’.”

Dr Zoltán Kovács slammed Melia – “a man who cannot speak or read Hungarian and, as far as I know, has never lived in Hungary” – as a member of the “old, liberal cabal once part of the State Department,” which rely “on biased and politically-motivated sources for their information about Hungary and [have] lost sight of the real issues.”

Indeed, while Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was one of the few European leaders to buck the EU consensus and welcome the election of President Donald Trump as a leader who shared their opposition to mass migration, support for strong borders, and embrace of a patriotic brand of conservatism which puts ordinary citizens first – and President Trump has expressed mutual admiration for as a “strong and brave” leader – the State Department has continued to adopt a hostile posture towards the Central European country, courting controversy with $700,000 media fund widely regarded as an attempt to bolster anti-government forces.

“Here’s what’s sad: According to Melia, the ‘message of U.S. diplomacy to the people of Hungary is that the USA and Americans are their friends’,” Kovács continued. “Unfortunately, no. The message is that you have no respect for the free will of Hungarians. You look down on the Hungarian voter. And your so-called help comes off as condescending and ideologically-driven meddling in our affairs. “Thomas Melia, you and your cabal have done grave harm to Hungarian-U.S. relations. It will take years to repair them.”

By James Reinl

The US Department of Defense on Wednesday rejected a Russian claim that it re-trained former Daesh militants in a bid to destabilize Syria, dismissing the suggestion as “false and absurd.”

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Andrews told Arab News that allegations from the chief of the Russian General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, were bogus and that the US continued to battle the extremist group.

“The outrageous allegation that the (US-led) coalition runs a training center for former ISIS terrorists in Tanf, or anywhere else in the world, is false and absurd,” said Lt. Col. Andrews, using an alternate acronym for Daesh.

“This is just a continuation of ridiculous, meaningless and totally untrue statements from the Russian MoD that seeks to discredit the US and our successful coalition fight against ISIS in Syria,” he added, referencing Moscow’s Ministry of Defense.

Earlier, in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper that was published on Wednesday, Gen. Gerasimov said the US was re-training former Daesh militants under the banner of the New Syrian Army and other armed groups.

The general’s claims center on a US military base at Tanf, a strategic Syrian highway border crossing with Iraq in the south of the country, which the Pentagon describes as a temporary base for training partner forces to fight Daesh.

According to Gen Gerasimov, Russian satellites and drones have spotted militant brigades at the base that were “practically Islamic State” who have switched allegiance and are trained to destabilize the already-turbulent country.

Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial withdrawal of Russian troops from Syria, signalling the wind-down of an intervention that helped turn the conflict in favor of Bashar Assad.

Russia launched an air campaign in Syria in September 2015 with the aim of “stabilizing” Assad’s government after a series of defeats.

US-backed rebels have sought to topple Assad, but have had a common enemy in Daesh, which this year lost almost all the territory it held in Syria and Iraq.

“We urge all actors operating in Syria to remain focused on the very real threat of ISIS and to carry out good-faith efforts to bring peace and stability to war-torn Syria,” Lt. Col. Andrews told Arab News.

Jennifer Cafarella, a Syria expert at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Gen. Gerasimov was trying to discredit the Pentagon and said he needed to back up his claims with evidence.

“This is clearly a Russian operation targeted to discredit America’s local partners in Syria in order to gain additional leverage,” Cafarella told Arab News.

“Can the Russians offer any ‘proof’ and how they classify ISIS fighters? Does it mean any military aged male in ISIS-held terrain? I would actually regard it as a sign of success for the US to recruit from available pools of recruits that ISIS could otherwise access.”

On Dec. 15, Israeli soldiers shot 14-year-old Palestinian Mohammad Fadel Tamimi in the face at close range during protests in Nabi Saleh, a small village of about 600 people some 20 miles north of occupied Jerusalem. He was part of a non-violent protest by dozens of Palestinians against the meaningless US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Even though the teenager has been in a coma ever since, the story has been pushed aside by Israeli and American media, explained away as a consequence of Palestinians’ own actions. In the case of Nabi Saleh, the media pay even less attention because residents there have been protesting Israel’s illegal occupation almost every week for years.

Most of the residents are part of the extended Tamimi family, and the majority of the population have been seriously injured or killed by Israeli soldiers in those protests. Nabi Saleh lives the nightmare of Israel’s atrocities every day.

In 1977, Orthodox Jews who came to Israel from Europe through Israeli government subsidies founded the illegal settlement of Halamish on Nabi Saleh’s lush farmlands. The heavily armed and violent Halamish settlers have terrorized the residents of Nabi Saleh ever since.

From the day he was born until the moment he was struck in his face by a rubber-coated steel bullet, Tamimi lived every day of his life in this atmosphere of Israeli terrorism and the constant threat of Halamish violence. American and Israeli media have marginalized the story and put it into a context that defines events there as a consequence of Palestinian aggression against Israeli soldiers.

In fact, every day Palestinians are brutalized, beaten, arrested on fake charges that are never brought to trial, and portrayed by Israeli and American media as “terrorists.” They are protesting against the real terrorism they face every day at the hands of the Israeli military and armed settlers.

As Tamimi lay in a coma breathing with the help of an oxygen machine, protests resumed in Nabi Saleh, but this time something happened that forced the world to take notice. Heavily armed Israeli soldiers gathered around as villagers mounted another protest against the theft of their land, years of brutality, Halamish terrorism and the shooting of Tamimi the week before.

One of his cousins, 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi, slapped armed soldiers on their arms and yelled at them to leave her home. She has faced off against Israeli soldiers since she was only 8 years old. Her relatives did what Palestinians have been doing for years: They videotaped the confrontation on their mobile phones. The next day, the video went viral and Western media could not deny its existence.

Israeli and Palestinian civil rights organizations have been documenting a new trend in violence by Israeli soldiers and settlers against Palestinian children. It is a new form of Israeli collective punishment, which is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Israel has been destroying the homes of Palestinians accused (but never convicted) of engaging in violence against its soldiers.

Now it is targeting children of Palestinian protesters. According to Israeli human rights watchdog B’Tselem, there is a “clear policy” of arresting Palestinian children to punish their parents who are involved in non-violent protests. The children are arrested and exposed to violence during their interrogations and detention.

The day after Ahed’s video went viral, Israeli soldiers kicked down the door of her home and arrested her, accusing her of fomenting violence. Concerned by rising criticism that it is targeting children, Israel has launched a PR campaign to inundate YouTube with videos that mock her and accuse her of being an “actress” staging the protests.

The campaign does not address the violence caused by Israeli soldiers and settlers, instead depicting them as the victims. It does not point out that no charges have ever been filed against Halamish settler terrorists involved in violence against Palestinian civilians.

Despite the heavily financed Israeli campaign, Ahed has pushed the Palestinian struggle for justice to the frontlines of public awareness, with no budget. She is just one of hundreds of Palestinian children who are standing up to Israel’s powerful military and its brutal oppression. That is a story no real human being can ignore.

In a televised broadside, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to “disappoint America in all arenas,” and unfavorably compared Donald Trump to predecessor Ronald Reagan.

“Reagan was more powerful and smarter than Trump, and he was a better actor in making threats, and he also moved against us and they shot down our plane,” said Khamenei in Wednesday’s speech, referring to the gunning down of an Iran Air passenger jet carrying 290 people on-board in 1988, which the US has always insisted was an accident.

“But Reagan is gone and, according to our beliefs, he now faces God’s retribution, while Iran has made great advances in all areas since Reagan’s time. This trend will continue under the current American president and any hopes on their part that the Islamic Republic would back off or weaken is futile.”

Khamenei, 78, was the President of Iran for almost the entirety of Reagan’s two terms, before ascending to his current position as the Islamic Republic’s head of state in 1989.

“But Reagan is gone and, according to our beliefs, he now faces God’s retribution, while Iran has made great advances in all areas since Reagan’s time. This trend will continue under the current American president and any hopes on their part that the Islamic Republic would back off or weaken is futile.”

Khamenei, 78, was the President of Iran for almost the entirety of Reagan’s two terms, before ascending to his current position as the Islamic Republic’s head of state in 1989.

In a related message, the Supreme Leader accused the US of “supporting ISIS,” backing Saudi Arabia’s “tyrannical ruling family” and helping perpetrate “Zionist atrocities in Palestine.”

“The U.S. gov. commits oppression inside the U.S., too. U.S. police murder black women, men, & children for no justifiable reason, and the murderers are acquitted in U.S. courts. This is their judicial system! And they slam other countries’ and our country’s judicial system,” added Khamenei, ending the post with the hashtag #BLM – Black Lives Matter – to signal Iran’s support for the grassroots minority rights movement.

After a period of reconciliation under President Barack Obama, and the relatively moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, relations between Tehran and Washington thawed, culminating in the nuclear deal signed in 2015, which eased sanctions against the country in exchange for restrictions on its atomic program. Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the agreement, and vowed to reverse it, while also painting Tehran as America’s greatest adversary in the region.

(RFE/RL) — Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko has been replaced as chairman of the 2018 World Cup organizing committee amid pressure over allegations of state-sponsored doping in Russia.

Aleksei Sorokin, currently the chief executive of the committee, will take over the chairmanship, giving him the most visible role in the globally watched games scheduled for June and July, while Mutko will remain involved in logistical planning, the organizating committee announced on December 27.

“Mutko will continue to oversee the preparations of the regions as well as coordinate the construction of the necessary infrastructure,” the committee said in a statement that expressed “great regret” over his departure.

Mutko’s resignation comes two days after he said he would temporarily step down as president of the Russian Football Union while fighting a lifetime ban from the Olympics.

Investigations by the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee alleged Mutko was involved in a state-sponsored doping program during the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

Mutko, 59, who served as Russia’s sports minister during those Olympic games, has strongly denied all doping allegations.

Olympics authorities didn’t accuse Mutko of being personally involved in doping, but they banned him from the Olympics for life, saying he and his ministry bore overall responsibility for “failure to respect” anti-doping rules.

Until this week, Mutko had retained his high-level posts in Russia throughout the nation’s two-year doping scandal, even receiving a promotion to deputy prime minister after the allegations emerged in 2015.

Hundreds of Russian athletes have been banned from the Olympics and other major sports events in the wake of the scandal.

Mutko maintains that Russian athletes were clean at the 2014 Olympic Games and that the state played no role in individual doping cases, despite documentation cited by Olympic authorities. Russia maintains that the blame for doping rests on individual athletes and their coaches.

On December 27, Mutko said he has filed a claim in the Court of Arbitration for Sport contesting his Olympic ban.

Mutko had been defiant at the World Cup draw in Moscow earlier this month, dismissing calls for him to leave his role as front-man for soccer’s most important tournament.

But FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, has faced calls to open disciplinary proceedings against Mutko from sports officials around the world concerned about the serious doping allegations against Russia.

FIFA did not mention the doping questions in a statement acknowledging Mutko’s resignation, which thanked the Russian minister for his “invaluable contribution to the preparations for the competition so far.”

Russia opens the World Cup against Saudi Arabia on June 14 in Moscow, which is also where the final game will be staged on July 15.

The games will be played in 11 cities around the country. Authorities have been building or modernizing facilities in preparation with a budget of about $11 billion.

By Michael Lelyveld

China’s government has cancelled a ban on coal-fired heating in northern cities after blaming local officials for “hasty” gas conversions that left residents without winter fuel.

On Dec. 4, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) sent an “extra urgent” notice authorizing 28 northern cities to resume using coal for winter heating if their mandated projects for switching to natural gas or electricity remained incomplete.

The about-face on the government’s order to replace coal with cleaner fuel in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in time for the heating season was first reported by the independent daily The Paper following complaints from citizens who were left with no heat at all.

Public anger boiled over after China Youth Daily published video images of children at a primary school in Hebei province’s Quyang county who were forced to sit outside in the winter sun because their classrooms were too cold.

The Ministry of Education demanded “immediate” action to provide heating after students at another primary school showed signs of frostbite, the official English-language China Daily said.

The incidents have been a major embarrassment for the government’s environmental policy, which has sought to avoid a repeat of last winter’s smog crisis with a crash program of fuel conversions in areas where coal burning affected air quality in Beijing.

A joint government and municipal action plan for the 28 cities was released as far back as last March, calling for Beijing, Tianjin, Langfang and Baoding to ban small coal- fired furnaces by the end of October, among a host of other measures for the region.

“Areas in these cities will be declared completely ‘coal free,'” the official Xinhua news agency reported on March 31.

But it wasn’t until Aug. 24 that the MEP issued its own 143-page action plan, laying out a series of tough targets and penalties.

The goals included a 25-percent cut in smog-causing particles known as PM2.5 for the region by the end of this year compared with 2012, echoing targets first set by the government in 2013.

To meet the standards, some coal-fired industries were ordered to suspend operations completely for the winter, while others faced steep production cuts.

The MEP plan also required 3 million households in the 28 cities to substitute gas or electricity for coal as a heating source for this winter, which runs from mid-November to mid- March.

By mid-September, the fuel switching had turned into an outright coal ban.

“In the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and nearby areas, 28 cities will now use only natural gas, electricity and renewable energy for heating,” Xinhua reported at the time.

Scramble for heating equipment

The new goals touched off a scramble for new boilers, heating equipment, distribution networks, power lines and gas connections.

“The construction of the necessary pipelines and storage tanks to support this dash for gas at the household level has been an immense task and cost billions of yuan,” said China energy expert Philip Andrews-Speed at National University of Singapore in a recent post.

But the wholesale replacement of entire urban heating systems by the deadline proved too big a challenge.

“It doesn’t matter how much money is available and how much governments push,” Andrews-Speed said by email. “It is not possible to transform urban energy systems in a few months.”

One official at a power plant owned by China Huadian Corp. stated the obvious in a quote cited by China Daily.

“To replace coal with clean energy for heating in all of Hebei is a huge project, and it takes time,” the official said.

Government pressure to meet the deadlines apparently outweighed realistic assessments of how long the conversions would take, leaving consumers with no heat when winter began.

In areas where gas service became available, the sudden jump in demand produced price spikes and shortages.

As early as mid-October, the government’s top planning agency warned local authorities and petroleum producers that supplies would be “insufficient” during peak demand periods.

A cold winter would make the “supply and demand situation … more severe,” the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Oct. 16.

By the first week of December, prices for liquefied natural gas (LNG) had jumped 60.2 percent from September levels, the Communist Party-affiliated Global Times said.

Last week, the NDRC reported that gas consumption through November soared 18.9 percent from a year earlier to 209.7 billion cubic meters (bcm), while domestic gas production of 133.8 bcm rose only 10.5 percent.

Despite the sequence of decisions and statements from the central government, some state media tried to blame local officials for the fiasco.

“That the supply of gas has been insufficient to meet the demand has resulted in many residents in north China’s Hebei province not having the heating they need, which indicates local policymakers were too hasty in implementing their gas-for-coal energy policy,” said China Daily on Dec. 5.

“What has gone wrong in northern China is the way this laudatory policy has been implemented,” it said.

Blame the NDRC

Despite efforts to shift the blame, responsibility for the poor policy coordination seemed to fall squarely on the NDRC and the central government.

The episode is reminiscent of the NDRC’s effort in 2010 to meet five-year energy efficiency targets by cutting electricity to homes, factories and even hospitals as the deadline approached at the end of the year.

“As with the energy intensity reduction program for 2005-2010, central and local governments are struggling to meet at the last moment the targets set by the 2012-2017 air pollution reduction program,” Andrews-Speed said. “Unintended consequences are the side effect.”

It may be too soon to tell how long the disruptions will last, but the blunders are likely to result in a cycle of higher energy costs, shortages and renewed coal consumption that could go on for months.

There were signs last week that the problems were spreading beyond the northern areas.

In central China’s Hubei province, the government of Wuhan city imposed a limit on household gas supplies of 150 cubic meters per month after shortages reduced pressure in pipelines, threatening safe operation, state media said.

In another Xinhua report suggesting less impact, the MEP said Sunday that 5.6 percent of villages in the northern region had encountered gas shortages after completing conversions from coal.

In November, the region experienced a 41.2-percent drop in PM2.5 concentrations from a year earlier, the MEP said.

On Monday, the MEP said that 96,000 households that had no heat on Dec. 15 had now been supplied either with gas, coal or electric heaters, China Daily reported.

The impact on gas supplies has already driven coal prices to new highs. On Dec. 11, coal futures hit a record of 689.8 yuan (U.S. $104.86) per metric ton, Reuters said.

But in some cities where old boilers and furnaces have been scrapped, a return to coal for heating this winter may prove difficult.

In its criticism of “local policymakers,” China Daily also slammed city officials for not conducting “thorough investigations in advance” and having the foresight to know that the central government’s fuel-switching initiative might not come off as planned.

“Some of the coal-burning boilers might also have been kept in operation to provide heating when necessary if there was an insufficient supply of gas,” the paper said.

Unexpected, indirect costs

Aside from the suffering and expense it has caused, the bureaucratic debacle may result in a host of unexpected and indirect costs.

China’s state-owned petroleum companies have been ordered to take costly steps and “keep natural gas prices basically stable” to ease the sudden gas shortages, according to Xinhua.

In one instance, China National Offshore Oil Co. (CNOOC) is spending U.S. $10 million (66 million yuan) to lease two LNG tankers for increased storage to meet emergency demand, Reuters reported on Dec. 6.

“LNG tankers are not only among the most expensive merchant vessels to hire, but keeping the fuel super-chilled is energy intensive and costly, much more expensive than putting crude on an oil tanker for later sale,” the report said.

CNOOC may take a beating on the deal because LNG prices are likely to drop by the time it sells the stored gas, according to Reuters.

CNOOC is planning to send over 100 trucks to make round- the-clock deliveries of LNG from southern import terminals in Guangdong province to the cities in the north, China Daily said.

The fuel mix-up may be a setback for the air quality gains that Beijing hoped to achieve this winter by closing its coal-fired power plants and switching to gas.

On Dec. 7, Beijing’s City Management Commission said the NDRC had “ordered an immediate restart to coal-fueled generators to ease the shortage of liquefied natural gas in northern China,” Caixin magazine said.

The backtracking on coal-fired power in the capital may bring the consequences of the crisis full circle after the 28 northern cities were ordered to switch fuels in order to reduce the smog in Beijing.

By Hadi Azmi and Prapti Rahman

A Bangladeshi film director and 18 others who were arrested in Kuala Lumpur over the weekend will face charges of violating Malaysia’s tough security law, allowing authorities to hold them up to 28 days without trial, officials said Wednesday.

Film director Anonno Mamun and 18 fellow Bangladeshis were arrested at a condominium unit in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday after authorities received information that they were they were involved in human trafficking under the pretext of organizing a cultural event, police said.

The 19 suspects were detained under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (SOSMA), a law that was created to thwart internal security issues, including acts of terrorism, Shaharuddin Abdullah, chief of the Dang Wangi police district, which covers Kuala Lumpur, told BenarNews.

“It is currently under investigation by Bukit Aman,” Shaharuddin said, referring to the Malaysian police headquarters. “They were detained under SOSMA.”

SOSMA replaced the controversial Internal Security Act, which allowed for detention of up to two years without requiring authorities to present the suspect in court.

If found guilty, the defendants could face up to 15 years in prison, authorities said.

The film director had travelled to the Malaysian capital from Dhaka on Dec. 13 along with 57 people, including singers and artists, for the Cinematic Bangladeshi Nights entertainment event. It was held at a building in downtown Kuala Lumpur on Dec. 23.

The event’s anchor, Debashish Biswas, told BenarNews that he found it “very suspicious” to see Mamun with so many people during his arrival at the airport in Kuala Lumpur.

“Everything seemed fishy,” he said. “But the organizer asked us not to get worried.”

Bangladeshi celebrities entertained the crowd of about 2,600 during the event, Biswas said, adding he was told by some of the undocumented Bangladeshi workers that they had paid their “handlers” the equivalent of U.S. $3,100 in taka, the Bangladeshi currency.

Muhammad Shahidul Islam, Bangladesh’s ambassador to Malaysia, said he found the incident embarrassing.

“The organizers had not informed the Bangladesh High Commission before the program,” he said, explaining that the diplomatic mission in Kuala Lumpur learned of the incident only after Mamun’s arrest.

The Cinematic Bangladeshi Nights event brought Bangladeshi acts such as singers Asif Akbar, Ankhi Alamgir and HM Rana, rock band Chirkutt, actors Anika Kabir Shokh, Mamnun Hasan Emon, Sakhawat Hossain Nirob and Misty Zannat, and a few models.

Muslim-majority Malaysia, home to about 32 million people, has about 2 million legally registered foreign workers and a similar number of undocumented immigrants, according to non-governmental organizations.

In July this year, Malaysia swept up more than 5,000 foreigners in a crackdown on illegal immigration. Bangladeshis and Indonesians topped the list of detained undocumented workers, officials said.

Southeast Asia’s third biggest economy after Indonesia and Thailand, Malaysia became a popular destination for migrant workers after it posted robust economic growth in the past few years.

In a statement released in August, the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights said that because of the crackdown in Malaysia, many migrants were living in fear.

“Poor treatment by law enforcement, including indefinite detention in abysmal conditions, are urgent concerns as well,” Emmi De Jesus, a Philippine lawmaker, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur after a four-day fact-finding visit.

Hareez Lee in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report.