In addition to our old enemies in the form of castes and creeds, we are going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing political creeds. Will Indians place the country above their creed or will they place creed above country? I do not know. But this much is certain that if the parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be lost forever. This eventuality we must all resolutely guard against. We must be determined to defend our independence with the last drop of our blood — Dr.BR Ambedkar’s , Constituent Assembly (November 25, 1949)

India’s economy is booming but Muslims continue to suffer great economic deprivation. Muslims are the second largest demographic of India, with nearly 14 per cent of the country’s population or roughly 172 million people. Their situation is so dire that, for them, economic reforms need precedence over all other amelioration policies. In fact improvement in social and educational conditions as also the much talked about gender reforms can automatically follow as a byproduct of economic redemption.

The discrimination in the workplace is phenomenal. Muslims constitute between 12 and 14 percent of our population, but on almost every measure of success — number of Muslims in the IAS, the police, and the army; the number of Muslim-owned companies in the top 500 Indian firms; the percentage of Muslim CEOs or even, national newspaper editors — they lag far behind their statistical entitlements. And then the millions of common Muslims who live in abject poverty and abysmal living conditions.

By keeping Muslims backward India is depriving itself of one fifth of its valuable talents. The economic problems are not likely to be solved with civil rights remedies, but they could be relieved with public and private action that encourages economic redevelopment.

The economic agenda is more urgent for the community than most of the reforms which the government is contemplating because they involve a miniscule section of their population. The whole chorus of gender reforms gives an impression that the civil code is the prime urgency of the community and that it is a magic bullet for its multiple problems. But this is far from realty. In fact, Most Muslims see these gender reforms as a subterfuge for deflecting attention from the most pressing discriminations that the community is facing on the economic front.

Muslims, have the lowest literacy rate and highest percentage of illiterates aged beyond seven years (42.72 percent) according to 2011 Census data. The number of illiterates is 36.4 per cent for Hindus, 32.49 per cent for Sikhs, 28.17 per cent for Buddhists and 25.66 per cent for Christians, according to 2011 Census data on “education level by religious community” for age seven years and above.

In the literacy graph also, Muslims feature at the lowest among other religious communities. The Jain community has 94.9 percent literacy rate, Christians have 84.5 percent, Sikhs 75.5 percent, Hindus 73.3 percent and Muslims stand at 68.5 percent. The literacy rate among Muslims is lower than the national average of 74.04 percent. The data also reveals that a meager 2.76 percent Muslims are educated till graduation level or above.

Despite almost trebling in the decade ending 2010 – from 5.2% to 13.8% – the rate of Muslim enrollment in higher education trailed the national figure of 23.6% and that of other backward classes (22.1%) and scheduled castes (18.5%). Scheduled tribes lagged Muslims by 0.5%.In proportion to their population, Muslims were worse-off than scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Muslims comprise 14% of India’s population but account for 4.4% of students enrolled in higher education, according to the 2014-15 All India Survey on Higher Education.

The conditions for India’s Muslims have continued to worsen; and this is the prime reason for the social and economic degeneration of their community. According to a report compiled by The Economist “No serious official effort has been made to assess the lot of India’s Muslims since the publication in 2006 of a study ordered by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Called the Sachar report, it broadly showed Muslims to be stuck at the bottom of almost every economic or social heap. Though heavily urban, Muslims had a particularly low share of public (or any formal) jobs, school and university places, and seats in politics. They earned less than other groups, were more excluded from banks and other finance, spent fewer years in school and had lower literacy rates. Pitifully few entered the army or the police force.”

Though heavily urban, Muslims had a particularly low share of public (or any formal) jobs, school and university posts, and positions in politics. They hold only 4.9 percent of government jobs and only 3.2 percent of the jobs in the country’s security agencies. They earned less than other groups, were more excluded from the financial world, spent fewer years in school and had lower literacy rates. Few entered the army or the police force. Pitifully Muslims account for 40 per cent of India’s prison population.

The inequality between Hindu majority and Muslim minority continues to widen further. A study by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) called Employment and Unemployment Situation Among Major Religious Groups in India, has found the average monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) of a Hindu household in 2009-10 was Rs1,123 while that for a Muslim household was only Rs980.

According to a World Bank report in 2013, nearly 34 percent of all Muslims in urban India were below the poverty line compared to 19 per cent of Hindus. Between 1983 and 2009-10, the poverty rate for urban Hindus declined by 52 percent, but the rate of decline for urban Muslims was only at 39 percent.

The government owes an obligation to act. It makes both good economics and politics, if a fraction of its new economic gain can be used to correct the negative trajectory of Muslim reality in India. The relative economic condition of Muslims has suffered significantly compared to everyone else, in spite of spectacular growth in the country’s economy. Poor Muslims are much poorer than poor Hindus and can easily be bracketed with the lowest Hindu castes and Dalits. Muslims are stuck at the bottom of almost every economic or social heap.

The government has been aggressively pursuing the agenda of reforms in the personal laws of Muslims claiming that it has genuine concern for Muslim women. Economic backwardness is a much harder and bitter reality for Muslims and the State can’t turn its eyes off it particularly when it is training so many telescopes on the community’s social condition. It will amount to questioning the purity of the nationalism of Muslims, the same way the upper castes have questioned the purity of spiritualism of the so called backward castes.

The marginalization of Muslims in India has been well documented. In the mid-2000s, the Indian government commissioned two studies. The Sachar Committee Report of 2006 and the Misra Commission Report of 2007 highlighted a higher prevalence of discrimination towards Muslims and socio-economic deprivation among them as compared to other religious groups.

Almost none of the recommendations have been implemented nor did Muslims expect them to be even under a Congress-led government that uses Muslims as vote banks. The Sachar report states that Muslims have not “shared equally in the benefits” of India’s economic growth and are “seriously lagging behind in terms of most of the human development indicators.”According to it, Muslims are not just poorer but also less educated: 25% of 6- to 14-year-olds have either never gone to school or dropped out their literacy rate is 59% (compared to 65% nationally) and they are only 4% of students at top universities. They also hold only 5% of government jobs.

Muslims have traditionally been craftsmen and Hindus traders. Most craft skills have been overtaken by mechanization which has rendered skills of most Muslim craftsmen as obsolete. These people have lost their traditional livelihood. On the contrary Hindu traders and businessmen have prospered from the country’s booming economic growth.
The Post Sachar Evaluation Committee headed by Prof. Amitabh Kundu, in its report of 2014, highlighted the fact that the state of Muslim education is a matter of great concern. The Graduation Attainment Rates (GARs) and Mean Years of Schooling (MYS) amongst Muslims are very low, and Dropout Rates are very high the Committee stated.

These can have long term adverse effect for the community which in turn will have overall impact in the larger national economy. It can also engineer inter generational economic stress.

It is nothing short of an admission of our collective failure as a nation, when after 70 years of independence, constitutional safeguards and several welfare measures, a report of the Steering Committee, Planning Commission), Government of India titled ‘Empowerment of Minorities’ states that:

“For effective implementation of any welfare policy, the alienation and disempowerment among Muslims needs to acknowledged and challenged. A sense of persecution and general insecurity and fear of state institutions adds to non-participation and non-productivity.”

The recent report prepared by the Maulana Azad Education Foundation (MAEF) that works under the Ministry of Minority Affairs has painted a grim picture of them in the education sector. According to the 2011 census data, the report says that the literacy rate among Muslims was 68.53 percent while the national average was 72.98 percent.

Only 7 percent of young people in the country who had reached the age of 20 had a degree or a diploma and this was 4 percent in the case of Muslims. The committee said that Muslims were the “educationally most disadvantaged community” and the main reasons were financial backwardness along with the dearth of educational institution
Since the constitution and the courts have ruled out religion to be any sort of criteria for assessing backwardness, minority groups were not identified as “backward” for the purpose of special safeguards for the disadvantaged. There are three main reasons advanced: (i) it was not compatible with secularism; (ii) since Muslims don’t have a caste system it was difficult to use the benchmark of social backwardness for providing them special relief ; and (iii) it would be antithetical to the principles of national unity.

In India, reservations have been formulated on the principles of social justice enshrined in the constitution. The Indian Constitution provides for reservation for historically marginalized communities, now known as backward castes. But the Constitution does not define any of the categories, identified for the benefit of reservation. One of the most important bases for reservation is the interpretation of the word ‘class’.

Experts argue that social backwardness is a fluid and evolving category, with caste as just one of the markers of discrimination. Gender, culture, economic conditions, educational backwardness, official policies other factors can influence social conditions, and could be the cause of deprivation and social backwardness. Moreover, the notion of social backwardness itself could undergo change as the political economy transforms from a caste-mediated, closed system to a more open-ended, globally integrated and market-determined system marked by high mobility and urbanization. We are seeing this transformation at a much more exponential pace than our constitution makers may have visualized.

In one of its recent and well known judgment, the Supreme Court has made an important point about positive discrimination in India. Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Rohinton F. Nariman of the Supreme Court said:

“An affirmative action policy that keeps in mind only historical injustice would certainly result in under protection of the most deserving backward class of citizens, which is constitutionally mandated. It is the identification of these new emerging groups that must engage the attention of the state.”

Backwardness is condition which is an outcome of several independent circumstances, which may be social, educational, economic, cultural, or even political. We must actively consider evolving new benchmarks for assessing it, reducing reliance on caste-based definition of backwardness. This alone can enable newer groups to get benefit of affirmative action through social reengineering or else the tool of affirmative action will breed new injustices .Muslims can become eligible for at least some forms of positive discrimination among new “backward” groups.

India has 3,743 “backward” castes and sub castes making up about half the population. So the potential for caste warfare is endless. The result, British journalist Edward Luce wrote in his book In Spite of the Gods, is “the most extensive system of patronage in the democratic world.” With such a rich gravy train, it’s no wonder the competition turns lethal. The pervasive discrimination of Muslims in India must compel us to re-examine facile assumptions about social backwardness stemming from historically over-simplified categories.

The animus of Indian Hindus against Muslims is based on hard statistics. In 1950 (shortly after independence), West Pakistan (now Pakistan) had 85.5% Muslims, whereas by 2010, the percentage had gone up to 96.5%. In 1950, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had 85% Muslim population, whereas in 2010 it had gone up to 89.6%. Contrast that with India, a non-Muslim country, where the Muslim population between these two dates went up from 10% to 13.5%. In most Middle Eastern Muslim countries, the Muslim population is 98% to 99%, with all non-Muslims having been driven out or eliminated.

The founder of Banaras Hindu University Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya also symbolized the multiculturism of India. Malaviya declared:

“India is not a country of the Hindus only. It is a country of the Muslims, the Christians and the Parsees too. The country can gain strength and develop itself only when the people of India live in mutual goodwill and harmony.”

In a larger landscape of increasing communalization, where Muslims continue to face social discrimination and exclusion in education, housing, employment and development schemes, the government should economically and socially empower the community so that it comes out with its own appropriate solutions for overall social reforms.

All political parties at the helm of the government have resorted to” strategic secularism” to secure a so-called Muslim vote bank – an approach that has stoked resentment among the country’s Hindu majority while doing little to improve Muslims’ wellbeing.

India’s Muslims will be hit particularly hard, with further social and political marginalization undermining their economic prospects. Given the size of India’s Muslim population, this is bound to drag down overall economic development.

Writing in the quiet seclusion of a British prison in 1944 (his ninth term of imprisonment for revolting against the British India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru contemplated “the diversity and unity of India:

“It is tremendous (he wrote); it is obvious; it lies on the surface and anybody can see it….. It is fascinating to find how the Bengalis, the Canarese, the Malayalis, the Sindhis, the Punjabis, the Pathans, the Kashmiris, the Rajputs, and the great central block comprising of Hindustani – speaking people, have retained their particular characteristics for hundreds of years, have still more or less the same virtues and failings of which old traditions of record tell us, and yet have been throughout these ages distinctively Indian, with the same national heritage and the same set of moral and mental qualities.”

Nehru added almost lyrically in his great book, the ‘Discovery of India’ the following sentiment:

“Some kind of a thread of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization. That unity was not conceived as something imposed from outside, a standardization of externals or even of beliefs. It was something deeper and, within its fold, the widest tolerance of beliefs and customs was practiced and every variant acknowledged and even encouraged.”

It’s silly to try to consign the great multiplicity of our lives to one single identity, even one as resplendent as the Indian tradition.

At the end of the cold war, Francis Fukuyama’s thesis was that the liberal idea, rather than liberal practice, had become universal. He believed that no ideology is in a position to challenge liberal democracy. Yet, as Fuku¬yama contends, even as we desire peaceful lives, we as individuals are mostly restless and passionate beings. For Fukuyama, our primordial instincts for struggle are such that even if the world were full of liberal democracies people would struggle for the sake of struggle, out of boredom with peace.

It is time that instead of a constant search for a new struggle and restlessness with peace we strive for a stable and model democracy-where the colours in the painter’s palette find full expression.

*Moin Qazi began his early career as a development journalist .While still at college he began writing on Issues relating to the plight of child labourers. He did his post graduation in English and English with distinction from Nagpur University in 1980 and obtained his PhD in English from Los Altos University in 1989 and in Economics from Nagpur University in 2012. An accomplished poet, he has contributed to Indian Pen, The Independent, The Illustrated Weekly of India, Kavya Bharati, The Muse etc. His poems have also been set to music by Hollywood companies. He received Hon D Litt at the World Congress of Poets held at Istanbul in 1989. He has contributed articles to Indian and foreign publications including The Times of India, Statesman, Indian Express, The Economic Times, Financial Express, The Hindustan Times, Business Standard, The Hindu, Mainstream, Asian Age, Far Eastern Economic Review and Asiaweek (Hong Kong) Daily Sabah (Turkey), Moroccan Times, Chicago Monitor, Sudan Vision and Times of Malta.He has authored several books on religion, rural finance, culture and handicrafts.

By Dr. S.Chandrasekharan

Prince Zeid bin Raád Zeid al-Hussain, the current United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in an interview to the BBC called for an international criminal investigation into the perpetrators of what he called the “shockingly brutal attacks”against Muslim ethnic groups in the northern Rakhine in Myanmar.

It is perfectly fine for the UNHCR chief to make such a statement, but he certainly exceeded his brief in saying that the possibility of genocide charges against the State Councillor Aung San Suu Kyi and the military chief some time in future exists. What is more, he even found fault with her for failing to use the term “Rohingya” to the Muslim ethnic group. He was also of the view that Suu Kyi could have done more to try and stop the military campaign.

I am sure the UNHCR chief is aware of the 2008 constitution and the limited powers the civilian government has in dealing with law and order of the State. For him to call for trying Suu Kyi for genocide charges is outrageous to say the least. It looks that the UN Human Rights Chief is prejudiced and he has no right continue to deal with the crisis in northern Rakhine State. He could perhaps go back and see the rampant human rights violations taking place in his own country and in the surrounding regions before accusing others of genocide charges.

Perhaps for a change, he could divert his attention to the killing of a large number of innocent civilians in Yemen by indiscriminate and ruthless bombing by the Saudis. Will he?

The Myanmar government is really worried that United Nations may interfere in the Rakhine State on the excuse of invoking its responsibility to protect. The National Security Adviser U Thaung Tun said explicitly so that it is a very dangerous situation for his country and added that China and Russia would stand by them.

As expected, an UN resolution in the first week of December expressing grave concern and indication of likely commission of crimes against humanity in Rakhine State was not supported by China. It looks that both the western countries and the international agencies are bent upon throwing Mynmar back into the lap of the Chinese and they may as well succeed.

The United Nations Chief ( not the UNHCR chief) had independently demanded that Myanmar should take four steps in dealing with the crisis. First, is the halt of the military activities and second – offering humanitarian aide to the refugees who remain on the ground – three repatriating refugees who have fled the state and fourth- fulfilling the recommendations of the Advisory Commission chaired by Kofi Annan.

It is believed that Suu Kyi, given her constraints is doing her best in implementing all the demands. The army operations have been halted much earlier though the flow of refugees had continued for a while. A number of panels have been created, to implement the report of Kofi Annan and to improve the situation in Rakhine state. The latest is the establishment of a ten member “Advisory Team for the committee for the implementation of recommendations of Rakhine State” consisting of five Burmese and five foreigners.

Among the foreigners, a notable inclusion is that of Bill Richardson who had run unsuccessfully for president in 2008 in USA, former Thai Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, and Roel Petrus Meyer a former South African Defence Minister.

Dominic Stillhart, director of operations of ICRC who had recently visited the northern Rakhine State opined that the situation has “definitely” stabilized save a few sporadic incidents but that “tensions are huge between the communities.” Stillhart had visited Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathdaung where the ICRC is providing food, water and other aid to about 150000 people of the estimated 300000 people still remaining. In due course the ICRC is expected to reach out to others too.

After lengthy discussions between Myanmar and Bangladesh, it has been agreed that Myanmar would take back the refugees. The understanding is that there will be no restriction on the number of those who would be willing to return as long as those who want to return provide bonafide evidence of their residence in Myanmar. The problem will be that many of the refugees may not wish to go back. A recent survey conducted in the refugee camps in Bangladesh found that just 11 percent of the refugees wanted to return to Myanmar.

It looks that there is a conspiracy at the international level to name and shame Suu Kyi which is regrettable.

By Dr Subhash Kapila*

The United States in end 2017 is faced with a grave legacy challenge of the South China Sea maritime expanse under illegal military occupation of China as a result of US strategic complacency in the past decade. This has resulted in a grave Chinese security threat to Indo Pacific security as a whole.

Chinese aggression in takeover of the South China Sea was a symptom of the larger Chinese itch to prompt an United States exit from the Western Pacific and dent American image in Asian capitals that the United States was not a credible strategic partner in countervailing a rising China.

United States policy establishment with its adherence in the past decade to ‘China Hedging Strategy’ and ‘Risk Aversion’ policy priorities stood as a passive spectator as China in a calibrated strategy embarked on annexation with superior military force of islands in the South China Sea whose sovereignty lay with Vietnam and the Philippines. These soon were fortified militarily.

China to achieve full-spectrum dominance over the South China Sea proceded to construct a series of ‘Artificial Islands’ bristling with naval jetties, airstrips and sizeable electronic surveillance facilities. Combat jet fighters and air-defence infrastructure is being added as an ongoing project. International media has provided a wide photo-coverage evidence of China’s illegal military activities in the South China Sea expanse.

China wilfully ignored US rhetorical protests and warnings to desist from her destabilising military activities in the South China Sea. China increased its pace of completion of mastery over the South China Sea more so after The Hague Tribunal in an international ruling decreed that China’s claims to sovereignty over the South China Sea was ‘illegal’.

China’s sequential time-span of a decade to effect full-spectrum dominance of the South China Sea with the United States in a policy paralysis to checkmate China throws up two major deductions:

• China with full-spectrum dominance of the South China Sea and having designated it as a ‘Core Issue’ implying that China is willing to go to war to sustain its illegal occupation, has signalled that China is not open to any conflict –resolution dialogues on its illegal sovereignty and now military control of the South China Sea.
• China in doing so further reinforces the growing global perception that China’s propensity to use force and aggression to implement the Chinese President’s ‘Great China Dream’ will not end. China’s success in gaining mastery of South China Sea without any US checkmating could gain further momentum.

It is this backdrop of China that US President Trump’s according over-riding priority to the Indo Pacific security in his National Security Strategy 2017 directive seems to be an initial step in damage control of the attempted China’s strategic blueprint to dominate the Western Pacific, unravel the US security architecture in the region and attain complete mastery of the waterways of Asia Pacific and its maritime routes.

The same backdrop of China seems to have prompted US President Trump to designate China as an adversarial power in his National Security Strategy 2017.

The United States in 2018 and beyond is in a strategic bind over the South China Sea takeover by China. The United States cannot afford to let the China-imposed status quo prevail endlessly without appropriate ripostes as what is at stake is the wider issue of Indo Pacific security and stability. The United States has a vital national security determinant of not allowing China emerging as the hegemonistic power in Indo Pacific.

More specifically, the United States to sustain its predominance in the Western Pacific cannot allow China to have a free run in all the Seas of the Western Pacific, shake the stability and security of Japan and South Korea as vital Allies of the United States and not allow China to dent United Sates Asian image of provider of global security and stability.

Since outright use of military force to unravel China’s military mastery and control over the South China Sea is not an immediate option, The United States will now be forced to resort to a combination of multiple politico-strategic and politico-military strategies to push China into a direction of accepting that freedom of navigation of international waterways cannot be restricted by China; and further, that China cannot get away with its strategic delinquencies against regional and global security without paying unaffordable costs.

China cannot be allowed to get away with its ill-gotten gains of aggression in the South China Sea. China cannot be allowed to get away with double standards of transforming militarily the international maritime routes of the South China Sea into a ‘China Inland Sea’ and restricting navigation in international waters and at the same time expect that China should have unrestricted use of international trade routes of the Indian Ocean or the Pacific Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea.

The United States should therefore first and foremost assert and enforce the principles of free maritime navigation and use of international maritime expanse of the South China Sea and the airspace above it. To this end international naval patrols either under the United Nations flag or by a US-led coalition of both Asian and European nations ( who have an equal stake in use of South China Sea) should be used on lines of the inconsequential FONOPS of the US Navy, but more assertively.

To neutralise China’s artificial islands providing military control over the South China Sea, the United States and Asian countries should provide finances and technology to Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia to construct similar islands in the South China Sea and lease them to United States to offset Chinese local military superiority in the South China Sea.

The United States should beef-up the matching countervailing coalitions that it is helping to create in terms of the US-Japan-India Trilateral and the US-Japan-Australia- India Quadrilateral. To this should be added the Vietnam-Indonesia-Singapore Trilateral and a Australia-Indonesia-Vietnam Trilateral. Such a web of strategic groupings would deter China from dividing the region as it has attempted of ASEAN.

In this direction the creation of a formalised and structured Indo Pacific Treaty Organisation, recommended in my earlier Paper deserves special mention and consideration.

The above combination of politico-strategic and politico-military measures may be adequate warning and deterrent signals to China that Asian powers and the United States as the resident external and global power mean business. While it may not prod China to unravel its military aggression in the South China Sea but it may yet bring China to realise that its military occupation of South China Sea has not met China’s end-objectives in the South China Sea. Freedom of navigation through international waters would have been enforced and China deterred from its next aggressive step of declaring a China-ADIZ over the South China Sea.

Moving to the other dimension of China not being allowed to get away with its strategic delinquencies in the Indo Pacific without paying exorbitant costs for such activities of a power aspiring to be a Superpower, the United States must take the lead in creating strategic counter- pressure points against China. By 2018 a number of vulnerabilities have surfaced as far as China is concerned. If properly exploited by the United States these have the potential prod China not only in recoiling in the South China Sea but also rethink its Asian hegemony plans and its global Superpower aspirations.

China’s biggest vulnerability is a slowing economy and the vital component which propelled China’s exponential military rise and use of ‘Hard Power’ in the South China Sea military occupation. China derives its economic strengths mainly from its trade-links with the United States. The United States has a good grip on China’s economic jugular vein and this must now be used to effect by the United States to prompt China into second-thoughts on South China Sea.

China’s Western Frontiers in Xinjiang and Tibet are in a state of unrest ad patently vulnerable. Tibet like South China Sea is a ‘Core Issue ‘of China and so could be Xinjiang going by the brutal suppression of Uighurs there. The United States has the instruments of power to make China’s Western Frontiers unstable enough to recoil from its Eastern military adventurism in the South China Sea.

United States ‘ace card’ against China is Taiwan both on the political sense and the military sense. The United States should vocally declare that it is dispensing with its “One China” Policy and the rest of the global community would follow suit. China cannot go to war with the United States on an America dispensing with its “One China” policy. Nothing would hurt China and its ‘Core Interests”. The United States would have thus extracted a heavy price from China for its military adventurism in the South China Sea.

In conclusion, it needs to be reiterated that United States strategic complacency in being a passive spectator of China’s military occupation of the strategically vital South China Sea has been the United States most Himalayan post-World War II blunder. The United States should not accept the status quo for reasons of its sustaining onslaughts on its global predominance and its credibility in Asian capitals as the enforcer of Indo Pacific security and stability. For China to recoil in its South China Sea military aggression, the United States must use its ace-card of jettisoning its “One China” policy which China cherishes beyond everything else for reasons both political and strategic.

*Dr Subhash Kapila is a graduate of the Royal British Army Staff College, Camberley and combines a rich experience of Indian Army, Cabinet Secretariat, and diplomatic assignments in Bhutan, Japan, South Korea and USA. Currently, Consultant International Relations & Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. He can be reached at drsubhashkapila.007@gmail.com

All UN veto members have a common plan and they move accordingly. The USA and Russia, the two very important super powers, have always cooperated in regional problems —  even during the Cold War era.

Cooperation and confrontation have been the hallmark of Russo-US relations. Russia has once again accused the USA of training terrorists in Syria, this time at a military base in the south of the war-torn country. Moscow has regularly charged that Washington provides cover, if not all-out support, for militant forces fighting against Syria’s regime and civilian population.

In Syria the USA and Russia seem to be working in tandem in Syria to destabilize those Arab nations by attacking select zones without any clash between them in the choice of zones for attack.

Apparently, US-Russian relations in Syria are warmer after Trump’s arrival at the White House. Russia says it wants to end its role in Syria, but the USA is opposed to ending terror wars in West Asia and it has no plan to leave Syria. The USA is not even considering leaving Syria or West Asia for good because there is nothing that could force it to leave the region alone.

The six year-old conflict in Syria that’s killed at least 400,000 people and generated millions of refugees has entered a new phase; with diplomacy taking center stage as fighting subsides. Islamic State has been driven out of its main strongholds, and the two rival blocs that have been combating the jihadists — the Assad-Russia-Iran alliance, and a coalition headed by the USA — are now arguing over the shape of a postwar settlement.

Assad’s departure from power is supposed to be a stated US objective, even if the Trump government is more flexible than its Obama government predecessors in how its provisions are implemented. However, in fact, the USA does not want either to kill or remove Assad from power, but only wants to destabilize that Arab nation as part of their Arab Spring agenda.

Limiting or even reversing Russian influence in the Middle East continues to be the operative principles guiding the formation of US foreign policy.

Russia’s intervention in the Syrian war in 2015 on the side of Bashar al-Assad has been marred by accusations its Air Force deliberately targeting aid convoys and civilian infrastructure.

Donald Trump’s informal meetings with Vladimir Putin on November 11 on the sidelines of the recent APEC summit in Vietnam may have produced a warm attitude between the two leaders, but some fundamental policy differences between them are hard to overlook. Though the bilateral diplomatic effort has elicited optimism from officials, it does not represent any promising step forward to save tremendous numbers of lives in Syria which has been under siege from foreign forces.

In fact their statement does not provide a workable roadmap for effective American-Russian collaboration and coordination Putin’s spokesman characterized it that it “does not require comments” and is not open to multiple interpretations. The latest statement — another in a long list that have been hailed as groundbreaking efforts to end the fighting in Syria — is really not going to make a difference this time around.

On the one hand, one gets the impression that both super powers are trying stabilizing Syria, but on the other both are destabilizing the Arab nation as per their own plans without any conflicts. However, just as with the agreements reached over Syria during the last year of the Obama government, this latest statement is open to multiple interpretations.

Both sides continue to use vague language and terms deliberately left undefined to accommodate the still considerable divergences between Washington and Moscow over Syria’s future. While both sides agree on the necessity of fighting ISIS, Moscow has a much broader definition of who constitutes “associates” of ISIS — in order to encompass some of the groups that the United States views as legitimate opposition to the Assad regime. Both sides concur foreign fighters should leave, but are the Iranian Al-Quds units of the Revolutionary Guard or Hezbollah combatants permitted to remain at the invitation of the government in Damascus?

The statement heralds an imminent shift in the trajectory of US-Russia relations. The statement builds on previous modest steps that Russia and the USA have achieved: the use of de-escalation zones and limited cease-fires to tap down fighting; the continuation of deconfliction efforts to ensure that USA-Russian-backed forces don’t engage in direct clashes; the agreement to work with Jordan to stabilize southern Syria and maintain tenuous truces between pro- and anti-regime forces; and the ostensible support for the complete destruction of the Islamic State and getting a post-conflict political reconciliation process underway.

It’s only the Geneva talks that can lead to a sustainable settlement, the US officials said. A separate Russian-led process is pointless unless it contributes to that goal, and looks instead like a quick-fix arrangement to leave Assad in power and get someone else to foot the bill for reconstruction, they argued.

The flaw in that approach, the White House contends, is that Assad lacks the means to control the territory that’s nominally back under his control, while his main allies can’t afford to pick up a bill for reconstruction that may total several hundred billion dollars.

Syria under Assad remains cut off from the world economy and subject to sanctions by the UN, the USA and European Union. America and its EU allies are in agreement that there shouldn’t be any international funding for rebuilding in the Assad-controlled part of Syria, the officials said.

The question of Assad’s future has overshadowed all other sticking points in the Syrian talks, and has already caused a breakdown at the latest round in Geneva. The USA and its European and Arab partners have spent years insisting on his departure. Yet as Russian support swung the war in the Syrian president’s favor, the ‘Assad-must-go’ coalition was left without any obvious means of making that happen.

Moreover, while Russia keeps open the possibility that Assad could be re-elected as president of a post-war Syria, the United States finds it inconceivable that, in any free and fair election, Assad could win a majority of the ballots cast.

Also, the statement never mentions the “Syria National Dialogue Conference” that Moscow has now postponed until next month. The conference represents the Kremlin’s efforts, along with its partners in the Middle East, to define the “acceptable” members of the Syrian political constellation who could be brought into some sort of power-sharing agreement.

At the same time, some of those who will not be invited to or would not take part in the planned conference in Sochi are precisely the political forces that the United States hopes would play a leading role in a post-war Syria.

Meanwhile, although Trump may be prepared to accept a cooperative role for Russia in charting Syria’s future, he has almost no political support for this position in the USA — either within his own national security establishment or from Congress.

The USA will not passively “sign on” to decisions on Syria reached largely by the trilateral dialogue by Russia-Iran-Turkey— yet Russia, in turn, is not going to yield the gains that its air power has won for the Assad regime on the battlefield. The joint statement is important because it recognizes the crucial task of preventing any sort of clash between Moscow and Washington in Syria. It sends a clear message to the military establishments of both countries to take the steps necessary to avoid any accidents.

Last week, Israel carried out an air strike on a military base near Damascus. USA asks Israel to intervene and kill some Syrians on its behalf, ostensibly to help push back against Iranian influence. The US officials said it’s a priority to stop Iran and its proxies from entrenching in Syria and posing a threat to American allies, though they wouldn’t go into detail about how that can be achieved. Topping that list is Israel, which says it’s ready to take military action of its own to combat Iran’s growing clout in the neighboring country, according to Arab media.

NATO-Russia relations deteriorated in 2014 when the alliance decided to suspend cooperation with Moscow over the Ukrainian crisis that was triggered by the coup in Kiev.

Meanwhile, number of NATO troops near Russian borders tripled since 2012: Russia
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on December 22 that NATO has doubled the number of its military drills since 2012 in the vicinity of Russia’s borders, adding that Moscow is scrutinizing the exercises. Sergei said that the US missile defense system in Europe has been brought to the level of “initial operational readiness.” The number of the bloc’s servicemen deployed near Russian borders has grown from 10,000 to 40,000 in three years, he added. While the bloc conducted 282 military exercises near Russia’s borders in 2014, in 2017 the number of drills grew to 548. He also said that the NATO member-states have intensified their surveillance operations near Russia. “We resolutely suppress any attempts to violate the Russian air and sea borders,” the Minister of Defense added.

Shoigu has added that the Russian military is determined to keep the pace of modernizing hardware and acquiring new equipment next year. The armed forces will receive 10 S-400 missile systems and put in service 11 Yars missile systems. “The share of modern weapons in the Russian army should grow to 61 percent by the end of 2018, including 82 percent in the strategic nuclear forces, 46 percent in the land forces, 74 percent in the aerospace forces, 55 percent in the navy.”

Its latest effort backfired last month when Russia’s Defense Ministry attached video game footage as “irrefutable evidence” of its claims. “According to space and other types of surveillance data, there are militant units inside a US base in Tanf, Syria. They are, in fact, training there,” General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of Russia’s Armed Forces, said in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid.

ISIS is a terrorist organization banned in Russia. Gerasimov cited a BBC report about a secret US-led coalition deal to let hundreds of Islamic State (ISIS) fighters escape their former stronghold of Raqqa in October. He estimated around 350 of these fighters were in the Tanf base in southern Syria and 750 more at another base in a Kurdish-held region in the northeast. “They are de-facto IS. But, after they are worked on, they change colors and rename themselves the ‘New Syrian Army,’ or otherwise,” Gerasimov said.

The USA has emphatically refuted Russia’s latest accusations.

Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement with Syria that will give the Russian military access to an airbase on the Mediterranean for another half a century. According to the document published on the official government website, Russia will continue to lease the Khmeimim Air Base, in the Latakia province, until at least 2066. The Syrian government conceded to lend the base in Latakia province free of charge.

Hosting the leaders of Iran and Turkey at the Black Sea resort of Sochi last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared there’s a “real chance” to end the war, saying “the militants in Syria have been dealt a decisive blow.” Russia’s intervention in the war two years ago turned the tide of the conflict in Assad’s favor.

Putin plans to invite all Syrian factions to a congress in Sochi early next year.

Meanwhile, United Nations-brokered talks in Geneva — which have been underway since the civil war’s early years, though they’ve produced few results — resumed last week.

The Syrian conflict is likely to drag on and could reignite into full-scale civil war as long as President Bashar al-Assad remains in power, despite efforts by Russia to paint the conflict as winding down, according to White House officials. The Syrian faction including America’s Kurdish allies controls the largest amount of territory, besides Assad’s government.

The Syrian army is barely able to reimpose authority on territory it has recaptured, even with military support from Russia and Iran, while Assad’s allies can’t afford to rebuild the country. As the war against Islamic State winds down, some US troops are set to stay on to help the Kurds consolidate their gains.

Declarations of victory by Assad’s backers are premature, three White House officials said in a briefing for reporters. They spoke on condition of anonymity to share internal government assessments of the conflict.

The UNSC that can reign in USA and other powers forcing them to mind their own business is silent and only promotes the military interests of veto member states.

What is causing the droughts that the Iberian Peninsula regularly endures? Why are the winters sometimes mild and rainy and other times cold and dry or cold and damp? Is climate change of anthropogenic origin exerting an influence on these processes? How are these cycles affecting the productivity of terrestrial ecosystems? And finally, can these cycles be predicted and the economy thus adjusted to them? The work, published this week in Nature Communications, was led by the University of Alcal de Henares. It was conducted in collaboration with the UPV/EHU, the University of Geneva and the University of Castilla-La Mancha and offers important keys for answering some of these questions.

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a large-scale fluctuation in the atmospheric mass located between the area of subtropical high pressures and the low polar pressure in the North Atlantic basin, and is largely responsible for the periods of drought on the European continent. Previous studies show that the NAO has a great potential effect on various aspects, from carbon fixing and tree growth to fruit production and forestry pest cycles. However, the connection between long-term forestry productivity and the NAO presented some inconsistencies, such as periods in which climate cycles did not correspond to what was expected in terms of the NAO value. In their work the researchers in fact show that these inconsistencies may be originated by periodical anomalies in the surface temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean, known as the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO). They are ocean phenomena that appear in the North Atlantic and by which ocean temperatures follow a cycle that takes about 70 years in total. These temperature changes in the ocean affect the atmosphere not immediately but with some delay.

19th-century data analysed using modern tools

The work in which Asier Herrero, the post-doctoral researcher in the UPV/EHU’s FisioClimaCO2 research group, has participated in is the result of a painstaking line of research that was started over five years ago and which includes data from historical archives, climatology, statistical models and forestry ecology. “It has been a fascinating piece of work, dusting off archives of the end of the 19th century to get accurate estimates about how the productivity of forests across the Peninsula evolved over the last century and analyse them using 21st-century tools to understand the causes of the climate cycles and their consequences for the productivity of ecosystems,” explained the researchers.

The research integrates data on pine forests in various localities in the Spanish regions of Castilla-La Mancha and in Castilla y Len. “These pine forests were the means of livelihood of many rural areas from the 19th century onwards, and that was why a detailed quantification of the available resources, timber, pastures, resin, etc. used to be carried out,” he pointed out. The problem is that many of the previous pieces of work were based on projections of models and, furthermore, did not take into consideration the interaction between the two climate modes, the NAO and the AMO. Thanks to the existence of this time series, the study shows for the first time that it is the interaction of both climate modes which largely controls the productivity of ecosystems.

So the results of the work show that the AMO+ NAO+ and AMO- NAO- phases exert a high degree of control on forestry productivity owing to the reduction in rainfall and wintertime temperatures. The NAO is like a key that opens up and closes off the entry of areas of low pressure. What is needed, however, is the control of the AMO (linked to the temperature of the Atlantic at extratropical latitudes and the formation of areas of low pressure), which eventually determines the temperature and humidity of the air that reaches the Peninsula.

“The monitoring of the climate modes analysed may help to predict periods of severe drought, although it would not be an easy task, thus encouraging the applying of measures to adapt the forests more effectively,” said Asier Herrero. During a drought, such as the one thrashing the Mediterranean in recent times, these findings could be crucial for water, agricultural and forestry planning, and in particular for assessing the climate vulnerability of the ecosystems.

By Malek Awny

Ten people were killed and five others were injured on Friday morning in an armed clash after security forces attempted to thwart a terrorist attack targeting a church in the southern Cairo suburb of Helwan, according to Egypt’s Health Ministry.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that security forces shot and wounded a terrorist who was riding a motorcycle and shooting randomly in an attempt to storm the Mar Mina Church in Helwan. Security forces found an automatic gun, 150 bullets and a bomb on the wounded terrorist, according to the ministry statement.

Before the church shootout, the terrorist opened fire on nearby commercial stores, killing two citizens.

The ministry said that the terrorist’s name is Ibrahim Ismail Mustafa, and he has taken part in other terrorist attacks. A ministry official said the terrorist’s identity had some of the fingerprints of Daesh.

The Egyptian national TV said that a terrorist was killed and another was arrested, while the Interior Ministry said the attack was executed by one terrorist only.

An official source at the Saudi Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the attack. The source offered deep condolences to the families of the victims and the people and government of Egypt, wishing the wounded a speedy recovery. The source renewed the Kingdom’s support of Egypt against such attacks.

Denouncing the attack, King Abdullah of Jordan stressed Amman’s solidarity with Cairo and its support against terrorism. He also expressed his deepest condolences to President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and the families of the victims.

Yousef Al-Othaimeen, secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), highlighted the preparedness of the Egyptian security forces, noting that the supporters of the terrorist attack have been trying to execute a desperate plan targeting the security of Egypt. He renewed the position of the OIC in condemning terrorism and extremism in all its forms and manifestations.

Daesh had threatened more than once this year to target Egyptian Christians and their churches. The last threat came when Wafa Media Foundation, a propaganda body affiliated to the network of Daesh, incited the militants to kill Egypt’s Christians and bomb their churches.

Daesh claimed responsibility for three massive attacks on Egyptian churches through the past year; the first one was on St. Peter’s Church in Cairo in December 2016, and the second and third attacks were on two churches in Alexandria and Tanta in April.

El-Sisi said the terrorist attacks would make Egyptians more determined to continue cleansing the country of terrorism and extremism.

El-Sisi extended “his condolences to the families of the victims of the despicable terrorist attack.” He instructed the relevant bodies to provide the necessary care for the victims’ families, and ordered tightened security at vital sites.

Mai Mogib, who teaches political science at the University of Cairo, said that it was possible to identify two political objectives behind the escalation of terrorist attacks and threats against Egyptian Christians during the past year.

“The first one is to create sectarian tension that will drain the state’s institutions, weaken security efforts and people’s trust in any security successes that might be announced in other fronts like Sinai and Western Desert,” he said.

“The second one is to erode the popularity of the president among Christians; an important support base, especially when the presidential elections will be held in June,” he said.

The attack has been expected by Egyptian security bodies since the Interior Ministry on Dec. 17 raised the security alert to the maximum level during the Christmas holidays.

Interior Minister Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar stressed the importance of intensifying security measures at Christian sites and constantly monitoring the perimeters of all churches.

Abdel-Ghaffar told the ministry’s officials that it was “necessary to continue taking pro-active measures and thwart the terrorist attacks,” warning that “the decisive security confrontations with terrorists in Sinai might push these terrorists to escape and sneak into cities.”

In June, the weekly newspaper Al-Naba, published by the media center of Daesh, claimed that the terror group had another branch in Egyptian districts, known as “the Caliphate’s Soldiers in Egypt,” along with Daesh’s more active first branch, “Sinai Province.”

Meanwhile, the Egyptian armed forces announced they would continue their joint efforts with the Interior Ministry to boost security during the holiday season.

A spokesperson for the Egyptian armed forces said that the citizens’ protection units affiliated to the armed forces were working intensively alongside the police in streets and religious places.

He said that the armed forces were backed by additional specialized and technical forces ready for an immediate action in the event of any emergency on New Year’s Eve.

While studies of ancient gold metallurgy and the colour characteristics of gold alloys are well supported by modern research, the colour properties of prehistoric copper alloys, such as tin bronzes or arsenical copper, the most abundant type of metal artefacts in prehistory, have largely been understudied. Until now.

In a study published today in the Journal of Archaeological Science an international team of Serbian and UK researchers have developed a Cu-As-Sn (Copper-Arsenic-Tin) colour ternary diagram to uncover the original colours of archaeological artefacts now patinated through age and exposure.

The study was prompted by the discovery of the world’s earliest tin bronze artefacts four years ago in Serbia and the ongoing debate into what significance colour played in the advancement of metal-making technologies.

Dr Miljana Radivojevic, lead author and researcher at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, said “Given the acknowledged importance of aesthetics in ancient metallurgy, we decided to experimentally replicate the most common prehistoric alloys, made of binary and ternary combinations of copper, arsenic and tin and produce a colour chart that comes the closest to showing the true ‘bling’ of such artefacts in the past. We were inspired by modern jewellery making where similar colour charts are used to explore properties of gold-copper-silver alloys.”

Professor Zeljko Kamberovic, leader of the Serbian team from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy said, “Our laboratory is one of the few in Europe to hold a license to experiment with arsenic, which is why we were approached to develop the study and produce 64 metal samples of variable copper-tin-arsenic compositions.”

“The copper-tin-arsenic ternary colour charts enabled us to re-evaluate the claim that early tin bronzes in the Balkans had a distinctive golden hue”, said Radivojevic. She added that it is “now highly likely that the production of this new alloy in the Balkans at the same time as gold could have been dictated by the demand for the ‘exotic’ golden hue, or its closest imitation”.

“This research, although driven by the case study in the Balkans, yielded a valuable representation of colour of the most commonly produced prehistoric alloys worldwide. We now have the means to bring the original shine to the items that have lost their original aesthetic appeal during several millennia of deposition below ground”, stated Professor Martinón-Torres from the UCL Institute of Archaeology, where chemical and colorimetric analyses for this study were conducted.

Dr Radivojevic added that she anticipates these colour charts being widely used in teaching or museum exhibits, “helping students and museum visitors to imagine how the majority of ancient metal objects looked a couple of thousands years ago.”

By Sinem Cengiz*

The year 2017 was tough for the Middle East. The conflicts and crises in the region dominated Turkey’s foreign policy throughout the year as it faced complex challenges ranging from Syria’s civil war to the Kurdish referendum, from the Jerusalem issue to the rise and fall of Daesh.

Syria: Developments in Syria tested Turkey’s patience severely throughout 2017, as they had in the previous six years. Some argued that Turkey had softened its stance toward the Syrian regime, but that is not the case. Just this week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Bashar Assad “a terrorist” and said it would be impossible to continue the Syrian peace process with Assad’s involvement.

However, Ankara has taken into account the reality on the ground and has re-emphasized that its priorities in Syria are border security and the threat from Kurdish groups. So Turkey has taken pragmatic steps to improve its relations with two of the key players in the Syrian crisis — Iran and Russia.

Turkey and Russia worked tirelessly throughout the year not only to find a political solution to the Syrian conflict but also to improve their bilateral relations. Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin met eight times in 2017 alone. However, while Turkey’s relations with Tehran and Moscow improved, those with the West, particularly the US, have deteriorated for a number of reasons. In 2018, the Astana process will likely see Ankara work hand in glove with Russia and Iran. The future of Syria is extremely significant for the entire region’s political future.

Kurdish Referendum: The referendum held by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on Sept. 25 — despite harsh warnings from several global and regional actors, particularly Turkey and Iran — was a grave miscalculation. Since the Iraqi invasion of 2003, Turkey has enjoyed close diplomatic and economic ties with the KRG. Some thought that close relationship may lead Turkey to look positively on Iraqi Kurdistan’s aspirations for independence. They were wrong. The referendum posed a serious dilemma for Turkey. On the one hand, there was Ankara’s close ally, the KRG, and on the other the referendum’s possible threat to Turkey and the entire region. Turkey voiced its concerns about further instability in Iraq and about increasing separatist tendencies among Kurds in the region. Moreover, Ankara stated that it considered the referendum to be “a national security issue.”

Turkey remains opposed to any political advances by the Kurds, in both Iraq and Syria. This seems likely to be the initial focus of Turkish foreign policy in 2018 as Russia, Iran and Turkey are set to hold talks in January in Sochi, which the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) plans to attend, despite Turkey’s objections.

Jerusalem: 2017 concluded with US President Donald Trump’s controversial announcement that America recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and would relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This quickly became Turkey’s hottest foreign policy matter.

Ankara’s objection to the US decision was not just led by government policy, but by a general expression of broad popular opinion in Turkey that unites all opposition parties: Turkey supports a Palestinian-Israeli resolution.

Turkey took successful steps both internationally and regionally against the move: Erdogan convened an emergency summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and Turkey welcomed the UN General Assembly’s rejection of the US decision, which — like the Kurdish referendum — failed to garner international support.

In 2018, according to reports, Turkey plans to launch fresh diplomatic initiatives to increase the number of countries that recognize Palestine as a state and East Jerusalem as its capital.

Let us hope that next year will see these ongoing crises reach a peaceful conclusion.

• Sinem Cengiz is a Turkish political analyst who specializes in Turkey’s relations with the Middle East. Twitter: @SinemCngz

Male students tend to do better on high-stakes tests in biology courses, but it’s not because they are better students. Gaps in performance change based on the stakes of the test. A new study published in PLOS ONE confirms this, finding that performance gaps between male and female students increased or decreased based on whether instructors emphasized or de-emphasized the value of exams.

Sehoya Cotner, associate professor in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota, and Cissy Ballen, a postdoctoral associate in Cotner’s lab, base their findings on a year-long study of students in nine introductory biology courses. They found that female students did not underperform in courses where exams count for less than half of the total course grade. In a separate study, instructors changed the curriculum in three different courses to place higher or lesser value on high-stakes exams (e.g., midterms and finals) and observed gender-biased patterns in performance.

“When the value of exams is changed, performance gaps increase or decrease accordingly,” said Cotner.

These findings build on recent research by Cotner and Ballen that showed that on average, women’s exam performance is adversely affected by test anxiety. By moving to a “mixed model” of student assessment — including lower-stakes exams, as well as quizzes and other assignments — instructors can decrease well established performance gaps between male and female students in science courses.

“This is not simply due to a ‘watering down’ of poor performance through the use of easy points,” said Cotner. “Rather, on the exams themselves, women perform on par with men when the stakes are not so high.”

The researchers point to these varied assessments as a potential reason why the active-learning approach, which shifts the focus away from lectures and lecture halls to more collaborative spaces and group-based work, appears to decrease the performance gap between students.

“As people transition to active learning, they tend to incorporate a diversity of low-stakes, formative assessments into their courses,” Cotner said. “We think that it is this use of mixed assessment that advantages students who are otherwise underserved in the large introductory science courses.”

Cotner and Ballen also see their findings as a potential to reframe gaps in student performance.

“Many barriers students face can be mitigated by instructional choices,” said Cotner. “We conclude by challenging the student deficit model, and suggest a course deficit model as explanatory of these performance gaps, whereby the microclimate of the classroom can either raise or lower barriers to success for underrepresented groups in STEM.”

Small municipalities in Ontario are less likely than larger centres to be able to accommodate the needs of their aging populations, according to a report from the University of Waterloo.

The report, Prepared for the Silver Tsunami: An examination of municipal old-age dependency and age-friendly policy in Ontario, Canada, examined the current and projected demographic profiles of 159 Ontario municipalities with populations over 10,000 people.

The report found that smaller municipalities were the least likely to have started any municipal-level planning for older adults, despite expected increases in service and mobility needs of their aging population.

“When we look at jurisdictions like British Columbia where age-friendly principles have been made mandatory in the creation of statutory planning documents, we see a longer history and greater uptake on age friendly projects, such as the age-friendly outdoor fitness park in Keremeos”, said Maxwell Hartt, who co-authored the release while doing his PhD at the University of Waterloo. “When we look at Ontario, we find that smaller communities are less likely to have the capacity, funds or political will to enact these kinds of policies for older members of their communities.

“It’s also possible many of these communities are unaware of the magnitude of their ongoing demographic shift and the kind of impact that will have on the kind and level of services they’re expected to provide.”

As part of the report, Hartt and Samantha Biglieri, a PhD candidate at Waterloo’s School of Planning, performed a systematic review of what kind of age-friendly policies each Ontario municipality had adopted.

The report recommended that to help municipalities become more age friendly, they should follow the model of British Columbia and examine how municipalities are implementing strategic plans, how budget dollars are allocated and how age-friendly planning is incorporated into municipal success indicators.

“As we age, our access to the world shrinks, which makes the role of the surrounding city in our health and wellbeing more important than ever,” said Biglieri. “With the number of Canadians over 65 now outnumbering those under the age of 15, there are so many opportunities for municipalities to support older adults in context-specific ways that can make a tangible difference in their lives.”

In 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) called on municipalities to take steps to assist their citizens to age well in place. The WHO’s Age-Friendly City policy encouraged municipalities to look at a number of factors in their planning, including outdoor and indoor spaces, transportation, housing, social participation, inclusion, civic participation, employment, community support and health services.

Hundreds of Iranians hit the streets in the northeastern cities of Mashhad and Kashmar on Thursday to protest rising commodity prices and perceived government mismanagement, according to local media reports.

The Iranian Students News Agency quoted Mashhad Governor Mohammad Rahim Norouzian as saying that police had eventually dispersed the protests while a number of demonstrators had been taken into custody.

In a statement issued by the governor’s office, Norouzian warned that any unauthorized demonstrations would be considered illegal.

In an address delivered earlier Thursday in the city of Sabzevar (roughly 220 kilometers east of Mashhad), prominent preacher Ahmad Alamolhoda declared: “In terms of economic management, welfare and overall living conditions, we have been deeply embarrassed by decades of government maladministration”.

Original article

On 12/6/2017 Prime Minister Netanyahu, speaking at a conference in Jerusalem stated that, “within a decade, Iran stands to emerge from the nuclear deal with nuclear arsenal of 100 bombs and more.” A month earlier Netanyahu explained in a talk at Chatham House that Iran is working secretly on nuclear warheads and if it scraped the nuclear deal today it might produce “one bomb, but if it were to silently bide its time until the agreement ran out and the restrictions were lifted, it would rack up a hundred atomic bombs “within weeks.”

Bibi’s thesis is a bit of a stretch. For example, in 2016 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) studied more than 400 Iranian sites and used advanced technological equipment, satellite images, and surveillance cameras transmitting live, nonstop monitoring feeds to the IAEA’s Vienna headquarters. The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff has explained to Congress that if a breach of the deal is ever suspected, American intelligence would immediately inform the IAEA. Meanwhile, the White House and Congress are seeking to amend the agreement to also ensure that Tehran cannot build nuclear weapons and to stop Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Bibi is leaking that the US Intelligence Community (USIC) secretly claims North Korea transferred 3 nuclear warheads to Iran last spring as both governments feverishly test ICBM’s to neutralize US and Israeli threats. Granted, an interesting assertation, but where’s the Beef?

Well, if so, just how and when did Iran acquire three North Korea nuclear weapons in addition to a suspected ‘dirty bomb’ freebee for Hezbollah?

It is widely agreed that Pyongyang has dramatically deepened its partnership with Tehran’s ‘Axis of Resistance.’ This according to the 16 agency US Intelligence Community as well as some Asian powers. All are said to suspect that the DRNK-IROI partnership seeks the ability to launch nuclear weapons at their enemies. Another recent report has it that North Korea has been benefiting from technical assistance from Russia and Pakistan and sharing some of it with Iran while committing about 25 percent of North Korea’s entire gross domestic product to its nuclear weapons program and much of that to missiles.

It’s likely not the case that either Pyongyang or Tehran is anxious to start a nuclear war which would pulverize both countries. Rather both seek ‘respect’ as a member of Iran’s Parliament recently explained to this observer. In practical terms ‘respect’ comes from the ability to launch nuclear weapons globally such that no country is able to challenge North Korean or Iranian geo-strategic goals, the key pillars of which are a united Korea administered from Pyongyang and a return to “Persian Empire” quality regional hegemony. The Parliamentarian from Tehran did not publicly agree with my definition of “respect.”

The deliveries of the nuclear warheads, if they happened, have been a while coming. A brief overview:

More than thirteen years ago, in January 2004, the director of North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center handed an American visitor from Oregon a sealed glass jar tightly packed with plutonium, apparently to convince the skeptical fellow that his country possessed a nuclear deterrent but only to be used if threatened.

In December 2012, North Korea completed its first successful launch of a long-range ballistic missile, confirming American fears that the so-called hermit kingdom had finally acquired the technology to pose a threat to American shores. Critically, according to Asian policy experts, “North Korea’s sudden success on December 12th was not the result of good fortune but rather was the fruition of its increasing instructional cooperation with Iran.”

In 2013, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Iranian missile technicians from the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group traveled to Pyongyang to work on an 80-ton rocket booster. According to the report, “The booster is believed by U.S. intelligence agencies to be intended for a new long-range missile or space launch vehicle that could be used to carry nuclear warheads, and could be exported to Iran in the future.” The Pentagon claims that were Iran to acquire this technology, its ballistic missile program would be transformed from a regional into a global threat.

Earlier this month, Pyongyang lofted a missile 2,800 miles and declared it had a nuclear-tipped missile that could destroy much of the United States so please back off and show us some “respect”. Within 90 minutes, countless Iranian basij and IRGC types surfaced in Tehran’s central Azadi Square and chanted, what else? “Death to America, the Great Satan!”
The Pentagon estimates that the DRNK has approximately 200 launchers able to fire on short notice a variety of short-, medium- and intermediate-range missiles. According to the Washington Post, citing the

Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Kim’s arsenal likely includes as 80 nuclear weapons. But other IC and Asian intelligence agencies believe his number of nuclear weapons is likely higher. But as of today, Kim cannot deliver them with the precision he seeks and is preassembly aware after the first one is fired that his country will largely cease to exist. Ditto Iran.

Iran is currently in negotiations to acquire North Korea’s longest-range ICBM’s to counter Israeli and American threats. This, as pressure mounts given mixed signals emanating from other nuclear arsenals, which given the right cash incentive, may well cooperate with the growing number of Iranian detractors, Arabs, and Sunni Muslims globally among others. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has reportedly rejected DRNK offers to sell Iran older varieties like the SCUD missile, which have a range of 200 to 600 miles, or the No Dong missile which can reach as far as 800 miles. Rather, what Iran urgently wants to buy are the Musudan and KN-11, which have a range of approximately 2,000 miles. In addition, Iran wants Kim Joun Un to sell it the intercontinental ballistic missile that was tested successfully twice last month, the Hwasong-14 and 15 (based on the Soviet Rd-250 missile) which western intelligence agencies including NATO specialists and Asian allies believe puts Israel in very close “we can’t miss” range.

North Korea also claims that both intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Hwasong-14 and 15, when topped with a “super-large heavy warhead,” can strike the US mainland. The country’s state media made the announcement hours after leader Kim Jong Un last month ordered the launch of the Hwasong-15 missile, which reached the highest altitude ever recorded by a North Korean missile. State news agency KCNA called its newest missile “the most powerful ICBM” and said it “meets the goal of the completion of the rocket weaponry system development. After the launch, Kim announced that North Korea had “finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force.” The US IC reportedly agrees that the DRNK has reached a major milestone in its nuclear program by creating a miniaturized nuclear warhead which the Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15 can carry and accurately target selected localities.
Any probative evidence of DRNK-IROI partnership to achieve nuclear arsenals?

A few points according to USIC chatter. With respect to Iran’s continuing involvement with North Korea’s nuclear program, there is growing speculation based partly on the recent occurrences noted below. U.S. intelligence agencies, according to US Senate Intelligence sources, have photographs and tapes of scores of Iranian defense officials living for weeks at a time in Pyongyang. It is suspected that these Iranian visitors along with their hosts are jointly working on nuclear technological advances. These increasing contacts are cause for alarm according to a Senate Intelligence Committee because they suggest that Iran is indeed racing to develop nuclear weapons– but mainly inside Korea not in Iran– due to UN oversight of Iran.

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), it was back in the late 2000s, the CIA intensified its monitoring of North Korean cooperation with Iran’s ballistic missile programs labeling them, “ongoing and significant.” The CRS concluded that while Iran had likely exceeded North Korea’s ability to develop, test, and build ballistic missiles, Tehran still relies, despite its denials, on Pyongyang for certain materials for producing Iranian ballistic missiles despite Iran’s denials.

Retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander, in an interview on 12/17/2017, argued to AM 970 Radio host John Catsimtidis in New York that “North Korea is likely receiving outside help from Iran as it races to develop its weapons arsenal, given how fast it’s moving. “There is also much cooperation between Iran and North Korea, which we know has occurred in this nuclear warhead race.”

The three DRNK Nuclear warheads and the ‘dirty bomb’ deliveries to Iran allegedly took place during the Spring of 2017. They were transported under heavy guard from Pyongyang’s Sunan International Airport on four separate North Korean regularly scheduled passenger flights of its Air Koryo airline to Iran Air at Russia’s Vladivostok airport in Russia. Whether anyone in Russa knew what the cargo bays held is weak speculation. The U.S. Treasury Department had sanctioned Air Koryo in December 2016 for financially aiding the Kim regime and its ballistic missile program. According to the IC, the Nuclear warheads were then forwarded to Tehran via Russia’s state carrier, Aeroflot, flying through Chinese airspace. All events being an egregious violation of U.N. sanctions that prohibited Iran at the time from “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons,” and North Korea from “exporting nuclear and missile technology.” They would violate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

After the claimed nuclear warheads transfer, reports have documented that both countries have increased the holding of “high-level meetings,” to expand the “depth” of their military ties and exploring further “military cooperation.” This August, Kim reiterated his support for working with Iran, stating, “Iran and North Korea share a mutual enemy, the United States. We firmly support Iran on its (Iran’s) stance on missile development.”

Mr. Daniel Coats, US Director of National Intelligence testified before Congress on 5/11/2017, shortly after the claimed nuclear transfer, that “North Korea’s export of ballistic missiles and associated materials to Iran and Syria, and its assistance to Syria’s construction of a nuclear reactor, destroyed in 2007, illustrate its willingness to proliferate dangerous technologies.” Not long after, Iran’s President Rouhani threatened that Tehran could restart its nuclear program within a matter of hours. His statement was chimed in with the IRGC claim that it may “expand and continue with more speed” its ballistic missile program. Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran´s Supreme Leader, claims to have earlier set the maximum range of Iran’s missiles as 2000 kilometers. This includes Israel as part of the Middle East region where Iran’s perceived enemies are located, including American military bases.

Several of the 16-member US Intelligence agencies allege that senior Iranian regime officials have been flooding into North Korea to observe its six nuclear warhead tests. Chief among these officials, is Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian general whom the UN has accused of working closely with Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani on secret nuclear weapons research. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials say these accusations cannot be ruled out, so all known contacts between the two regimes need to be scrutinized closely.

Many of the increasing numbers of North Koreans visiting Iran are from defense industries or secretive financial bodies that report directly to Kim Jong-un, including Offices 39 and 99 of the ruling Workers’ Party of North Korea.

In late 2016 U.S. authorities reported that missile technicians from one of Iran’s largest defense companies, the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, had traveled to North Korea to help develop an eighty-ton rocket booster for ballistic missiles. One of the company’s top officials, Sayyed Javad Musavi, has allegedly worked in tandem with the Korea Mining Development Trading Corp. (KOMID), which the United States and UN have sanctioned for being a central player in procuring equipment for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. For example, Shahid Hemmat is claimed to have illegally shipped valves, electronics, and measuring equipment to KOMID for use in ground testing of space-launch vehicles and liquid-propellant ballistic missiles.

Early last August, Kim Yong-nam, North Korea’s number two political leader and head of its legislature, flew from Pyongyang to Tehran supposedly for a few days to attend the inauguration of President Hassan Rouhani What alarmed Washington and NATO was the length of Kim Yong-nam’s visit. North Korean state media claimed he was only in Iran for three days, but Iranian state media claimed two weeks, and that Kim was accompanied by a large delegation of Korean scientists. Kim had last visited Tehran in 2012 to attend the Non-Aligned Movement Conference. But did not attend the events associated with that conference, instead focusing on signing a bilateral scientific cooperation agreement with Iran’s then President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. According to U.S. intelligence officials, that agreement was identical to the one Pyongyang inked with Syria in 2002. Israel bombed a building in eastern Syria that the United States and UN believe was a nearly operational North Korean-built nuclear reactor for Iran’s use. One of the Iranian officials who attended the 2012 gathering with Kim was Atomic Energy Organization chief Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, who was sanctioned by Washington and the UN for his alleged role in nuclear weapons development. Kim also held a string of bilateral meetings with foreign leaders, many from countries that have been significant buyers of North Korean weapons in recent decades, including Zimbabwe, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Namibia.

This past September at the request of the CIA and key Congressional leaders, the White House ordered an urgent intensive search for any potential North Korea-Iran bilateral nuclear collaboration. This is years after officials in Washington, Asia, and the Middle East who track the relationship indicate that Pyongyang and Tehran already announced plans to jointly develop their ballistic missile systems and other military/scientific programs.

Certain DRNK-IROI meetings that have gone unreported in state media are of even more concern to Washington and its allies. even more worrisome for allied governments. U.S. and South Korean intelligence have documented a study and increasing number of Iranian and North Korean officials visiting each other seeking to jointly develop their nuclear arsenal and ICBM delivery systems as quickly as possible.

Over the same period, U.S. intelligence agencies have spotted dozens of Iranian defense officials spending weeks at a time in Pyongyang, raising the specter that they are sharing nuclear technological advances with each other. “All of these contacts need to be better understood” a Senate Intelligence Committee staffer opined that Iran is indeed reaching to develop nuclear weapons, but in Korea not in Iran due to NATO and UN oversight in the IROI.

North Korea has become a critical partner in Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” which Tehran developed to replace US influence in the Middle East. Pyongyang is also Iran’s main arms partner in Syria as an important supplier of arms and equipment to Iran’s most important Arab ally, Syria’s Assad regime. According to current and former U.S. officials, Iranian funded Houthi have also been supplied with weapons from North Korea as it seeks to replace the current government in Yemen.

Several of the 16-member US Intelligence agencies allege that senior Iranian regime officials have frequently visited North Korea to observe and discuss with their counterparts, its six recent nuclear weapons tests. Chief among these officials, is Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian general whom the UN has accused of working closely with Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani on secret nuclear weapons research. Current and former U.S. intelligence officials say these accusations cannot be ruled out, so all known contacts between the two regimes need to be scrutinized closely.

Meanwhile, this week, Mark S. Kirk, a former U.S. senator from Illinois, has joined in a new campaign by the pro-Israel group, United Against Nuclear Iran and is urging President Trump, whose ear he is said to have, to get tough with Iran and North Korea. Kirk and his friends are arguing to the White House and Congress that both must follow through on Trump’s promise to impose further sanctions on those found to have helped Iran and North Korea share military technology. According to United Against a Nuclear Iran, the administration must also order the Pentagon to intercept and destroy ICBMs fired from either country in the direction of the U.S. or `our allies in the Western Hemisphere.

Wrote Kirk recently, “It’s time for America to show that our rhetoric in response to rogue states is matched with concrete action.”

One can literally feel the tension rising in this region as speculative reports and conjectures crowd the marketplace for discussion. This, as Hezbollah friends offer only a knowing smile on the question of possessing a ‘dirty bomb’ and whether it would be used during the next war with Israel.

By Vijay Sakhuja*

India’s effort to harness Blue Economy received a boost with the establishment of the International Training Centre for Operational Oceanography (ITCOocean). The Centre will operate under the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad, known for its expertise in ocean sciences and services, including advisory to society, industry, government agencies and the scientific community through sustained ocean observations.

The ITCOocean would serve as the specialist institution for Operational Oceanography, a field of study relating to systematic and long-term measurements of various changes in the oceans and atmosphere, and undertake interpretation and dissemination of data in the form of ‘now-casts’, ‘forecasts’ and ‘hind-casts’ to a number of stakeholders. The centre is expected to commence work in June 2018 and will train technical and management personnel engaged in various sectors of the Blue Economy such as fisheries, seabed and marine resource development, shipping and ports, coastal tourism, marine environment, coastal management, etc.

The ITCOocean can potentially support the development of Blue Economy in the Bay of Bengal through capacity building in at least five ways. First, it can serve as a regional hub for collation and dissemination of scientific data among the regional science centres and communities. For instance, in Bangladesh, the National Oceanographic and Maritime Institute (NOAMI), Bangladesh Oceanographic Research Institute (BORI) and National Oceanographic Research Institute (NORI) can be part of the ITCOocean network for Bay of Bengal Blue Economy initiatives.

Second, Blue Economy is data-intensive which is a function of the collection of observations generated through satellites, research vessels, sea-based sensors including those embedded in the ocean floor, and weather modelling. These systems, devices and processes generate tens of terabytes of data and require technology and expertise to interpret it for operational uses. Further, oceanographers and scientists operate with diverse data types obtained bya variety of national technical means and methodologies. At ITCOocean, an oceanographic data bank for use by the regional scientific community can support regional initiatives to study and harness the oceans in a sustainable manner.

Third is human resources training in oceanography and creating a gene pool of professions to support national Blue Economy programmes in regional countries. India has an excellent track record of training scientists, and in the last few years, besides training scientists for their own needs, the INCOIS faculty has trained 105 scientists from 34 other countries in various aspects of operational oceanography.

Fourth is supporting innovation for ocean-related disruptive technologies which are transforming modern day operational oceanography. Big data, artificial intelligence, augmented reality/virtual reality, blockchain technology and additive manufacturing commonly known as ‘3D printing’ are mushrooming and driving innovation to augment operational oceanography. For instance, 3D printing technologies support real-life applications in oceanography through hydrodynamics, biomechanics, locomotion and tracking and surface studies. Another significant use of 3D printing is in preparing coral reef replicas and thereafter seeding coral to restore damaged reefs.

Fifth, ITCOocean is also an important diplomatic tool for science diplomacy. The Indian government has promoted Blue Economy in multilateral forums at regional and sub-regional levels such as the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). As far as the latter is concerned, the 15th BIMSTEC Ministerial Meeting’s joint statement notes that member countries agreed to constitute a Working Group to develop Blue Economy. In that spirit, Bangladesh hosted an international conference in October 2017, where it was noted that the lack of scientific marine knowledge and technology could be the Achilles Heel of Blue Economy development in the Bay of Bengal.

It is fair to argue that Bangladesh has been most proactive among the Bay of Bengal littorals to develop Blue Economy. Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has stated that Bangladesh will have to ensure 5 per cent contribution of Blue Economy to the GDP to achieve the targeted 8 per cent economic growth in 2019, 9 per cent in 2025, and 10 per cent in 2030.

Bangladesh merits a leadership role for the development of Blue Economy in the Bay of Bengal; however, it is constrained by a number of factors that potentially inhibit this a mandate given that it is yet to develop advanced technological skills to study the oceans. To address this critical gap, the Bangladesh government has decided to acquire a modern survey ship in 2018. In this context, India is well-placed to support Bangladesh to develop scientific capacities, including training for oceanographic research. Additionally, ITCOocean is an important institution to support Bangladesh’s needs of operational oceanography.

Bangladesh has established scientific technical collaboration with Norway through the Nansen-Bangladesh International Centre for Coastal, Ocean and Climate Studies (NABIC); likewise, ITCOocean has tied up with Norway’s Nansen Scientific Society and the Research Council to collaborate in teaching and research. It will be useful to pool resources to augment cooperation among the Bay of Bengal littorals and bring together regional initiatives under one roof.

Although ITCOocean is well-positioned to support high-end Operational Oceanography, there would also be a critical need to establish vocational institutions to promote, train and skill workers that are adept at understanding the oceans and working in industries that support Blue Economy.

* Vijay Sakhuja
Former Director, National Maritime Foundation (NMF), New Delhi

Not the best of times for Apple, the issue will be the running theme through 2018.

By Gautam Chikermane

The 28 December 2017 apology ^[i] by Apple Inc. is an indication of what the future of business looks like. The coincidence of Apple allegedly slowing down its old phones by stealth once new models are launched is just one more example of pushing the boundaries of not just business ethics — for a company that has been ‘loved’, this non-disclosure on the downside of a premium product is an abuse of that trust. The sense of feeling cheated hurts more when the breach happens from a loved and trusted brand.

But what’s worse for the shareholders of Apple is the legal risk that this opacity has brought to the doorsteps of its Board, which we believe, would know the incentives behind creating product structures that slow old models to sell new ones — at last count there were nine class action suits against the company ^[ii]. Were Apple to lose these legal battles, it throw the company’s market capitalisation down the cliff, prompting a change not only in management by investors but the replacing of the entire Board. On the other side, even if Apple wins the legal battles, the reputational damage to a company that was slated to be the world’s first trillion-dollar corporation will linger on.

For now, all we have is the company getting out of its silent denial mode — customer complaints about slowing gadgets had been coming for years now — into one that accepts three things. First, that there is a problem with the software updates of iPhones. Second, that it knew about the problem. And third, that the company did not think it important enough to inform its consumers about it. This essay goes under Apple’s 778-word apology, ‘A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance’ and argues that Apple could well be the case study to consolidate the Age of Transparency through four lessons for other corporations.

Disclosure: The author of this essay uses and is a repeat victim of slowing iPhones, who thought his brain was slowing down and not his iPhone.

We’ve been hearing feedback from our customers about the way we handle performance for iPhones with older batteries and how we have communicated that process. We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologise. There’s been a lot of misunderstanding about this issue, so we would like to clarify and let you know about some changes we’re making.

Fair start: getting out of denial mode.

First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades. Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that.

It is true that Apple products are the best in the market. They are also the most expensive. And the most loved. Nobody is doubting this statement. But intent is a difficult idea to capture. The question then becomes: did Apple know that the life of its iPhones would be shortened? Yes. Did it know it would ‘degrade the user experience’? Yes. Whether it would drive customer upgrades remains open, but big data of past trends would have revealed how many existing users upgraded their iPhones after a new one was launched and the old model slowed down.

How batteries age

All rechargeable batteries are consumable components that become less effective as they chemically age and their ability to hold a charge diminishes. Time and the number of times a battery has been charged are not the only factors in this chemical aging process.

Device use also affects the performance of a battery over its lifespan. For example, leaving or charging a battery in a hot environment can cause a battery to age faster. These are characteristics of battery chemistry, common to lithium-ion batteries across the industry.

A chemically aged battery also becomes less capable of delivering peak energy loads, especially in a low state of charge, which may result in a device unexpectedly shutting itself down in some situations.

To help customers learn more about iPhone’s rechargeable battery and the factors affecting its performance, we’ve posted a new support article, iPhone Battery and Performance.

It should go without saying that we think sudden, unexpected shutdowns are unacceptable. We don’t want any of our users to lose a call, miss taking a picture or have any other part of their iPhone experience interrupted if we can avoid it.

This little lecture on battery chemistry ^[iii] is nothing but distraction. The issue is not chemistry — it is ethics and disclosures about that chemistry. This lecture could have accompanied the product itself. Consumer-focussed foresight could have been more credible than law suits driven hindsight.

Preventing unexpected shutdowns

About a year ago in iOS 10.2.1, we delivered a software update that improves power management during peak workloads to avoid unexpected shutdowns on iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and iPhone SE. With the update, iOS dynamically manages the maximum performance of some system components when needed to prevent a shutdown. While these changes may go unnoticed, in some cases users may experience longer launch times for apps and other reductions in performance.

Customer response to iOS 10.2.1 was positive, as it successfully reduced the occurrence of unexpected shutdowns. We recently extended the same support for iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in iOS 11.2.

Of course, when a chemically aged battery is replaced with a new one, iPhone performance returns to normal when operated in standard conditions.

The updates would be useful. But again, consumers would have preferred to be forewarned than analyse the post-mortem of lost trust.

Recent user feedback

Over the course of this fall, we began to receive feedback from some users who were seeing slower performance in certain situations. Based on our experience, we initially thought this was due to a combination of two factors: a normal, temporary performance impact when upgrading the operating system as iPhone installs new software and updates apps, and minor bugs in the initial release which have since been fixed.

We now believe that another contributor to these user experiences is the continued chemical aging of the batteries in older iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s devices, many of which are still running on their original batteries.

This bit looks as if it has been drafted by a battery of lawyers rather than a company known for creating the world’s best products. To say Apple received feedback about slowing performance ‘in certain situations’ only ‘this fall’ tells us that no executive in Apple reads newspapers, technical papers, blogs or is on Twitter, where this problem has been recorded, discussed and critiqued. But for it to write it down in this apology, hoping that consumers will believe it, is taking them for granted, and showing a snooty contempt for them.

Addressing customer concerns

We’ve always wanted our customers to be able to use their iPhones as long as possible. We’re proud that Apple products are known for their durability, and for holding their value longer than our competitors’ devices.

To address our customers’ concerns, to recognise their loyalty and to regain the trust of anyone who may have doubted Apple’s intentions, we’ve decided to take the following steps:

Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by USD 50 — from USD 79 to USD 29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, starting in late January and available worldwide through December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com.

Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone’s battery, so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance.

As always, our team is working on ways to make the user experience even better, including improving how we manage performance and avoid unexpected shutdowns as batteries age.

At Apple, our customers’ trust means everything to us. We will never stop working to earn and maintain it. We are able to do the work we love only because of your faith and support — and we will never forget that or take it for granted.

Now, the marketing department has taken over, with spiels about the competition. Reducing the price of an ‘out-of-warranty’ battery by USD 50 (about INR 3,200) to USD 29 (INR 1,850) is a good first step. It will retain some of their customers, until even this breaks down. New features that will give greater visibility of the battery health is also a good corrective.

But as far as ‘trust’ goes, the company will have to go a very long way. And the journey will now be littered by class action suits, allegations and individual stories, against which Apple will need to defend itself. Violetta Mailyan in California has filed a USD 999 billion law suit ^[iv], saying “each member of the Class had to buy a newer iPhone model because the performance of their older iPhone model had slowed down as a result of Defendant’s purposeful conduct.” If Apple loses this case, it would be the end of the company, whose market capitalisation stands at USD 878 billion, about USD 121 billion short, with other law suits waiting.

Apple’s conduct has lessons for other companies that serve consumers. First, this is the age of extreme and instant transparency, so disclose problems early on. Non-disclosure reads like mal-intent. Second, like managements of the same companies, consumers too do not want negative surprises. But they are also more understanding — had the issue of slowing batteries been addressed at the point of purchase, consumers wouldn’t be feeling cheated today. Third, managements will work on the incentives the Board sets for them. An alert Board must examine these incentives and ensure that the risks to the company are minimised if not removed. It is in the Board’s interest to align itself with consumer interest. And fourth, consumers are smart people: do not underestimate their power. In the age of transparency — to borrow from Abraham Lincoln — you can fool all the consumers some of the time; and some of the consumers all the time; but you can’t fool all the consumers all the time.

Not the best of times for Apple, this issue will be the running theme through 2018.

^[i] Apple Inc, ‘A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance’, 28 December 2017, https://www.apple.com/iphone-battery-and-performance/, Accessed on 29 December 2017

^[ii] Los Angeles Times, ‘Apple faces class-action lawsuits over slowed-down iPhones’, http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-apple-iphone-lawsuit-20171227-story.html, Accessed on 29 December 2017

^[iii] Apple Inc, ‘iPhone Battery and Performance: Understand iPhone performance and its relation to your battery’, https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT208387, Accessed on 29 December 2017

^[iv] BGR, ‘This iPhone slowdown lawsuit wants Apple to pay $999 billion’, http://bgr.com/2017/12/27/iphone-slowdown-class-action-lawsuits-999-billion/, Accessed on 29 December 2017

By Igor Ivanov

Boris Johnson’s recent visit to Russia, which took place on the day of the winter solstice, was the first time in five years that a UK Foreign Secretary had made such a trip. Does this mean the all-time low in Russia–UK relations is behind us? Does it mean the “daylight” hours will be growing longer? There are reasons to be hopeful in this regard: Mr. Johnson’s talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov were on the whole constructive, with the ministers even starting to talk about mutual trust.

I do not know what presents the ministers exchanged on the eve of Christmas and New Year holidays, but it is fair to say that resuming a constructive dialogue at the high political level is a fine gift in itself. Of course, we are not talking the full normalization of relations; this is still a distant prospect. But it is good that the ministers have resumed normal communication, meaning that contacts with London are reaching the level of Russia’s relations with other leading European countries.

The talks yet again demonstrated that there are a large number of (sometimes fundamental) contradictions in UK–Russia relations, which are primarily concerned with conceptual approaches to issues of the contemporary world order, global and European security and resolving specific crisis situations. This is nothing out of the ordinary for the world’s leading powers, particularly today, when the world is in a state of unprecedented transformation and the possibility of maintaining any kind of status quo is extremely low. This is why the two countries need to be engaged in a dialogue, for there is no point in preaching to the converted. The ministers emphasized the obvious fact that there are quite a few areas where the interests of the two countries dictate the need for cooperation, despite the existing differences.

As permanent members of the UN Security Council, Russia and the United Kingdom have a special responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, and this circumstance alone obliges them to engage in cooperation and coordination, as both parties noted. The challenges and security threats the two countries face are similar in many ways. They may have different views on their origins and their solutions, but, as the ministers noted at the final press conference, they share the same goals, be it the resolution of the Korean nuclear problem or the conflicts in the Middle East. Russia and the United Kingdom should be on the same side in counteracting the entire range of global challenges and threats, above all international terrorism. The same applies to bilateral relations, in particular, to ensuring security at the 2018 FIFA World Cup: the law enforcement agencies in both countries are actively engaged in such cooperation.

Russian people tend to believe that the United Kingdom has become a haven for fugitive businessmen and dodgy money. The media largely contributes to shaping such a view, although there is the problem of rejected extradition requests filed by the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation with the UK authorities concerning defendants in relevant criminal proceedings. However, these factors should not overshadow the overall positive picture of trade and economic relations between the two countries. Hundreds of British companies continue to work in Russia, and mutually beneficial economic and financial cooperation is taking place. Despite the crisis of the last few years, the trade turnover grew 29.4 per cent in the first nine months of 2017. UK companies continue to invest in the Russian economy. For instance, on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Rosneft and BP signed an agreement on the development of a strategic gas partnership, and Gazprom and Shell signed an agreement on the Baltic LNG project and on several other promising projects.

Of course, the sanctions imposed by the European Union on Russia constrain bilateral relations. On the other hand, they demonstrate that putting the brakes on mutually beneficial cooperation is a no-win situation, while deepening such cooperation is in line with the long-term national interests of the two countries. Whatever the outcome of the Brexit talks, London will remain one of the world’s economic and financial centers. Hence the need to open a discussion on the formation of a bilateral regulatory framework that takes full advantage of the new opportunities for the development of the two countries.

Cultural and humanitarian ties between Russia and the United Kingdom remain unaffected by political storms. Large-scale cultural, scientific and educational exchange projects are successfully carried out. People in the United Kingdom know and love Russian culture. Russian theatres tour the United Kingdom with great success. And large-scale exhibitions are held almost every year. Four large exhibitions dedicated to the 100-year anniversary of the Russian Revolution were held recently at the British Library and the Royal Academy of Arts, as well as at other places. Tourist flows are growing. The tradition of holding various cross-years has a good track record with the recent years of Russian and British cultures (2014), literature (2015) and science and education (2017). The ministers announced that 2019 would be the Year of Music. Thematic trains in the Moscow Metro and the London Underground are another successful innovation.

Much more may be said about cooperation in a wide range of areas. And how could it be otherwise given the centuries-old tradition of Russia–UK relations? The main thing is to make proper use of that “wealth” so that it benefits the peoples of the two countries and promotes global stability.

In June 2003, President Vladimir Putin made a state visit to the United Kingdom. It was the first head-of-state visit in 150 years. I remember very well the complications surrounding preparations for this visit, since shortly before, the United States and its allies had launched a military intervention in Iraq, in which the incumbent Labour Government played an unsavory part. Nevertheless, the long-term interests of the two countries prevailed. Both parties stated that the visit turned a new page in Russia – UK relations. Unfortunately, the turn of events prevented the countries from using in full the opportunities that this provided. Yet it is never too late to do so. As Mr. Johnson’s visit has demonstrated, both Moscow and London agree on this.

Source: Modern Diplomacy, first published at RIAC

(RFE/RL) — The Russian Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by opposition leader Aleksei Navalny against a decision to bar him from running in Russia’s 2018 presidential election.

The court’s ruling on December 30 upheld a December 25 decision by Russia’s Central Election Commission that the anticorruption crusader isn’t eligible to run.

The court said the decision by the Central Election Commission fully conforms to law.

A lawyer for Navalny said he would now take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Navalny is barred from running for office because of a conviction in a fraud case, which has been viewed as political retribution.

Following his disqualification, Navalny called on his supporters to boycott the vote.

He also announced plans to hold protests across Russia on January 28 to press home his call for a boycott of the election.

The Kremlin said such boycott calls should be reviewed by officials to see whether they break the law.

Navalny responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling by repeating his call for a “voters’ strike.”

“We don’t acknowledge elections without competition,” he said on Twitter.

President Vladimir Putin is set to easily win a fourth term in office in the March 18 election, with his approval ratings topping 80 percent.

Putin, who has been president or prime minister since 1999, is seeking a new six-year term in the election.

Over the past year, Navalny has mounted a grassroots campaign across Russia.

Presidential campaigning officially started in Russia on December 18.

More than 20 people have declared their intention to run in the March election, including liberal Grigory Yavlinsky, business ombudsman Boris Titov, and journalist and TV personality Ksenia Sobchak.

While none of the candidates pose a a serious challenge to Putin, analysts say the Kremlin is worried about voter apathy and has focused on ways to boost turnout to make Putin’s expected victory as impressive as possible.

The US State Department has issued a formal condemnation of the Iranian government following two days of economic protests centering in a handful of cities, calling the regime “a rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos” while announcing support for protesters.

It fits a familiar script which seems to roll out when anyone protests for any reason in a country considered an enemy of the United States (whether over economic grievances or full on calling for government overthrow).

The statement by spokesperson Heather Nauert, released late on Friday, further comes very close to calling for regime change in Iran when it asserts the following:

On June 14, 2017, Secretary Tillerson testified to Congress that he supports “those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of government. Those elements are there, certainly as we know.” The Secretary today repeats his deep support for the Iranian people.

Though most current reports strongly suggest protests are being driven fundamentally by economic grievances, the US has already framed this week’s events inside Iran as revolutionary in nature and as aiming for “transition of government”. On Friday evening White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted the following statement:

Reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with the regime’s corruption and its squandering of the nation’s wealth to fund terrorism abroad. The Iranian government should respect their people’s rights including their right to express themselves. The world is watching.

The media is already promoting a regime change narrative.

As we noted during our initial coverage of Thursday’s protests, Israeli as well as Iranian opposition media commentators (and of course pundits in the US mainstream) have generally appeared giddy with excitement at the prospect that protests could spread inside Iran, potentially culminating in society-wide resistance and possible change in government. It goes without saying that Iran has been enemy #1 for the United States and Israel since the Islamic Revolution and embassy hostage crisis beginning in 1979.

Consider for example a major Israeli international broadcast network, which in an English language interview segment covering the very beginnings of (relatively small and limited) protests Thursday quickly linked the Tehran government with use of chemical weapons in Syria, supporting the “biggest butcher in this region Bashar al-Assad”, and facilitating the killing of civilians.

Simultaneously the resident “expert” presents the protesters as condemning these things while yearning for freedom and democracy. He can barely contain himself while repeating “It’s spontaneous! It’s spontaneous!… and could be more spontaneous! …it inspires people to go out more! …Because it’s spontaneous these two are combustible mixtures”.

By Amin Masoodi

Counter-insurgency operations in 2017 killed more than 340 people in Indian Kashmir, including suspected militants, security personnel and civilians, making it the bloodiest year in nearly a decade for the disputed Himalayan territory, a top security official said.

Indian security forces claimed to have gunned down more than 210 militants, and 54 civilians and 78 security personnel also lost their lives during anti-militant operations. This year’s death toll was the highest since 2010, when more than 380 people, including about 110 civilians and 270 suspected militants, were killed in such operations, police said.

“[The year] 2017 was a mix of challenges and successes. We were able to eliminate some top militants of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), but in the process lost a large number of civilian and non-civilian lives,” Ravideep Sahi, the inspector general of the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Indian Kashmir, told BenarNews.

The new year will prove to be another challenge for Indian forces as some 275 militants, including at least 150 LeT and JeM cadres, are still active in the territory, Sahi said.

Kashmir, home to a separatist insurgency for decades, is claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan, but each country controls only part of it. More than 70,000 people have died in flare-ups of insurgency-related violence since the late 1980s, officials said.

“Despite repeated warnings and appeals to stay away from areas where firing is going on, civilians continue to congregate and protest at encounter sites, eventually getting killed in cross-fire,” Sahi said.

In 2016, about 325 people, including protesters and suspected insurgents, died in months of unrest, officials said.

Shot point-blank

Locals alleged that a large number of civilian deaths this year resulted from cold-blooded killings at the hands of Indian security forces, who are routinely accused of committing rights abuses in the Muslim-majority region.

“There was an exchange of fire going on between Indian forces and militants. My wife was passing by the site when one soldier shot her in the head from point-blank range. Our 7-month-old child is now left without a mother,” Ishfaq Ahmad, 22, told BenarNews.

Ahmad’s wife, Maysara Akther, 20, was one of two civilian women killed during a counter-insurgency operation in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district earlier this month.

On Monday, Indian forces gunned down Noor Mohammad Tantray, a top JeM cadre, in an encounter in Srinagar.

“His killing is a major success for us, as he was involved in major anti-India operations in Kashmir over the past 10 years,” Sahi said, referring to Tantray.

The good part of the year gone by, Sahi said, was that there was a “drastic decline” in incidents of stone-throwing by Kashmiri protesters during anti-India rallies.

“Also, a large number of Kashmiri youths, who had been pulled into militancy, gave up their firearms and surrendered to start a fresh life,” he said.

Line of Control

Two of three full-blown wars fought by Pakistan and India – in 1947 and 1965 – have been over Kashmir, which is divided between the two sides by a de facto border called the Line of Control (LoC). The two nuclear-armed rivals routinely accuse each other of ceasefire violations and harboring terrorism.

On Monday, the Indian Army claimed to have crossed the LoC and killed three Pakistani soldiers to retaliate against a cross-border attack by the Pakistan Army that killed four Indian soldiers on Saturday.

There were more than 300 infiltration attempts by Pakistan-sponsored militants to cross the LoC into Indian Kashmir, the highest in four years, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs said, adding that 2017 also witnessed a major spike in ceasefire violations by the neighboring country.

“[Until] Dec. 15, there were 820 ceasefire violations along the LoC in comparison to 228 such violations in 2016 and 153 in 2013. There were more than 310 infiltration attempts by Pakistani militants [in 2017],” Kiren Rijiju, India’s Deputy Minister for Home Affairs, said according to The Hindu newspaper.

“The considerable increase in ceasefire violations and infiltration attempts indicates Pakistan is desperate to push militants into Indian territory,” Rijiju said.

But the Pakistani foreign ministry said Indian security forces fired their guns across the LoC to provide cover for unidentified “non-state actors” – or armed fighters who are not Indian soldiers – who placed improvised bombs that killed the three Pakistani soldiers on Monday.

“The false claims by India about the alleged cross LoC adventures are a figment of their imagination and counter-productive for peace and tranquility on the LoC,” the ministry said in a statement.

By Ritu Sharma

As a turbulent year winds up, Indian Christians look to the New Year with apprehension amid growing violent bigotry.

Many are hoping that the government of the Hindu-majority country will do more to contain hate crimes against religious minorities such as Christians and Muslims.

The year 2017 saw the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), already controlling the national government, extend its rule to 18 of 29 states.

Presentation Sister Anastasia Gill, a member of the Delhi Minority Commission, said minorities are feeling insecure.

Every day at least five cases of religion-based violence were reported, mainly in the states of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, she said.

She added that fanatically nationalist Hindu forces were responsible for the erosion of religious freedom.

With national elections due in 2019, fanatics could seek to divide the electorate on religious lines in order to secure more Hindu votes for the BJP.

Some of these militant groups have the ultimate aim of establishing a “Hindu-only” India.

Muslim and Christian leaders say in the past three years, since the BJP came to power in New Delhi, minority communities have faced worsening persecution.

This had included physical attacks such as Hindu militant lynchings of people involved in the slaughter for meat of revered cattle.

When BJP came to power in 2014, there were only three violent attacks on people that year over the treatment of cattle, but this was up to 24 in 2016.

2017 saw an all time high of 34 incidents in which people were attacked for alleged involvement in the transport or slaughter of cattle.

At least 29 people died. Most of them were Dalits, formerly known as untouchables, but Muslims were also killed.

A U.S. report dealing with worldwide religious freedom in 2017 criticized the Indian Government for presiding over deteriorating religious tolerance.

The report placed India in a category of countries where intolerance is considered to be serious.

Even the monitoring group World Watch List calculated that in India during 2016, a church was burnt down, or a cleric beaten, on average 10 times a week.

This was a threefold rise on the previous year.

Christians constitute only 2.3 per cent of the 1.2 billion Indian population, still making them the second largest religious minority after Muslims.

Both Christians and Muslims have come under attack for allegedly trying to convert Hindus.

Christians are also accused of using inducements, such as educational and health services, to convert tribal minorities, some of whom are animists.

Sister Gill said that many Christians, who lived in fear of losing their lives or property, hide their identities.

Several intellectuals and journalists, who challenged Hindu cast hegemony and superstitions, were also attacked in the past year.

Hopes for New Year

However, Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, president of Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, told ucanews.com that Christians were looking forward to the New Year being filled with life, hope and joy.

“Nothing can shatter our resolve to live and work for Jesus,” Cardinal Cleemis said.

“If there are problems, we will overcome them because our faith is in the resurrected Lord, not in any dead god.”

Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, secretary general of the conference, told ucanews.com the Christian community had faith that the government would act to protect religious minorities.

The whole of India wanted concerted action against those threatening freedom of religion and expression, he added.

Some Christian leaders feel that “fringe elements” were emboldened by BJP political dominance, considering it a mandate to push a violent agenda.

Joseph Dias, founder of the Catholic Secular Forum, complained that official “lip service” on minority rights contrasted with a dismal track record.

Dias predicted that in 2018 there would be even more attacks on Christians and other minorities as religion became increasingly politicized.

Charcoal remains after a forest fire help decompose fine roots in the soil, potentially accelerating CO₂ emissions in boreal forests.

Boreal forests are a huge carbon sink. The fine roots, not only the leaves, stems and branches of trees, largely contribute to carbon accumulation. The Russian Far East has had an increasing number of forest fires, many of which are believed to be caused by global warming and human activities. Burning trees in forest fires naturally cause the emission of CO₂, but little is known about the extent to which fire-derived charcoal influences ecosystem processes, such as soil organic matter decomposition.

The researchers, including Russian Academy of Science Senior Researcher Semyon Bryanin and Hokkaido University Assistant Professor Makoto Kobayashi, performed field litterbag experiments over 515 days, incubating fine larch roots with varying concentrations of charcoal in the soil. Mass loss of fine roots was measured in each of four conditions over nearly two years: control (no charcoal); mean charcoal content measured in the field; twice the mean charcoal content measured in the field; and charcoal content equal to the maximum concentration in the field.

According to the results, charcoal had little effect on the decomposition of fine roots right after they were buried in soil. But at the end of the experiment, the loss of root mass in samples incubated with higher concentrations of charcoal was greater (double content: 40 percent; maximum content: 42 percent) than in the control (30 percent) and the average content conditions (27 percent).

“Our study has provided the first field evidence that fire-derived charcoal might accelerate the decomposition of fine larch roots and consequently CO₂ emissions from boreal forest,” said Makoto Kobayashi.

The finding likely will help predict future changes in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere should more forest fires be triggered by global warming and human activities.