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US Beverage Alcohol Volumes Decline Again In 2017

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The IWSR, the leading provider of data and analysis on the global beverage alcohol market, has released initial 2017 category results for the US market as part of its US Beverage Alcohol Review (US BAR) database.

After analyzing preliminary 2017 volume, the IWSR says total US beverage alcohol consumption declined for the second consecutive year by -0.2%. This loss is more than double that of 2016, a decrease of 17.6m gallons, or 7.4m nine-liter cases.

Beer volumes continued to slide in 2017 (-0.5%), which weighed down the performance of total beverage alcohol. The growth of spirits (+2.3%) and wine (+1.3%) were unable to make up the difference in volume due to beer’s overwhelming 79% share of total beverage alcohol.

The decrease in total beverage alcohol consumption is directly related to the slow-building trend of moderation or not drinking at all. Signs of health and wellness permeate the industry with increasing frequency. From all-natural ingredients to low-ABV to zero-proof mocktails, consumers are clearly gravitating toward ‘healthier’ drinking experiences.

The bright spots of 2017 were wine and spirits which stole share from beer and increased in volume. The long-term trend of premiumization has continued to spur growth. Premium-and-above offerings currently make up 33% of the spirits category and 22% of the wine category respectively (compared to just 12% and 2% in 1990).

Within spirits, whisky showed the most momentum (+3.9%), outperforming non-whisky (+1.7%). Within the whisky category, Bourbon, rye, malt Scotch, Irish and Japanese offerings faired the best, while tequila, mezcal, brandy and Cognac led in the non-whisky segments. Still wine grew a modest 1%, while sparkling wines, especially prosecco (+23.2%), led the growth for the wine industry.

Another key trend helping propel wine and spirits is the rise in alternative packaging and small sizes. For spirits, 50ml and 100ml offerings increased at rates of 18.1% and 13.6% respectively, while 187ml and 500ml wines experienced double-digit growth rates. The rise in the quality of boxed and canned wines has changed consumer perception. Most importantly, this trend has been a direct hit on beer occasions like sporting events and other outdoor activities.

The information is considered preliminary data (p) and is subject to revision with the official IWSR 2017 global database release in May 2018.


Pakistan Warned By US It Can No Longer Bear Weight Of Contradictions – Analysis

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By Dr Subhash Kapila

For far too long the United States has borne the strategic weight of Pakistan’s strategic contradictions of pretensions to be a staunch US ally and simultaneously resorting to destabilisation US interests in Afghanistan by terrorism and suicide bombings sponsored by Pakistan Army though its Islamic Jihadi affiliates.

The United States after a decade of strategic patience with Pakistan Army’s Afghanistan-destabilisation strategies has seemingly decided to discipline Pakistan Army by putting it “on notice” that the United States will “no longer continue to bear the weight of contradictions in Pakistan’s relations with the United States,”

The United States seems determined this time around in 2018 under President Trump that the security and stability of Afghanistan is contemporaneously more crucial geopolitically than the United States transactional relationship with Pakistan and the rentier instincts of the Pakistan Army. This may lead the United States to undertake drastic actions to secure its end-aim.

This assertion was made last week by US National Security Adviser General J H McMaster in a sequential flow of US advisories, cautions and warning by US President Trump personally and top dignitaries of his Administration. Pakistan Army has so far been defiant and dismissive on this score, at least in terms of rhetorical responses.

The beginning of 2018 may eventually turn out as the tipping point in US-Pak relations wherein United States reacting to Pakistan Army’s obduracy in not desisting from destabilisation of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s changed strategic preferences for US adversaries, namely, China and Russia, feels compelled to put Pakistan “on notice” by an opening step of suspending all US military aid to Pakistan.

The United States through its Secretary of State and Defense Secretary has asserted that it will defeat proxy terrorism emanating from Pakistani safe havens with or without Pakistan (read Pakistan Army) help.

Media reports also indicate that the US Defense Secretary Mattis has declared that the United States has taken into account that Pakistan may not offer its logistics arteries for maintenance of US Forces in Afghanistan. But he asserted further that he thinks Pakistan wold not do so. This US signalling suggests that the Pakistan Army would eventually fall in line on US demands, willingly or grudgingly.

In addition enough indicators are available that in case Pakistan Army does not fall in line on US demands then the United States will apply pressures on global financial institutions to cease loans to Pakistan. That would seriously affect Pakistan’s economy in a big way.

Pakistan and more specifically the Pakistan Army has over-played its hand in 2017 on not heeding President Trump’s warnings to desist from destabilisation of Afghanistan and abandoning use of terrorism against its neighbours and thus forced a “role reversal” w in January 2018 in US policy approaches to Pakistan.

Analytically, the assertions flowing from US National Security Adviser, General H R McMaster needs to be seen as the final warning to Pakistan sequentially in a series of calibrated steps to put Pakistan on notice to reset its policies and desist from destabilising Afghanistan which is critical to the United States geopolitically.

Pakistan Army’s chief instruments of State-policy in the destabilisation of Afghanistan are the Haqqani Brothers militias and a wide array of Islamic Jihadi terrorist group affiliated to Pakistan Army’s intelligence agency, the ISI. The Pakistan Army has used these outfits to effect against US Forces in Afghanistan and US-friendly entities for decades, double-timing the United States while devouring billions of dollars in US military aid and Coalition Support Funds.

The US National Security Adviser in the same interview took pains to emphasise a differential in US attitudes towards the Pakistani people at large and the Pakistan leadership.

The US National Security Adviser stressed that the United States has great “sympathy” and “empathy” for the people of Pakistan and looked forward to the Pakistani nation moving forward on the road to progress.

On the Pakistan leadership, and which should be read as the Pakistan Army leadership, the US National Security Adviser was highly critical. Implicit in his remarks was that the obsession of using Islamic terrorist groups by the Pakistan Army to destabilise Afghanistan was endangering US-Pak relations. He further added that Pakistan had a choice to adopt the pathways of North Korea and become a “pariah state” or to retract from its terrorism-centric disruptive policies against Afghanistan and return Pakistan to the path to progress. The latter would be in the best interest of the people of Pakistan.

United States geopolitical other expediencies of the US-China relations had held back United States hands to discipline the Pakistan Army on its disruptive strategies against Afghanistan and India. With US determination to stay put in Afghanistan without any timelines till such time Afghanistan can shoulder its security on its own is a new US geopolitical development which puts Pakistan Army in a quandary on two critical counts.

The United States resolve to stay put in Afghanistan foils the plans of Pakistan Army and the China=Pakistan Axis to exploit the vacuum that was going to ensue with the earlier time-table of draw-down of US Forces in Afghanistan by end 2014.

The United States latest assertion of no longer willing to bear the weight of contradictions in US-Pak relations and the US decision to suspend all US military aid to Pakistan including Afghanistan-centric Coalition Support Funds is a double whammy for the Pakistan Army.

Both these implications cannot be ignored any longer by Pakistan leadership or its Pakistan Army as the progenitor of Pakistan’s strategies on Afghanistan and its overall relationship with the United States.

The United States has now posed two major challenges to the Pakistan Army, First, that it should put an end to use of Haqqani Brothers and other Islamic Jihadi affiliates destabilisation efforts in Afghanistan. The second challenge is can the Pakistan Army continue with suspension of US military aid which directly and indirectly has propped up Pakistan Army’s militany adventurism against India and Afghanistan.

The Pakistan Army would continue to be obdurate and not cease terrorist attacks and suicide bombings in Afghanistan through proxy use of its Islamic Jihadi affiliates operating from safe havens in Pakistan’s border areas with Afghanistan. It would continue to play the deniability exit card. It would continue with its contradictory approaches of playing the victim card portraying Pakistan as the victim of terrorism

.But then, the world knows that the terrorist attacks within Pakistan were not by Pakistani Army affiliates but by the Pakistan Taliban protesting Pakistan Army atrocities in Pakistan’s frontier regions.

The United States should foresee this Pakistan Army ploy and be prepared to undertake limited military operations and Special Forces operations against the safe havens in frontier areas bordering Afghanistan being used by the Haqqani Brothers and other terrorist groups. US military operations to knockout Pakistan Army safe havens used for terrorist attacks in Afghanistan would be the surest way to insulate Afghanistan from Pakistan Army’s destabilisation strategies.

The Pakistan Army may cynically welcome a US military action against its safe havens bordering Afghanistan so that the terrorism monsters that it had created are destroyed by US military action. This would give it a plausible exit from any blame that it was forced to do so, in terms of domestic politics.

The United States suspending all military aid in billions of dollars for the Pakistan Army will be a serious blow with lunge long term impact to curtail Pakistan’s military adventurism. China will be most reluctant to replicate US military aid to Pakistan as it would not bring commensurate military gains from Pakistan Army other than what exists already.

Indirect impact of cut-off of US military aid would seriously impact Pakistan’s economy as made out by Pakistani economic advisers themselves. This may hasten the emergence of democracy in Pakistan in a tangential way.

So far so good but two major questions arise here. The first, can the Pakistan Army continue to defy the US demands hoping to gamble away in the hope that the United States would ultimately be forced to temporise with the Pakistan Army over Afghanistan. The second major question pertains to the credibility of US resolve that it would strongly follow through with its disciplining of Pakistan Army to achieve its strategic end-aims in Afghanistan and whether the Pakistan Army still will continue to be an important factor in US strategic calculus to prompt United States to revert to US permissiveness of Pakistan Army’s military adventurism against Afghanistan and India?

Both these aspects stand analysed in my recent Papers on Pakistan and the United States and lie in the field of estimative analysis which has many imponderables. My Paper last week analyses that Pakistan has lost its strategic utility in United States strategic calculus and all that it entails. If that is a given then one could expect stronger pressures awaiting Pakistan Army from the US armoury.

Going by current indicators it would not be wrong to conclude that this time around the United States seems determined that nothing should stand in the way of stabilising Afghanistan, whatever the costs. One should not be surprised that the United States in an extreme step even impose economic sanctions and resort to political isolation.

Geopolitically, Afghanistan’s stability and security in 2018 for the United States outweighs the gains to the United States that may have accrued in the past from its transactional relationship with Pakistan and its rentier Pakistan Army.

As stated in my last Paper on Pakistan, the Pakistan Army misread the evolving geopolitics in the Indo Pacific and foolishly aligned Pakistan with China and Russia——both countries designated as adversarial in US National Security Strategy 2018 of US President Trump.

Concluding, it needs to be emphasised that the United States strong pressures on Pakistan Army are no knee-jerk reactions to the preceding stalemate in Afghanistan. In my assessment these need to be viewed as a calibrated strategy of the United States to ensure that the Pakistan Army ceases to dictate its template on Afghanistan to the detriment of United States vital security interests not only in Afghanistan but also as a consequence on the wider South Asia regional security environment and the Indo Pacific geopolitics.

A Human Security Approach To Nuclear Disarmament – Analysis

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By Shivani Singh*

Despite the best intentions of nuclear disarmament groups, failure to adopt norms surrounding human security in disarmament has proved to be a major impediment in achieving concrete progress. Why is the human security approach needed in nuclear disarmament? Why has it taken a backseat to a country’s military and strategic considerations? How can human security norms be built into the nuclear disarmament discourse?

Human security studies deal with the merging of traditional and non-traditional threats to security, narrowing down the analysis to the unit level where the individual is the subject matter of the debate.

For any use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against an adversary state, it is ultimately human lives that stand at the receiving end. The very nature of nuclear weapons defies distinctions between combatants and non-combatants in a state of war. Considering the exorbitant risk attached with the possible usage of a weapon that is technically never meant to be used, the costs fail to match the benefits.

The risks to human lives are not only limited to the actual use of a nuclear weapon but in fact span the production, stockpiling and transfer of nuclear weapons and fissile material. Exposure to nuclear radiation while cleaning radioactive leaks and spills, uncertainty regarding the extent of genetic mutation among populations that neighbour reactors and testing grounds, and the potential for disasters at the site of a nuclear reactor are some of the inadvertent yet crucial consequences of maintaining a nuclear arsenal.

Any discussion therefore that accounts for traditional, state-centric conceptions of security must also focus on individual, human security. After all, what is it exactly that nuclear weapons are supposed to secure? Whose security are they prioritising?

The human security approach becomes all important in dealing with nuclear disarmament given the scale at which nuclear weapons can affect human lives. This approach does not de-prioritise the state – instead, it complements state security and works in tandem to attain the goal of nuclear disarmament.

The place of norms surrounding human security, however, has been rather precarious. States still see nuclear weapons as intrinsically linked and even synonymous with their national security, focusing on the strategic and military considerations rather than – or in tandem with – humanitarian or ethical concerns.

The reason is two-fold. Firstly, there is an inherent power struggle that emerges from the systemic realities of the international system. Nuclear weapons are validated by the understanding that striving for power is the ultimate aim for any state – their possession provide states with defensive (and offensive) power to ensure their survival. This power-seeking behaviour gives rise to the notion of security that gives precedence to protecting borders and maintaining the status quo over ensuring the survival of its citizens.

Secondly, the international system is plagued by innate trust deficits that motivate states to adopt security-centric approaches while formulating national security strategies. A result of this trust deficit is the logic of nuclear deterrence which is based on the principle of mutually assured destruction. Deterrence, through repeated articulation, has become the norm, thus convincing states to nuclearise in order to survive.

The problem, however, is in the very rationale of nuclear deterrence theory which encourages a spiralling arms race. In fact, what deterrence promises is a heightened state of fear to maintain the status quo – that is, guaranteeing ‘security’ by perpetuating ‘insecurity’.

Since human security norms in nuclear disarmament are weak, the starting point in any norm-building exercise would be to explore ‘security’ from a humanitarian lens rather than solely viewing nuclear weapons as symbols of power and prestige. This requires a paradigm shift towards using the individual as the proper referent of security rather than the state.

To this end, states like Austria and Japan have initiated efforts on international forums to emphasise the humanitarian initiative in nuclear disarmament. Treaties like the Mine Ban Treaty and Convention on Cluster Munitions have set a positive precedent in customary international law on armament policy by stigmatising the use of these associated weapons. These treaties can act as a guiding framework for successful norm-building around humanitarian considerations for nuclear disarmament.

The traditional understanding of security must undergo a paradigm change in order to recognise the centrality of humanitarian considerations in nuclear disarmament, and subsequently incorporate them in national security strategies.

* Shivani Singh
Researcher, NSP, IPCS

Greece Limits Power Of Sharia Law For Muslim Minority

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(EurActiv) — The Greek parliament yesterday (9 January) made the practice of Islamic sharia law in family disputes optional for the country’s Muslim minority, changing a century-old legacy.

Greece’s leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras immediately called the vote an “historic step” as it “extended equality before the law to all Greeks.”

The legislation will allow Muslim litigants to opt for a Greek court to resolve family disputes rather than appealing to Islamic jurists known as muftis.

For family law matters, Greek Muslims generally seek recourse to muftis for things like divorce, child custody and inheritance. Rights groups say it is a system that frequently discriminates against women.

Paradox of history

The issue has its origins in the period after World War I, and treaties between Greece and Turkey that followed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The 1920 Treaty of Sevres and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne stipulated that Islamic customs and Islamic religious law would apply to thousands of Muslims who suddenly became Greek citizens.

Greece’s roughly 110,000-strong Muslim minority mainly lives in Thrace, a poor, rural region in the northeast bordering Turkey.

The parliament’s move comes as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is expected to rule this year on a complaint brought against Greece by a 67-year-old widow, Hatijah Molla Salli, who is locked in an inheritance dispute with her late husband’s sisters.

When Salli appealed to Greek secular justice, she initially won her case. But the Greek supreme court in 2013 ruled that only a mufti had the power to resolve Muslim inheritance rights.

“The government is only acting to prevent condemnation by the court, which, as everyone knows, is inevitable,” Salli’s lawyer Yannis Ktistakis told AFP in November.

“As a European Union nation, this does not bestow honour upon us,” Tsipras said at that time.

The issue is complicated by still-tense relations between traditional rivals Greece and Turkey.

Ankara takes a close interest in the Muslim community — which it sees as Turkish, although it also includes Pomaks and Roma — and frequently complains on its behalf to Athens, which considers it interference in Greece’s domestic affairs.

Athens admits that the Islam preached by the Thrace muftis is generally more moderate than the teachings of more hardline imams elsewhere in Europe.

South Korea Readies Ban On Cryptocurrency Trading

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South Korea’s justice minister has announced legislation is in the works to ban cryptocurrency trading after police and tax authorities reportedly raided the country’s biggest exchanges in a tax evasion probe.

“There are great concerns regarding virtual currencies and the justice ministry is basically preparing a bill to ban cryptocurrency trading through exchanges,” Park Sang-ki told a press conference, according to the ministry’s media office.

The minister refused to disclose any details about the planned shutdown, but promised to work “jointly” with the government task force.

Earlier an official at Coinone, a major cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, confirmed to Reuters that “a few officials from the National Tax Service” raided their office this week. The source said police have been investigating the company since last year, suspecting their operations of “gambling.”

The 2nd largest virtual currency exchange in South Korea, Bithumb, was also raided on Wednesday, according to an official who asked to remain anonymous.

“We were asked by the tax officials to disclose paperwork and things yesterday,” the source told Reuters.

The ministry apparently sees virtual currency trading in its current form as an illegal activity and plans to embark on discussing the draft bill as soon as this week, according to the SBS news service.

The news comes as South Korea is turning the screw on domestic cryptocurrency trading by going after banks and exchanges.

The South Korean government announced in December it is going to ban exchanges from enabling anonymous cryptocurrency transactions and prohibit banks from providing virtual currency accounts.

On Monday, the South Korean finance regulator said it has been inspecting six banks offering such accounts while looking into a potential breach of anti-money laundering rules.

READ MORE: Bitcoin tumbles as South Korea threatens to throw cold water on its red-hot crypto market

“Virtual currency is currently unable to function as a means of payment and it is being used for illegal purposes like money laundering, scams and fraudulent investor operations,” Choi Jong-ku, chairman of South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC), said at the time.

In South Korea, where cryptocurrencies and, in particular, bitcoin, are extremely popular among general population, the financial authorities display a far more timid attitude, with the chair of the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), Choe Heung-sik, last month warning of a “bitcoin bubble” which will inevitably burst.

Defying Israel With The Help Of Martin Luther King – OpEd

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This month, America will commemorate the anniversary of the birth of iconic civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who used non-violent protests to challenge racist and discriminatory practices by local and federal governments and agencies.

African American and the descendant of slaves in Georgia, King used civil disobedience to confront racist laws that treated blacks differently from whites, resulting in the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was introduced by President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Johnson was merely following up on promises made by his predecessor, President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated only months after addressing the American people on his efforts to enforce civil rights for all.

America in the 1960s was not much different from today’s Israel, where racism and discrimination define the Jewish state’s policies, which recognize the superiority of Jews over non-Jews in the Holy Land.

It might be wise for the Palestinians to pause and reorganize themselves using King’s message as a foundation for their own struggle against growing apartheid practises by Israel’s government. King’s methods were based on principles evolved from the struggle of Mahatma Gandhi.

The struggle that King led was not without violence from his foes, and he was assassinated by a white racist on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. King’s “civil disobedience” resulted in the rise of a new wave of racism in America and the election of people like George Wallace, who became governor of Alabama in 1963.

Wallace fought to preserve laws that segregated whites and blacks, requiring the races to be given different public facilities and services, with whites receiving far better treatment than blacks — in much the same way that Israel provides Jews with more funds and services than they do to Palestinians living in Israel.

What did King do that Palestinians can do? A lot.

They can start by building civil rights coalitions inside Israel, coordinated with Palestinians living in the West Bank, where apartheid is used to distinguish government services and rights between Jews, who are favored, and non-Jews, who are discriminated against because of their race, religion and national origins.

And reaching out to the African American community would also be good because the racism against non-Jews by Israel extends to racism against other minorities, including blacks, Asians and others. Last week, for example, Israel’s government shockingly, openly announced that it would give each African refugee living inside Israel as much as $3,500 to leave the country. Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the Israeli version of Wallace, explained the outrageous offer as driven by the need to protect Israel’s “Jewish and democratic character.”

Of course, racism based on religion is no different than racism based on race. I call Israel’s discrimination “racist religionism.”

The analogy of Netanyahu’s offer strikes a strong chord among Americans, who are forced to finance Israel’s government apartheid and societal racism with more than $3.5 billion dollars of their taxes every year.

This money could easily be spent bolstering areas of real need for American citizens. For example, the US spent $63 billion in 2015 on much-needed “Housing and Community” resources. With 321 million Americans, that’s only $196 each. The US funding for Israel’s 8.5 million citizens, meanwhile, amounts to an annual subsidy of $425 per Israeli. And if you eliminate the 2.2 million non-Jews from that, the actual subsidy for Jewish Israelis equates to $549 each.

Tax dollars taken from hard-working Americans are directly used to support Israel’s racist societal values, which are falsely cloaked as being “democratic.” This means that Israel’s violations of civil rights directly reflect on the American people, because the funding spent on Israel represents nearly one-fifth of all of America’s aid to foreign countries.

Americans have not shown a strong sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians, mainly because of the poor performance of Arab activists and groups in the US. But Americans will when they understand who is paying for Israel’s racism; a system that defies the fundamental principles of America’s commitment to civil rights.

Palestinians can embrace King’s message and make it their own, and many Americans would identify with that. In fact, to mark his birthday on Jan. 15, Palestinians should close down their stores inside Israel as a form of civil disobedience and declare it as a commemoration to King’s principles in the face of the daily discrimination they face.

Israel’s government continues to motor towards worse forms of racist discrimination. This week, they also announced they would ban members of 20 civil rights organizations from entering their embattled “Jewish state.” Many of those banned are Jews.

Palestinians need to dramatically shift their activism away from their routine protests, which have proven to fail, and embrace new strategies through civil disobedience that reinforce a commitment to peace, compromise and non-violence.

They will find much support from progressive Jewish and Israeli organizations such as B’Tselem, Jewish Voice for Peace, the New Israel Fund, Rabbis for Human Rights, Gush Shalom, Seeds of Peace, and J Street, to name just a few. We should be talking with Israelis who support justice, like courageous civil rights writers such as Bradley Burston and Gideon Levy and many of the Israeli groups above, not supporting a blanket and self-destructive BDS boycott of all of Israel.

On Jan. 15, Palestinians should abandon their failed strategies and embrace a new, more principled stand. Suspend all their business and honor King, redefining themselves with a protest process that can be more successful in standing up to Israeli racism. Mark one time that day for a Palestinian and Arab world moment of silence in King’s name and make his successful efforts ours too.

Malaysia Launches New Search For Missing Airliner, Hires US Firm

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By Hadi Azmi

Malaysia’s government agreed Wednesday to pay an American firm up to U.S. $70 million (280 million ringgit) to find the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which disappeared four years ago, within an Indian Ocean area ranging to at least 25,000 square km.

The government and Houston-based Ocean Infinity Ltd. signed off on a deal by which the firm agreed it would be paid only if any of its eight high-tech Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) finds the debris field from the missing Boeing 777 or the plane’s black-box in-flight recorders within three months, starting “imminently.”

“The contract is on a ‘no cure, no fee’ basis within a 90-day time frame. The search operation is scheduled to commence mid-January 2018,” Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told reporters after a Wednesday signing ceremony in Putrajaya, Malaysia’s administrative capital. The agreement states Ocean Infinity will be paid only if it finds the airliner’s wreckage.

The new search marks the first time in a year that Malaysia is resuming an undersee hunt for the wreckage of MH370, which is believed to have crashed into the Indian Ocean with 239 passengers and crew on board. It drifted off course during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

In January 2017, Malaysia, China and Australia called off a search for the missing plane after spending nearly three years scouring an area of 120,000 square km (46,332 square miles) in Indian Ocean waters off the western Australian coast. That search area was selected based on satellite analyses of the flight’s presumed path.

“To all the family members and loved ones on board MH370, we are with you during these trying times,” the minister told relatives of passengers and crew who were at the ceremony.

The minister said Ocean Infinity would search for the wreckage of flight MH370 within a designated area of the southern Indian Ocean ranging from 5,000 square km (1,930.5 square miles) to at least 25,000 square km (9,652.5 square miles).

“Ocean Infinity will take on the economic risk of the renewed search, only receiving payment if the aircraft wreckage is located,” the firm said in a statement posted on its website Wednesday.

Search to start Jan. 17

Under the terms of the deal, the government will pay the firm $20 million (80.1 million ringgit) if its submersible drones find the debris field within an area of 5,000 square km, or up to $50 million (200.4 million ringgit) within an area of up to 25,000 square km (9,652.5 square miles), officials said.

If the subs find the airliner’s wreckage beyond a radius of 25,000 square km, Malaysia will pay the firm $70 million (280.6 million ringgit), officials said. Ocean Infinity will be rewarded if it pinpoints the location of the debris field or discovers the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder.

“As we speak, the vessel Seabed Constructor is on her way to the search area, taking advantage of the favorable weather conditions in the South Indian Ocean,” Tiong Lai said, referring to a ship carrying the eight AUVs and operated by Ocean Infinity, a company that specializes in collecting high-resolution geophysical seabed data.

The vessel will have 65 people on board, including two Malaysian government representatives, officials said.

Oliver Plunkett, the firm’s CEO who attended the signing ceremony, said imaging technology developed by his team, as well as new data on current movements, would aid in identifying the debris field with better accuracy than in previous efforts.

“We have eight unmanned underwater vehicles, or underwater drones, that can sweep the ocean floor running at the same time, beaming the information back to onboard ships,” he told journalists, adding that the operation would begin Jan. 17.

The eight AUVs are “free flying,” which means they can travel untethered and can dive to depths of 6,000 meters (19,685 feet), Ocean Infinity said.

Citing discoveries of debris believed to be from MH370 that swept ashore on Reunion Island, a French territory in the western Indian Ocean in August 2015, and new ocean-current patterns, Plunkett was optimistic that his firm could solve the aviation mystery.

“We would like to say we are 80 percent confident but we don’t want to put a percentage on our chances,” Plunkett said. Experts from his company were involved in finding the wreckage of Air France flight 447, which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean while en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009.

In August 2015, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced a team of international experts had confirmed that debris found on Reunion were from MH370, and this marked the first physical evidence the plane had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

Of the 239 people on board MH370, 153 were Chinese nationals and 38 were Malaysians.

“We just want to know what happened, a closure,” a relative of one of the people aboard the doomed flight, told BenarNews, identifying himself only as “Nathan.”

“It’s a bit difficult to come to a closure without knowing what happened to our loved ones.”

White House ‘Deeply Concerned’ By Iran Crackdown On Citizens

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The Trump Administration is deeply concerned by reports that the Iranian regime has imprisoned thousands of ‎Iranian citizens in the past week for engaging in peaceful protests, the White House said in a Wednesday press statement.

“Further reports that the regime has tortured or killed some of these demonstrators while in detention are even more disturbing. We will not remain silent as the Iranian dictatorship represses the basic rights of its citizens and will hold Iran’s leaders accountable for any violations,” the White House said in the press release.

According to the White House, the protesters in Iran are expressing legitimate grievances, including demanding an end to their government’s oppression, corruption, and waste of national resources on military adventurism.

“Iran’s regime claims to support democracy, but when its own people express their aspirations for better lives and an end to injustice, it once again shows its true brutal nature,” the White House said, adding, ” The United States calls for the immediate release of all political prisoners in Iran, including the victims of the most recent crackdown.”


Germany Mulls Charges Against Top Iranian Cleric Shahrudi

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(RFE/RL)  — Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office said it is continuing to investigate whether to bring charges against a top Iranian cleric who is receiving medical treatment in the country as a report emerged he may return to Tehran on January 11.

A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office told Reuters on January said that “we will continue to examine on a legal basis whether [Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi] Shahrudi was guilty of crimes against humanity” during his decade overseeing an estimated 2,000 executions as the head of Iran’s justice ministry, regardless of whether he leaves or stays in the country.

Two complaints were filed this week in Germany against Shahrudi, who has been mentioned as a possible future Iranian supreme leader, one by former Green Party lawmaker Volker Beck and the second by an exiled opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

The opposition group urged Germany on January 10 to immediately issue an arrest warrant for Shahrudi to prevent him from leaving the northern city of Hannover, where he is receiving medical treatment. The group said it learned that the Iranian government has reserved seven flight tickets for Shahrudi and his entourage to return to Tehran on January 11.

A coalition of Iranian human rights groups on January 10 said it provided the German government with what it said was evidence that Shahrudi “was responsible for the Islamic Revolutionary Courts that sent numerous human rights activists, defense lawyers, journalists, webloggers, political dissidents, and religious minorities, to Iran’s notorious prisons where they were subject to torture, rape, and murder.”

In a news release, the coalition quoted Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, as saying “Shahrudi is directly responsible for the appointment of judges and prosecutors that have been responsible for persecutions and systematic violations of fundamental human rights. He must be held accountable.”

Shahrudi, who has been mentioned as a possible successor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has attracted protesters and sharp criticism during his stay at a neurological treatment center in Hannover.

The mass-circulation Bild daily’s front-page headline on January 8 read, “Death Judge In Iran, Luxury Patient In Germany.”

The Jerusalem Post reported that the prosecutor in the German province of Lower Saxony, where Hannover is located, is also considering whether to pursue a criminal complaint filed against Shahrudi in that jurisdiction.

About 200 demonstrators showed up outside the Hannover hospital where he is staying on January 6 to protest the executions of an estimated 2,000 Iranians that took place while he was Iran’s justice minister.

The complaints against him claim he can be prosecuted under German law for alleged crimes committed in Iran. Shahrudi has not publicly commented on the accusations against him.

German Foreign Ministry spokesman Rainer Breul said on January 8 that Shahrudi had sought treatment in Germany for a “serious illness” and that his request was granted after “credible health reasons” were given.

Bild reported that if the German government determined that Shahrudi, who is currently a member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, is considered to be a government office-holder, he might be granted diplomatic immunity from prosecution.

“It would be a big mistake if the federal government provides diplomatic immunity here to the organizer of mass murders through Iran’s justice system,” Beck told The Jerusalem Post, explaining the reasons behind the complaint he filed against Shahrudi.

“Germany should not be a sanctuary for such people, who in their country persecute people for political or religious reasons and threaten them with death,” he said. “The Iranian regime persecutes women who were raped, homosexuals, Baha’is, Kurds, and atheists.”

Shahrudi headed Iran’s judiciary for 10 years from 1999 to 2009. Amnesty International said that during that time he carried out more than 2,000 executions, including of adolescents, while overseeing the torture of prisoners and arrests of political and human rights activists.

Shahrudi was a student of Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and is viewed as a strict disciple of Khamenei.

Besides serving in the Assembly of Experts, Shahrudi currently heads Iran’s Expediency Council, which moderates disputes between Iran’s parliament and a constitutional watchdog known as the Guardians Council.

Saba Farzan, the German-Iranian executive director of Foreign Policy Circle, a strategy think tank in Berlin, told the Post that “this representative of the Islamic dictatorship shouldn’t be on European territory at all,” and criminal prosecution was “absolutely the right path to go.”

“These human rights violators must learn that they can’t deprive their own citizens of their inalienable rights and then receive luxurious treatment – medical as well as political,” Farzan said.

US And Europe Drifting Apart Over Middle East Strategies – OpEd

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By Fadi Esber*

Ever since Donald Trump was elected to office little more than a year ago, relations across the Atlantic have been, at best, tense. While British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron have attempted to meet Trump halfway, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s relations with the US president remain frosty. The popular mood in major European countries is even more disdainful of the new president.

It is on the Middle East, above all, where European policy diverges significantly from the Trump administration’s approach. Recent events and diplomatic maneuverings have shown that the major European players are trying to carve out an independent space for their policy in the region, sometimes at the expense of the long-established American position. European relations with Iran and Turkey, their approach to the Qatar crisis, and their stance on the Jerusalem watershed have stood in marked contrast, if not outright opposition, to Trump’s policy. European and American post-Daesh strategies for Iraq and Syria seem aligned, but only for the time being.

Trump came into office with a plan to roll back what he saw as expanding Iranian influence in the Middle East. Yet, when he tried to use the Iran nuclear deal as a tool for political pressure, European diplomats and businessmen went into a frenzy. European leaders renewed their commitment to the nuclear agreement with Iran and were willing to stick to the deal even if Trump abandoned it. They called for dialogue about other thorny issues, such as Iran’s ballistic missile program. And, when the recent protests erupted in Iran, Europe’s position was lukewarm, as opposed to Trump’s fiery support for the demonstrators. European diplomats were also uneasy about Trump taking the issue to the UN Security Council.

Commitment to international treaties and Iranian sovereignty, however, are not Europe’s primary motives for defying Trump on Iran. In the first half of 2017, there was a 94 percent increase in trade between Europe and Iran over the same period in 2016. Even though major banks are still reluctant to handle Iranian transactions, other European entities are scrambling for their cut, signing agreements with dozens of Iranian banks to finance projects. The European Commission, the highest executive body in the EU, has proposed allowing the European Investment Bank to operate in Iran in the future. German and French businessmen have accompanied their countries’ top diplomats on visits to Tehran. These burgeoning financial and economic relations, and EU-US differences on Iran, are expected to grow in the coming months.

Ties between Europe and Turkey have been worsening ever since the 2015 refugee crisis. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasing authoritarianism since the July 2016 abortive coup has only made matters worse. European leaders asserted that anti-democratic measures have buried all remaining hopes of Turkey joining the EU. Relations between Germany and Turkey, in particular, are at an all-time low after Erdogan and Merkel exchanged harsh accusations over the past year. This rift in relations with Europe paralleled the crisis in Turkish-US relations.

 

In recent days, however, European and American approaches to Turkey suddenly diverged. While Erdogan was attacking Trump for his support for the Iran protests and continued American commitment to the Kurds, France and Germany took steps towards detente with Turkey. Hosting Erdogan in Paris last week, Macron called for a Turkish-European partnership in order to transcend the impasse over Turkey’s quest to join the EU. The main goal, the French president asserted, is to keep Turkey “anchored” in Europe. Parallel to the summit in Paris, German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel hosted his Turkish counterpart and vowed to improve ties between the two countries. This recent detente with Europe, added to his rapprochement with Russia, only strengthens Erdogan’s hand vis-a-vis Trump, as he continues to defy US policy in the Middle East.

In both major diplomatic crises that rocked the Middle East in 2017 —Qatar and Trump’s decision on Jerusalem — European and American positions were markedly divergent. While his secretary of state Rex Tillerson was more diplomatic, Trump took a harsh stance on Qatar. Germany, on the other hand, announced that Arab demands from Qatar were “very provocative.” The German stance on the Qatar crisis was alarmist, warning about the possibility of conflict in the region, without actually contributing to any diplomatic solutions. Macron also tried to play a role in crisis diplomacy, but that did not prevent him from flying to Doha and signing $14 billion worth of deals, including the sale of advanced fighter jets to Qatar.

When the US recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and decided to move the US embassy there, sparking a major crisis, Europe vehemently opposed the American decision. France, Germany and Britain all criticized Trump, and almost all European countries voted in favor of condemning the US decision at the United Nations General Assembly. Europe, nonetheless, has not offered any viable diplomatic alternatives for the stumbling peace process in the Middle East.

For years, Europe and the US were partners in the anti-Daesh coalition. But, as the fight against the terrorist group in both Iraq and Syria comes to an end, it is unlikely American and European strategies for the post-Daesh era in Iraq will be harmonious, given the aforementioned disagreements over almost all issues related to the Middle East. On the other hand, Europe is almost completely absent from the diplomatic activity aimed at resolving the Syrian conflict. It is doubtful whether recent openings with Iran and Turkey could guarantee Europe a seat at the table, considering the ambivalent status of Europe’s relations with Russia, the dominant player in the Syrian case. The most important fact to keep in mind about both Iraq and Syria is that, unlike the US, Russia, Iran and Turkey, European powers do not have enough leverage on the ground to construct a policy independent of other powers.

• Fadi Esber is a founding associate at the Damascus History Foundation, a private organization promoting research on themes related to the history of Damascus from the 19th century to the present. He is pursuing a doctorate in history at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

China Outbidding US For Pakistan’s Future – Analysis

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By Ty Joplin

Trump rang in the new year in the only way he knew how: by smack-talking a strategic ally and threatening to take away billions in aid money.

On Jan. 1, Trump tweeted out: “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”

The next day, the State Bank of Pakistan fired back and announced it would be adopting the Chinese Yuan as an international currency, which allows deals to be done directly between the Pakistani rupee and Chinese yuan.

Although Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and Pakistani pushback appeared to be causally linked, Pakistan’s move towards China has been long in the making. From Former President George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Pakistan’s relationship with the U.S. has been a tumultuous one.

But Trump has accelerated the process of deteriorating relations at breakneck speeds, and China is well-poised to pick up the replace the U.S. as Pakistan’s global backer. It’s not just the tweet or fraying of diplomatic relations, but the lack of concerted effort to secure Pakistan as a partner as U.S. interests are drowned out by other powers.

As Trump works on “Making America Great Again,” China is literally building inroads to become West Asia’s hegemon.

During Trump’s short tenure, his administration has overseen the rapid retrenchment of U.S. power from West Asia and the Middle East: Trump has relinquished Iraq to Iran, stepped back on the Iranian nuclear deal, withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, retreated from a meaningful part in the Israeli/Palestinian peace process, and now is seemingly turning its back its alliance with Pakistan.

Both economically and militarily, China is successfully implementing a plan to outbid the U.S. for Pakistan’s future.

All Roads Lead to China

According to John Fei, an independent consultant who has previously served as a manager to John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Asia Security Initiative, China views Pakistan as a vital part of a larger initiative to establish a globally dominant economy.

“China’s interests in Pakistan dovetail closely with its Belt and Road Initiative. Through the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), China will be able to exert economic influence and gain a strategic foothold in the region.”

The Belt and Road Initiative is a massive project spanning nearly the entire world, and involves China forging accessible trade routes between China and countless other countries. Part of that initiative is CPEC, a $62 billion investment in Pakistan’s infrastructure to facilitate China’s economic agenda.

In other words, China is essentially reworking Pakistan’s entire infrastructure and economy so that it is routed to China. The project not only promises to fundamentally reshape the world economy around China, but it also spells danger for the U.S., which risks losing leverage over countries that could simply sign on to China’s economic world vision.

CPEC also looks to renovate Pakistan’s businesses, agriculture, defence and telecommunications, and societal structures. In the words of Firstposts’ Tara Kartha, “The currency was the last bastion of the Pakistani state that remained inviolate. It seems that this is now about to be breached.”

According to Fei, now that CPEC is well underway and Pakistan has adopted the Chinese yuan, it no longer needs the U.S. dollar to conduct international trade.

China has quickly become Pakistan’s most critical trade partner, importing far more from China ($17.2 billion) than the closest competitor, the U.S. ($2.1 billion). China has also rapidly rose through the ranks to become Pakistan’s second-largest export destination, just behind the U.S.

So while Trump attempts to revitalize the U.S. economy by ‘bringing jobs back,’ and advocating for a kind of anti-globalist isolationism, he has largely remained silent on the slow leaching of critical U.S. assets abroad which bolster the American economy.

New Chinese Military Bases in Pakistan

In a bold new move, China also plans on building one or multiple military bases in Pakistan–a radical move for a country that has only one other military base abroad (built in Djibouti in 2017).

Fei claims that its military and economic goals are intimately interlinked: “The scope, features and size of the [military] facility in Jiwani [in southwest Pakistan] will indicate the extent of Chinese ambitions in the region, and likely signal the degree to which economic initiatives, such as the Belt and Road Initiative or China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, are linked with China’s larger military and security ambitions.”

When reporters repeatedly asked representatives from the Chinese government about specifics regarding the planned base, the response was curt: “China and Pakistan are also making efforts to build the CPEC which is in the common interests of the countries along the route. I don’t think it is necessary for the outside world to make too much guesses in this regard.”

Even more telling, China may also expand Pakistan’s crucial naval port in Gwadar to have military assets. “China already has commercial interests in Gwadar, but given that military and commercial uses require different facilities and equipment, it is likely that a second port to support China’s military interests will be opened,” Fei states.

In short, China is gambling of Pakistan becoming a central platform in its plan to project power internationally, and is doing everything in its power to secure Pakistan, including sending its military to the country.

Trump’s ‘America Last’ Model

At this stage, the U.S. can offer little compared to China, and Trump appears unconcerned about relinquishing what has been a crucial albeit unreliable strategic partner in the region.

China promises to completely remake Pakistan, while the U.S.’ top politician tweets threats about aid money. For Pakistan, the choice is easy.

When asked what could slow down the process of an emerging Pakistan-China economic axis, Fei points to domestic factors. “If China becomes mired in internal social or economic challenges, then it will have less resources to devote to overseas diplomatic and economic initiatives… One can draw analogous scenarios for the influence of U.S. domestic developments, and the diversionary power of other external events, to its ability to maintain ties with Pakistan.”

One of those ‘domestic developments’ preventing a close relationship with Pakistan may be the emergence of an ‘America First’ model of trade and governance.

To imagine a powerful U.S. economy without the support of Asia is unthinkable, but Trump seems to have made a habit of doing the unthinkable every day.

Original source

SETI Project Homes In On Strange ‘Fast Radio Bursts’

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Recent observations of a mysterious and distant object that emits intermittent bursts of radio waves so bright that they’re visible across the universe provide new data about the source but fail to clear up the mystery of what causes them.

The observations by the Breakthrough Listen team at UC Berkeley using the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia show that the fast radio bursts from this object, called FRB 121102, are nearly 100 percent linearly polarized, an indication that the source of the bursts is embedded in strong magnetic fields like those around a massive black hole.

The measurements confirm observations by another team of astronomers from the Netherlands, which detected the polarized bursts using the William E. Gordon Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Both teams will report their findings during a media briefing on Jan. 10 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C. The results are detailed in a combined paper to be published online the same day by the journal Nature.

Fast radio bursts are brief, bright pulses of radio emission from distant but so far unknown sources, and FRB 121102 is the only one known to repeat: more than 200 high-energy bursts have been observed coming from this source, which is located in a dwarf galaxy about 3 billion light years from Earth.

The nearly 100 percent polarization of the radio bursts is unusual, and has only been seen in radio emissions from the extreme magnetic environments around massive black holes, such as those at the centers of galaxies. The Dutch and Breakthrough Listen teams suggest that the fast radio bursts may come from a highly magnetized rotating neutron star – a magnetar – in the vicinity of a massive black hole that is still growing as gas and dust fall into it.

The short bursts, which range from 30 microseconds to 9 milliseconds in duration, indicate that the source could be as small as 10 kilometers across – the typical size of a neutron star.

Other possible sources are a magnetar interacting with the nebula of material shed when the original star exploded to produce the magnetar; or interactions with the highly magnetized wind from a rotating neutron star, or pulsar.

“At this point, we don’t really know the mechanism. There are many questions, such as, how can a rotating neutron star produce the high amount of energy typical of an FRB?” said UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Vishal Gajjar of Breakthrough Listen and the Berkeley SETI Research Center.

Gajjar will participate in the media briefing with three members of the Dutch ASTRON team: Daniele Michilli and Jason Hessels of the University of Amsterdam and Betsey Adams of the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute.

“This result is an excellent demonstration of the capabilities of the Breakthrough Listen instrumentation and the synergies between SETI and other types of astronomy,” said Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center and of the Breakthrough Listen program. “We look forward to working with the international scientific community to learn more about these enigmatic and dynamic sources.”

Are FRBs signals from advanced civilizations?

Another possibility, though remote, is that the FRB is a high-powered signal from an advanced civilization. Hence the interest of Breakthrough Listen, which looks for signs of intelligent life in the universe, funded by $100 million over 10 years from internet investor Yuri Milner.

“We can not rule out completely the ET hypothesis for the FRBs in general,” Gajjar said.

Breakthrough Listen has to date recorded data from a dozen FRBs, including FRB 121102, and plans eventually to sample all 30-some known sources of fast radio bursts.

“We want a complete sample so that we can conduct our standard SETI analysis in search of modulation patterns or narrow-band signals – any kind of information-bearing signal emitted from their direction that we don’t expect from nature,” he said.

Breakthrough Listen allotted tens of hours of observational time on the Green Bank Telescope to recording radio emissions from FRB 121102, and last August 26 detected 15 bursts over a relatively short period of five hours. They analyzed the two brightest of these and found that the radio waves were nearly 100 percent linearly polarized.

The team plans a few more observations of FRB 121102 before moving on to other FRB sources. Gajjar said that they want to observe at higher frequencies – up to 12 gigahertz, versus the present Green Bank observations in the 4-8 GHz range – to see if the energy drops off at higher frequencies. This could help narrow the range of possible sources, he said.

Hiding From A Warmer Climate In The Forest

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When studying the effect of climate change on biodiversity, it is important to consider the climate near the ground (microclimate) which a plant or an animal actually experiences. Deep shady depressions, dense old forests or places close to water for example are always considerably cooler than their surroundings.

“Knowing where cold climate refugia are in the landscape means we can protect these cold spots and help cold-adapted species to survive a warmer climate. Knowing how colder microclimates are generated means we could even create colder spots by wisely managing our forests”, said Caroline Greiser, PhD student at Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences.

The scientists found out that summer maximum temperatures at the forest floor can differ more than 10°C over only 100 meters.

“We also found out that the forest plays a dominant role in controlling warm near-ground temperatures in the summer, more than local topography. In other words, the temperature differences between open and dense forest stands are larger than the differences between the sunny and the shady side of a hill,” said Caroline Greiser.

The researchers produced forest microclimate maps for an area of 16 000 km2 in central Sweden (covering parts of Värmland, Örebro län, Västmanland and Dalarna) with the help of small temperature data loggers, not larger than a finger nail. The data loggers were spread out across the area and measured near-ground temperatures over one year.

They made maps for different months of the year and for both minimum and maximum temperatures, because the microclimatic landscape appeared to be changing across the year. The research group will further investigate what kind of microclimates the species need for survival.The maps can be used not only for further climate and forest research, but also for conservation and land-use planning.

“We hope this study raises the awareness that forest density has a large impact on the microclimatic landscape and that forest management has the potential to slow down biodiversity loss. Concrete steps could be to reduce forest fragmentation or to create buffer zones around cold places so they remain cold, when close-by forest is cut down”, said Caroline Greiser.

The article “Monthly microclimate models in a managed boreal forest landscape” is published in the scientific journal Agricultural and Forest Meteorology.

Microclimate is the climate near the ground which can be colder or warmer than in the free atmosphere, depending on local topography (e.g. north vs. south side of a hill, higher vs. lower elevation) and vegetation (e.g. young sparse vs. old dense forest).

‘Sniffing’ Out Counterfeit Liquors

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Watered-down or fake liquors can reap financial rewards for nefarious individuals, but the adulteration of liquor cheats consumers and can even lead to health hazards from added contaminants.

Scientists now report in ACS Sensors a portable device with an advanced sensor array that can identify liquors and determine if they’d been altered, offering a strategy for liquor quality assurance.

In the past few years, deaths from contaminated alcohol have been reported in Indonesia, Mexico, China, Poland and Russia, among other places. Unscrupulous individuals hoping to make a profit may homebrew liquor and bottle it in official-looking packaging or dilute liquor with anything from water to antifreeze. Kenneth S. Suslick and Zheng Li from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign wanted to address this growing health concern by engineering a device that can easily identify tainted products.

The researchers developed a disposable sensor with 36 dyes that change color upon exposure to particular components in liquor. Partial oxidation of the liquor vapors improved the sensor’s response.

Using a handheld image analyzer to detect these color changes, the scientists correctly identified the alcoholic content and brand of 14 different liquors, including various scotch whiskies, bourbon, rye, brandy and vodka with greater than 99 percent accuracy.

In a proof-of-concept experiment to demonstrate a real-world application, the researchers also sniffed out booze that had been watered down, even by as little as 1 percent.

Ban Upheld For Marriage Between Bangladeshis And Rohingya

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By Stephan Uttom and Rock Ronald Rozario

The Bangladesh High Court has upheld a law that bans marriage between Bangladeshi nationals and Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, triggering a mixed response from refugees, locals and rights advocates.

A High Court bench on Jan. 8 dismissed a legal challenge against the ban from a father whose son married a Rohingya woman in a Muslim ceremony last September despite the legal ban but the practise has raised fears of human trafficking.

Shoaib Hossain Jewel, 26, married the 18-year-old Rohingya and ran away to evade police arrest, local media reported.

Babul Hossain defended his son’s marriage and challenged the law in the country’s top court on Dec. 31.

The court rejected his petition and ordered him to pay 100,000 taka (US$1,200) for legal fees.

His plea to protect his son from arrest was also rejected by the court.

“As a citizen of Bangladesh, I will abide by the country’s law and respect the court’s decision, but I won’t give up fighting to save my son. After consulting my lawyer, I will appeal against the ruling and accept whatever the court finally decides,” Babul Hossain told ucanews.com.

Muhammad Noor, 48, a Rohingya community leader at Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, said he does not support marriage between Bangladeshis and Rohingya as it complicates the lives of refugees.

“The court is 100 percent right and I support the law. We fled our home to this country to escape persecution and we want to go back home one day. If Rohingya marry Bangladeshis, they won’t be able to return and it will make our lives worse,” said Noor, who came to Bangladesh in 2008.

Nur Khan, a prominent rights advocate, said the law curtailed the constitutional rights of Bangladeshi citizens.

“Rohingya can be identified as stateless, refugees and infiltrators, so marriage for them outside their community is a bit critical. Our constitution allows marriage between Bangladeshis and foreigners, so the law in fact curtails the constitutional rights of citizens and the court supported it,” Khan told ucanews.com.

Motahar Hossain, the state prosecutor who defended the law’s legality, said the law and the court’s decision were right.

“According to a provision of the Foreigners Act, citizens are barred from marrying people from ‘special areas’ and it’s a punishable offense. The court dismissed the petition as there is nothing wrong with the law,” Hossain said.

Theophil Nokrek, secretary of the Catholic bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission, said freedom of marriage is a universal human right but the Rohingya case is different due to its sensitivity.

“Some Bengali people are exploiting the situation and we came to know some lured Rohingya to marriage to sell them to human traffickers and for the sex trade. Maybe the decision is right for now, but when things get normal the decision might be reviewed,” Nokrek told ucanews.com.

The government formulated the law in 2014 that seeks to prevent what are now nearly a million refugees in the country from marrying Bangladeshis. It followed media reports that the persecuted minority was trying to use marriage as a backdoor way to obtain citizenship in the Muslim-majority country.

Anyone who marries a Rohingya faces up to seven years in jail. The law also stipulates a two-year jail term and the loss of their license for marriage registrars who officiate civil unions between Bangladeshis and Rohingya.


Romania: Pedophile Police Case Exposes Tensions In Government

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By Ana Maria Luca

The arrest of policeman suspected of having sexually assaulted children has shaken Romania’s police and exposed rifts inside the country’s Social Democrat-led government.

The arrest of a traffic policeman suspected of sexually assaulting two children last weekend has shaken Romania’s police force and added to tensions in the centre-left government.

The suspect was arrested on Monday after police circulated a still from a surveillance video of a man sexually assaulting two minors, a boy aged nine and a girl aged five, in an elevator last Friday.

Besides sparking outrage among Romanians, worried about the ethics of their police force, the case has caused skirmishes in the Social Democrat-led cabinet as well as in the ruling party, with Prime Minister Mihai Tudose opposing measures taken by Interior Minister Carmen Dan.

Police said DNA tests showed that the same man was a suspect in another assault case in 2012 involving a seven-year-old girl, and might have been involved in several other sexual assault cases going back to 2009, which are also being reinvestigated.

He was recognized by co-workers and his immediate superior turned him.

The suspect had worked in the traffic brigade since 2010 and had been a gendarme before that for 20 years.

Interior Minister Carmen Dan on Tuesday asked for the resignation of several police officials, including the national police chief, Bogdan Despescu.

However, Prime Minister Mihai Tudose on Wednesday told the cabinet that he was unwilling to fire Despescu – and praised the police for catching the suspect in only two days.

“I gave the police chief a week to come back with a list of measures that he took to clarify the situation,” Tudose told the cabinet meeting.

The Interior Ministry issued a statement on Monday saying that the police service needed reform and reorganization, and that any chiefs deemed responsible for hiding problems would be asked to resign.

Among the officials that Dan wanted to fire was the head of the Traffic Brigade where the suspect worked in the past eight years, but also the head of the Homicide Department, who had no connection to the case.

However, the minister also criticized the ruling Social Democrats for proposed amendments to the penal codes that he deemed a threat to the rule of law.

On Tuesday, however, Dan announced that none of the police chiefs she had asked to “take a step back” had actually resigned and requested Despescu’s resignation instead.

Tudose did not agree with Dan’s decision, and asked Despescu for a report on Wednesday morning. Moreover, he did not consult with the Interior Minister on the case.

Voices within the police are also calling for reform of the force. Iulian Surugiu, leader of the police union, on Tuesday blamed the paedophile case on 28 years of politicians working against the police service, adding that the psychological testing system for the police needed updating.

Marian Godina, a traffic policeman and a well known blogger, said, as a policeman himself, he could not understand how the man suspected of sexually assaulting minors could work as a policeman for so many years,

“I think there are many cops who are ashamed today,” Godina wrote on Facebook on Monday. “If I weren’t a cop, I would feel the same disgust towards the police,” he added.

Tensions in the cabinet, however, run deeper than the scandal in the police force. On Monday, Tudose asked the Social Democrat leadership to approve a government reshuffle and deemed some ministers and dignitaries incompetent.

“I can’t win the race if you’re making me drive a Trabant,” Tudose told a Social Democrat leadership meeting on Monday, referring to the cheap, popular small car produced between 1957 and 1990 in former East Germany.

Interior Minister Dan is one of Dragnea’s close allies. She was prefect of Teleorman County while Dragnea served as head of the county council.

Tudose was appointed Prime Minister in June 2017, after the Social Democrats impeached their own government, led by Sorin Grindeanu.

Ambassador Gingrich’s Visit To Rome’s American Seminary – Analysis

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By Ed Condon

On Jan. 10, Callista Gingrich, the United States Ambassador to the Holy See, was a guest at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. She visited the college to receive a blessing as she embarks upon her work as ambassador, according to sources at the North American College.

News of the event is striking for two reasons.

The first reason is that her visit, and her request for a blessing, stresses the important connection between the work of the North American College as a pastoral center (it is the home to more than 200 U.S. seminarians living and studying in Rome) and the embassy which looks after the diplomatic interests of Americans in relationship with the Holy See.

Given that it is something of an unspoken tradition that the ambassador be a Catholic, the gesture of a new ambassador seeking a private blessing upon her endeavors is both paradoxical and encouraging; a symbol of the role religion can play in public life, informing and affirming public servants without contradicting their work on behalf of the secular state.

The second reason the event is significant is that it demonstrates that a pastoral welcome transcends partisan disagreement. It is all too easy for public servants to be tarred with the broad brush of the government they serve. In the case of President Trump’s administration, there have been a number of issues on which church authorities have voiced clear notes of caution and disagreement. But disagreements between the Trump administration and the US bishops have not severed the pastoral relationships essential to the Church’s mission.

It would be easy to use the occasion of an ambassador’s visit to the North American College as an opportunity to emphasize disagreement or partisan rancor. That Ambassador Gingrich was welcomed as a daughter of the Church shows the sort of personal pastoral attention which Pope Francis has placed at the heart of his papacy, and the maturity to rise above the secular partisan fray. This sort of pastoral maturity benefits everyone involved.

The Church has many occasions where she offers prayers and blessings for Catholics, and non-Catholics who want them, as they serve in public life; Red Masses are a stable feature in many countries at the opening of the judicial year, for example. Public service requires sacrifices, and carries many difficulties for those serving any government. Many Catholics who work in politics especially find that they are, sooner or later, obliged to test their terms of service against their conscience and their faith. Public service requires the constant work of discernment. Where exactly the line is, or can be, drawn between personal faith and public service is under constant scrutiny from the secular world, and is often used to push people of faith out of public life. Yet, as was seen during the confirmation of Judge Amy Barrett, it is often those who have drawn deepest from the Church’s pastoral well who can offer a most measured and dedicated contribution to public life.

Today, the Church prayed that Ambassador Gingrich will find success in her role, and prove an example to those who follow her in it. For Catholics, her visit to the North American College was a meaningful way to begin.

Ecuador To Grant Julian Assange Citizenship

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WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has cryptically uploaded a picture of himself dressed in the national colors of Ecuador. The country’s media reports the whistleblower has been granted an Ecuadorian ID.

Assange’s ID was issued on December 21, Ecuadorian outlet El Universo reports, citing “reliable sources” and providing the civil registry number to check on the government website. The document number 1729926483, upon checking on the Internal Revenue Service, is indeed registered to one Julian Paul Assange.

Meanwhile, Assange uploaded a photo of himself on Twitter wearing a yellow, blue and red shirt, the colors of the Ecuadorian flag. The post was his first activity on the platform since his strange message on New Year’s Day, which featured a 60 character code and a link to the popular song ‘Paper Planes’ by British rapper MIA. The tweet sparked widespread speculation over what, if anything, the seemingly random string of letters and numbers meant.

It appears the Ecuadorian government has granted Julian Assange some kind of formal documentation such as an ID card, human rights activist Peter Tatchell told media. If that’s the case, it could pave the way for giving him a passport and even diplomatic status, he added.

“The granting of an identity card is of course potentially the first step towards being granted citizenship of Ecuador, and beyond that, the possibility that he could be granted diplomatic status, which would give him diplomatic immunity,” Tatchell explained.

And the suggestion might be that if he was granted diplomatic immunity he would therefore be free to leave the embassy and travel to Ecuador, and the British government would not be able to lay a finger on him. That is of course speculation, it’s a long way down the road yet, but clearly the granting of an identity card is a new development which may open the door to further things in the future.”

Earlier in the day, the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry issued a statement reiterating it is seeking a solution to the problem with the British government, but did not mention anything about an official ID number, passport, or any changes to Assange’s asylum status.

Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, when he was accused of sexual assault in Sweden. Although Swedish prosecutors have since dropped the charges, British police remain outside the embassy ready to arrest the WikiLeaks co-founder for breaking his 2012 bail conditions. Assange refuses to surrender to the British authorities, fearing they would extradite him to the United States where he will be prosecuted for his whistleblowing activities.

Detected ‘Whirlpool’ Movement In Earliest Galaxies

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Astronomers have looked back to a time soon after the Big Bang, and have discovered swirling gas in some of the earliest galaxies to have formed in the Universe. These ‘newborns’ – observed as they appeared nearly 13 billion years ago – spun like a whirlpool, similar to our own Milky Way. This is the first time that it has been possible to detect movement in galaxies at such an early point in the Universe’s history.

An international team led by Dr Renske Smit from the Kavli Institute of Cosmology at the University of Cambridge used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to open a new window onto the distant Universe, and have for the first time been able to identify normal star-forming galaxies at a very early stage in cosmic history with this telescope. The results are reported in the journal Nature, and will be presented at the 231st meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Light from distant objects takes time to reach Earth, so observing objects that are billions of light years away enables us to look back in time and directly observe the formation of the earliest galaxies. The Universe at that time, however, was filled with an obscuring ‘haze’ of neutral hydrogen gas, which makes it difficult to see the formation of the very first galaxies with optical telescopes.

Smit and her colleagues used ALMA to observe two small newborn galaxies, as they existed just 800 million years after the Big Bang. By analysing the spectral ‘fingerprint’ of the far-infrared light collected by ALMA, they were able to establish the distance to the galaxies and, for the first time, see the internal motion of the gas that fuelled their growth.

“Until ALMA, we’ve never been able to see the formation of galaxies in such detail, and we’ve never been able to measure the movement of gas in galaxies so early in the Universe’s history,” said co-author Dr Stefano Carniani, from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory and Kavli Institute of Cosmology.

The researchers found that the gas in these newborn galaxies swirled and rotated in a whirlpool motion, similar to our own galaxy and other, more mature galaxies much later in the Universe’s history. Despite their relatively small size – about five times smaller than the Milky Way – these galaxies were forming stars at a higher rate than other young galaxies, but the researchers were surprised to discover that the galaxies were not as chaotic as expected.

“In the early Universe, gravity caused gas to flow rapidly into the galaxies, stirring them up and forming lots of new stars – violent supernova explosions from these stars also made the gas turbulent,” said Smit, who is a Rubicon Fellow at Cambridge, sponsored by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. “We expected that young galaxies would be dynamically ‘messy’, due to the havoc caused by exploding young stars, but these mini-galaxies show the ability to retain order and appear well regulated. Despite their small size, they are already rapidly growing to become one of the ‘adult’ galaxies like we live in today.”

The data from this project on small galaxies paves the way for larger studies of galaxies during the first billion years of cosmic time. The research was funded in part by the European Research Council and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

Mediterranean Diet May Help Protect Older Adults From Becoming Frail

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An analysis of published studies indicates that following the Mediterranean diet may reduce the risk of frailty in older individuals. The findings, which are published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, suggest that a diet emphasizing primarily plant-based foods–such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and nuts–may help keep people healthy and independent as they age.

Frailty is common among older people and its prevalence is increasing as the population ages. Frail older adults may often feel low in energy and have weight loss and weak muscle strength. They are more likely to suffer from numerous health concerns, including falls, fractures, hospitalization, nursing home placement, disability, dementia, and premature death. Frailty is also associated with a lower quality of life.

Nutrition is thought to play a crucial role in developing frailty, a team led by Kate Walters, PhD and Gotaro Kojima, MD, of University College London, in the UK, looked to see if following a healthy diet might decrease one’s risk of frailty.

The researchers analyzed evidence from all published studies examining associations between adherence to a Mediterranean diet and development of frailty in older individuals. Their analysis included 5789 people in four studies in France, Spain, Italy, and China.

“We found the evidence was very consistent that older people who follow a Mediterranean diet had a lower risk of becoming frail,” said Dr. Walters. “People who followed a Mediterranean diet the most were overall less than half as likely to become frail over a nearly four-year period compared with those who followed it the least.”

The investigators noted that the Mediterranean diet may help older individuals maintain muscle strength, activity, weight, and energy levels, according to their findings. “Our study supports the growing body of evidence on the potential health benefits of a Mediterranean diet, in our case for potentially helping older people to stay well as they age,” said Dr. Kojima.

Although older people who followed a Mediterranean diet had a lower risk of becoming frail, it’s unclear whether other characteristics of the people who followed this diet may have helped to protect them. “While the studies we included adjusted for many of the major factors that could be associated–for example, their age, gender, social class, smoking, alcohol, how much they exercised, and how many health conditions they had–there may be other factors that were not measured and we could not account for,” said Dr. Walters. “We now need large studies that look at whether increasing how much you follow a Mediterranean diet will reduce your risk of becoming frail.”

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