The United Nations is implementing its Action Plan for Libya to create the necessary conditions for the completion of the North African country’s post-conflict transition, the head of UN mission there said Wednesday.

“The United Nations is poised to increase its presence in Libya,” Ghassan Salamé, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and head of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), told the Security Council via video link, noting that more staff will be working in the capital, Tripoli, and they will visit more communities across the nation.

“It is only by truly understanding the country that we can succeed in the implementation of the Action Plan for Libya and help its citizens put an end to a too long transition,” he added.

Following six months of armed conflict in Libya in 2011, the UN established UNSMIL, a political mission, to support the country’s transitional authorities in their post-conflict efforts.

Mr. Salamé, who brifed the Council alongside Hajer Sharief, Co-founder of ‘Together We Build It,’ a professional network for Libyan women, said that the second anniversary of the Libyan Political Agreement, on 17 December 2017 passed peacefully due in no small part to the unity of the Security Council, which, in its recent Presidential Statement declared that the international community stands behind the Agreement and will not accept attempts to undermine it.

However, the specter of violence remains present; clashes occurred recently between forces affiliated with two rival communities in the area at the eastern vicinity of Tripoli. Tension has also heightened around the city of Derna.

The efforts of UNSMIL have been pivotal to the relative quiet Libya has enjoyed over the last months. These extremely time-consuming conflict prevention efforts must continue if hope in the political process is to be maintained, he stressed.

“Libya needs a competent and efficient government,” he said, “One which can deliver the public services the people desperately need. One that is able to unify the institutions of the country. One which can provide order and justice. One that will preside over the elections that will end the transition.”

Mr. Salamé said that the Mission’s work focused on supporting efforts to adopt a new constitution, achieve national reconciliation and hold elections.

“The transition cannot definitively end until Libya stands upon a true constitution,” he said, noting that the draft constitution is undergoing judicial review.

The fabric of Libyan society is frayed, and requires meaningful reconciliation if it is to be mended. The UN has successfully facilitated numerous dialogues between representatives of local communities formerly in conflict while seeking to include the major players and groups previously marginalized in the political process.

The UN has been able to provide extensive technical support for voter registration, with six hundred thousand Libyans newly registered to vote in just over six weeks. The number of people on the electoral register now exceeds two million, and continues to rise.

Humanitarian crisis

The political crisis in Libya has been accompanied by an equal humanitarian crisis. The UN will launch a humanitarian response plan next week.

A matter of great humanitarian concern is the dire situation many migrants in Libya continue to face. In just the last weeks of 2017, thousands of migrants have been voluntarily returned for humanitarian purposes from Libya to their countries of origin, but thousands more migrants remain arbitrarily detained in centres, many of them in inhumane conditions.

Individual predatory agendas continue to dominate at the expense of the collective good, he said.

“Conflict over resources is indeed at the heart of the Libyan crisis,” he said, pledging that the Mission will not spare any effort to advocate that national wealth be directed toward the provision of public services rather than to special interests.

Mr. Salamé said that UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, who visited Libya from 9 to 12 January, urged Libyan interlocutors to truly commit to working together and implement the Action Plan to create the necessary conditions to end the transitional period.

(RFE/RL) — An Uzbek man charged with killing eight people by ramming a truck down a New York City bike path is willing to plead guilty and accept a life sentence in prison if prosecutors do not seek the death penalty, his lawyers said.

The lawyers for Sayfullo Saipov, 29, made their offer in a court filing on January 17 as prosecutors asked a U.S. District Court in Manhattan to set an April 2019 date for Saipov’s trial on murder and terrorism charges.

The prosecutors said injured victims and relatives of those killed in the October 31, 2017, attack — the deadliest in New York City since the September 2001 attacks — have a “strong desire for closure.”

Saipov’s lawyers said the fastest way to resolve the case would be for prosecutors to accept their proposed deal.

“A decision by the Government not to seek the death penalty would bring immediate closure to the case without the need for the public and victims to repeatedly relive the terrible event,” the lawyers wrote.

The office of interim U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman in Manhattan, which is prosecuting the case, is expected to make a recommendation on whether to seek the death penalty, though the final decision will be made by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Both Berman and Sessions were appointed by President Donald Trump, who on Twitter said Saipov should face the death penalty.

If the government seeks to impose the death penalty on Saipov, his lawyers said a trial should occur no earlier than September 2019 because of the need to build a defense with information that must be gathered halfway around the globe.

Saipov, an immigrant from Uzbekistan who became a legal permanent resident of the United States, was arrested immediately after the attack.

Police said he deliberately plowed a rented truck into bikers and joggers on a bike path only blocks from where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood.

Saipov in his first statements to police professed his allegience to the Islamic State extremist group, which later claimed him as a “soldier of the Caliphate.”

Prosecutors said his cell phone contained IS propaganda and videos of beheadings and other gruesome acts the radical Sunni Muslim group committed in Syria and Iraq after seizing territory in those countries in 2014.

Saipov, who worked as a commercial truck driver and Uber driver in the United States before the attack, told investigators he was inspired by the IS videos.

Saipov’s family told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service that he did not have radical views before he moved to the United States in 2010, and appeared to have been radicalized through online sources.

Saipov was charged in November with eight counts of murder, 12 counts of attempted murder, one count of providing material support to Islamic State, and one count of violence and destruction of a motor vehicle resulting in death.

He pleaded not guilty on November 28, but is now offering to reverse that plea.

By Michael Lelyveld

China’s sudden push to replace smog-causing coal with natural gas for winter heating has added to the country’s import dependence and energy security concerns.

The government’s badly-managed attempt to avoid another winter smog crisis by banning coal-fired heating in 28 northern cities left thousands of homes in the cold due to gas and electricity projects that could not be completed in time.

Much of the fault has been traced to rigid regulation of fuel replacement directives issued by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the government’s top planning agency, and Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) rules that were not issued until August.

Three weeks after an outcry over reports of frostbitten school children in Hebei province, MEP inspectors said on Dec. 26 that the last 96,000 unheated households had been provided with gas, electricity, or restored coal supplies.

Despite the problems, the government has claimed a measure of success for the fuel-switching campaign. Nearly 4 million homes completed conversions from coal to gas or electricity last year, according to the MEP.

The upside of the initiative is that it appears to have contributed to an improvement in air quality, at least temporarily, this winter.

The average density of smog-forming particles known as PM2.5 dropped 53.8 percent in the fourth quarter of last year from a year earlier in Beijing, according to the MEP.

Long-term improvement unclear

Whether the improvement will continue is unclear. Last Thursday, environmental monitors issued an orange alert, the second-highest level, for severe smog in Beijing and nearby areas this week.

At least three cities in neighboring Hebei province announced their highest red alert warnings, state media said.

But the conversion crunch has had other short-term and long-term consequences.

In December, China’s prices for liquefied natural gas (LNG) shot up 60 percent over September levels. Asian spot prices nearly doubled since June, Reuters said.

On Monday, the official Xinhua news agency suggested that the worst of the price spike was over, citing a 22.6-percent drop in the first 10 days of January from the end of December.

The consequences of the abrupt initiative are not over, however.

LNG imports in November hit a monthly record, climbing 53 percent from a year earlier, making China the world’s second-biggest LNG importer after Japan, Reuters reported.

Total gas imports for 2017 jumped 26.9 percent to 68.6 million metric tons, the General Administration of Customs said.

Over the first 11 months, China’s gas imports rose at nearly three times the rate of domestic production.

While domestic output increased 10.5 percent from a year earlier to 133.8 billion cubic meters (bcm), imports of 81.7 bcm climbed 28.9 percent, the official English-language China Daily said.

Import dependence a major concern

The numbers tell a story of growing import dependence, already a major concern for China with its rising reliance on foreign oil.

According to recent forecasts from the International Energy Agency (IEA), gas imports covered about 35 percent of China’s demand in 2016. That proportion is expected to climb to “just under 50 percent” by 2040 with imports reaching 280 bcm, the IEA said.

Domestic production numbers for all of 2017 are scheduled to be reported later this week, but the 11-month figures suggest that imports already account for nearly 38 percent of consumption.

In its annual World Energy Outlook, the IEA argued that China’s total import dependence for all forms of energy would not rise substantially over the forecast period, starting in 2016 at 21 percent and edging up to 24 percent by 2040.

But the moderate increase is the result of China’s continued heavy reliance on domestic coal, which the government is trying to replace with cleaner fuels like gas.

The growth in import dependence for gas is likely to heighten concerns about China’s reliance on foreign oil.

According to the IEA, the country’s import dependence will grow to 80 percent for oil in 2040 from 64.5 percent in 2016.

The ratios mean that China will rely increasingly on overseas energy sources not only for its economic growth but also for its environmental goals.

The combined challenges are expected to become a major motivation for China to increase its presence abroad and project its military power to safeguard energy supply routes overseas.

By 2030, China will consume about one-fourth of all the world’s gas traded over long distances and nearly 30 percent of internationally traded oil, the IEA said.

Rising energy risks

Edward Chow, senior fellow for energy and national security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the long-term forecasts and China’s sudden spurt in gas demand are both signs of rising energy security risks.

“In the long run, this really shows a major deficiency in the Chinese system,” Chow said by email.

“In spite of fast growth in renewables and nuclear power, coal use has not been reduced sufficiently to improve air quality. Infrastructure for distributing electricity and gas effectively is still lacking. Price controls and slow adjustment in prices have led to chronic shortages,” he said.

Chow said that President Xi Jinping’s policies based on government control and the use of state-owned enterprises in key sectors “have led to increased vulnerability in energy security.”

China’s gas deficit is expected to increase the importance of overland pipeline deliveries from Russia’s Power of Siberia project and other routes that Moscow has promoted, as well as China’s existing lines from Central Asia.

Last year, pipelines from Central Asia delivered 38.7 bcm of gas to China, a 13.4-percent increase, Xinhua reported.

But heavy reliance on waterborne LNG could be problematic for both security and economic reasons. LNG from 16 countries accounted for nearly half of China’s gas imports in 2016, the IEA said.

While China has invested heavily in LNG import terminals and covered some of its bets with supply contracts, it has leaned on the spot market for cargoes to balance seasonal needs and supplement domestic supplies.

That approach poses problems for both energy security and infrastructure.

“LNG cannot be a long-term solution without exacerbating the country’s reliance on seaborne energy imports. Nor does it make business sense to commit to more long-term LNG contracts without adequate gas storage facilities,” Chow said.

Not enough storage

Insufficient storage has been seen as an energy security problem for China in both oil and gas.

After a decade of investment in a strategic oil reserve, the National Bureau of Statistics reported this month that China had stored 37.73 million tons (276.5 million barrels) of crude by mid-2017.

While the level rose 13.5 percent from a year earlier, the reserves represent only about 35 days of imports, far less than the 90 days of import coverage required for IEA member countries.

But China’s vulnerability due to inadequate gas storage may be even worse.

The country has only 8 bcm of gas storage capacity, according to Kerry Anne Shanks, head of Asia gas and LNG research at the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, as quoted by Reuters in October.

“We worry that China doesn’t have enough storage,” Shanks said.

Even if it were full, the storage would cover only 32 days of imports at the 11-month level. In relation to demand, the capacity is only one-fourth to one-sixth of the amount available in the United States and Europe, Shanks said.

The IEA forecast for China’s domestic production may also be optimistic because it assumes a 12-fold increase in shale gas output to 100 bcm in 2040. China produced 7.9 bcm of the unconventional gas in 2016, the Ministry of Land and Resources said.

Shale gas production costly

Although China has the world’s largest shale gas reserves, production in the fledgling industry has remained costly and modest due to difficult geology and changes in government subsidy policies.

Ambitious shale targets for 2020 of up to 100 bcm were set in 2012, then scaled back in 2014 to 30 bcm. Recent reports make it unclear whether even these will be met.

Subsidies for shale gas production are set to be slashed by half with no commitment for any support after 2020, the IEA said.

The nation’s biggest shale gas resource—Sichuan province’s Fuling field, developed by state-owned Sinopec—produced about 6 bcm in 2017, falling far short of the 10-bcm target for the year.

The disappointing returns may suggest even greater import dependence than forecast without significant changes in incentives for production.

Nearly all of the projected growth in China’s gas production by 2040 is expected to come from unconventional sources, including shale and coalbed methane, the IEA said.

(Civil.Ge) — Georgian Parliamentary Chairman Irakli Kobakhidze, who is paying an official visit to Latvia on January 15-17, held talks with his Latvian counterpart Ināra Mūrniece, as well as Foreign and Economy Ministers, Edgars Rinkēvičs and Arvils Aseradens, respectively.

The two parliamentary chairs discussed future cooperation between the two countries’ legislatures as well as Georgia’s European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations. Kobakhidze thanked Mūrniece for the Latvian legislature’s support for Georgia in this regard.

Mūrniece seized upon the opportunity to once again voice her country’s support for both Georgia’s western aspirations, and its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Kobakhidze and Mūrniece signed a memorandum on strategic partnership between the Parliament of Georgia and the Saeima [parliament] of Latvia. The memorandum envisions greater inter-parliamentary cooperation, coordination of work in international parliamentary organizations, and exchange programs for the staffs of the two countries’ legislatures.

According to the Georgian Parliament, Mūrniece described the Georgian-Latvian cooperation as “based on values,” and focused on “aspiration for democracy, Euro-Atlantic integration, and our cultural values and connections.” The Saeima Speaker pledged Latvia’s continued “firm” support for Georgia in the future.

In a meeting with Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs, Kobakhidze called Latvia “a special and faithful friend of Georgia,” and discussed with him the “grave humanitarian situation” existing in the Georgian regions under the Russian occupation.

Rinkēvičs gave positive assessment to the Eastern Partnership Summit of November 2017 and “pointed out that the document on 20 Deliverables for 2020 approved at the summit is a stepping-stone towards the strengthening of tangible cooperation between the EU and its partner countries.” He also encouraged Georgia to continue its process of reforms, “especially in the field of justice, the rule of law, good governance and economy.”

Latvian Economy Minister Arvils Aseradens said after the meeting with Kobakhidze that the two discussed One Belt One Road Initiative, as well as the ways to improve bilateral cooperation in the future, the Georgian Parliament reported.

Kobakhidze also met with Chairperson of the Constitutional Court of Latvia, Ineta Ziemele, and concluded his visit by holding talks with Latvian President Raimonds Vējonis.

India’s Prime Minister Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Wednesday dedicated to the nation, the iCREATE facility located on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

iCreate is an independent Centre created with the objective of facilitating entrepreneurship through a blend of creativity, innovation, engineering, product design and leveraging emerging technologies to deal with major issues such as food security, water, connectivity, cybersecurity, IT and electronics, energy, bio-medical equipment and devices etc. iCreate aims to develop an ecosystem in India to generate quality entrepreneurs.

The two leaders visited various stalls that highlighted technologies and innovations across diverse fields.

Addressing the gathering, the Indian Prime Minister said that innovation has a key role to play in bringing the people of India and Israel, closer to each other. Modi said the entire world has taken note of the technological prowess and creativity of Israel.

Modi said the youth of India has energy and enthusiasm. What the youth needs is a bit of encouragement and institutional support, he added.

Modi said that the Government is working to make the entire system innovation-friendly, so that intent can generate ideas; ideas lead to innovation; and innovation helps create a New India.

Modi said that the first pre-requisite of success is courage. He congratulated the courageous youth who are engaged in innovative activities at iCreate.

Quoting Kalidasa, the Indian Prime Minister touched upon the dilemma between convention and innovation. He urged the youth of India to innovate to overcome the challenges facing the nation today, and to improve the quality of life of the common man at lowest possible cost.

The Prime Minister spoke of cooperation between India and Israel for innovation in areas such as food, water, health and energy. He said this cooperation between the two countries would write a new chapter in the history of mankind in the 21st century.

By Sayli Udas-Mankikar*

The Kamala Mills compound fire in Mumbai’s high-scale pub at Lower Parel has left the apathetic civic administration gasping for oxygen.

The horrifying fire which claimed 14 lives owing to negligence of the authorities has punctured the dream for Mumbai becoming the first Indian nightlife capital, forcing them to go back to the drawing board.

A government notification, issued on December 16, 2017, under the Maharashtra Shops and Establishment Act, 2017, allows shops, including restaurants (not pubs or bars for now), cinema halls, salons, hyper malls and businesses such as banks, medical establishments and tax consultancies, to remain open through the night.

Conservative estimates put together by the State officials show that the additional footfalls at malls, hotels, restaurants, pubs, will bring in an additional tax collection of at least 649 million dollars annually to the state exchequer. About three million foreign tourists and 40 million domestic tourists visit Mumbai annually, which is also said to increase if this move is successful. The State has initiated the process of getting authorities together to chart a plan for Mumbai, but this recent incident has put the rollout on hold.

The Kamala Mill compound deaths are systemic murders which should lead to some serious introspection and make the State government reconsider its nod for the nightlife zones to be set up in Mumbai soon. It has identified three pilot zones: Lower Parel (a former mill area), the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC, a reclaimed space) and Marine Drive (a sea-front commercial-residential zone) for kicking off this concept over weekends.

With a highly stressed civic administration, sparse police force (15% shortage) and inadequate fire stations and firefighters, any unplanned implementation of the decision seems like an open invitation to more Kamala Mill-like disasters. With the current strengths and capacities, it is doubtful if these authorities are competent to handle complex dynamics of urbanisation which will lead to more fires, issues of safety, security, accessibility, mobility and public nuisance.

Nightlife economy is an urban phenomenon which is an important part of city regeneration, both in terms of its economy and socio-cultural fabric. The most successful cities, which have been able to work around the challenges of managing the nightlife plans, have adopted a multi-agency, public, private and holistic strategies. London, Tokyo, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sao Paolo and New York are a few examples.

There are a few key aspects to be considered while rolling out a plan such as the one being considered for Mumbai. Issues of dispersal, transportation linkages, integrated planning of night zones, licensing of establishments, cleaning up the area and surveillance are key to such a strategy. London which tops the list, generating 26,300 million dollars through the night economy alone, and employs one in every eight Londoners in this, has created a ‘Night Time Commission’ that looks after all these aspects.

Many cities, including London, Paris, Belgium and Amsterdam, have appointed a single-point authority, an ambassador, who heads the planning and is in-charge of the roll-out of such plans. London appointed a ‘Night Czar’ in 2016 whose task is to set out a roadmap of how this vision will be delivered and she will build on opportunities such as the Night Tube to diversify and grow London’s night time economy.

Two of the pilot zones identified in Mumbai for the night plan, Lower Parel (closed mill compounds) and BKC, which are largely non-residential, have issues of access and movement. Mumbai’s public transport, including its municipal bus services and suburban railways do not operate during the night. While the buses do not play for eight hours between 12.15 am and 4 pm, trains remain shut for three hours between 12.30 am to 3.30 am.

The London Safe Travel at Night Campaign introduced 16 new buses and the Docklands light railways has tied up with mini-cab services to ease transportation and ensure last mile connectivity for night travellers.

A large congregation of people will mean increase in noise decibels and littering. Garbage generation both inside and outside facilities like restaurants, malls, theatres and roads will double and will need to be managed with double the workforce.

A brilliant example in this case is the Copenhagen Nyhven and Dublin Culture Quarter, the harbour area, which was full of litter after a whole night of activity. The local residents have joined hands with business houses of the culture quarter for cleaning the area.

The administration will have to come up with stringent rules for noise management and avoiding public nuisance. For example, New York and Berlin do not allow permits to large clubs or bars (size described in laws) in residential areas.

Noise pollution in case of nightlife is not restricted to only transmissions – either live or recorded – from entertainment areas, but also from break out of crowds from premises to streets. In 2015, residents from the tony suburbs of Bandra and Khar protested on permissions given to pubs and bars mushrooming in their neighbourhoods, demanding for shifting these to non-residential zones.

The already-slim police force that receives 55,000 calls on its redressal system every day, will need to pump up its numbers, and device new systems for policing and licensing. New laws on licenses to be linked to deterring vandalism and rowdiness in these zones need to be in place.

Unique ways of sharing intelligence on the lines of those adopted by cities like Manchester will need to be set up. The Manchester City Center Safe project includes a unique Nitenet radio system that links up all pubs, discos, bars, and the CCTV to the police, which has live telecasts on any problems that may arise during the night. Similarly, the concept of night wardens has taken off in Leicester Square where people appointed by the police for monitoring any untoward incidents.

Introducing nightlife in Mumbai will certainly boost its economy, and also open up entertainment opportunities for people in this megacity who spend nearly half their life just commuting to work and back. Nightlife is not only about drinking or making merry. It is about exposure to culture and heritage, music and dance. Keeping museums open through the night, organising music and dance festivals, and having local community open houses could be ways to rejuvenate the city and the citizens alike.

But all this can be done when all stakeholders including police, local authorities, emergency agencies, business houses and the community are integrated into the night plan. Apart from a responsible citizenry, Mumbai will need a robust system for setting out a roadmap of how this vision will be delivered. Its successful implementation, on the other hand, will provide a robust template for other cities in India to emulate.

A 24X7 city will mean a 24X7 active and efficient administration. Are we ready for it?

*Sayli Udas-Mankikar is a Senior Research Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Mumbai

Microwaves usage across the EU alone emits as much carbon dioxide as nearly seven million cars according to a new study by The University of Manchester.

Researchers at the University have carried out the first ever comprehensive study of the environmental impacts of microwaves, considering their whole life cycle, from ‘cradle to grave’.

The study found that microwaves emit 7.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year in the EU. This is equivalent to the annual emissions of 6.8 million cars.

Microwaves across the EU consume an estimated 9.4 terawatts per hour (TWh) of electricity every year. This is equivalent to the annual electricity generated by three large gas power plants.

Efforts to reduce consumption should focus on improving consumer awareness and behaviour to use appliances more efficiently

Microwaves account for the largest percentage of sales of all type of ovens in the European Union (EU), with numbers set to reach nearly 135 million by 2020. Despite this, the scale of their impacts on the environment was not known until now.

The study used life cycle assessment (LCA) to estimate the impacts of microwaves, taking into account their manufacture, use and end-of-life waste management. Altogether, the research team investigated 12 different environmental factors, including climate change, depletion of natural resources and ecological toxicity. They found, for example, that the microwaves used across the EU emit 7.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. This is equivalent to the annual emission of 6.8 million cars.

The research shows that the main environmental ‘hotspots’ are materials used to manufacture the microwaves, the manufacturing process and end-of-life waste management. For example, the manufacturing process alone contributes more than 20% to depletion of natural resources and to climate change.

However, it is electricity consumption by microwaves that has the biggest impact on the environment, taking into account its whole life cycle, from production of fuels to generation of electricity. In total, microwaves across the EU consume an estimated 9.4 terawatts per hour (TWh) of electricity every year. This is equivalent to the annual electricity generation by three large gas power plants.

The study found that, on average, an individual microwave uses 573 kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity over its lifetime of eight years. That is equivalent to the electricity consumed by a 7 watt LED light bulb, left on continuously for almost nine years. This is despite the fact that microwaves spend more than 90% of their lifetime being idle, in the stand-by mode.

The study’s authors suggest that efforts to reduce consumption should focus on improving consumer awareness and behaviour to use appliances more efficiently. For example, electricity consumption by microwaves can be reduced by adjusting the time of cooking to the type of food.

Waste is another major problem. Due to their relative low cost and ease of manufacture, consumers are throwing more electrical and electronic (EE) equipment away than ever before, including microwaves.

In 2005, across the EU, 184,000 tonnes of EE waste was generated from discarded microwaves. By 2025 this is estimated to rise to 195,000 tonnes, or 16 million individual units being sent for disposal.

Dr Alejandro Gallego-Schmid, from the School of Chemical Engineering & Analytical Science, explains: ‘Rapid technological developments and falling prices are driving the purchase of electrical and electronic appliances in Europe.

‘Consumers now tend to buy new appliances before the existing ones reach the end of their useful life as electronic goods have become fashionable and ‘status’ items.

‘As a result, discarded electrical equipment, such as microwaves, is one of the fastest growing waste streams worldwide.’

Another major contributing factor to the waste is a reduced lifespan of microwaves. It is now nearly seven years shorter than it was almost 20 years ago. Research shows that a microwave’s life cycle has decreased from around 10 to 15 years in the late 90s to between six to eight years today.

Dr Gallego-Schmid added: ‘Given that microwaves account for the largest percentage of sales of all type of ovens in the EU, it is increasingly important to start addressing their impact on resource use and end-of-life waste.’

The study also shows that existing regulation will not be sufficient to reduce the environmental impacts of microwaves. It recommends that it will be necessary to develop specific regulations for these devices targeting their design. This will help to reduce the amount of resources used to make microwaves and waste generated at the end of their lifetime.

More needs to be done to educate audiences, including viewers at home and filmmakers, on the unethical nature of using primates in the film industry, says a leading expert in a new study.

Brooke C. Aldrich, trustee at the charity Neotropical Primate Conservation, highlights serious concerns around the wider implications of using primate “actors” in films, including the trivialization of their conservation and welfare needs and representing them as suitable pets to viewers.

The new study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Anthrozoös, analyzed two decades of English-speaking film trailers from the period 1993-2013 to understand the modern use of primate “actors” in the film industry. Primate “actors” have been featured in major Hollywood films such as The Hangover Part II, The Wolf of Wall Street and Babe: Pig in the City.

Results indicated that primate “actors” in more than half the cases studied are shown amongst humans and performing “human” actions the vast majority of the time. The study also found that these individuals were shown “smiling” – which in most primate species can surprisingly indicate fear or submission.

Of further concern is how the use of primates as actors in films may misrepresent their conservation needs. A previous study by Steve Ross and colleagues found that 35% of respondents mistakenly thought chimpanzees were not endangered due to their frequent appearances in film and television, and the continuing use of primate “actors” is likely to reinforce this misconception. Although the number of films featuring primate “actors” is relatively low, the wide reach of the film industry could worsen millions of viewers’ understanding of primate needs and behaviors.

Primate ‘actors’ continue to feature in films, despite an ever-increasing understanding about the welfare needs of nonhuman primates. Orangutans are the only species with declining usage, which Aldrich hypothesizes could be due to their long-standing listing under the US Endangered Species Act, making them more difficult for Hollywood filmmakers to source.

Author of the study Aldrich commented, “Far too often, well-meaning, animal-loving people fail to recognize the suffering of wild primates in captivity. Given how often people see images of “smiling” chimps or capuchin monkeys, apparently happy to be wearing a pirate suit or brushing their teeth, it’s not surprising. As long as monkeys, apes and other primates continue to be depicted in this way, such misunderstandings are likely to continue.”

Using the now-complete Cassini data set, Cornell University astronomers have created a new global topographic map of Saturn’s moon Titan that has opened new windows into understanding its liquid flows and terrain. Two papers, recently published in Geophysical Review Letters, describe the map and discoveries arising from it.

Creating the map took about a year, according to doctoral student Paul Corlies, first author on “Titan’s Topography and Shape at the End of the Cassini Mission.” The map combines all of the Titan topography data from multiple sources. Since only about 9 percent of Titan has been observed in relatively high-resolution topography, with 25-30 percent of the topography imaged in lower resolution, the remainder of the moon was mapped using an interpolation algorithm and a global minimization process, which reduced errors such as those arising from spacecraft location.

The map revealed several new features on Titan, including new mountains, none higher than 700 meters. The map also provides a global view of the highs and lows of Titan’s topography, which enabled the scientists to confirm that two locations in the equatorial region of Titan are in fact depressions that could be either ancient, dried seas or cryovolcanic flows.

The map also revealed that Titan is a little bit flatter – more oblate – than was previously known, which suggests there is more variability in the thickness of Titan’s crust than previously thought.

“The main point of the work was to create a map for use by the scientific community,” said Corlies; within 30 minutes of the data set being available online, he began to receive inquiries on how to use it. The data set is downloadable in the form of the data that was observed, as well as that data plus interpolated data that was not observed. The map will be important for those modeling Titan’s climate, studying Titan’s shape and gravity, and testing interior models, as well as for those seeking to understand morphologic land forms on Titan.

Other Cornell authors on the paper are senior author Alex Hayes, assistant professor of astronomy, doctoral candidate Samuel Birch and research associate Valerio Poggiali.

The second paper, “Topographic Constraints on the Evolution and Connectivity of Titan’s Lacustrine Basins,” finds three important results using the new map’s topographical data.

The first result is that Titan’s three seas share a common equipotential surface, meaning they form a sea level, just as Earth’s oceans do. Either because there’s flow through the subsurface between the seas or because the channels between them allow enough liquid to pass through, the oceans on Titan are all at the same elevation.

“We’re measuring the elevation of a liquid surface on another body 10 astronomical units away from the sun to an accuracy of roughly 40 centimeters. Because we have such amazing accuracy we were able to see that between these two seas the elevation varied smoothly about 11 meters, relative to the center of mass of Titan, consistent with the expected change in the gravitational potential. We are measuring Titan’s geoid. This is the shape that the surface would take under the influence of gravity and rotation alone, which is the same shape that dominates Earth’s oceans,” said Hayes.

The paper’s second result proves a hypothesis that Hayes advanced in his first paper, in graduate school: that Titan’s lakes communicate with each other through the subsurface. Hayes and his team measured the elevation of lakes filled with liquid as well as those that are now dry, and found that lakes exist hundreds of meters above sea level, and that within a watershed, the floors of the empty lakes are all at higher elevations than the filled lakes in their vicinity.

“We don’t see any empty lakes that are below the local filled lakes because, if they did go below that level, they would be filled themselves. This suggests that there’s flow in the subsurface and that they are communicating with each other,” said Hayes. “It’s also telling us that there is liquid hydrocarbon stored on the subsurface of Titan.”

The paper’s final result raises a new mystery for Titan. Researchers found that the vast majority of Titan’s lakes sit in sharp-edged depressions that “literally look like you took a cookie cutter and cut out holes in Titan’s surface,” Hayes said. The lakes are surrounded by high ridges, hundreds of meters high in some places.

The lakes seem to be formed the way karst is on Earth, in places like the Florida Everglades, where underlying material dissolves and the surface collapses, forming holes in the ground. The lakes on Titan, like Earth’s karst, are topographically closed, with no inflow or outflow channels. But Earth karst does not have sharp, raised rims.

The shape of the lakes indicates a process called uniform scarp retreat, where the borders of the lakes are expanding by a constant amount each time. The largest lake in the south, for example, looks like a series of smaller empty lakes that have coalesced or conglomerated into one big feature.

“But if these things do grow outward, does that mean you’re destroying and recreating the rims all the time and that the rims are moving outward with it? Understanding these things is in my opinion the lynchpin to understanding the evolution of the polar basins on Titan,” said Hayes.

By Ramin Jabbarli

Starting from Thursday, Dec. 28. 2017, the widespread protests continued for a week in Iran. Based on the official reports, at least 21 protesters have been killed in across the country. Officials also have confirmed the death of arrestees in the prisons. The occurrence of the protests for many Iranians was unexpected.

For the first time after Islamic Revolution of Iran, in 1979, the protesters have questioned the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic in Iran by burning the posters of the supreme leader and chanting the anti-regime slogans. Now, both reformists and conservatives consider the protests as a threat to the regime. Although in the starting point of demonstrations, in the city of Mashhad, the protesters’ slogans against Rouhani had articulated the economic grievance, then the protests turned to anti-regime protests in consecutive days. The recent events in Iran and the dynamics of the protests in Iran show that causes of the protests cannot be diminished to merely the economic factors.

The Triggering Grievances

In order to understand the dynamics of protests sociologists like M. Hechter, S. Pfaff, and P. Underwood emphasize the importance of distinguishing between structural and incidental grievances. Structural grievances came from a group’s disadvantaged position in a social structure like oppressed ethnic groups, women’s position in a patriarchal society, and etc. Whereas incidental grievances arise from a wholly unanticipated or unexpected situation that puts groups at risk. While structural grievances are essential factors, these are incidental ones that push people to take collective and coordinated action like protest and demonstration. Being unexpected or unanticipated is a key in this issue because people may react differently to an event If that will happen gradually.

In the case of Iran, the people for a long time, have suffered from structural grievances such as inflation, environmental crisis, ethnic and gender discrimination, corruption, increasing unemployment rate, restricted social and political freedom, the monopoly of power, and etc. In the terms of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranians experienced high inflation and the sanctions against Iran have intensified some of the problems. However, the pattern of protests in Iranian shows that the protests always follow an incidental grievance. In 2006, Azerbaijanis in Iran took street as Iran Newspaper, an official organ of Iran unexpectedly published a racist cartoon. Three years later in 2009, people took street after unexpectedly winning of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a president.

In 2011, the mass protest did not occur until the parliament’s unexpected rejection of an emergency bill on August 17, 2011, to raise the water level of Lake Urmia. The people did protest without being exposed to the incidental grievances while they were aware of the problems. Knowing that all the incidental grievances did not end up with protests, implies that these kinds of grievances are a necessary but not sufficient condition to protest. So, this requires taking into account other factors such as organization, political opportunity, and identity.

To some extent, the occurrence of the current protests should be analyzed in the context of recent unexpected. Because these factors played essential roles in triggering the protests. President Hasan Rouhani, in both terms, was elected because of his promises such as improving the economic situation and living standard, softening political climate and giving more social and political freedom and so on. He failed, even after nuclear agreement people did not feel a considerable improvement in their lives. His second term has started with moving to conservative side by having a dominantly conservative cabinet. Most recently his budget draft was the topic of hot discussion among Iranians. These were incidental ones which made the people ready to protest.

Rouhani’s plan for increasing the fuel price, and cutting subsidies were unexpected plans from a president who had promised to improve living standard. These grievances were perceived as broken promises and along with sharp rising of food prices in the recent days formed a basis to interact with other factors, especially the perceived political opportunity.

The Perceived Political Opportunities

Participating in protests is an extremely costly action in an authoritarian state like Iran. There are some political situations which individuals may consider appropriate to participate in a contentious action. For instance, even in authoritarian states, as a result of political climate during presidential campaigns that candidates criticize each other people psychologically feel comfortable to express themselves. Another case could be when there are disputes among leaders and elites. People perceive these situations as opportunities for contentious actions. Sociologist Douglas McAdam calls these situations Perceived Political Political Opportunities. Indeed, in authoritarian states mostly these are not real political opportunities because follow brutal suppression by the state.

The pattern of protests in Iran reveals that a considerable number of protests happened after an election or coincided with disputes among leaders. The demonstrations after 2009 were held after election and South Azerbaijanis’ demonstrations in northwestern cities of Iran in 2011 are also a manifestation of this association. One of the significant factors which interacted with the grievances and finally has led to the protests is the critical political climate or the disputes among leaders. The current protests proceeded with two main disputes.

On the one hand, the intensifying disputes among the former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Larijani brothers, especially Saded Larijani, in the conservative wing of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Sadeq Larijani Head of Judiciary and appointed by the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei. On the other hand, the increased pressures and accusations of the conservative wing on president Rouhani. Conservatives blame him for the nuclear agreement and not improving the living standard of the Iranians. These disputes finally have led to the protest in the city of Mashhad, where Rouhani’s rival in the recent election, Ebrahim Raisi, is from. But after Mashhad, the protests have been expanded to the other cities. In fact, the incidental grievances together with the perceived political opportunities led to the protests across the country.

Organization: An Essential Deterring factor of the Protests

No doubt, suppression is one of important deterring factors in autocracies; however, it is not the only factor. Protest as a form of collective action requires a minimum organization to concert and coordinate the people. I use organization in the broadest sense, a way to lead people to a collective action, not necessary an institution or a party. There was no particular known physical organization such as fraction or party behind the protests. The protests had been organized essentially by using Telegram App. Telegram is a widely used app in Iran that based on Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, has approximately 25 million Iranian users. This was an Achilles heel for the recent protests because the protesters were primarily linked with the app, and blocking the app impaired the linkage among them.

The Iranian state blocked the access to Telegram and other social media apps to hinder the protests. As for me, the state had succeeded because the protesters were deprived of the required organizational mean to coordinate people. It seems that linkage or organizational problems could be solved by the support of the constituents of social movements that there is a real interaction with each other.

An alternative might be the participation of non-Persian ethnicities’ social movement in the protests. However, chanting slogans in favor of Pahlavi dynasty and few anti-Arab racist slogans by a group of protesters have primed some non-Persian ethnic groups. The slogans recalled the ultra-nationalistic and racist programs of Pahlavi dynasty for the oppressed ethnic groups in Iran. This was a factor which impacted negatively the rate of the oppressed non-Persian ethnicities’ participation in the protests.

In order to use the alternative organizational network and guarantee the participation of non-Persian ethnicities in any possible protest, their demands and the possible solutions should be addressed by political groups. Derived from Value Expectancy Theory, it is worthwhile to say that the oppressed ethnicities may join to protest if their goals are expected as a result of taking collective action. Currently, disregarding ethnic rights by major Persian political groups creates a barrier for interethnic collective action in Iran. The recent protests were also a manifestation of the barrier in Iran.

Source: This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

Delegates of the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation (ROSATOM) on Thursday visited Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena at the Official Residence of the President.

The five-member delegation, including its Deputy Chief Executive Officer of ROSATOM for International Relations Nikolay Spasskiy, participated in this meeting.

The delegation arrived in Sri Lanka with the aim of granting scholarships to uplift science, technology and research streams in the country, as well as to strengthen cooperation between the two countries in power and energy, industrial and agriculture sectors.

Further discussions were made on implementing long and short term projects in cooperation with the Ministry of Power and Renewable Energy and Ministry of Higher Education and Highways.

President Sirisena pointed out the long term diplomatic relations between the two countries and appreciated the friendly support always given by Russia.

Sirisena expressed his heartfelt gratitude to Russia on successfully negotiating to remove the Russian tea import ban by clarifying the issue. He asked the delegation to convey his special thanks to President Vladimir Putin in this regard.

Minister Susil Premajayantha and Mr Yury Materiy, Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Sri Lanka and Maldives were also present on this occasion.

By Kishore Kumar Khera*

Nigeria has been trying to contain the insurgency confronting it with all possible means. The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has started playing a major role in this mission and has intensified air operations in North Eastern Nigeria. NAF operations from December 20-22, 2017 neutralized scores of Boko Haram Terrorists (BHT) in Tumbun Rago, a settlement in the northern fringes of Borno state, bordering Lake Chad. The operations started with an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) mission. This was followed by air interdiction to strike the identified targets. Then came Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) missions after the strikes to assess the nature and extent of damage to the targets. Finally, follow on mop up operations by helicopter gunships at multiple locations enhanced the degree of target neutralisation.1 A similar operation was carried out by NAF in conjunction with the Nigerian Army (NA) on January 3-4, 2018 in Sambisa, Njimia and Camp Zairo.2 These operations constitute a classical example of air power employment in anti-insurgency operations.

Nigeria is one of the most affluent and powerful West African countries, with the highest GDP in the continent. It shares land boundaries with four countries — Niger, Benin, Chad and Cameroon. The cumulative combat power and national power of these four neighbours is less than that of Nigeria by a large margin. The differential in combat air power between Nigeria and these four countries is even more glaring.3 Consequently, the prime focus of Nigeria’s creation and employment of air power has been to manage internal conflicts and insurgency, besides ensuring the protection of the coastline and exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The country is nearly square shaped (1100 km long and 1000 km broad). The three military air bases are strategically located and over 30 airstrips evenly spread across the country allow an efficient application of air power.

The only combat aircraft in the NAF inventory at present are 14 Chinese built F7 procured in 2005-08. MiG-21s and Jaguars have been phased out. For counter insurgency (COIN) operations, it has 13 Alpha Jets, 23 L-39 and 12 MB-339 aircraft, besides 11 attack helicopters made up of Mi 24/Mi 35.4 The further growth trajectory of Nigerian air power can be assessed by analysing its defence budget and likely procurements. The proposed defence budget for 2018 with an allocation of US $1.5 billion has nearly 77 per cent earmarked for salaries and overheads. This limits the funds available for modernisation and up-gradation. Out of this limited modernisation budget, an allocation of $66.32 million is planned for aviation assets, including payment for three light utility helicopters for the army, two helicopters for the air force, one UAV for the navy, and for the maintenance of two Alpha Jet aircraft and one C-130 transport aircraft. Nearly 53 per cent of the money earmarked for aviation assets is for part payment for the acquisition of three JF-7s from Pakistan.5

A significant event took place on December 27, 2017 when the US Ambassador to Nigeria, Stuart Symington, presented the Letters of Offer and Acceptance (LOA) in respect of 12 A-29 Super Tucano Aircraft to the NAF. This will no doubt boost the NAF’s airpower potential. The Trump administration’s offer reverses the Obama administration’s decision to block the sale of military hardware to Nigeria. The LOA represents the official US Government offer to sell defence articles and services to the Nigerian Government.6 It is expected that the LOA would be signed and necessary payments made before February 20, 2018, to ensure the commencement of the production of these aircraft.7

The US $ 593 million deal includes aircraft, weapons, training, spare parts, aviation and ground support equipment, hangar, facilities, and infrastructure. These aircraft will augment the NAF effort in operations against the Boko Haram and ISIS West Africa, as well as Nigerian efforts to counter illicit trafficking both within the country and in the Gulf of Guinea.8 The deal also includes $29 million worth of weapons including 200 GBU-12/58 Pave Way II tail kits, 400 laser guided rockets, 2,000 MK-81 (250lb) bombs, 6,000 unguided rockets, 20,000 rounds of .50 calibre machine gun ammunition, seven AN/AAQ-22F electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor and laser designators. In addition, all aircraft sold will include weapons software to support forward-looking infra-red (FLIR).9 Nigeria’s defence budget of 2018 will have to provide for this deal at the expense of some other equipment.

This deal, on fructification, will permit sustained and effective round the clock COIN operations by the NAF. The combination of sensors and precision weapons will be difficult for the insurgents to beat. Precision strikes by the proposed low-calibre guided weapons will also reduce the probability of collateral damage. However, the mission can be effective only when it is supported by adequate ISR and suitable communication grids. NAF is presently not very well equipped in this regard. With the available ISR resources, it will not be possible to fully exploit the offensive assets on its inventory. NAF has a large area to cover for surveillance and monitor activities in specific sectors on a round-the-clock basis. The time lag between the initial ISR mission and follow-on mop-up attacks in December 2017 and January 2018 is of the order of 24 hours. With the kind of mobility available to insurgents, this time is adequate to relocate safely, thus staying ahead of the ISR cycle. Operational necessity is to shrink the sensor-to-shooter time.

To upgrade its ISR capabilities, NAF is looking intently at UAVs.10 These provide an optimal low cost and safe solution for long duration, repetitive missions. A benign air defence environment makes a perfect backdrop for UAV operations. The issue however is of the availability of resources to fund this need. And the answer lies in a re-look of the operational environment and reassessing the combat equipment requirement. One deal that stands out in this regard relates to the JF17. With practically no conventional threat on its borders, should NAF be equipping itself with the high-cost JF-17s at this juncture? Its existing fleet of F-7 is barely a decade old and adequate, along with ground-based radars, to ensure air superiority in its neighbourhood against known threats for another decade. The financial resources earmarked for the three JF-17s could optimally be utilised to upgrade the surveillance and communication network and reduce the sensor-to-shooter time for COIN operations.

Building up the capability to douse the current insurgency should ideally take precedence over the necessity to tackle a hypothetical conventional threat. Additionally, the procurement of just three JF-17s will not stand professional scrutiny with respect to its maintenance. A fighter platform like the JF-17 will necessitate the setting up of first and second lines of maintenance facilities for unhindered operations. This will tantamount to a sub-optimal utilisation of the investment in the project for just three platforms. In the absence of these facilities, the aircraft will be non-operational for a prolonged duration owing to the scheduled maintenance servicing. Either way, the cost of operation of the three JF-17s will further bloat the already burgeoning revenue expenditure. That will, in fact, prevent further modernisation.

Governments all over the world can allocate only finite resources for their armed forces. It is incumbent on the armed forces to assess the operational environment in a realistic manner and then draw out an appropriate equipment procurement strategy. Assets to tackle the existing security challenges must be provided for and only thereafter capabilities for tackling future threats should be built up. Unless reprioritised, the Nigerian defence budget will come under severe strain in the next three years.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India.

About the author:
*Group Captain Kishore Kumar Khera, VM is Research Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi.

Source:
This article was published by IDSA.

Notes:

• 1. Nigerian Air Force, “Press Release: Nigerian Air Force Intensifies Air Operations In Northeast, Neutralizes Scores of Boko Haram Terrorists in Tumbum Rago, Bogumeri,” January 9, 2018, available at http://www.airforce.mil.ng/post-nigerian_air_force_intensifies_air_opera…, accessed on January 11, 2018.
• 2. Nigerian Air Force, Press Release: Nigerian Army Elements Combine to Inflict Heavy Casualties on Boko Haram Terrorists, January 6, 2018, available at http://www.airforce.mil.ng/post-nigerian_air_force__nigerian_army_elemen…, accessed on January 12, 2018
• 3. International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Military Balance 2017, London: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 2017, pp. 498-537.
• 4. Ibid, p. 529
• 5. Guy Martin, “New Acquisitions Proposed in Nigeria’s 2018 Defence Budget,” Defence Web, January 4, 2018, available at http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id… Itemid=30, accessed on January 11, 2018
• 6. News Release by Nigerian Air Force on January 9, 2018, available at http://www.airforce.mil.ng/post-united_states_ambassador_presents_letter…, accessed on January 11, 2018
• 7. Guy Martin, “Nigeria Proceeding with Super Tucano Purchase,” Defence Web, January 2, 2018, available at http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id…, accessed on January 11, 2018
• 8. Defense Security Cooperation Agency, USA, press release on August 3, 2017, available at http://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales/government-nigeria-29-super-tucano-…, accessed on January 11, 2018
• 9. Office of the Federal Register (US), notification on August 28, 2017, available at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/08/28/2017-18201/arms-sal…, accessed on January 11, 2018
• 10. Nigerian Ministry of Defence, “Press Release: Nigeria Air Force UAV unveiled,” available at http://defence.gov.ng/index.php/78-featured/169-nigerian-air-force-uav-u…, accessed on January 12, 2018

By Marcin Rzegocki*

On January 3, during his first press event of the new year, French President Emmanuel Macron presented a proposal intended to “protect the democratic life” of France from “fake news.” According to the French president, so-called fake news constitutes a threat to democracy itself. “We are going to develop our legal means of protecting democracy against fake news,” he said in a video posted on Twitter.

These proposals would mandate greater transparency from internet portals about the sponsored content that they publish during an election season. The identity of the advertisers and those who finance them would have to be clearly indicated. The amount of money spent for such content would be limited. It would also be possible for judges to remove fake news stories, delete the links to them, block the sites, or close the offending users’ accounts. He also announced that the Higher Audiovisual Council (CSA) would be given the power to fight against any attempt by television services controlled or influenced by foreign states to destabilize society. This refers to Russian-state-owned francophone media outlets, specifically Russia Today and Sputnik News, which are considered Russian propaganda tools.

“If we want to protect liberal democracies, we must have strong legislation,” Macron said.

Even though the details of the new law have not been fully fleshed out, the idea of the state censoring fake news has already been widely criticized in France and abroad. The political opposition said that France is sliding towards an Orwellian regime, and some journalists observed that Macron’s law may decrease diversity of opinion and limit the freedom of speech. “Democracy is based on neutrality of media outlets, which does not really exist when an overwhelming majority of journalists militate for the Left,” writes the right-wing website La Gauche m’a tuer. A socialist deputy, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in his turn, says that it is evident that the proposed legislation risks to become liberticide.

In the context of fighting against falsehood in the media, another important question arises: “Who is going to decide whether a piece of information is false? The judges from Syndicat de la Magistrature [judges trade union closely related to the Left] or the Government?” asks Marine Le Pen. “Who will decide what is truth?” concurs Mélenchon.

The French president is not alone with his ideas to limit foreign information in his country. On Monday, the EU assembled a 29-person panel to investigate the problem of “fake news” and present a plan for a coordinated response to the European Commission by April. On Tuesday, the British Parliament held a hearing on “fake news.”

Some nations have already taken action. Lithuanian media authorities have suspended broadcasting by the Russian television chain, RTR Planeta, for “inspiring war sentiments and for hate speech.” In Sweden, almost simultaneously with Macron, the prime minister, Stefan Löfven, announced a stronger intelligence initiative to protect Swedes in the upcoming election from Russian and other foreign propaganda. “He said the new Swedish agency would be created ‘immediately’ and would be responsible for bolstering the ‘psychological defense’ of the Swedish public by ‘identifying, analyzing, and responding’ to ‘external influence’ campaigns,” one press account reported.

Even though regulations aimed at diminishing the impact of foreign propaganda may seem advantageous to many – at least, at first glance – it is entirely possible that they will open the way for the government to abuse its power by attacking its political rivals. Labeling other opinions “fake news,” “propaganda,” or “hate speech” may lead to severe legal consequences and may have a seriously adverse impact upon diverse views and sources of information, a crucial pillar of any democracy.

The democratic political system already has an effective mechanism to cope with fake news: Courts allow people to sue for libel. This should be considered a free-market response to certain varieties of fake news. Lawsuits, which are argued in the open before independent courts and are often covered by the media, guarantee a higher level of objectivity and transparency than the arbitrary decisions of politicized state authorities carried out behind closed doors.

“Desire for truth is part of human nature itself,” wrote Pope John Paul II in his 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio. People have both a will and intrinsic capacity to search for the truth. This is known as reason, the guiding principle of Western civilization since the time of Socrates. Therefore, people do not have to rely upon political authorities to help them sort out accurate news sources from false ones. They are able to do so on their own, provided – crucially – that they have access to a variety of diverse sources of information.

“Rather than make use of the human capacity to know the truth, modern philosophy has preferred to accentuate the ways in which this capacity is limited and conditioned,” continued the saintly Pope John Paul II. Instead of floating along this philosophical dead-end – and possibly empowering the government to restrict our freedom of the press – we must rather acknowledge the profound capabilities of the human intellect and allow them to exercise the liberty of thinking, and deciding, on their own.

About the author:
*Marcin Rzegocki is a Ph.D. student at the Warsaw School of Economics. You can contact him at marcin.rzegocki@gmail.com.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

By Ryan McMaken*

Earlier this week, the LA Times reminded its readers that California has the highest poverty rate in the nation.

Specifically, when using the Census Bureau’s most recent” Supplemental Poverty Measure” (SPM), California clocks in with a poverty rate of 20 percent, which places it as worst in the nation.

To be sure, California is running quite closely with Florida and Louisiana.

That said, we can certainly say that California is a top contender when it comes to poverty:

This continues to be something of a black eye for California politicians who imagine themselves to be the enlightened elite of North America.

The fact that one in five Californians is below this poverty line doesn’t exactly lend itself to crowing about the state’s success in its various wars on poverty.

Many conservative sites have seized on the information to say “I told you so” and claim this shows that “blue-state” policies fail.

One should be careful with this, of course, since there are plenty of red states in the top ten as well.

Moreover, some blue states, like Massachusetts, are doing moderately well by this measure:

In the realm of political punditry,  though, it matters a great deal whether one is using the regular poverty measure, or the SPM. For one, in the regular poverty measure, California ranks better than Texas, and leftists love to use the standard poverty rate to talk about how truly awful Texas and other red states are. The Supplemental Poverty Measure allows Texans to talk about how awful California is.

If we’re going to use census data to guess the prevalence of low-income households, though, the SPM is greatly superior to the old poverty rate. There’s a reason, after all, that the Census Bureau developed it, and the Bureau has long warned that poverty rates using the old measure don’t make for good comparisons across state lines.

The old poverty measure was a far more crude measure that did not take local costs into account, did not include poverty-assistance income, and basically ignored what can be immense differences in the cost of living in different locations. Many commentators often love to note how the median household income in many red states are below the national average — but then conveniently ignore how low the cost of living is in those places.

The SPM, on the other hand, takes into account the costs of “food, clothing, shelter, and utilities, and a small additional amount to allow for other needs” It includes government benefits, but also subtracts taxes. (A full explanation is here.)

The end result shouldn’t really be all that surprising: once we take into account the actual cost of living, including taxes, we find that poverty is actually quite high in California.

How to Alleviate Poverty

There are only two ways to reduce poverty and increase the standard of living:

• Increase household income
• Lower the cost of living

Poverty can be alleviated by simply increasing income. Or it can be done by simply reducing the cost of living. Ideally, both things happen at once, and fortunately, that’s usually how it works.

The greatest reductions in global poverty have come about due to the spread of capital and industrial production methods. This is because better and more widespread use of capital leads to two things:

1. It increases household income by increasing worker productivity. That is, each worker can produce more stuff of higher value. This means each worker can take home a higher income.

2. When we produce more stuff more quickly, that stuff becomes more affordable. Thanks to labor-saving and more efficient machinery, for example, fewer people can make more cars more quickly. In turn, more people can afford more cars because cars are more plentiful, and less expensive.

Over time, more people can buy more stuff at lower prices, thus increasing their standard of living. Even better, thanks to modern capital, those people can also produce more during the hours they work, making it possible to buy even more stuff. Both pieces work together to increase living standards.

One of the biggest problems California is facing right now, though, is that government interventions in the marketplace are making it harder and harder to produce more stuff, thus driving up prices.

The end result is a higher cost of living, and thus more poverty. Kerry Jackson at The LA Times notes: 

Further contributing to the poverty problem is California’s housing crisis. More than four in 10 households spent more than 30% of their income on housing in 2015. A shortage of available units has driven prices ever higher, far above income increases. And that shortage is a direct outgrowth of misguided policies.

“Counties and local governments have imposed restrictive land-use regulations that drove up the price of land and dwellings,” explains analyst Wendell Cox. “Middle-income households have been forced to accept lower standards of living while the less fortunate have been driven into poverty by the high cost of housing.” The California Environmental Quality Act, passed in 1971, is one example; it can add $1 million to the cost of completing a housing development, says Todd Williams, an Oakland attorney who chairs the Wendel Rosen Black & Dean land-use group. CEQA costs have been known to shut down entire homebuilding projects. CEQA reform would help increase housing supply, but there’s no real movement to change the law.

Extensive environmental regulations aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions make energy more expensive, also hurting the poor. By some estimates, California energy costs are as much as 50% higher than the national average. Jonathan A. Lesser of Continental Economics, author of a 2015 Manhattan Institute study, “Less Carbon, Higher Prices,” found that “in 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced … energy expenditures exceeding 10% of household income. In certain California counties, the rate of energy poverty was as high as 15% of all households.” A Pacific Research Institute study by Wayne Winegarden found that the rate could exceed 17% of median income in some areas.

It is increasingly becoming common knowledge that California is notoriously bad in terms of the cost of housing.

Every time a new “top ten” list of least-affordable housing markets is published, California cities often dominate the top of the list. In this list, for example, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Diego are all in the top ten.

Housing is perhaps the poster child for the impossibility of getting ahead in California. Much of this is due to locally-based NIMBYism in which local governments actively intervene to reduce new housing construction for the sake of “preserving the character” of the neighborhoods. This is just another way of sawing: “rich people like things the way they are, so you poor people can just get lost. We’re not building any more housing.”

These same rich people then later pat themselves on the back for voting Democratic and “doing something” about poverty.

But it’s not all just local regulations. As Jackson notes, environmental regulations are especially burdensome on businesses, thus driving up the cost of everything. This is especially true of housing which requires land, water resources, and visibly impacts the local environment.

These regulations, mind you, are all imposed on top of already existing federal regulations, and in addition to the environmental regulations that already function with a lower burden to business in other states. Coloradans, for example, aren’t exactly living in rivers of toxic sludge, in spite of having fewer environmental regulations — and cheaper housing.

Nor is housing the only industry impacted by these regulations. Mountains of anti-business regulations in the state also make it harder to start new businesses, hire people, and cover the basic costs of expanding worker productivity. Fewer workers get hired. Less capital is deployed to workers. The end result is that worker productivity growth can’t keep  up with increases in the cost of living. Poverty results.

Recognizing this vise in which the poor are caught in California, the response is always the same: more rent control, more regulations, more more costly hoops for employers to jump through.

“We’re taming capitalism!” the politicians tell themselves. Unfortunately, they’ve driven a fifth of the population into poverty in the process.

But don’t expect things to improve for the poor in California any time soon. California is perhaps the single biggest example in the US of how stylish locales become playgrounds for the rich, and a treadmill to nowhere for everyone else.

In recent years, news outlets have carried a number of articles on how workers in silicon valley are living in their cars. Sometimes, the homeless even have jobs at the big tech firms like Facebook. Nearly all of these homeless people have jobs of some sort, though. Thanks to the ruling classes of California, though, a basic apartment is $3,000 per month, while food and gasoline aren’t exactly cheap.

The well-to-do tell themselves that the high cost of living is simply “the cost of doing business” for living in such a wonderful place with so many enlightened, intelligent, and beautiful people. People can go to the beach whenever they want, and life is wonderful.

Of course, anyone who has actually lived in California as a non-wealthy person knows that one most certainly can’t go to the beach “whenever you want.” If one is working two jobs to pay the rent, a day at the beach — after sitting in traffic and paying for parking — isn’t exactly a regular event. Moreover, the communities with non-sky-high rents are generally found well inland, and aren’t exactly next to Malibu.

This may help explain why, as the Sacramento Bee reported last year, California is exporting its poor to Texas. The beaches aren’t as nice in Texas, but many of these migrants are trading in the beaches — which they never see anyway — for an affordable apartment.

About the author:
*Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is the editor of Mises Wire and The Austrian. Send him your article submissions, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado, and was the economist for the Colorado Division of Housing from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

The Rohingya issue in Myanmar has peaked international highlight where human rights, sovereignty, oppression of religious minorities and many more related issues have engaged many countries, not only the neighboring countries of Myanmar, but also others who may not have any direct interest as stakeholders. This is expected as in an interconnected globalised world where interests of nations coalesce, resolving an issue that assumes crisis proportion becomes every nations’ responsibility.

Japan is blessed with a Foreign Minister in Taro Kono who has been taking greater interest in global issues such as in the Middle East, Europe, Southeast Asia or South Asia and has been traveling frequently to talk with his counterparts on sensitive issues of global importance. This is a part of the Abe administration’s conduct of global diplomacy wherein consensus is being sought in critical issues of global importance such as the North Korean nuclear issues, terrorism, China’s growing influence in the world and in particular its policy of unilateralism in foreign policy making.

Japan’s interest in Myanmar is not recent. Even during the rule by the military junta and before democracy was restored without violence, Japan has been engaging with the Myanmar leaderships as protecting its economic interests is basically premised on political stability. So, when over a million of Rohingya Muslims fled to refugee camps in south-eastern Bangladesh after brutalised by the military in Myanmar in August 2017, it called for outside intervention on how to address to the issue. So, in November 2017, the foreign ministers of Japan Taro Kono, Sigmar Gabriel of Germany and Margot Wallstrom of Sweden travelled to Bangladesh to discuss with their counterpart Abul Hassan Mahmood this issue. The combined visit of the high level delegations was the first of its kind since the crisis began in August 2017.

The definition of the status of the Rohingyas in Myanmar is at the crux of the problem. Myanmar law does not recognize the Rohingya as one of Myanmar’s 135 official ethnic groups, thereby denying them citizenship as well as access to basic services such as education and health care. By contrast, the government formally recognizes the Kamans who are classified as one of the seven ethnic groups comprising the Rakhine national race. They are considered indigenous and are widely acknowledged as citizens who have national identity cards. The issue of identity is the cause of the recent violence.

Rohingyas are viewed as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Whether owing to international pressure or otherwise, the government in Myanmar has been working on a citizenship process for undocumented people in Rakhine state. The process seeks to check everybody in the state to determine whether they are eligible for citizenship. As per the existing citizenship law, to become citizens, the Rohingyas must obtain national verification cards before they are granted a status, such as guest citizens or people who can apply for citizenship. So, the issue is complex and sensitive too.

An estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims are believed to have crossed into Bangladesh after Myanmar army launched crackdown on suspected Muslim insurgents blamed for attacks on security outposts in Rakhine state on August 25. The three townships in northern Rakhine faced the brunt of the military crackdown. It was alleged that civilians were too tortured and their homes were burnt by the military and Buddhist vigilantes. Many Muslims were killed. Soldiers were also accused of committing random killings, rape, and arson in the villages.

The three visiting foreign ministers interacted with the Rohingya at the camps and witnessed the humanitarian operations by the government of Bangladesh, UN agencies and local and international NGOs. The idea was to garner international support for the Rohingya community living in Bangladesh, which has been hosting more than 400,000 other Rohingya Muslims driven away from their homes in Rakhine in the late 1970s and 1990s. Though the international community has lauded Bangladesh for compassion and generosity shown to the Myanmar people seeking refuge in Bangladesh, the pressure on Bangladesh is reaching unmanageable proportion as the number of refugees keeps on increasing. Bangladesh is engaging in diplomatic efforts, bilateral as well as multilateral, for early and sustainable return of forcibly displaced Rohinyas in safety and dignity.

Continuing his diplomatic outreach, Kono went to Myanmar on January 11 for a three-day visit to discuss political, economic and other issues of common concern to both countries with the country’s top leaders. While in Myanmar, Kono met Myanmar leader Daw Aung San Kyi and Tatmadaw Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. This was the first such meeting since he took office in August 2017. The purpose of Kono’s visit was to discuss democratic nation-building in Myanmar as well as improvement of humanitarian and human rights conditions in Rakhine State. With mounting international criticism of high-handedness by the military on the Muslim residents in northern Rakhine, following which over 650,000 people fled to Bangladesh, Myanmar agreed to receive back the first batch of refugees that were to be repatriated from Bangladesh by 23rd or at the end of January 2018. The UN Human Rights Council condemned the alleged systematic and gross violations of the Rohingyas’ human rights.

Earlier, during their meeting in Manila on the side-lines of the ASEAN Summit in November, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo had told State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi that Japan was ready to provide up to $1.03 billion of development aid to Myanmar. In 2016, Japan announced a $7.7 billion package to Myanmar for both the public and private sectors that was to be spread over five years.

After meeting with Myanmar’s de facto leader San Suu Kyi in the capital of Naypyitaw, Kono visited a village in Maungdaw region in Rakhine state that used to be home to around 1,000 Rohingya Muslims. Kono was the first minister of a foreign country to visit the region since the unrest began. In addition to what Abe had announced in Manila, Kono in a meeting with San Suu Kyi announced that Japanese government will provide an additional $3 million to help repatriate Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar.

It is noteworthy that when humanitarian groups and media were strictly prohibited from traveling to the affected areas, Kono was allowed to visit the affected areas and interact with the people there. It is believed that Myanmar and Bangladesh had already signed an agreement of Rohingya refugees on November 23, and Kono’s visit could have given a push to this initiative. Though the repatriation process was expected to start on November 23, the exact number of returnees remains unknown.

Japan’s offer of financial grant of $3 million to help facilitate the repatriation of displaced Myanmar Rohinya Muslims is well appreciated by Myanmar. Japan’s financial help is also a message to the international community that peace and human rights ought to get the utmost priority.

Though more than 650,000 Rohinyas fled to neighbouring Bangladesh to escape a brutal crackdown in which security forces have been accused of systematic abuses tantamount to ethnic cleansing, the agreement of November 23 does not clearly specify the number likely to be repatriated.

In order to create the right peaceful environment and transparency, it is desirable that the Myanmar government allows humanitarian and media access to the affected areas, work on the resettlement of returned refugees, and implement the recommendations made in 2017 by the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, a group led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The commission called for reviews of the country’s Citizenship Law, under which the Rohingya are ineligible for citizenship, besides ending restrictions on the Muslim minority group so that further violence in the ethnically and religiously divided region can be prevented. The commission recommended that citizenship be granted to Bengalis who are not one of Myanmar’s official ethnic groups. So far humanitarian groups and media have been strictly prohibited from traveling to the affected areas freely.

In his meeting with San Suu Kyi, Kono also announced Japan’s readiness to provide further aid of $20 million to improve humanitarian conditions and development of Rakhine state. The money is to be paid in a timely manner based on the progress of repatriation. Japan is already a major donor of development aid to Myanmar.

Both Myanmar and Bangladesh being India’s neighbours, what role is India expected to play and what are the expectations of both Myanmar and Bangladesh from India? From India’s perspective, strategic considerations seem to weigh above all other points of views. The overwhelming opinion from the strategic community is that India should support Myanmar to fight the Rohingya crisis instead of supporting Bangladesh. Such opinion suggests that if Bangladesh expects India to criticise Myanmar, then it is wrong.

It may be remembered that on September 18, India refused to sign a global declaration adopted at an international conclave as it referred to the violence against Rohingyya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

Kapil Sibal, former Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, says that India cannot afford to fritter away its strategic stakes in Myanmar by joining a selective, hypocritical chorus on humanitarian issues by those who prefer to agitate only such as are low-cost for them.

In an article published in The Economic Times, Sibal observed: “The Islamic countries who condemn Myanmar should explain why Saudi Arabia’s onslaught on the Yemenis or that of Turkey on the Kurds is overlooked by them. Why is there silence on China’s treatment of Tibetans and the Uighur Muslims? The OIC [Organisation of Islamic Cooperation] liberally condemns India on Kashmir but is inaudible over Pakistan’s promotion of terrorism in India and Afghanistan.” He added: “The ease with which the perceived maltreatment of Muslims anywhere mobilises the community in distant geographies, even violently, explains why pan-Islamism makes the full integration of Muslim minorities in non-Muslim countries difficult.”

Though Bangladesh’s assistance in helping India fight militancy in northeast is well appreciated, India is also aware that Bangladesh still purchases most of its defence hardware and armaments from China and also supports China’s One Belt One Road strategy which India strongly opposes.

If the argument that Bangladesh’s diplomatic relations with India and China are different has merit, so is the case with India’s policy towards Myanmar and Bangladesh. India is also aware that some 40,000 Rohingya have entered India through Bangladesh. There is a need now to seal off the border to control influx. India cannot overlook the fact that plenty of Rohingyas “have settled down in Jammu and Kashmir where Muslims fiercely oppose the settlement of Hindu refugees as a conspiracy to bring about demographic change”.

If such is India’s stance, can India and Japan cooperate for a joint strategy in Myanmar? On the Rohingya issue, both do not seem to be on the same page and India can only encourage Japan in its efforts through economic means to ameliorate the conditions of the people. But both India and Japan are likely to cooperate to check China’s growing influence and dissuade Myanmar not to fall into China’s trap of development cooperation.

*Dr. Panda is currently Indian Council for Cultural Relations India Chair Visiting Professor at Reitaku University, JAPAN. Disclaimer: The views expressed are author’s own and do not represent either of the ICCR or the Government of India. E-mail: rajaram.panda@gmail.com

What’s really behind the Trump Russiagate scandal? Go from one news source to another and you’ll see widely disparate versions of the story. The difference is especially stark in cable TV news reports. Switch from Fox News to MSNBC and you see two totally different pictures. It’s like they’re in parallel universes.

Compare these examples:

“Mueller Probe Stinks Worse Than Cabbage Cooking in an Unventilated Kitchen” –Fox News

“Is Trump unraveling as Mueller investigation hits closer to home?” –MSNBC

Is either example correct?

The themes surrounding Russiagate reportage range from Trump covering up the conspiracy with Russia that got him elected president, to a plot by mysterious American “deep state” forces to stage a coup against Trump.

How are audiences able to sort out the real story? My guess is that people are likely to ascribe credibility to whichever news source most closely reflects their own political biases.

But in an era of truth contestability that’s no way to uncover the honest facts.

What’s worse is that I’ve seen in most cases the critically important background regarding Russiagate has been suppressed. This leaves observers with little reliable information to go by. Audiences are being exposed to questionable accounts without the benefit of context.

To ameliorate that situation I’ve prepared a series of monographs that present relevant background. The series is called “Russia: Straight Talk on Hushed Issues.”

Initially, six monographs have been posted (http://www.amzn.to/2jpNV80).

Current titles include,

• Wise Up President Trump: It’s time to confront the Russian Conspiracy scandal head on
• The Secret Yeltsin Scandal: Discover the truth about the present from events in the past
• Putin’s Orders For Trump: Do they exist, and is Trump complying?
• Congress Warned Over Russia: The smell of war is in the air. What can Congress do?
• US Policy Toward Putin’s Russia: A hearing before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
• Putin’s Ally Dead in DC: Can the official explanation be believed?

These monographs will be free of charge for Eurasia Review readers from January 22 through January 26.

That’s just the first installment. This series will continue with many more monographs to come.

My intent is not to persuade anyone of anything, but to empower news consumers with the necessary context to critically examine the everyday news streams they are exposed to. A hallmark of this approach is its fact-checking of news reports. It also tests news content for logical consistency. This all will give readers a good idea of who’s presenting reliable facts and who’s propagating distortions. The results can be quite surprising and illuminating for everyone.

The first year of US President Donald Trump’s administration was marked by a sharp regression in government efforts to protect and promote a range of human rights, Human Rights Watch said Thursday in its World Report 2018. The Trump administration made policy changes that have harmed refugees and immigrants, undermined police accountability for abuse, and rolled back women’s rights, including access to important health services.

“The Trump administration has promoted policies that put vulnerable people in increased danger and undermine constitutional protections for everyone’s human rights,” said Alison Parker, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch. “The people most likely to suffer abuses are often least able to defend their rights in court or through the political process and should be protected, not targeted by abusive policies.”

In the 643-page World Report, its 28th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 90 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth writes that political leaders willing to stand up for human rights principles showed that it is possible to limit authoritarian populist agendas. When combined with mobilized publics and effective multilateral actors, these leaders demonstrated that the rise of anti-rights governments is not inevitable.

Trump’s policies have made all deportable immigrants targets for deportation. The administration expanded abusive fast-track deportation procedures and criminal prosecutions for immigration offenses and moved to increase the prolonged detention of immigrants. Trump also repealed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, putting hundreds of thousands of immigrants who arrived in the US as children at risk of deportation. In October, the White House released immigration principles and policies that would weaken protections for child migrants and refugees.

The administration also issued new, harsh screening measures for the refugee program and set the annual cap for refugee admissions for 2018 at 45,000, the lowest annual limit since Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980.

The White House and Justice Department have scaled back efforts to monitor local police departments engaged in systemic abuses, including discontinuing investigations and monitoring of local police departments reported to have patterns and practices of excessive force and constitutional violations. The Trump administration has signaled an intent to re-escalate the disastrous and ineffective war on drugs. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Smart on Crime initiative, which prioritized federal prosecutions of people accused of high-level drug offenses, reduced racial disparities in federal drug sentencing, and improved reentry opportunities for people leaving prison.

The Trump administration rolled back important women’s rights protections with an executive order that enabled more employers and insurers to assert objections to the contraceptive coverage mandate of the Affordable Care Act.

The White House also announced that it would scrap an equal pay initiative, which was to go into effect in 2018. The initiative would have required large employers and federal contractors to provide information about employee compensation broken down by race, ethnicity, and gender to civil rights enforcement agencies. The Education Department announced its intention to review and change guidelines on campus sexual assault.

The Trump administration’s policies and statements also threatened or undermined human rights in other ways:

• Trump’s reluctance to repudiate hate groups risks fueling discriminatory and racist conduct and abdicates his responsibility as president to uphold the fundamental principles of equality and non-discrimination.
• Trump’s repeated denunciations of journalists as dishonest and biased against him, and comments and videos denigrating them prompt concerns over a chilling effect on freedom of speech.
• Trump’s sudden firing of James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and his criticism of judges who have blocked some of his administration’s actions, risked undermining the rule of law and checks on presidential power.
• The administration’s actions affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people undermines their rights. The changes include Trump’s unexpected and sudden decision to ban transgender people from serving in the US military and the Justice Department directive reversing the position that the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in the workplace on the basis of gender identity.
• The Trump administration’s reported revision of the policy for drone strikes outside conventional war zones allows attacks on lower-level terrorism suspects in more countries, with less oversight, and greater secrecy.

“Trump should abandon his abusive and discriminatory policies and respect everyone’s rights,” Parker said.

2017 was the warmest year on record for the global ocean according to an updated ocean analysis from Institute of Atmospheric Physics/Chinese Academy of Science (IAP/CAS).

The oceans in the upper 2000 m were 1.51 × 10²² J warmer than the second warmest year of 2015 and 19.19 × 10²² J above the 1981-2010 climatological reference period. Owing to its large heat capacity, the ocean accumulates the warming derived from human activities; indeed, more than 90% of Earth’s residual heat related to global warming is absorbed by the ocean.

As such, the global ocean heat content record robustly represents the signature of global warming and is impacted less by weather-related noise and climate variability such as El Niño and La Niña events. According to the IAP ocean analysis, the last five years have been the five warmest years in the ocean. Therefore, the long-term warming trend driven by human activities continued unabated.

The increase in ocean heat content for 2017 occurred in most regions of the world (Figure). The human greenhouse gas footprint continues to impact the Earth system. Increases in ocean temperature cause ocean volume expansion, which contributes to the global mean sea level rise.

The increase in ocean heat of 1.51 × 10²² J in 2017 resulted in a 1.7 mm sea global level rise. Other consequences include declining ocean oxygen, bleaching of coral reefs, and melting sea ice and ice shelves.

NATO has denied claims made by some Qatari media outlets which sought to exaggerate a recent agreement which was signed with the tiny Gulf state, some of which have imagined that such an agreement makes Doha a fully-fledged ally.

On Tuesday, it was announced that Qatar had signed a “security agreement” with NATO at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.

It was in fact a regular agreement that NATO signs with a number of countries. This was clear from the press release posted on the alliance’s website, which said: “These agreements are signed by NATO partner countries that wish to engage in cooperation with NATO. All four ICI (Istanbul Cooperation Initiative) partner countries — Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE — have now signed individual security agreements with NATO.”

Some of the Qatari media outlets projected this agreement as if Qatar had become a NATO member, or that it means that it now benefits from the protection of the military alliance. Many social media users were taken in by the propaganda and actually thought that Qatar had joined NATO and become an ally.

However, a NATO official based at its headquarters in Brussels categorically denied all such claims.

“Qatar is a very active partner of NATO, but it’s not a NATO ally,” the official told Arab News. “NATO has 29 allies (27 European countries as well as Canada and the US).”

Qatar watchers were not surprised by the Doha-inspired propaganda.

“Qatar is such a tiny country and it has often punched above its weight. So I am not surprised by the fallacious claim of its media and followers that it has become a NATO member. It is a joke,” said Dr. Hamdan Al-Shehri, a Saudi political analyst and international relations scholar in Riyadh.

He expressed surprise, though, that NATO should enter into any agreement with Qatar.

Other analysts see this agreement as another step Doha has taken to adhere to the demands of the Anti-Terror Quartet, comprising Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt. However, analysts told Arab News that Doha wants to save face by not making terror-combatting agreements with its fellow Arab nations, but with foreign entities such as NATO and the US Department of Justice.

Political commentator Oubai Shabandar says the deal should not be blown out of proportion.

“This is a standard agreement between NATO and a non-NATO member country that deals with information-sharing privileges that are shared by other countries in the Arabian Gulf region. It would be a major stretch to consider this development as being anything more than what it really is: A diplomatic agreement along the lines that NATO enjoys with other Arab states, no more, no less,” he added.

Lithium metal-based batteries have the potential to turn the battery industry upside down. With the theoretically ultra-high capacity of lithium metal used by itself, this new type of battery could power everything from personal devices to cars.

“In current batteries, lithium is usually atomically distributed in another material such as graphite or silicon in the anode,” explains Northwestern University’s Jiaxing Huang. “But using an additional material ‘dilutes’ the battery’s performance. Lithium is already a metal, so why not use lithium by itself?”

The answer is a research challenge scientists have spent years trying to overcome. As lithium gets charged and discharged in a battery, it starts to grow dendrites and filaments, “which causes a number of problems,” Huang said. “At best, it leads to rapid degradation of the battery’s performance. At worst, it causes the battery to short or even catch fire.”

One current solution to bypass lithium’s destructive dendrites is to use a porous scaffold, such as those made from carbon materials, on which lithium preferentially deposits. Then when the battery is charging, lithium can deposit along the surface of the scaffold, avoiding dendrite growth. This, however, introduces a new problem. As lithium deposits onto and then dissolves from the porous support as the battery cycles, its volume fluctuates significantly. This volume fluctuation induces stress that could break the porous support.

Huang and his collaborators have solved this problem by taking a different approach — one that even makes batteries lighter weight and able to hold more lithium.

The solution lies in a scaffold made from crumpled graphene balls, which can stack with ease to form a porous scaffold, due to their paper ball-like shape. They not only prevent dendrite growth but can also survive the stress from the fluctuating volume of lithium. The research was featured on the cover of the January issue of the journal Joule.

“One general philosophy for making something that can maintain high stress is to make it so strong that it’s unbreakable,” said Huang, professor of materials science and engineering in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. “Our strategy is based on an opposite idea. Instead of trying to make it unbreakable, our scaffold is made of loosely stacked particles that can readily restack.”

Six years ago, Huang discovered crumpled graphene balls — novel ultrafine particles that resemble crumpled paper balls. He made the particles by atomizing a dispersion of graphene-based sheets into tiny water droplets. When the water droplets evaporated, they generated a capillary force that crumpled the sheets into miniaturized paper balls.

In Huang’s team’s battery, the crumpled graphene scaffold accommodates the fluctuation of lithium as it cycles between the anode and cathode. The crumpled balls can move apart when lithium deposits and then readily assemble back together when the lithium is depleted. Because miniature paper balls are conductive and allow lithium ions to flow rapidly along their surface, the scaffold creates a continuously conductive, dynamic, porous network for lithium.

“Closely packed, the crumpled graphene balls operate like a highly uniform, continuous solid,” said Jiayan Luo, the paper’s co-corresponding author and professor of chemical engineering at Tianjin University in China. “We also found that the crumpled graphene balls do not form clusters but instead are quite evenly distributed.”

Formerly advised by Huang, Luo earned his PhD in materials science and engineering in 2013. Now as a professor and researcher at Tianjin University, Luo continues to collaborate with Huang.

Compared to batteries that use graphite as the host material in the anode, Huang’s solution is much lighter weight and can stabilize a higher load of lithium during cycling. Whereas typical batteries encapsulate lithium that is just tens of microns thick, Huang’s battery holds lithium stacked 150 microns high.