By Ayo Awokoya

There has been little media attention focusing on the biggest political crisis to hit Cameroon in decades. Plagued by an ongoing linguistic secessionist movement, instability present in the small West African country threatens to spill over to neighboring Nigeria and the surrounding region. While the UN and former colonial powers Britain and France have called for the cease of hostilities and open dialogue, the Cameroon government has attempted to resolve the crisis through force instead of diplomacy.

As a result, tensions between separatist elements and government authorities have continued to escalate; thousands of civilians have fled to the Nigerian border, and a crackdown against secessionist militants has resulted in large-scale arrests, detainments, and killings.  The government’s heavy use of force has led some to call the crackdown a form of ethnic cleansing , which has only served to heighten the level of political agitation in the country. The conflict has undermined bilateral relations with Nigeria as separatists have crossed the border intending to wage their militancy with the aid of local sympathizers. The response of the Cameroon government has been to illegally cross the border in pursuit, raising ire in Abuja, and placing the interests of both governments at odds – a tension not welcomed considering that both nations are closely coordinating their military operations against Islamic extremists along the northern Cameroon-Nigerian border.

The advent of the secessionist sentiment is particularly inconvenient for President Biya, who is scheduled to run in national elections this year. Having served as one of Africa’s longest running heads of state, it was presumed Mr Biya will hold on to his status as the nation’s leader, but the on-going crisis raises questions on whether Biya will follow the same fate as Robert Mugabe and Yahya Jammeh.

Background

The Anglophone crisis has been a simmering point of contention in Cameroon’s society. Dating back to the days of colonization, grievances leveled at the French-speaking government have not been just linguistic in nature, but rooted in economic and political deprivation. Formerly a German colony, Cameroon was divided between France and Britain as one of the spoils of the First World War – France occupied the majority of Cameroon, while Britain annexed the westernmost region along the border with Nigeria. In 1960, the French territory of Cameroon voted for independence as did the British territory in the following year. The vote was meant to unify the English and French speaking regions together and place both languages under equal status, but this did not come to pass.

As the present crisis shows, the linguistic status of English was greatly undermined in favor of a unitary state that disseminated the practice of spoken and written French in the majority of the state’s main institutions. There was also a widespread sentiment amongst the Anglophone regions that the government was gradually attempting to impose “frenchification” as the Biya regime began to demand that local administrative and civil services should converse on French. Economic deprivation of the Anglophone regions became increasingly apparent. The southern regions of Cameroon were noted to have received a greater allocation of resources for projects relating to critical infrastructure than all of the Anglophone regions combined. It is no coincidence that the southern state of Cameroon is also the home region of President Biya. These long held grievances eventually manifested in large scale demonstrations. Their eventual trigger was the nomination of French-speaking magistrates in the English speaking region. Ultimately it was the government’s refusal to address the issues at hand that gave way to the social unrest that has swept across the country.

A greater risk of insurgency and damaged bilateral tensions

The government’s disproportionate use of force will most likely encourage even greater insurgency. As can be seen from clashes between separatists and security forces, potential militants will seek to cross the Nigerian border and support guerrilla attacks. This can be viewed as capitalizing on the fraught relations between Cameroon and Nigeria as questions over whether Nigeria can legally extradite Cameroon independence leaders have been raised by human rights bodies. In addition, private diplomatic spats between the two neighbors will most likely provide time for independence separatists to conduct the training of new recruits and launch counter operations against the government.  However, impeding these developments are the bilateral commitments that exist between Nigeria and Cameroon. Given their joint operations against Boko Haram in the north, it is likely that the Nigerian government will eventually begin military operations to root out Cameroonian dissidents, both to appease Cameroon so that bilateral military relations will continue unabated and to eliminate the risk of inciting more secessionist sentiment amongst the Indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB).

The growing refugee crisis will also pose problems for Nigeria and Cameroon. At present, more than 43,000 refugees have fled to Nigeria amid the government’s heavy crackdown, straining the monetary resources of the federal government. This proves to be particularly strenuous given the fragmented social climate of Nigerian society, with secessionist tensions in the Biafra region, on-going clashes with Niger Delta militants, and the continued pressure to eradicate Boko Haram. As such the refugee situation will only add to Nigeria’s problems. If the exodus of refugees continues to swell, Nigeria may close the border in order to prevent the onset of regional instability or begin to impose pressure on the Cameroon government to contain the violence within its own borders.

Deterioration of political and economic stability

Both separatist militants and the Biya regime have given no indication of ceasing hostilities, increasing the likelihood of a breakdown of law and order and the continuation of violence committed on both sides. It is likely that current government crackdown will continue to be presided over by President Biya, who has declared war on any individual who seeks to pursue a secessionist agenda. Separatists are equally determined to oppose the Biya regime and establish the “Federal Republic of Ambazonia.” The clash will only serve to deteriorate the political stability in the region as the violence will result in civilian casualties and the suspension of ordinary business and local services.

The crisis will also undermine the country’s economy as methods to root out the secessionists have greatly affected local business and enterprises in the Anglophone region. The government’s decision to impose an internet shutdown for the past four months has acted as a double-edge sword – while it has prevented English-speaking Cameroonians from communicating with the outside world, the economy has suffered greatly. In total, two major shutdowns were implemented – the first one lasting 93 days cost the Cameroon economy at least $38m, while the second shutdown had similar monetary loss. The production of one of the country’s largest exports, cocoa, will be stunted in the months to come as violent clashes have already cut off buyers from the Southwest Region, which produces more than 100,000 tons of cocoa beans, reported to be nearly half of the country’s output. The production slowdown will also increase the already existing cocoa smuggling trade, undermining the amount of revenue Cameroon garners from the exportation of the bean.

Looking ahead

The international community will continue to divert its attention away from the situation in Cameroon due to the country’s importance in quelling radical extremism in the Sahel region and northern Nigeria.

As such, it is most likely that regional powers will be forced to intervene to prevent destabilization along their own borders. However, they will abstain from pressuring the Biya regime to address the root causes of the political turmoil so as to not encourage similar separatist sentiments within their own borders. With the upcoming elections, president Biya’s position as the presidential candidate may become compromised if the political agitation is not quelled.

 The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect any official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com, where this article was published.

By R S Panwar*

Ever since Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo programme defeated South Korea’s top professional Lee Sedol in 2016 in the popular board game Go, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including machine learning and deep learning,1 have seized the imagination of people across the globe. While the impact of AI is already being felt in many areas, such as speech recognition in digital assistants like Siri and Cortana, and consumer behaviour prediction by Amazon and Google, it is future AI systems that are creating all the excitement. The most prominent amongst these is self-driving cars, with the year 2020 being targeted by market leaders for productionising cars capable of driving themselves without any human intervention.

There appears to be general agreement on the positive benefits which AI can bring to society. At the same time, there is also an underlying fear grounded in the belief that AI systems would one day exceed human intelligence and capabilities, a line of thinking which leads to many doomsday scenarios. Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and others have all expressed serious concern about the uncontrolled development of AI applications, stating repeatedly that AI could pose the greatest existential threat to humanity.

Of immediate concern, however, is the use of AI in military applications, specifically those termed as Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS). LAWS, according to a commonly accepted definition, are weapon systems that “once activated, can select and engage targets without further human intervention”.2 The prospects of this military application has given rise to the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a global coalition of 64 non-government organisations (NGOs) launched in April 2013 under the aegis of Human Rights Watch with the aim of pre-emptively banning fully autonomous lethal weapons. This Campaign, amongst others, advocates the view that retaining human control over the use of force is a moral imperative and essential for promoting compliance with international law and ensure accountability.

An informal group of experts from a large number of countries has been debating the issue of LAWS for three years now at the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) forum known as Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). In December 2016, countries agreed to formalise these deliberations. As a result, a Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) has been established, the first of which was held from 13 to 17 November 2017, chaired by Ambassador Amandeep Gill of India. Approximately 90 countries along with many other agencies participated in the meeting. Some of the conclusions arrived at during the meeting were:

• states must ensure accountability for lethal action by any weapon system used by them in armed conflict;
• acknowledging the dual nature of technologies involved, the Group’s efforts should not hamper civilian research and development in these technologies; and,
• there is a need to keep potential military applications using these technologies under review.

It was also agreed that a ten-day meeting should be scheduled in 2018.

The primary argument put forth by advocacy groups calling for a ban is that weapon systems that have autonomy in the critical functions of ‘select and engage’ would be in violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), and specifically its principles of distinction and proportionality.3 While the former principle requires weapon systems to be able to reliably distinguish between combatants and civilians, the latter requires value judgement to be used before applying military force. According to this argument, LAWS will never be able to live up to these requirements. In addition, there is also the consideration of what is known as the Martens Clause, wherein it is contended that delegating to machines the decision power of ‘life and death’ over humans would be “against the principles of humanity and the dictates of public conscience.”4

There is an equally vocal body of opinion which states that the development and deployment of LAWS would not be illegal, and in fact would lead to the saving of human lives. This is because without the driving motivation for self-preservation, LAWS may be used in a self-sacrificing manner, saving human lives in the process. Moreover, they can be designed without emotions that normally cloud human judgment during battle leading to unnecessary loss of lives. An argument is also put forth that autonomous weapons would have a wide range of uses in scenarios where civilian presence would be minimal or non-existent, such as tank or naval warfare, and that the question of legality depends on how these weapons are used, and not on their development or existence.5

Some of the well-known autonomous defensive weaponry already in use today are missile defence systems such as the Iron Dome of Israel and the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System used by the US Navy. Fire-and-forget systems, such as the Brimstone missile system of the United Kingdom (UK) and the Harpy Air Defense Suppression System of Israel, also function in an autonomous manner. Another oft quoted example of existing autonomous weapon systems is the SGR-A1, a sentry robot deployed by South Korea in the Demilitarized Zone with its northern adversary.6

The relevance of the ongoing debate on LAWS in the context of the Indian military landscape cannot be over-emphasized, as there are many scenarios where these can be deployed to advantage. Autonomous systems designed to disarm improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are already in use by Indian forces, although these are non-lethal and defensive in nature. Future possible applications include AI-enabled drone swarms to boost surveillance capabilities; robot sentries along the borders to check infiltration by terrorists; autonomous armed UAVs for use in conventional as well as sub-conventional scenarios, and so on.7 In general, saving own soldiers from the lethality of war would yield rich dividends to any military force, especially in conventional conflicts. Faced with the prospect of a two and a half front war, the development of LAWS by India assumes strategic significance.

The United States has put AI at the centre of its quest to maintain its military dominance. As a part of its Third Offset Strategy announced in 2014,8 the Pentagon has reportedly dedicated US $18 billion for its Future Years Defense Program,9 a substantial portion of which has been allocated for robotics, autonomous systems and human-machine collaboration. Chinese military leaders and strategists believe that the character of warfare is fundamentally changing due to unmanned platforms and autonomous systems and have labelled AI research as a national priority, thus giving it a huge impetus.10 Russian president Vladimir Putin has recently predicted that whichever country leads the way in AI research will come to dominate global affairs. Without doubt, Russia is pursuing the development of LAWS in earnest, in order to keep pace with the US and China in this new arms race. The UK, France and Israel, amongst others, are expected to be significant players in this contentious new field.

In the context of India’s defence, presently there appears to be a void in terms of doctrines and perspective plans when it comes to the exploitation of AI/ Robotics technologies. Occasional interactions by the defence establishment with the DRDO’s Centre for AI and Robotics (CAIR) and other agencies are inadequate to spur the latter into producing timely and meaningful results. Given its track record, DRDO is unlikely to be successful in developing complex lethal autonomous systems anytime soon. It is also worth noting that world-wide, R&D in these technologies is being driven by the private commercial sector rather than the defence industry. Unfortunately, the Indian equivalents of Baidu, Amazon, Google and Microsoft are yet to rise to the occasion, despite the strengths of our IT industry. Clearly, much more needs to be done.

After decades of false starts, AI/ Robotics technologies today appear to be at an inflection point, making rapid advancements which are considered significant enough to usher in a new revolution in military affairs (RMA). Notwithstanding the world-wide concern about the development of LAWS from the legal and ethical points of view, it is increasingly clear that, irrespective of any conventions that may be adopted by the UN, R&D by major countries is likely to proceed unhindered. Given India’s security landscape, perhaps there is a need to adopt a radically different approach for facilitating the development of LAWS. As with any transformation, this is no easy task. Only a determined effort, with specialists on board and due impetus being given from the apex level, is likely to yield the desired results.

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:
*Lieutenant General (Dr) Ravindra Singh Panwar, AVSM, SM, VSM (retd.) is the 57th Colonel Commandant of the Corps of Signals. His last appointment in the Indian Army was as Commandant of Military College of Telecommunication Engineering, Mhow.

Source:
This article was published by IDSA.

Notes:

• 1. Michael Copeland, “What’s the Difference Between Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning?”, nvidia.com, July 29, 2016, https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ 2016/07/29/whats-difference-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-deep-learning-ai/
• 2. Ashton B Carter, US Department of Defence Directive 3000.09, Washington, Office of the US Deputy Secretary of Defence, November 21, 2012, p. 13, https://cryptome.org/dodi/dodd-3000-09.pdf; Mary Wareham, “Presentation on Campaign to Stop Killer Robots,” PIR Centre Conference on Emerging Technologies, Moscow, September 29, 2016, http://www.stopkillerrobots.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/KRC_Moscow_29…
• 3. Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots, Cambridge, International Human Rights Clinic, Harvard Law School, November 19, 2012, pp. 30-32, https://reliefweb.int/report/world/losing-humanity-case-against-killer-r…
• 4. Rupert Ticehurst, “The Martens Clause and the Laws of Armed Conflict,” International Review of the Red Cross No 317, April 30, 1997, https://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/article/other/57jnhy.htm
• 5. Ronald Arkin, “Counterpoint,” Communications of the ACM, December 2015, https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/12/194632-the-case-for-banning-kille…
• 6. R Shashank Reddy, India and the Challenge of Autonomous Weapons, Washington, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 2016, p. 4, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/CEIP_CP275_Reddy_final.pdf
• 7. R S Panwar et. al., “International Perspectives: Autonomy and Counter-Autonomy in Military Operations,” Panel Discussion, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, October 31, 2016, http://carnegieendowment.org/2016/10/31/rise-of-artificial-intelligence-…
• 8. Peter Dombrowski, America’s Third Offset Strategy: New Military Technologies and Implications for the Asia-Pacific, Policy Report, June 2015, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technology University, Singapore, pp. 4-5, https://www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/PR150608_Americas-Thi…
• 9. Chuck Hagel, Memorandum Secretary of Defence: The Defence Information Initiative, Washington, Office of the Secretary of Defense, November 2014, pp. 1-2, http://archive.defense.gov/pubs/OSD013411-14.pdf; Franz-Stefan Gady, “New US Defense Budget: $18 Billion for Third Offset Strategy,” thediplomat.com, February 10, 2016, https://thediplomat.com/2016/02/new-us-defense-budget-18-billion-for-thi…
• 10. Jonathan Ray et. al., China’s Industrial and Military Robotics Development, Vienna, Centre for Intelligence Research and Analysis, October 2016, pp. 21-22, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/DGI_China%27s%20Indust…

The Earl of Wessex, Prince Edward and Countess Sophie Rhys-Jones arrived in Sri Lanka to participate in the 70th Independence Day celebrations to be held on Sunday. Prince Edward will be the chief guest. They were welcomed at the Airport by State Foreign Affairs Minister Wasantha Senanayake and Mrs. Senanayake.

Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex, and the Countess of Wessex arrived in Sri Lanka to represent her Majesty the Queen at the 70th anniversary celebration of Sri Lanka’s independence.

“The Earl and Countess will travel to Colombo and other parts of Sri Lanka, celebrating the long-standing friendship between the two countries and shared interest in the Commonwealth, youth development and education,” the British High Commission in Colombo said.

Their Royal Highnesses will meet participants in The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award and young Sri Lankans selected as Queen’s Young Leaders, an initiative to recognize and celebrate exceptional young people across the Commonwealth.

The Earl and Countess will also meet representatives of a number of projects advancing causes they support through their work, including MENCAFEP, whose work to help differently-abled children and their families in the Nuwara Eliya, Trincomalee and Batticaloa Districts illustrates the close links between the people of Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom.

The Prince Edward is the youngest child of Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh.

The Earl and Countess support Her Majesty in her official duties and undertake many public engagements each year in support of a wide range of charities and non-governmental organizations.

A Turkish prosecutor issued detention warrants for 120 suspects from the military, the state-run Anadolu agency said on Thursday, the latest in a long-running government crackdown launched after a failed coup attempt in 2016.

Police began simultaneous raids in 43 provinces to capture the suspects, 58 of whom were believed to be users of the outlawed ByLock messaging app, Anadolu said, according to Reuters.

Turkey banned ByLock following the attempted putsch, saying followers of the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen used it to communicate on the night of the coup, when rogue soldiers commandeered tanks and warplanes to attack parliament, killing more than 240 people.

Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, has denied involvement and condemned the coup.

More than 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial over alleged links to Gulen, while 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from jobs in the military, public and private sectors.

The government dismisses rights groups’ concerns about the crackdown, saying only such a purge could neutralize the threat represented by Gulen’s network, which it says infiltrated institutions such as the judiciary, army and schools.

A new study finds polar bears in the wild have higher metabolic rates than previously thought, and as climate change alters their environment a growing number of bears are unable to catch enough prey to meet their energy needs.

The study, published February 2 in Science, reveals the physiological mechanisms behind observed declines in polar bear populations, said first author Anthony Pagano, a Ph.D. candidate at UC Santa Cruz.

“We’ve been documenting declines in polar bear survival rates, body condition, and population numbers over the past decade,” he said. “This study identifies the mechanisms that are driving those declines by looking at the actual energy needs of polar bears and how often they’re able to catch seals.”

Pagano, who is also a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), conducted the study as part of his Ph.D. thesis research at UC Santa Cruz, where he has been working with coauthors Terrie Williams and Daniel Costa, both professors of ecology and evolutionary biology.

The researchers monitored the behavior, hunting success, and metabolic rates of adult female polar bears without cubs as they hunted for prey on the sea ice of the Beaufort Sea in the spring. High-tech collars on the bears recorded video, locations, and activity levels over a period of eight to 11 days, while metabolic tracers enabled the team to determine how much energy the bears expended.

The field metabolic rates they measured averaged more than 50 percent higher than previous studies had predicted. Five of the nine bears in the study lost body mass, meaning they weren’t catching enough fat-rich marine mammal prey to meet their energy demands.

“This was at the start of the period from April through July when polar bears catch most of their prey and put on most of the body fat they need to sustain them throughout the year,” Pagano said.

Climate change is having dramatic effects on the Arctic sea ice, forcing polar bears to move greater distances and making it harder for them to catch prey. In the Beaufort Sea, sea ice starts to retreat away from the continental shelf in July, and most of the bears move north on the ice as it retreats. As the Arctic warms and more sea ice melts, the bears are having to move much greater distances than previously. This causes them to expend more energy during the summer, when they are fasting until the ice returns to the continental shelf in the fall.

In other areas, such as Hudson Bay, most bears move onto land when the sea ice retreats. There, Arctic warming means the sea ice is breaking up earlier in the summer and returning later in the fall, forcing bears to spend more time on land.

“Either way, it’s an issue of how much fat they can put on before the ice starts to break up, and then how much energy are they having to expend,” Pagano said.

Previous studies had tried to estimate polar bear metabolic rates and energy expenditures based on some assumptions about their behavior and physiology. For example, since polar bears are primarily “sit and wait” hunters, it was thought this would minimize their energy expenditure during hunting. Researchers also speculated that polar bears could lower their metabolic rate to save energy if they were not successful catching seals, Pagano said.

“We found that polar bears actually have much higher energy demands than predicted. They need to be catching a lot of seals,” he said.

In the spring, polar bears are mostly preying on recently weaned ringed seals, which are more susceptible to being caught than adult seals. By the fall, the young seals are older and wiser, and polar bears are not able to catch as many. “It’s thought that bears might catch a couple per month in the fall, compared to five to 10 per month in the spring and early summer,” Pagano said.

USGS researchers have been studying polar bears in the Beaufort Sea area since the 1980s. Their most recent population estimate indicates the polar bear population has declined by about 40 percent over the past decade. It has been difficult, however, for researchers to study the fundamental biology and behavior of polar bears in this very remote and harsh environment, Pagano said.

“We now have the technology to learn how they are moving on the ice, their activity patterns, and their energy needs, so we can better understand the implications of these changes we are seeing in the sea ice,” he said.

It has been more that a decade since Jim Caviezel played Jesus in the “Passion of the Christ.” This spring, he’ll play St. Luke in another major religious film, “Paul, the Apostle of Christ,” opening in theaters on March 28.

Unlike the “Passion,” Caviezel will not be the main actor in the film: James Faulkner, star of HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” will portray Paul.

“James Faulkner is to Paul as Christopher Reeve is to Superman. … This guy was born to play Paul. When he was walking around, it was in his behavior. You couldn’t find someone else who organically nails it like this,” Caviezel recently told USA Today.

The movie follows St. Paul in the last days of his life, facing Roman imprisonment for preaching Christianity while waiting execution under Emperor Nero. Luke, a physician, is able to visit his fellow Christian in jail.

Caviezel said the movie’s theme centers on forgiveness and merciful love, a message relevant today, and he recalled a powerful scene in which Paul restrains Luke from calling for justice on the Roman oppressors.

“Forgiveness starts with not just love, but ardent love,” Caviezel told USA Today. “It’s really easy to love people who think like you think; it’s very hard to treat someone with a polar opposite view with the same dignity and respect you would treat a friend. That’s this movie’s core message.”

Since Caviezel played the role of Christ, he has received offers for parts in other religious movies, but is picky about the movies that change scriptural stories.

“It’s like, ‘We want to change this, pull that out,’” said Caviezel. “I’m like, ‘This book has been around a lot longer than any of us in Hollywood.’”

“‘I have the faith to believe it’s still good for us now.’ That’s one of the greatest things about [“Paul.”] You don’t realize it, but it’s actually scriptural.”

While the release of “Paul” is still a month away, Caviezel is also excited about another movie, the sequel to “The Passion,” again directed by Mel Gibson.

Caviezel has not disclosed the sequel’s tentative schedule for the filming date, but has hinted at some surprises in the retelling of Christ’s resurrection.

“There are things that I cannot say that will shock the audience,” he said. “But I’ll tell you this much: The film [Mel Gibson’s] going to do is going to be the biggest film in history. It’s that good.”

Mel Gibson has talked about the movie in the past. He has said it has taken time to develop a script that sheds a new light on Christ’s resurrection without making it “weird.”

“The resurrection. Big subject. Oh, my God,” Gibson told USA Today. “We’re trying to craft this in a way that’s cinematically compelling and enlightening so that it shines new light, if possible, without creating some weird thing.”

Astronomers have examined the distribution and movement of dwarf galaxies in the constellation Centaurus, but their observations do not fit with the standard model of cosmology that assumes the existence of dark matter. The international team of researchers led by the University of Basel reported their findings in the journal Science.

Like other large galaxies, our Milky Way is surrounded by smaller galaxies that orbit it as satellites. According to the standard model of cosmology that describes the formation of galaxies, these satellite galaxies should be distributed randomly and should orbit the host galaxy in an unordered way. The standard model assumes that all galaxies consist mainly of invisible dark matter, which has not yet been directly detected.

Observations of the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, however, challenge this model: a few years ago, astronomers discovered that satellite galaxies are arranged in disc-shaped planes around the host galaxy and co-rotate within such planes.

Advocates of the standard model interpreted these structures as isolated cases. However, new findings by researchers led by Oliver Müller from the University of Basel’s Department of Physics now suggest that these are not statistical outliers, but are part of a widespread phenomenon.

Orderly movement within a plane

The researchers analyzed the movement of satellite galaxies around Centaurus A, a galaxy around 13 million light years away. The satellites are arranged on a plane that is perpendicular to the parent galaxy. This plane is oriented at a favorable angle to Earth, so the Doppler effect of the starlight can be used to determine the movement of the objects.

The researchers were thus able to show that 14 of the 16 satellite galaxies follow the same pattern of movement and are likely rotating within the plane around the main galaxy. According to model simulations with dark matter, however, only half a percent of satellite systems in the local universe at most should behave this way.

Challenge to the standard model

“Coherent movement seems to be a universal phenomenon that demands new explanations,” said Oliver Müller. The astronomical observations challenge the simulations. The possibility of coincidence can be ruled out, as this result – already seen in the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy – has now been detected a third time, in Centaurus A.

The standard cosmological model cannot explain the development of such structures; on the contrary, the results strengthen the supposition that satellite galaxies form during the collision of two larger galaxies, out of small debris ejected by tidal forces, as the astronomers write in the journal Science.

By Karl Romano and Froilan Gallardo

Authorities captured the leader of Philippine communist guerrillas in a Manila suburb, officials said Thursday, a signal that President Rodrigo Duterte is determined to crush them instead of resuming peace negotiations aimed at ending Asia’s longest insurgency.

Rafael Baylosis, 69, was arrested with his aide, Guillermo Roque, in Quezon City on Wednesday, police said. A joint team from the police and the military’s intelligence branch captured the two after a brief chase, officials said. Officers seized two handguns, ammunition and cellphones from the suspects, police said.

Baylosis is believed to be the head of the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), which has been waging a Maoist-inspired rebellion since 1969.

Both are considered “high-value” prisoners and have been taken to police headquarters in Manila, where a small group of left-leaning activists held a protest rally Thursday demanding their release.

Crackdown on rebel consultants

The pair was captured two weeks after a Philippine court issued arrest warrants for three other senior rebel consultants involved in peace talks with the government.

But so far, Benito Tiamzon and his wife, Wilma, as well as Adelberto Silva have eluded capture.

The Tiamzon couple, who face multiple murder charges, as well as Baylosis, were consultants for the National Democratic Front, the rebels’ political wing, in the peace negotiations, which Duterte cancelled late last year.

The Tiamzon couple were arrested four years ago, but were among dozens of jailed rebels freed by Duterte as part of confidence-building measures when he took office as president in 2016.

Human rights group Karapatan denounced the arrests and called for their release, arguing that Baylosis was sickly and posed no threat.

Karapatan said relatives of Baylosis had sought its help Wednesday night, and the group was able to verify that the two were being kept inside the police headquarters.

‘Flagrant violation’ of agreement

Luis Jalandoni, chief peace negotiator for the communist rebels, said in a statement that the arrest of Baylosis and his aide was a “flagrant violation” of an earlier agreement giving rebel negotiators immunity from arrest.

“President Duterte must be held accountable for this trampling upon a valid peace agreement that assures all consultants and those participating in peace negotiations immunity from surveillance, harassment, search, arrest, detention, prosecution and interrogations or any other similar punitive action,” Jalandoni said.

He said the two men also had the right to medical and legal visits. He called on the public to join them in mounting a “strong campaign” for their freedom.

“President Duterte must not be allowed to kill and destroy the peace negotiations,” Jalandoni said.

But presidential spokesman Harry Roque, who is not related to Guillermo Roque, said immunity guarantees covering both men were no longer valid because the talks had been suspended.

“That no longer applies,” Roque said. “What I am saying is, the president has a right to enforce the law. And, because there are no more peace talks, they are not exempt from the full compliance with our penal laws.”

Duterte ended the peace talks in November, dashing hopes that a political settlement would be reached with the communists, which the military estimates to have an armed strength of about 5,000.

Tens of thousands have been killed in the rebellion that has mired many parts of the countryside in dire poverty. Duterte had accused the rebels of using the peace talks as a cover to stage attacks, including one last year that left a young girl dead.

Saudi-led coalition warplanes on Thursday struck a military airbase held by Yemen’s Shia Houthi militia outside capital Sanaa, witnesses said.

“Coalition warplanes targeted the Al-Dailami Airbase near Sanaa International Airport just north of the capital,” one eyewitness said.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing columns of smoke rising from the targeted site, but were unable to ascertain the extent of the damage.

The Houthi-run Al-Masirah satellite channel, for its part, reported that “Saudi aggressor aircraft” had hit the airbase with at least five separate airstrikes.

The broadcaster did not provide any additional details.

The Saudi-led coalition, meanwhile, has yet to issue an official statement on the reported air raids.

Yemen has been dogged by conflict since 2014, when the Houthis overran much of the country, including capital Sanaa, forcing Yemen’s Saudi-backed government to set up an interim capital in the coastal city of Aden.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia and its Sunni-Arab allies — who accuse the Houthis of serving as an Iranian proxy — launched a massive military campaign aimed at rolling back Houthi gains.

Original article

Two viruses closely related to Zika – West Nile and Powassan – can spread from an infected pregnant mouse to her fetuses, causing brain damage and fetal death, according to a new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The findings suggest that Zika may not be unique in its ability to cause miscarriages and birth defects.

“We only studied mice and human tissues, so we can’t say for sure what happens when pregnant women are infected with these viruses,” said Jonathan Miner, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine and the study’s senior author. “But our findings suggest that it is possible that viruses related to Zika, such as West Nile, pose the same risk to developing fetuses that Zika does.”

The study is published Jan. 31 in Science Translational Medicine.

Zika virus garnered worldwide attention beginning in 2015, when reports of an outbreak surfaced in Brazil. Alarm heightened when researchers linked Zika infection in pregnant women with the risk of bearing babies born with microcephaly, or abnormally small heads.

Miner, who helped develop mouse models of Zika virus infection during pregnancy while working in the laboratory of Michael Diamond, MD, PhD, stumbled across a few scattered reports in medical literature suggesting that West Nile virus also could be spread from mother to child before birth, causing birth defects. But nobody had rigorously tested the possibility by comparing multiple viruses in parallel.

Miner and graduate student Derek Platt, the study’s first author, decided to find out whether West Nile and a related virus known as Powassan could cause similar brain damage and fetal death. Like Zika, both belong to the flavivirus family and target neural tissues.

West Nile infects thousands of people every year in the United States. Most never know they have it, but about 1,000 people a year develop life-threatening brain infections that can cause persistent neurological problems.

Powassan is a rare virus spread by ticks. There are only a few dozen documented cases of disease caused by the virus in the U.S. over the past decade, mostly in the Great Lakes region.

As part of the study and for comparison, Platt and Miner also wanted to study the effects of two mosquito-borne viruses only distantly related to Zika: chikungunya and Mayaro. Both are found in Brazil and can cause arthritis.

They injected female mice at day six of their pregnancies with one of the four viruses, then examined the placentas and fetuses a week later.

All four viruses infected the placentas and fetuses, but levels of West Nile virus were 23- to 1,500-fold higher than those of the other three viruses in the placentas, and 3,000- to 16,000-fold higher in the heads of the fetal mice.

In addition, brain tissue from West Nile-infected fetuses showed severe damage under the microscope, while brain tissue from chikungunya-infected fetuses appeared healthy.

Miner and Platt also found that about half of the fetuses whose mothers were infected with West Nile or Powassan virus died within 12 days of infection, whereas no fetuses from mothers infected with chikungunya or Mayaro died.

With the help of Diamond and Carolyn Coyne, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh, the researchers then infected human placentas with one of the four viruses or Zika virus. They found that the three flaviviruses – Zika, West Nile and Powassan – multiplied in human placentas while chikungunya and Mayaro did not.

“Millions of people were infected with Zika in a short time, and I think that made it easier to see, in people, that Zika virus could infect and cross the placenta and cause fetal damage,” said Miner, who is also an assistant professor of molecular microbiology and of pathology and immunology. “But our data show that other flaviviruses have the same capacity, at least in mice. It may be that it’s just more difficult to prove a link between West Nile and birth defects because the number of cases is smaller and infections are more sporadic.”

Additional epidemiologic studies to determine whether West Nile infection can cause miscarriage and brain damage in people may be prompted by this discovery, Miner said.

“I don’t want people to think that we’re saying West Nile is definitely a threat to pregnant women and their babies,” Miner said. “We’re saying it’s possible. But until we know for sure, it’s always a good idea to wear bug repellant.”

By Federico Steinberg*

Donald Trump is a mercantilist. He has protectionist urges and instincts, he sees international trade as a zero-sum game and considers trade deficits enemies to be defeated. He seems allergic to multilateral cooperation and feels comfortable in bilateral interactions in which he can flex his muscles and behave like a schoolyard bully among leaders he considers to be weaker than himself. In short, he is the antithesis of what for decades have been more amiable US leaders (much more to the liking of Europeans): that is, defenders of a rules-based global economic order and inclined to cooperate with other governments to promote long-term mutual interests –even if they would also look at the same time for advantages for US companies–.

As the most nationalist President that the US has had in a long time, Trump arrived at the White House with promises to withdraw the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (the TPP, which had only recently been approved) and from NAFTA (the regional trade agreement with Canada and Mexico), to unilaterally impose higher tariffs on Chinese products and to increasingly ignore the rules of the globalisation game as established by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This was certainly surprising given that, according to a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the US economy had generated economic gains of more than US$2 trillion (in 2016 dollars) thanks to international trade between 1950 and 2016 (some 11% of the country’s GDP), a period during which the system of multilateral rules, promoted by the US itself, was in place. A different issue altogether is the distribution of this large sum of new wealth among the population; but this is a question better addressed by US fiscal policy through redistribution, should the voters ever consider it opportune.

Ignoring the actual fact that international trade is, and will continue to be, a clear generator of wealth, Trump began in January 2017 to deliver on his promises, surprising those who had argued that Trump would drop his incendiary campaign rhetoric to become a ‘normal’ President. And, indeed, during Trump’s first year, his ambitions have run up against reality. He quickly realised that the power of the US President –for decades considered to be the most powerful man in the world– is more limited than he had believed. The country’s system of checks and balances, along with more exposure to different (and more sophisticated) viewpoints on the realities of trade –which he has listened to while still not sharing their outlook– has led Trump to hold a more cautious stance. Of everything he had promised, so far he has only withdrawn the US from the TPP. NAFTA is now being renegotiated, and his relationship with China and the WTO, at least for the moment, is turning out to be more strategic than expected. In particular, although his Administration maintains a discourse of confrontation with nearly all the great economic powers (and especially which those with which the US maintains a bilateral trade deficit, excepting Japan), for the moment he has been careful to restrain from initiating actions which would be flagrant violations of current rules and norms. He has not yet approved any unilateral tariffs against China, nor has he moved forward with his proposal for a border-adjustment tax. Therefore, he has managed to avoid the opening of procedures against the US for infringement of WTO rules.

This new strategy –to play tough but within the rules, as opposed to abandoning the system to attempt to destroy it– seems to be linked to the rise in influence of Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s US Trade Representative (or USTR, a kind of trade minister) and the marginalisation of his more combative (and less experienced) advisors, Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, both of whom were very close to Trump during the election campaign. Lighthizer, an experienced lawyer and trade policy specialist who worked in the Reagan Administration during the 1980s, is a critic of the WTO; but he also knows well how it functions, particularly in legal terms. It therefore appears that, during its first year, the Trump Administration has been attempting to use the WTO for its own benefit while, at the same time, attempting to undermine its functioning. Instead of imposing higher tariffs unilaterally on China (which would be discriminatory and, therefore, inconsistent with WTO regulations), the Administration has initiated various actions against the Asian giant within the WTO in relation to steel and aluminium imports, as well as against Chinese solar panels. China has also been denied ‘market economy’ status within the WTO, something which should have been automatic 15 years after China’s accession to the organisation and which would have limited the instruments of trade defence that the US and the EU, among others, could legally use to reduce the importation of Chinese goods (above all it would have limited recourse to ‘anti-dumping’ proceedings). Facing such a situation, China has also presented a complaint to the WTO; but it is still too difficult to foresee how such a complaint might be resolved.

But the US is also undermining the functioning of the ‘crown jewel’ of the WTO: its dispute resolution mechanism. By refusing to allow the naturally occurring vacancies on the WTO appeals board to be filled by new replacements, US obstructionism is slowly making the system unworkable. If the US is successful in this effort, the WTO will not be able to issue decisions regarding the violation of its rules, allowing the US to infringe them, and returning us to the dark times during which trade relations were managed according to the law of the strongest. Finally, as seen at the WTO Summit in December in Buenos Aires, the US has no intention of allowing any initiative to advance within the WTO –not those related to the Doha Round, nor those related to new forms of trade which require new forms of regulation, like electronic commerce or environmentally-related trade–. With all this, the US has initiated a strategy that could mortally wound the WTO by making it irrelevant and inoperative, but without explicitly destroying it, and while still using it as a mediator in trade conflicts with China, which are bound to increase from now on.

In the renegotiation of NAFTA, the Trump Administration seems to be following a similar strategy. Instead of abandoning the negotiating table, Trump’s people are making proposals that will not be acceptable to Mexico or Canada, particularly the proposal to have automatic revisions of the agreement every five years (but which would allow for US withdrawal just as easily), or the plan to eliminate the dispute resolution mechanism which acts as an independent tribunal and assures compliance with the agreement. Because Mexico holds elections in July, it is likely that these negotiations will continue until 2019. Meanwhile, Canada has already initiated actions against the US within the WTO for what it considers illegal subsidies, complicating the NAFTA negotiations even more.

In conclusion, the first year of Trump with respect to international trade has been less damaging to the multilateral trade system than was originally feared. This first year has also allowed us to see that the US Administration maintains a clear interest in isolating itself increasingly from the rest of the world, and that it will employ a strategy that is increasingly more aggressive and confrontational in order to obtain commercial advantages without explicitly violating the rules of the WTO –but all the while undermining the rules-based system of globalisation governance–. From 2018 into the future it is very possible that we will witness an increase in the level of tension and conflict surrounding international trade.

About the author:
*Federico Steinberg, Senior analyst, Elcano Royal Institute | @Steinbergf

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute. Original version in Spanish: Un año de Trump en política comercial

Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, the son of Cuba’s revolutionary icon Fidel Castro has committed suicide after a battle with depression, Cuban state-run media has reported.

Diaz-Balart, 68, the oldest son among Fidel’s many children, was being treated by a group of doctors for the depression he suffered in the final months of his life. Diaz-Balart was a doctor of sciences, the Vice President of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba, and served as scientific advisor to the Council of State.

Diaz-Balart was the only son of Fidel and his wife of seven years Mirta Diaz-Balart, who has survived both her late husband and son at 89.

“Fidelito,” as he was popularly known in Cuba, was the author of 11 books and over 150 scientific articles on nuclear physics, energy and its relation to environmental studies. In a 2013 interview with RT, he said his interest in the sciences was boosted by the revolution, and that he had studied nuclear physics in the former Soviet Union.

Diaz-Balart appeared on several of RT’s programs. The son of the world’s most famous revolutionary spoke out against the so-called color revolutions and military interventions masked as promoting democracy to people being “oppressed” by “regimes.”

“Nowadays, you can name whatever you want in a way convenient for your political strategy,” he told ‘Worlds Apart’ host Oksana Boyko.

Diaz-Balart believed in letting Cuba choose its own path, and rebuffed external criticism about the “slow pace” of Cuban reforms.

“We are used to receiving a receipt from outside. When something is not in place, it should be in place, when something is in place, it’s not enough, if it’s enough, it’s not so fast… The right way of changing things is the way the Cuban people are going to decide to do it.”

From 1980 to 1992, “Fidelito” was the head of Cuba’s nuclear program and lead the efforts to construct a nuclear power plant. Construction froze in 1992, however, when funds ran out after financial arrangements with the now-collapsed Soviet Union were disrupted. Diaz-Balart made few public appearances after that.

His father Fidel, the icon of the Cuban Revolution that shaped the modern communist island state, died aged 90 just over a year ago in November 2016. Fidel served as Cuba’s president for 32 years,

By Lisa Ferdinando

The Nuclear Posture Review being rolled out at the Pentagon requires an “investment in a credible nuclear deterrent with diverse capabilities,” chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. White said Thursday.

President Donald J. Trump directed the review to ensure a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent, White said during a Pentagon news conference.

The review is aligned with the National Defense Strategy, which is nested in the National Security Strategy, she said.

Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan, Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas A. Shannon Jr. will brief reporters on the strategy tomorrow at the Pentagon, she said.

The Nuclear Posture Review will confirm the importance of the nuclear triad, she said, adding that the strategy relies on stable, predicable budgets.

White further noted that in one week, the short-term continuing resolution that is funding the government will expire. She called on Congress to “pass a budget and write the check.”

University of Wyoming researchers led a climate study that determined recent temperatures across Europe and North America appear to have few, if any, precedent in the past 11,000 years.

The study revealed important natural fluctuations in climate have occurred over past millennia, which would have naturally led to climatic cooling today in the absence of human activity.

Bryan Shuman, a UW professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, and Jeremiah Marsicek, a recent UW Ph.D. graduate in geology and geophysics, led the new study that is highlighted in a paper, titled “Reconciling Divergent Trends and Millennial Variations in Holocene Temperatures,” published in Nature, an international weekly journal of science.

Marsicek, a current postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was lead author of the paper. He worked on the study from 2011-16. Other contributors to the paper were from the University of Oregon, University of Utah and the U.S. Geological Survey in Corvallis, Ore. The study was largely funded by a combination of fellowships from the Environmental Protection Agency and the UW NASA Space Grant Consortium, and grant support from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

“The major significance here is temperature across two continents over the last 11,000 years. The paper provides a geologically long-term perspective on recent temperature changes in the Northern Hemisphere and the ability of climate models, such as the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) models used in the study, to predict the changes,” said Shuman, senior author on the paper and Marsicek’s supervisor. “Climate simulations do a strikingly good job of forecasting the changes.”

“I would say it is significant that temperatures of the most recent decade exceed the warmest temperatures of our reconstruction by 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit, having few — if any — precedents over the last 11,000 years,” Marsicek said. “Additionally, we learned that the climate fluctuates naturally over the last 11,000 years and would have led to cooling today in the absence of human activity.”

The study covers a period that begins at the end of the Ice Age and when there still was an ice sheet covering Canada, Shuman said.

Researchers reconstructed temperatures from fossil pollen collected from 642 lake or pond sites across North America — including water bodies in Wyoming — and Europe. The Wyoming locations included Slough Creek Pond and Cub Creek Pond in Yellowstone National Park, Divide Lake in Bridger-Teton National Forest, Sherd Lake in the Bighorn Mountains and Fish Creek Park near Dubois.

“When we collect sediment from the bottom of the lake, we can recognize sequences of plants that grew in a given area based on the shape of the fossil pollen left behind,” Shuman explained. “Because different plants grow at different temperatures, we can constrain what the temperatures were in a given place at a certain time.”

The reconstructions closely matched the climate simulations run by NCAR, which were conducted independently as part of separate projects. The computer simulations later became part of the study.

“Our temperature estimates and the NCAR simulations were within one-quarter of one degree Fahrenheit, on average, for the last 11,000 years,” said Shuman, as he pointed to a graph that included a black line for his group’s climate research temperature and a gray line that represents the computer simulations. “I was surprised the computer models did as good of a job as they did as predicting the changes that we estimated.”

Long-term warming, not cooling, defined the Holocene Epoch, which began 12,000 to 11,500 years ago at the close of the Pleistocene Ice Age. The reconstructions indicate that evidence of periods that were significantly warmer than the last decade were limited to a few areas of the North Atlantic that were probably unusual globally. Shuman says results determined that the last decade was roughly 6.5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer today than it was 11,000 years ago. Additionally, the decade was at least one-half degree Fahrenheit warmer today than the warmest periods of that 11,000-year time frame, even counting for uncertainties, Shuman said.

“In the absence of people, the trend would have been cooling,” Shuman said. “It does show that what has happened in the last 30 years — a warming trend — puts us outside of all but the most extreme single years every 500 years since the Ice Age. The last 10 years have, on average, been as warm as a normal one year in 500 warm spell.”

In prior climate change studies, long-term cooling has been difficult to reconcile with known global controls that would have forced warming and climate models that consistently simulate long-term warming. In those studies, marine and coastal temperature records were used. However, certain areas in the oceans could be unusually warm and skew the overall long-term average temperature results of some of those prior studies, Shuman said.

“These results help resolve a divergence in climate trends of the past 2,000 years recorded in marine sediments of the North Atlantic Ocean, compared with those recorded in fossil pollen from the continents of North America and Europe,” said Jonathan Wynn, program director in NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences, which co-funded a portion of the research with NSF’s Division of Environmental Biology. “These new findings help us understand how the global climate system works over scales of decades to millennia and give us a new perspective from the distant past on recent and future climate changes.”

By Mike Eckel

(RFE/RL) — The director of the CIA has defended his decision to meet in Washington with the chiefs of Russian intelligence agencies, saying there was nothing untoward about it and that it was a routine practice.

The comments from Mike Pompeo came in a letter February 1 to the U.S. Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, in response to criticism about his meeting last week with the heads of the Federal Security Service and the Foreign Intelligence Service, known respectively as the FSB and the SVR.

The FSB and SVR directors, Alekasandr Bortnikov and Sergei Naryshkin, were both hit with economic sanctions and travel bans by the United States following the 2014 Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula and the outbreak of war in eastern Ukraine.

The head of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the GRU, also reportedly traveled to Washington, D.C., in recent days, though it was unclear whom he had met with.

Former U.S. intelligence officials and other experts noted CIA directors routinely communicate with their Russian counterparts. But they also called the presence of the Russian spy chiefs in the United States at the same time an unusual occurrence.

The CIA meeting also took place just days before President Donald Trump’s administration announced that it would not issue new sanctions against Russian politicians and wealthy, politically connected businessmen over Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Many observers were surprised by the decision, which was announced on a deadline set by a law passed overwhelmingly in 2017 by Congress. At least one former State Department official called the decision “perplexing” and suggested possible political interference from senior administration officials.

Schumer had demanded to know why the officials were allowed into the country, despite existing sanctions.

In his response to Schumer, Pompeo wrote that U.S. intelligence officials routinely meet with Russian officials to discuss topics, such as aviation security and preventing foreign fighters from returning to both nations.

Pompeo said the meetings with the Russians — whom he did not identify — were also not easy.

“When those meetings take place, you and the American people should rest assured that we cover very difficult subjects in which American and Russian interests do not align,” Pompeo wrote.

“Neither side is bashful about raising concerns relating to our intelligence relationships and the interests of our respective nations. We vigorously defend America in these encounters and pull no punches — we never will,” he wrote.

U.S. intelligence agencies have accused the FSB — considered Russia’s main domestic intelligence agency — and the GRU of being behind the cyberhacks of U.S. political parties and activists. A U.S. intelligence assessment released in January 2017 said the two organizations were involved in a hacking-and-propaganda campaign to sway the 2016 election campaign.

The SVR, meanwhile, was linked by U.S. law enforcement to a ring of “deep cover” agents who were living in the United States and arrested and deported in 2010. An SVR officer posing as an attaché at the Russian mission to the United Nations was linked to an effort in 2013 to recruit Carter Page, a former Moscow-based investment banker who was later an official in Donald Trump’s election campaign.

A recent poll places Dennis Kucinich, who announced his run for Ohio governor on January 17, in second place among five Democratic primary contenders. When you are doing well in an election, like appears to be the case with Kucinich, you can expect attacks, including attacks based on deception, to start coming at you.

Ed Kilgore, in a Monday New York Magazine article, criticized Kucinich’s work as a Fox News contributor between Kucinich leaving the United States House of Representatives in 2013 and announcing his governor candidacy this month. Kilgore asserts Kucinich’s work with Fox News involved “steady criticism of the Obama administration’s hostility to Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime” and “turned more sinister as Donald Trump began his climb toward the presidency, with the former lefty gadfly often expressing agreement with the mogul’s anti-globalist rhetoric.” Further, Kilgore writes, Kucinich agreed in a Fox News interview in May that President Trump was then under attack from the deep state in the intelligence community.

Here are the facts. Kucinich has long been a supporter of nonintervention overseas. That includes in Syria. Over his 16 years in the House as a Democratic representative from Ohio, Kucinich opposed US “regime change” efforts and wars no matter the political party affiliations of the president and congressional leadership pushing such. Kucinich has also long been an opponent of so-called globalist policies in the form of huge international trade deals.

Kucinich, who served in Congress as a Democrat and is now running for Ohio governor in that party’s primary, has not been a party-line guy who follows leadership orders and blindly joins in whatever attacks are being hurled at people in the opposing political party. If, in his judgement, he sees a Republican is being unfairly attacked, do not be surprised to see Kucinich defend the Republican or at least refrain from joining in the attack.

Indeed, Kucinich’s independence has enabled him to consistently take his stands against foreign intervention and huge trade deals even when his party leadership supported the opposite.

On these issues, as well as others including opposing the USA PATRIOT Act, Kucinich would work with like-minded Republicans in the House. Among them was then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). In fact, Paul was so impressed by his interactions with Kucinich that, when Paul decided to found the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity (RPI) after leaving the House, Paul invited Kucinich to join the institute’s Advisory Board. Kucinich accepted the invitation and spoke at the 2013 event announcing the institute’s formation as well as at RPI’s 2017 annual conference.

In his speech at the 2013 RPI inaugural event, Kucinich said, “I’m shoulder to shoulder with Ron Paul in being concerned about how war enables the state to become more powerful; and, as a result, it deprives our citizens not only of economic vitality, but also of civil liberties.” Continuing, Kucinich expressed that RPI “has so much importance because it will provide a place for people to gather from across the political spectrum so that we can as Americans address our common concerns about freedom, about peace, about prosperity, and, in doing so, help to rescue our country from a trajectory that it’s on right now that can only lead to our destruction.”

Kucinich, in making these comments at the event, is not saying that he has become a libertarian like Paul or that he agrees with Paul on every issue. Instead, Kucinich is saying that he desires to work on a group of important matters with people who agree with him on those matters even if those individuals’ views on other matters differ very much from his. In this case, the common ground is expressed at the RPI website as “advocacy for a peaceful foreign policy and the protection of civil liberties at home.”

Similarly, Kucinich having worked as a contributor at Fox News does not mean he is or ever was in lockstep agreement with, say, Fox News host Sean Hannity. Instead, Kucinich at Fox expressed his own views on matters, just as an opinion columnist with a “left,” “right,” or whatever political orientation does so at a newspaper that generally has a different editorial viewpoint.

In fact, appearing on Fox News or Fox Business, Kucinich could potentially make a bigger impact than he would if he had chosen to work with a media company that is more closely aligned with his political views. At Fox, Kucinich was not preaching to the choir. Instead, he was communicating to an audience a large percentage of whose members were unfamiliar with or antagonistic to his thoughts on many issues.

Indeed, Kucinich alludes to his work with Fox News in a new interview at WOSU radio of Columbus, Ohio as helping contribute to his ability to win the Ohio governor general election for just this reason. “How do you court Republicans? How do you court the small government voters who propelled Trump to victory?” Steve Brown asks Kucinich in the interview. Answers Kucinich in part: “Because for the last five years I’ve had the ability to stand in the same position that I’ve always took on the floor of the House and to communicate with a constituency that most Democrats never get a chance to talk to.”

Suppose Kucinich is right. Suppose he can reach across party lines in the general election, leading to his winning the governorship. That prospect, combined with his apparent strength so far in the Democratic primary, is sure to draw out more criticisms of Kucinich. Expect more criticism, including criticism that, like the criticism of Kucinich for having worked with Fox News, may sound incriminating on a first hearing but is based on no more than misleading innuendo and fallacious guilt by association.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

By Katharina R. Lestari

Catholics from an Indonesian parish have been forced to halt social work to help the needy after being accused by Muslims of proselytization.

Parishioners at St. Paul Church in Bantul district in Yogyakarta had been distributing aid packages containing basic necessities and free health care to local people — mostly Muslims — in a local village as part of a series of programs to celebrate the elevation of their church, from a mission station to a parish.

Their plans were thwarted as a result of opposition from local Muslims, a group of whom confronted them on Jan. 28 and accused the Catholics of attempting to convert local people.

The group’s spokesman called Darrohman claimed similar programs in other areas had resulted in a decrease in Muslim numbers due to proselytization.

He said any church social work should be carried out in the compound of the church itself and that Catholics should not go among Muslim communities.

Organizers denied the social work was designed to convert people.

“There was no proselytization. The social work was supposed to purely help local villagers,” Agustinus Edi Nugroho, coordinator of the program, told ucanews.com on Feb. 1.

“We canceled the program as it could create conflict,” he said after police brokered talks to settle the dispute.

Pregnant women who take the pain killer ibuprofen in the first 24 weeks of their pregnancy may be reducing the store of eggs in the ovaries of their daughters.

Researchers have found the first evidence in human ovarian tissue that exposure to ibuprofen during the crucial first three months of foetal development results in a “dramatic loss” of the germ cells that go into making the follicles from which female eggs develop. The germ cells either died or failed to grow and multiply at the usual rate.

The authors of the study, which is published today (Friday) in Human Reproduction¹, one of the world’s leading reproductive medicine journals, say that their findings raise concerns about the long-term effects of ibuprofen on the future fertility of women exposed to the pain killer when in their mothers’ wombs.

“Baby girls are born with a finite number of follicles in their ovaries and this defines their future reproductive capacity as adults,” explained Dr Séverine Mazaud-Guittot, a researcher at INSERM in Rennes, France, who led the study. “A poorly stocked initial reserve will result in a shortened reproductive life span, early menopause or infertility – all events that occur decades later in life.

“The development of the follicles in the foetus has not been completed by the end of the first trimester, so if the ibuprofen treatment is short then we can expect the ovarian reserve to recover to some extent. However, we found that two to seven days of exposure to ibuprofen dramatically reduced the germ cell stockpile in human foetal ovaries during the first trimester of pregnancy and the ovaries did not recover fully from this damage. This suggests that prolonged exposure to ibuprofen during foetal life may lead to long-term effects on women’s fertility and raises concern about ibuprofen consumption by women during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. These findings deserve to be considered in light of the present recommendations about ibuprofen consumption during pregnancy.”

Around 30% of women are estimated to use ibuprofen in the first three months of pregnancy. Current recommendations are that the pain killer should not be taken after that time as it is known to increase the risks of foetal malformations; however, there is no firm guidance on whether or not it is safe to take in the early weeks.

Dr Mazaud-Guittot and her colleagues obtained human foetuses between 7-12 weeks of development from legally induced terminations of pregnancy and with the mothers’ consent. Then they cultured the ovarian tissue in the laboratory; part of the tissue from each foetus was exposed to ibuprofen and a second part (the control) was not. Samples from 185 foetuses were analysed. In addition, the researchers measured the quantity of ibuprofen in the blood in the umbilical cord in order to analyse how much the foetus would have been exposed to.

They found that ibuprofen crosses the placental barrier. “The concentration that we found in the umbilical cords of foetuses from mothers who ingested 800 mg (four pills of 200 mg) two to four hours before surgery is similar to the concentration that can be found in adult’s blood for the same treatment. In simple terms, the foetus is exposed to the same concentration as the mother. Therefore, we tested concentrations that were in the range of those that can be found in adult’s blood in the ovarian samples in the lab,” said Dr Mazaud-Guittot.

In contrast to the foetal tissue that was not exposed to ibuprofen, the tissue that was exposed to concentrations of 10 μM (micromolar) of ibuprofen for a week had approximately half the number of ovarian germ cells².

“We found there were fewer cells growing and dividing, more cells dying and a dramatic loss of germ cell numbers, regardless of the gestational age of the foetus,” she said. “There were significant effects after seven days of exposure to 10 μM of ibuprofen, and we saw cell death as early as after two days of treatment. Five days after withdrawing ibuprofen, these harmful effects of ibuprofen were not fully reversed.

“This is the first study to look at the effects of ibuprofen on the ovarian tissue of baby girls, and the first to show that ibuprofen can cross the placental barrier during the first trimester of pregnancy, exposing the foetus to the drug. The implications of our findings are that, just as with any drug, ibuprofen use should be restricted to the shortest duration and at the lowest dose necessary to achieve pain or fever relief, especially during pregnancy. The wisest advice would be to follow currently accepted recommendations: paracetamol should be preferred to any anti-inflammatory drug up to 24 gestational weeks, and the latter should not be used thereafter. However, practitioners, midwifes and obstetricians are best placed to give expert advice: every mother and every pregnancy is unique.”

The researchers say that further work needs to be carried out into the mechanisms of action of ibuprofen on human ovaries, and on alternative painkillers. In addition, the study does have limitations in that the foetal tissue was studied in the laboratory rather than in a living body. “A further limitation is the duration: in this study we could not address the long-term effect of this drug on the ovary. That’s why further research at the population level is required to determine whether ibuprofen exposure during pregnancy will affect the fertility or the reproductive functioning of the daughters,” concluded Dr Mazaud-Guittot.

Professor Hans Evers, editor-in-chief of Human Reproduction, who was not involved in the research, commented: “The authors are to be commended for investigating the effect of ibuprofen on germ cells and follicles in human ovarian tissue, and these are important findings that require further investigation. However, at this stage it is not possible to say whether the reduced numbers of follicles in tissue samples from baby girls might translate into reduced fertility 30 years later. At present this is speculation and requires long-term follow-up studies of daughters of women who took ibuprofen while in their first three months of pregnancy.”

Notes:

[1] “Ibuprofen is deleterious for the development of first trimester human fetal ovary ex vivo,” by S. Leverrier-Penna et al. Human Reproduction journal. doi:10.1093/humrep/dex383.

[2] Micromolar is a unit of concentration corresponding to one millionth molecular weight per litre.

The US Chamber of Commerce hosted high-ranking Qatari and US officials participating in the strategic dialogue between the two countries, held in Washington DC.

The ceremony was attended by HE Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, HE Minister of Economy and Commerce Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al-Thani, HE Minister of Energy and Industry Dr. Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada. From the US side, the event was attended by HE US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, HE President of the US-Qatar Business Council Ambassador Anne Patterson and President and CEO of the US chamber of Commerce Mr. Tom Donohue.

Addressing the ceremony, the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said that this year marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of the Qatari-US relationship, noting that holding the strategic dialogue between the two countries for the first time indicates the depth of bilateral relations.

The Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister stressed the keenness on developing the Qatari-US partnership in various fields, saying: “We are not only talking about a security and defense partnership, but we believe that the business sector is an important element in this partnership,” he said.

He expressed the hope that in the next round of strategic dialogue, the two countries will celebrate the progress made in the partnership during the current year. He highlighted the mutual trust which the US-Qatari partnership has strengthened over the past years.

For his part, the Minister of Economy and Commerce Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al-Thani underlined the strength of the Qatari economy and the investment opportunities in the country, and the trade relations between the two countries.

The Minister noted that Qatar’s exports rose by 19% to $68 billion in 2017, compared to $57 billion in 2016.

Tthe Minister of Economy and Commerce underlined that numbers and positive indicators prove that the State of Qatar has overcome the siege imposed on it, noting that the Qatari economy was not affected thanks to the wise policies of the State.

He added that the business climate in Qatar encourages foreign investment, especially in light of the low uniform tax.

Regarding Qatar’s investments in the United States, the Minister said that the Qatari investments have helped create jobs in the United States.

For his part, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stressed the importance of the Qatar-US strategic dialogue in consolidating the important security partnership between the two countries.

He underlined that the United States is committed to the sovereignty of the State of Qatar, adding: “Qatar knows that it can rely on the United States to stand with it in terms of compliance with all UN treaties to preserve the sovereignty of the State of Qatar”.

During the strategic dialogue, the two sides will discuss the memorandum of understanding on combating terrorism, signed by the two countries last summer, he said, adding that the two countries will help each other to cut off terrorist financing networks and identify terrorists to be tried, ensuring their support for a stable Middle East.

Regarding the current Gulf crisis, Tillerson affirmed that the US President Donald Trump is committed to doing everything in his power to bring the parties together.

Meanwhile, the US State Secretary urged US businessmen to invest in the State of Qatar, stressing that “Qatar is an ally that has always adhered to its promises”.

For its part, Ambassador Anne Patterson underlined the continuing development in US-Qatari relations.

US Defense Secretary James N. Mattis and British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson discussed the National Defense Strategy, international security topics and priorities for the upcoming NATO defense ministers conference in Brussels during a meeting at the Pentagon on Thursday.

In a statement summarizing the meeting, chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. White said the two leaders discussed the effort to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, as well as other topics such including Afghanistan, North Korea and Iran.

Mattis emphasized the value of the U.S.-United Kingdom relationship and reaffirmed the importance of credible defense capabilities, White said. He also welcomed the release of Britain’s forthcoming report of defense program modernization, she added.

The two leaders pledged to continue their dialogue on shared security interests and the bilateral defense agenda, White said.