Real-time information from environmental monitors and sensors could soon inform rangers of the conditions of footpaths and monitor the effects of climate change. Bins could send alerts when they are full to reduce unnecessary emissions due to bin collections. Your phone could sense when you tire during a walk, notifying you of the nearest pub for a rest stop. It could even send you the menu, or make a reservation on your behalf.

These are all examples of smart technologies in use across the world that are quickly changing the face of cities and open spaces, shaping new types of experiences. Now, experts suggest innovation and the ‘Internet of Things’ could be the key to better protecting the world’s National Park landscape while reducing costs and enhancing visitors’ experience.

Professor Edward Truch, a Director of the Connected Communities Research Lab at Lancaster University Management School, is the lead author of the Smart Parks.

Bringing smart technologies to National Parks report, commissioned by the Lake District National Park Authority. According to Truch, “National Parks are under increasing pressure to deliver more for less and with population booms, visitor numbers are increasing – putting greater strain on the natural environment. This report sets out business models and revenue streams for National Parks right across the world to consider, that can help address the gaps in budgets caused by cuts in public sector spending. The Smart Park model demonstrates how a high degree of connectivity and exchange of information can benefit all – from nature conservationists, tourists, businesses and communities, through to park authorities and emergency services. A Smart Park could open up opportunities for new types of visitor attractions, which protect rather than spoil some of the world’s most treasured landscapes.”

“Visitors are already making use of intelligent connected devices through apps like Google, Ordinance Survey and Booking.com for things like navigation and accommodation bookings. Some areas of the world are already drastically cutting traffic pollution by introducing ‘smart’ car parking systems, for example, directing individual motorists to available car parking spaces.

“Research suggests there will be exponential growth in the number of worldwide devices connected to the internet over coming years, growing from 4.9bn in 2015 to around 25bn in 2025. National Parks need to act now and seriously consider these innovative technologies to better protect the environment and keep pace with future visitor expectations.”

The new vision of a ‘Smart Park’, or a national or urban park enhanced by the effective use of the Internet of Things, identifies potential solutions for the main challenge vast, rural national parks currently face – efficient and reliable internet connectivity. New and emerging networks are offered as solutions to the problem, such as cognitive radio technology which is considered to be the next frontier in wireless communications. The report suggests developing technology with built-in intelligence and agility to adapt to the environment it is operating in, can offer ‘greener’ more sustainable options for natural spaces – optimising transmissions to preserve power.

Lake District National Park’s Head of Strategy and Partnerships, Liam McAleese, said: “This collaboration between the Lake District National Park Partnership and Lancaster University Connected Communities Research Lab creates an opportunity for us to explore innovative technology that may one day benefit our communities and enhance the experience for the millions of visitors who enjoy the Park every year. Smart Parks is a fascinating piece research and it has presented us with a broad range of options to consider for the future of the National Park.”

Chris Mahon, Chief Executive of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Committee UK and Development Director of World Heritage UK said: “The report offers a very new look at how designated natural areas and other green spaces, and the people that visit them, can benefit from the latest innovations in modern technology. It’s about new ways of delivering conservation as well as visitor convenience and experience enhancement. Commissioned by the same organisation responsible for the successful 2017 inscription of the UK’s most recent UNESCO World Heritage Site, the ‘English Lake District’, this study will be of considerable interest to many people, including members of the UNESCO and IUCN networks, involved in land and people management.”

Rights and democracy activists have petitioned top Vietnamese government officials to free all prisoners of conscience jailed for dissident views.

They said more than 170 people are in jail after being convicted of attempting to overthrow the communist government, conducting anti-state campaigns and abusing democratic freedom to infringe the state’s interests.

The prisoners had only expressed their views or criticized policies of the government and the Communist Party, they added.

“Some were arrested and convicted of causing public disorder or tax evasion, even the sex trade, but the actual reason behind those arrests was their political dissent from the ruling party,” they said.

Their petition was sent to President Tran Dai Quang, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, National Assembly chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan and Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong.

The online petition dated Feb. 3 has drawn nearly 500 signatures so far.

Signatories also demanded officials “immediately free two female dissidents, Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh and Tran Thi Nga, because they are innocent and are single mothers who have to take care of their small children.”

Quynh, a Catholic blogger known as Mother Mushroom, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in June 2017 for propaganda against the government.

Her mother, Nguyen Tuyet Lan, said she visited Quynh in prison for 10 minutes on Feb. 5. “Quynh is in poor health and suffers high blood pressure,” she said.

Nga was convicted of propaganda against the government and sentenced to nine years in jail in July 2017.

The petition also asked the government to show that Vietnam respects freedom of speech and democratic values so that it can regain people’s confidence and build a democratic and progressive state.

Now there is hope of a new way to protect extremely premature babies from impaired vision or blindness resulting from the eye disease retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). A study at Sahlgrenska Academy published in JAMA Ophthalmology points to a clear link between ROP and low levels of the fatty acid arachidonic acid, measured in children’s blood.

“Seeing such a strong connection between arachidonic acid levels and ROP is something that is entirely new. However we looked at the data, it’s always low levels of arachidonic acid that is most clearly associated with the disease,” said Chatarina Löfqvist, an associate professor in experimental ophthalmology and the first author of the article.

“What we believe and hope is that providing the children with arachidonic acid will raise the levels and reduce the amount of ROP to minimize the risk of children becoming blind,” she continued.

Every year thousands of children in Sweden are screened for ROP, a disease that afflicts extremely premature babies whose retinal blood vessels have not fully developed. The children can be visually impaired, and in the worst cases become blind, due to retinal detachment.

Consequently, finding biomarkers for the disease has been an important goal. In the current study researchers investigated the levels of about 20 different fatty acids in the blood of 90 children born before 28 weeks of pregnancy at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg.

The fact that arachidonic acid so clearly stood out surprised the research team led by Professor Ann Hellström. The fatty acid belongs to the omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid family, which at high levels is associated with inflammation and heart disease in adults. During the fetal period, however, the situation may be different.

“Arachidonic acid seems to be of special importance during the whole pregnancy as a building block for membranes,” Ann Hellström said. “The mother provides the fetus with arachidonic acid, which is at a much lower level in her own blood compared to the fetal levels. Therefore, we believe that it’s important that the premature babies receive this fatty acid as a supplement.”

The hypothesis will now be tested in a new study involving 210 children at neonatal units in three Swedish cities; Gothenburg, Lund and Stockholm. Children will be given a supplement with a combination of DHA, an omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid, which is also important for the construction of blood vessels and nerve tissue, and arachidonic acid, an omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid. At present the latter is not included in the nutritional supplements that premature babies receive immediately after birth.

“Many times new treatments are introduced on the basis of intuition and opinion, but the evidence is not always there,” Ann Hellström said. “Now we have something entirely new to go on, a fatty acid that we had not at all expected to be important in fetal growth. However we found it by systematically surveying all fatty acids to find evidence of which were involved in development in both healthy and sick infants.”

By Kathrin Ammann

The Swiss-based International Olympic Committee (IOC) says the Korean peninsula has a brighter future due to the North’s participation in the Winter Games. But analysts argue any such rapprochement between the North and South will be short-lived.

“The Olympic Games show us what the world could look like, if we were all guided by the Olympic spirit of respect and understanding,” said IOC President Thomas Bach after a meeting in January with delegates from both Koreas at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne.

At the historic gathering, representatives from the two sides agreed that athletes from the North would not only compete in the Winter Games taking place in PyeongChang in the South, but even march together as one during the opening ceremony and play on the same women’s ice hockey team.

All of that is in line with the Olympic Chart, which states that the Games should bring athletes together from around the globe to “contribute to building a peaceful and better world”.

But this idea is often far removed from political realities.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in experienced this first hand when his popularity declined following the historic announcement of the joint Korean women’s ice hockey team. Even though Moon was partly elected on his promise to improve relations with the North, the prospect that the integration of players from the North would lower the team’s medal chances was met with little enthusiasm from the South Korean public. (This despite the fact that the 2017 Korean women’s team – with only players from the South – was ranked a lowly 22nd in the world)

“Such a move has its limits,” says Korea expert Samuel Guex from the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Geneva. “In our opinion, a mixed team is a nice idea but for many South Koreans, this kind of sporting sacrifice is too great.”

The Olympic ideal will also likely be short-lived, argues Guex, forgotten once representatives from the two sides finally sit down to discuss the North’s nuclear programme and the American military presence in the South. Bach’s hopes that the Winter Olympics “are opening the door to a brighter future on the Korean peninsula ” will ring hollow.

“The Olympic Games and the IOC can’t do much about [this reality],”says Guex. In the best-case scenario, he expects economic and cultural cooperation between the North and South to resume in the medium term.

The IOC has often watched its mediation attempts expire once the Olympic torch is extinguished during the Games’ closing ceremony. “Sport has never solved a political conflict,” adds Grégory Quin, a sports historian who teaches and researches at the University of Lausanne. But he thinks the Olympic Games are at least an opportunity for hostile states to meet quietly on the sidelines.

“From a diplomatic point of view, sport is very flexible, and the IOC wants to take advantage of that,” says Quin. Around the beginning of the 21st century, the IOC and the UN began to intensify their relations. On the one hand, the IOC wanted to position itself as a peacemaker through sport. On the other, it intended to play a larger role at the diplomatic level, he explained.

But this was at odds with the body’s stated position that sport has nothing to do with politics.

Quin says the IOC is an opportunist. In the case of North and South Korea, it’s happy to emphasise its role as a mediator. But if the rapprochement between the two sides doesn’t extend beyond the games, the IOC will remind everyone that politics is not its remit.

The IOC did not reply to questions from swissinfo.ch about its role as mediator in political conflicts.

The IOC and the UN – a growing relationship

Relations between the IOC and the UN have been growing since the early years of this century. In 2001, then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan founded the UN Office on Sport for Development and Peace (UNOSDP) in Geneva. He appointed former Swiss Federal Councillor Adolf Ogi as the first UN Special Envoy for this office.

In 2009, the IOC was granted UN observer status. In the same year, the UN and the IOC jointly organised the first international forum for sport, peace and development in Lausanne.

In 2014, the UN and the IOC reached an agreement on closer cooperation.

In 2017, UN Secretary General António Guterres decided to close the UNOSDP and instead established a “direct partnership” with the IOC.

(Translated from German by Dale Bechtel)

Lay people tend to think that insomnia is usually a symptom of something else, like stress, a bad diet or a sedentary lifestyle, but this may not be true at all. It is possible that insomnia itself causes many of the conditions that it is seen as a symptom of.

Using previous research that shows that insomnia causes a decrease in blood flow in the front dorsal lobe of the brain, and correlates it with depression, the authors of a Japanese study recently published in De Gruyter’s open access journal Open Medicine entitled ‘Insomnia and depression: Japanese hospital workers questionnaire survey’ seeks to establish a link between insomnia and depression.

Depression is a hidden killer. It is a condition that affects people all around the world. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in Japan. The yearly financial cost to the Japanese economy of depression and suicide is estimated by UPI to be USD 4.1 billion. Middle-aged males, one of the groups that was found to suffer the highest rates of insomnia are also the likeliest to commit suicide.

In March of 2011, over 7000 hospital staff in ten hospitals in the district of Rosai were given a self-administered anonymous questionnaire. The questions included information about the respondent’s gender, age, and medical profession, as well as questions about their sleeping history two weeks prior to responding to the survey, as well as detailing their overtime work, and their history of disease and chronic pain. It also asked them to assess their own feelings of depression and fatigue.

The results were alarming. Thirteen percent of men, and nineteen percent of women suffered from insomnia, and the medical profession with the highest rate of insomnia were nurses at twenty percent. For comparison, about ten percent of Americans suffer from chronic insomnia.

Chronic insomnia can lead to depression, and a better understanding of the link between the two conditions could be used to improve treatment, and prevent the condition from worsening while strengthening the world economy. The hope is a survey will be developed for healthcare professionals (and other high-stress professions) that can identify insomnia before it becomes a problem

After centuries of separation, one of the most valuable collections of manuscripts from the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age – the Bibliotheca Palatina – has been virtually reunited. Heidelberg University Library digitised not only the German manuscripts in its own holdings but also the Latin codices of this “mother of all libraries”, housed in Rome for nearly 400 years within the walls of the Vatican Library, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.

The Manfred Lautenschläger Foundation provided the long-term financing that made possible this landmark project in scholarly research. A ceremony will be held on 15 February 2018 at Heidelberg University to commemorate the completion of the digitisation. Sponsor and Honorary Senator of Ruperto Carola, Dr. h.c. Manfred Lautenschläger, will participate.

The technical capabilities of digitisation and the Internet gave the University Library the opportunity to reunite this “treasure of Western culture”, now split between Rome and Heidelberg, into a single virtual library. To this end, Heidelberg University and the Vatican established a cooperation extending over several years.

“We are extremely grateful to our Honorary Senator for funding this ambitious idea,” said Heidelberg University President Prof. Dr Bernhard Eitel. The Manfred Lautenschläger Foundation supported not only the digitisation of the German-language manuscripts in Heidelberg. Thanks to the Foundation’s financial support, a University Library digitisation studio was set up in the Vatican to capture the Latin codices. “For us, the virtual reunification of the German and Latin Palatina manuscripts is a dream come true,” emphasised Dr Veit Probst, Director of the Heidelberg University Library.

The Bibliotheca Palatina had a long history even before Pope Gregory XV confiscated it in the Thirty Years’ War and transferred it to the Vatican in 1623. For nearly 250 years, it had grown from two sources – the royal collections of the Heidelberg Castle and the libraries of Heidelberg University founded in 1386.

With the exception of the German-language codices, which were permitted to return to Heidelberg in 1816, the Palatina remains a foundation of the Vatican Library in Rome. At the beginning of the 17th century, it was known as “the greatest treasure of Germany’s learned”. As a universal library, it contains not only theological, philological, philosophical, and historical works but also medical, natural history, and astronomical texts. It therefore remains of great interest for a number of academic disciplines. The digitised core inventory of approximately 3,000 manuscripts is now available to everyone over the Internet.

The President of Ruperto Carola will open the ceremony to mark the virtual reunification of the Bibliotheca Palatina. The Director of the University Library will then provide some insight into the project’s academic policy and organisational framework. Prof. Dr Christopher Young of the University of Cambridge will deliver the keynote address. Using the example of the “Kaiserchronik”, the first large-scale German-language chronicles from the mid 12th century, Prof. Young will discuss the new opportunities that the digital presentation of mediaeval manuscripts offers research. Finally Dr. h.c. Manfred Lautenschläger talks about “Der Stifter als Anstifter”.

Airline pilots have a difficult task when landing airplanes on icy runways. 16 Norwegian airports have installed information systems that allow the pilots to distribute the braking power in the safest way possible. Data are being used to tell them how slippery the runway is – ahead of landing. This has drawn interest from Boeing.

Anyone who has driven a car on wintry roads covered with snow or ice can imagine the problem pilots are faced with when landing on a runway in winter. An ordinary passenger car weighs less than two tons and rarely drives faster than 80-90 km/h when the temperature is around or below the point of freezing, if the driver is sensible. The pilot’s problem is on another scale: A plane full of passengers can weigh over 60 tonnes, and the landing speeds can reach 270 km/h.

“Under such conditions, it is of course an advantage if the pilot knows how slippery the runway is long before touchdown. With this information, the pilot can calculate the best distribution of braking power between the three available systems. Modern aircraft are equipped with both disc brakes in the landing gear, thrust reversers on the engines, and air brakes that can increase drag during landing”, said Professor Arne Huseby at the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oslo.

Professor Huseby has been a key player in the development of the Integrated Runway Information System (IRIS), currently in use at 16 Norwegian airports. All the airports have their own weather stations combined with temperature gauges in the runways, and the system collects a wealth of data about every possible condition that can affect the airplane’s braking distance. The data are used to analyse and describe the conditions on each airport on a five-step scale from “Poor” to “Good”.

Calculating at one minute intervals

When IRIS is operating during winter, all sorts of weather and runway data are gathered and sent to a central computer server. The server analyses the data with the help of a specially developed algorithm, at one minute intervals throughout the winter – and sends a notification to the ground crew at any of the 16 airports if the calculations show that landing conditions are difficult. The ground crew can then pass the information on to the pilots.

“The alerts from the server are not sent directly to the pilots, because this is primarily designed as a support system for the ground crews. The reason is, among other things, that communication from airports to pilots is subject to a very strict international regulatory framework”, Huseby said.

Words of praise

Senior Advisor Stig Jone Nevland at the Airline Operations Division in Avinor, the Norwegian airport operator, has only words of praise to say about the IRIS system.

“Avinor wants to be best in the world with regard to winter operations of airports, and the IRIS system has made a significant contribution to this. In addition, we have invested a lot in training for such conditions”, said Nevland.

“The airlines operating in Norway are very happy about the system, and the pilots say that IRIS is a valuable support that gives them more accurate information about the conditions on the runway. SAS and Norwegian have also been so kind as to give us access to sensitive flight data. Thus, no-one else in the world has better data than Avinor about what we call friction-restricted landings, i.e. landings on slippery runways”, added Nevland.

A charming idea …

The initiative for the project originally came from Avinor around the turn of the century, because they identified a need to provide better information to pilots when landing during winter conditions in Norway.

“At that time, the ground crews typically had to close the runway and send out a man in a car with a mounted friction meter when they saw that the conditions could be difficult. After this inspection, they used pencil and paper to write a SnowTam report (SNOw Warning To Airmen), so the whole process was quite cumbersome. In addition, the friction measurements were quite unreliable”, Huseby said.

Avinor started with digitizing and automating the report format, but they also wanted to be able to prepare reports without having to close the runway to perform friction measurements. They imagined that it should be possible to measure a number of factors such as ground temperature, air temperature, humidity, rain- or snowfall and wind speed, and calculate the friction from this. It was a charming idea, said Huseby.

… but it was too simple

“A preliminary study was conducted, and it indicated that it should be possible to establish a statistical relationship between weather parameters and runway conditions. Optimism was in the air, and we collected a wealth of weather data during 2004 and 2005. We also collected large amounts of data from the aircrafts that had landed: Braking intensity, airbrake position, engine reversal and thrusting, airplane weight, and landing speed”, Huseby said.

“But in the end, we learnt that the charming idea was also naive. We gradually realized that the relationships between weather data, flight data and braking intensity were very complicated. One of the problems was that the relationships between a variety of the relevant conditions, such as friction and temperature, are not linear”, said Huseby.

At this time, Avinor meteorologist Marit Rabbe also became involved in IRIS. Based on her insight, the IRIS group developed a number of scenarios that could give rise to create difficult landing conditions. Professor Huseby later rewrote the scenarios into a mathematical language that could be understood by a computer. This was crucial for advancing the project.

Boeing becomes interested

At this point, the participants in the IRIS project still lacked information about how much the three different braking systems on an airplane – disc brakes in the landing gear, thrust reversers, and air brakes – contribute to the total retardation.

“The solution was that we went over to Boeing in the US, where they were very interested in our work. They had already prepared a model based on data from a number of landings, and from there, we could interpolate and create quite good estimates of the friction on runways during different conditions”, Huseby explained.

Arne Huseby and colleagues like physicist Alex Klein-Paste at NTNU have now jointly developed both a weather model, a precipitation model and a runway model. These models are running constantly on the afore mentioned server throughout the whole Norwegian winter.

“One of the effects of the IRIS system is that landings become less stressful for the pilots. In addition, the landings are safer for the passengers. But there are also a number of other benefits. If the pilot knows that the runway is dry and has good friction, the disc brakes on the wheels can be used as much as possible shortly after landing. This reduces the need to use a lot of fuel when the engine is used for braking, and that’s a good thing for both the environment and the economy. In addition, ground crews can reduce the use of chemicals on the runway, if IRIS shows that landing conditions are good”, Huseby said.

Interdisciplinarity and Big Data

Everybody talks about interdisciplinarity and Big Data, but the participants in the IRIS project have really proved that the buzzwords can be filled with meaning.

“It was much more difficult to develop this system than everyone thought from the beginning. The mathematical and statistical methods and models used are not very complicated, but the difficulty was instead that we had to combine many different disciplines: Mathematics, Statistics, Physics and Meteorology, as well as experience from both pilots, ground crews and aircraft manufacturers. I myself have mainly served as a catalyst, translating knowledge from all these groups into a mathematical format”, Huseby explained.

“It was also challenging that we had to find a way to deal with very large amounts of data. Today, a steady and large stream of data is ticking in from 16 Norwegian airports every minute in the winter. Everything is entered into a Structured Query Language (SQL) database, where the algorithm we have developed perform continuous analyses in order to produce the daily alerts”.

“At one point, I used eight computers simultaneously in order to do analyse historical landings, and the whole process took several weeks. Now, we have structured the data in a much smarter way, in order to perform calculations in a matter of minutes instead of weeks,” Huseby said.

According to Stig Jone Nevland, Avinor is now considering an expansion of the IRIS system to include even more Norwegian airports.

“There is probably no need to install IRIS at small airports with maybe one or two helicopter landing per day. But at several other medium-sized airports, the system can be of great value. The technology has made such great progress that it is fully realistic to install the system also on smaller airports than the ones using IRIS today. We have also had some interest from airport operators in other countries with a climate similar to what we have in Norway”, said Nevland.

Research that led to SpaceX developing a reusable rocket that can launch heavy payloads into space could eventually help solve the world’s energy problems, according to a leading space expert from London’s Kingston University.

The successful first launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy will not only usher in a new era of space exploration – it will open the door to a world of possibilities for improving life back on Earth, according to a leading rocket expert from London’s Kingston University.

Senior lecturer in astronautics Dr Adam Baker said the surreal image of a Tesla car and its ‘Starman’ passenger being blasted towards the Red Planet from the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, was a great way of bringing space to the masses.

But what billionaire entrepreneur and SpaceX founder Elon Musk had really achieved with the February 6 launch was something much more important – successfully testing an almost fully reusable rocket system that significantly reduces the cost of lifting vast payloads into orbit.

“The sight of the most powerful rocket in the world lifting off successfully and then landing two of its booster stages at the same time was really amazing,” Dr Baker said. “But much more exciting than sending something to Mars – fun though that is – is what this means for enabling a whole host of benefits to the human race just by being able to put things into space more cheaply.”

The introduction of a rocket that can carry heavy payloads into space at a fraction of the previous cost – through being able to recover and reuse the three lower stages – had wide-ranging implications for improving people’s lives across the globe, the rocket expert said.

“What makes the biggest difference to the world we live in today is putting satellites into orbit above our heads that can take pictures, allow us to communicate better, help us navigate and track shipping and monitor things like climate change. Getting things in to space is very expensive, and this rocket might reduce the costs by 80 per cent, which is an enormous decrease.”

Cheaper rocket launches could enable more satellites to be sent into orbit together, cutting the costs and making space services more widely applicable – and in the longer term, it could even help solve the world’s energy problems, according to Dr Baker.

“There’s almost limitless energy coming out of the sun in space but it’s far too expensive to put large solar panels up there and beam energy down,” he said. “But if we can reduce the costs, we could see a future that includes giant solar power stations in space. We could also build bigger cheaper space stations to let more people spend time understanding what it’s really like to live there.”

The SpaceX launch could also have implications for the research being carried out at Kingston University’s rocket propulsion laboratory, based at the Roehampton Vale campus in London.

“What we’re working towards in the University’s rocket lab is building low cost rocket engines – perhaps ultimately ones that can be retrieved and reused. We’re trying to bring a bit of the magic taking place over in the United States to the United Kingdom,” Dr Baker said.

“We’re a world leader at building small satellites in this country, but what we don’t have is the means of launching them. Over the next few years the UK is looking to build and launch its own rockets and hopefully what’s happening in the Kingston University lab is contributing to that long-term plan.

“The space industry here is growing very successfully but it’s got a huge shortage of skilled staff, so we’re trying to train not just rocket engineers but the space engineers of the future who can build the satellites and launch systems, control the satellites from the ground and use that data to bring benefits to everyone.”

Writing The Canada Israel Nexus, I came across many ironies.

• Israel is a country, but without borders,
• it has created the largest refugee population in the world (6m Palestinians), rivaling its own diaspora (7m), both ‘exiles’ amounting to half their peoples. However, the Jewish diaspora is comfortably ensconced in the world economic elite or close to it, while the Palestinians mostly live in what amount to outdoor prison camps, or if lucky, snag a ‘landed immigrant’ status somewhere (there are 31,245 in Canada).
• Israel admits it is an occupying force, which implies that it will, according to international law, care for its victims, and leave, leaving behind the civilians and their homes intact. But the occupation is unending (70 years and counting), Israel has never paid to provide sustenance to its prisoners, the civilians persecuted daily, in full site, and eliciting world condemnation. The EU foots the bill, as Israelis regularly bomb their meagre donations. The result — permanent occupation, theft and all the time more refugees.
• Israel is a ‘nation’, but without a constitution. What?!
• That brings us to the biggest conundrum — the bright blue Israeli passport. As with all passports, the key box is ‘nationality’. So there is an Israeli nationality? Which means all Israelis are citizens of Israel, their nation? Right?

Not. The passport is a fraud, or if you prefer the more genteel term, a confidence trick.

Israelis, both Jewish and non-Jewish, when asked at borders what their nationality is, answer politely ‘Israeli’, with an ironic smile if they bother to think about what they’re saying. Inside they are saying ‘Israeli Jew’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Christian’, whatever.

The Jews can cavalierly throw around ‘Israeli’, but the non-Jews know it isn’t really referring to them. They are unwanted guests of the Jewish state. The passport is a lovely dream world, an act to trick the outside world into letting the inhabitants of the Holy Land travel abroad, but is more a laissez-passez, a proto-passport.

The holders returns to “the only democracy in the Middle East” or what was proposed in 2011 in the Basic Law, a “Jewish and democratic state”. They go about their lives, but they live in two different worlds. Their real identity is buried at the state registry, with the label ‘Jewish’ or ‘non-Jewish’, which appears only in your records and determines your civil rights.

• This brings us to the fact that there are two citizenship laws governing their lives, the famous Law of Return of 1950, which gives every Jew in the world the right to come to Israel and instantly receive citizenship. The much less known Citizenship Law, passed two years later, confers citizenship, in very restricted circumstances, to non-Jews.

“Nationality” Sleight of Hand

A constitutional committee was set up in 1949, but almost 70 years later, whatever rights there are for Arab Israelis are trumped by Jewish Israeli rights. Palestinians make up 20% of the population of Israel, 60% of overall population including the occupied territories. Those who reside in the occupied territories have no rights as citizens at all.

A constitution implies equal rights for all the nation’s citizens. To be a democratic nation, Israeli must be the nationality of Israel, with the Israeli state composed of ethnicities with equal rights. ‘Jewish’ is not even considered a distinct ethnicity anymore, at least according to the US census. Nationality in most cases more or less conforms to ethnicity, but if it differs, nationality trumps ethnicity as a signifier.

As of 2005, ethnicity is not printed on Identity Cards either; a line of eight asterisks appears instead. Sounds good. But the registry knows everyone’s ethnicity and their respective civil rights. Some major violations of civil rights result from this:

• A non-Jew can’t obtain citizenship unless married to a Jewish spouse who is a native Israeli. They must marry abroad or the non-Jewish spouse must convert under the supervision of the Orthodox rabbinate, very difficult. Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens cannot immigrate to join their spouses in Israel.
• Non-Jews, even relatives of Israelis, are not automatically allowed to immigrate to Israel, blocking relatives of Palestinian citizens from returning to join their families.
• The only Arabs who can be Israeli citizens are those born in Israel, i.e., the descendants of those Arabs who were not expelled in 1948 and 1967.
• The Jewish National Fund directly or indirectly controls 93% of the land in Israel, chartered to benefit Jews exclusively. The law claims that Arabs have equal rights, but only Jews are offered land for settlement, Jews do not have land confiscated as do Arabs, and disputes mostly go against Arabs.
• Many services and privileges are granted only to veterans, which means only Jews.

Even the US condemns Israel on these violations of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Forward-looking Israelis have since the 1950s petitioned to be assigned an Israeli nationality and are denied. In the latest decision in October 2013, the Israeli Supreme Court again denied the request to recognize Israeli as a nationality. This would compel Jewish citizens of Israel to choose between being Israeli and Jewish. Most Israeli Jews would be forced into an impossible predicament, seeing themselves as both Jewish and Israeli. The implication would be that Judaism is not a nationality but solely a religion, as indeed it is.

This idea is antithetical to the fundamental doctrine of Zionism as the national movement of the Jewish ‘people’. If the nationality of Jewish Israelis is defined as Israeli rather than Jewish, then the national bond which binds together Jews in Israel and Jews in the Diaspora would be severed.

Arab irony

The supreme irony is that the only countries following international norms with respect to Israel are the Arab states that refuse to recognize Israeli passports, which claim a nationality that doesn’t exist. That is why Israeli governments feel it is so important to get these Arab countries and the stateless Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. That would supposedly legitimize Israel without worrying about declaring an Israeli nationality for all Israelis, Jew or Arab.

But that is why it is impossible to do, as that would automatically validate Israel’s de facto dispossession of its non- Jewish citizens. Unlike Canada with the native peoples, the Israelis are not seeking Arab assimilation into Judaism, nor do they want to assimilate them as Israelis with full citizenship. Were it not for the international acceptance of the duplicity of the Israeli passports, the Israeli Arabs would de facto be stateless. One can only marvel that Israel managed this confidence trick with most of the non-Arab world.

The West violated international law by recognizing Israel, a nation with no fixed borders, accepting without question its claim as a Jewish state. The requirement from 1948 onward was to recognize Israel as a normal state, abiding by international norms, without a formal demand on Israel’s part for recognition as a “Jewish state”, which is not an international norm. A clever deceit, but the Arabs saw through it. The latter became an issue only after the Oslo Accord in 1993, where the PLO recognized Israel as a normal state, but when asked to do so as a “Jewish state”, rightly balked. Israel ‘forgot’ to demand this from Jordan. “Why didn’t they present this demand to Jordan or Egypt when they signed a peace agreement with them?” PLO chair Mahmoud Abbas asked the Arab League when they too refused.

The contradiction in attempting to craft a democratic state based on the Jewish race is epitomized in the Kahane amendment to the Basic Law in 1985, which forbids “negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, negation of the democratic character of the State, incitement to racism.“ But limiting democracy to ‘Jews only’ is by definition both undemocratic and racist. Most Israeli Jews (79%) don’t see the contradiction, agreeing that Jews deserve preferential treatment in Israel. They do not see an inherent contradiction between a Jewish homeland and a functioning democracy providing equality before the law for non-Jews.

Irony of ironies: Israel as a religious state

The US census effectively undermines Israel’s claim as a Jewish state. As ‘races’, the US census shows White/ Black/ Asian/ Native/ Polynesian. For ethnic subdivisions, there is no Jewish ethnicity. Jews are considered members of some other ethnicity (European, Russian, Moroccan, etc.). Jewish is only a religious category and the census doesn’t do religion since the 1950s (a blowback from Nazism).

Ergo, a Jewish state can only be a religious state a la Iran/ Saudi Arabia, presumably with the titular head of state a chief rabbi, though with laws protecting all citizens equally. All ethnicities have equal rights, and the various confessions either abide by a generally agreed legal system or operate legally according to their religious laws.

Iran uses sharia but as interpreted by the elected government. Israel, in line with Saudi Arabia, uses religious law as issued by the religious establishment (though less and less, mostly limited to family issues), already admitting it is at least the pretense of a religious state, but still falling short of the ‘equal rights’ bit. Wait! Yet another irony: Rather than its enemy, Iran is in fact more a model for Israel as a viable religious state than, say, Saudi Arabia.

This does not please Rabbi Avi Shafran, a spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, “While Judaism is a religion, the Jewish people is a people. Peoplehood, at least Jewish peoplehood, transcends ethnicity and race.” (I’m not making that up.)

Sorry, Rabbi Shafran. The Zionist dream of a Jewish state was built on sand, and is still, 70 years after declaring independence, and fighting to gain international acceptance. Not a shred of “justice and hope” in sight. Almost all Jews wanted no part of this a century ago, when Zionism’s founding father Hertzl launched the Zionist Organization. Many Jews and non-Jews have continued to resist this “idea”, though until recently, Jews were cowed, too polite to protest, worried they would be perceived as traitors to their ‘race’, and be cast out of the tribe.

Any people who recognize the problem, especially Jews, are hounded as “antisemites”, the Jewish ones as “traitors” or “self-hating Jews”, including the ultra-Orthodox Jews who reject the very notion of a Jewish ‘state’.

Why this hysteria, 70 years after the state came into being? How will normality ever be established? In researching the history of Canada and the Zionist project, you find unremitting slander, the creation of ever growing mechanisms and institutions to defend the indefensible, avoiding the underlying catch-22.

An upset US-based Hindu group is urging Boston headquartered online home giant Wayfair for immediate withdrawal of cutting board carrying image of Hindu deity Ganesha, calling it highly inappropriate.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement from Nevada, said that Lord Ganesha was highly revered in Hinduism and was meant to be worshiped in temples or home shrines and not to “chop, dice and slice” meat, vegetables, cheese, etc. Inappropriate usage of Hindu deities or concepts for commercial or other agenda was not okay as it hurt the devotees.

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, also urged Wayfair to offer a formal apology.

Hinduism was the oldest and third largest religion of the world with about 1.1 billion adherents and a rich philosophical thought and it should not be taken frivolously. Symbols of any faith, larger or smaller, should not be mishandled, Rajan Zed noted.

Zed further said that such trivialization of Hindu deity was disturbing to the Hindus world over. Hindus were for free artistic expression and speech as much as anybody else if not more. But faith was something sacred and attempts at trivializing it hurt the followers, Zed added.

In Hinduism, Lord Ganesha is worshiped as god of wisdom and remover of obstacles and is invoked before the beginning of any major undertaking. There are about three million Hindus in USA. “Birchwood Golden Ganesha Elephant Cutting Board” at Wayfair sells for $34.99.

It will be its second foreign military base, after Djibouti, which was set up in August 2017. China clearly is looking at the longer term.

By Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan

A recent report about China trying to acquire a military base in Pakistan has created new concerns about Beijing’s long-term strategic plans in the Indian Ocean. The new base is supposed to go up in Jiwani, about 80 kilometers to the west of the better-known Gwadar port.

If China does establish a military base here, it will be its second foreign military base, after Djibouti, which was set up in August 2017. The Hambantota port in Sri Lanka given to China on a 99-year lease could possibly be added to the facilities available to China, though Sri Lanka has reportedly promised India that it will not allow the port to be used for military purposes.

All of this appears to fit with a concerted Chinese push to establish a long-term presence in Indian Ocean as well as to extend Beijing’s power projection capabilities. The proposed air and naval facility in Jiwani will come up next to Gwadar in Baluchistan, where China has already established what appears to be a long-term maritime presence. The new base is also fairly close to Chahabar port in Iran on the Gulf of Oman. Chahabar was jointly developed by Iran, India, and Afghanistan.

Gwadar is an important part of the China’s strategic plans, and it seems primarily to be driven by Beijing’s fear of a potential naval blockade of its sea lanes of communication (SLOCs). Irrespective of how serious such a threat of a blockade is, China has justified its interest in Gwadar as driven by its need for alternate shipping routes. More recently, China has linked its interest in Gwadar with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), one of the vital corridors of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Despite the insurrection in Baluchistan, in which both Gwadar and Jawani lie, China seems intent on doubling down on its Pakistan bet.

The Washington Times report, which originally reported on the base, indicated that a group of Chinese army officers met with Pakistan military officers in Pakistan to finalise the plans for the base. For Pakistan, this may be a knee-jerk reaction to the Trump administration’s policy of what Pakistanis consider the “abandonment” of Pakistan.

But if the reports are true, China clearly is looking at the longer term. This involves major upgrades of Jiwani airport so as to handle large Chinese military aircraft, with the airport renovation set to start in July this year. Establishing a joint naval and air base would mean relocating thousands of local Baluchis, which could create additional social and economic disturbances in the region and could further spur Baluchi unrest.

China, meanwhile, has officially called these reports as “unnecessary” and denied any plans to set up a military base in Pakistan. On the other hand, a Chinese military analyst, Zhou Chenming, claims that “China needs to set up another base in Gwadar for its warships because Gwadar is now a civilian port.” He added that “It’s a common practice to have separate facilities for warships and merchant vessels because of their different operations. Merchant ships need a bigger port with a lot of space for warehouses and containers, but warships need a full range of maintenance and logistical support services.” But some Chinese analysts have questioned this logic. Lin Minwang of Fudan University, for example, has argued that the base “is unnecessary at this time,” suggesting that it will be needed only if Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy gains traction.

Even as China has called these reports purely speculative, it is prudent to be assessing the strategic consequences of “Chinese militarisation of Pakistan” and of the growing speed of Chinese outward expansion. The most important consequence is that it will add another dimension to the growing competition between India and China. China’s encirclement of India through its “string of pearls” has already been of concern but the recent Chinese proactive approaches in the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal are likely to heighten the concerns in New Delhi. This will lead to other spiraling effects: a more worried India is likely to get closer to the US and to other powers in Asia that also worry about China.

There is also the possibility of China getting embroiled in the Baluchistan rebellion, a consideration that Beijing simply does not appear to take very seriously. Finally, as the United States refocuses attention on “great power conflict,” as has been referred to in strategic documents released by the Trump administration over the past few months, China’s expanding footprint seems to underscore the necessity for the shift in American grand strategy.

This article originally appeared in The Diplomat.

As ASEAN chairman this year, Singapore is focusing on the digital economy. How can the digital economy become a key driver to achieve a highly integrated and dynamic ASEAN Economic Community (AEC)?

By Phidel Vineles*

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong inaugurated the country’s chairmanship of ASEAN for 2018 with the themes of resilience and innovation. This is to promote innovation through the use of technology as well as collective resilience against terrorism, cybercrime, and climate change. This year’s chairmanship will also focus on advancing the digital economy of ASEAN member states to make the region globally competitive while achieving sustainable growth.

Hence, it is necessary to know the opportunities that digital innovation brings to the ASEAN economies. Roadblocks between ASEAN and the digital economy must be identified as well to ensure effective policy formulation. However, doing all these requires a critical understanding of the trends that shape today’s digital economy.

ASEAN’s Digital Economy

Where does ASEAN stand in the push for the digital economy today? ASEAN’s strong regional economy, favourable demographics, and Information and Communication (ICT) investments lead the region to become a potential global leader in the digital economy.

Collectively, ASEAN is the sixth largest economy in the world, with a combined GDP of US$2.5 trillion. Its total population of some 628 million people represents 10 percent of the world. Moreover, 40 percent of its citizens are under 30 years of age, and 90 percent of them have access to the Internet. Studies show that this group is technologically savvy who contributes significantly to the growth of the digital economy, using the Internet extensively for shopping, banking, booking hotels and hailing taxis.

ASEAN’s digital economy currently generates approximately $150 billion in revenues annually, according to a joint study by AT Kearney, a leading global management consulting firm, and Axiata, a Malaysian telecommunication conglomerate. The largest share of revenue comes from connectivity and online services, each accounting for 35 up to 40 percent of overall revenues.

They are followed by user interface (20 percent of revenues), which includes devices, software, and systems. Another component of revenue comes from content and enabling technologies, which constitute the remaining 10 percent.

ICT investments also boosted the region’s digital economy. According to the AT Kearney-Axiata study, ICT investment in the region has amounted to more than $100 billion in 2014, which grows at over 15 percent annually.

However, much more should be done to address the digital divide in the region. For example, Singapore is the only ASEAN member state in the top 10 of the United Nations’ ICT Index, and also the only ASEAN country that has been categorised as a “Stand out” or possessing high digital development in Tufts University’s Digital Evolution Index.

Promoting a Dynamic Economy

Promoting the digital economy will help the bloc’s member-states propel their economic growth. Using the Internet will help entrepreneurs to gain access to new markets as well as construct new businesses. Moreover, according to the study, if ASEAN has successfully transformed itself into a global digital powerhouse, it could potentially generate an additional $1 trillion in ASEAN’s GDP by 2025.

Interestingly, digital innovation is already present in ASEAN. For example, Singapore’s Olam International, a conglomerate engaged in agri-business, has successfully promoted smart farming through the use of digital technology. The conglomerate’s Olam Farmer Information System (OFIS), which registered more than 100,000 farmers in 21 countries in the system, serves as an online platform that provides a comprehensive view of operations in different farms.

This technology is useful for analysing the collected data for mapping the exact location of farms, determining appropriate amount of fertilisers, and identifying which types of shade trees should be planted for better cocoa production.

Digital technology also creates new industries such as mobile financial services, e-commerce, big data analytics, cybersecurity solutions, and transport services. The presence of ride-sharing services through mobile applications — Uber, Grab, and Go-Jek — illustrates how digitalisation reshapes transport services in ASEAN. The widespread adoption of e-commerce and mobile financial services also boosted the growth of local business activities in the region.

Developing smart cities through digital technology will also help ASEAN address the influx of people migrating into cities. It is projected that around 34.5 million people in the region will migrate into cities by 2025, which could intensify the problems of pollution and traffic congestion.

Addressing the issues stemming from the growing urban population requires the use of smart technology. Singapore’s electronic road pricing (ERP) system for managing traffic congestion is a case in point and can be used in other ASEAN member states.

Accelerating Broadband Access

Improving Internet access must be a top priority to address the gap between ASEAN countries. The AT Kearney-Axiata study showed that close to 417 million people in ASEAN do not have access to basic Internet services. Lack of access is more severe in CLMV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam) countries.

For example, the OECD’s Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook 2016 revealed that less than 20 percent of individuals are using Internet in Laos and Cambodia, which is lower than in Singapore (more than 80 percent) and Malaysia (over 70 percent).

The low number of Internet users in Laos and Cambodia might discourage attracting investments, especially for firms which need broadband access for operating their websites and selling their products online. Therefore, ASEAN should pursue a universal mobile broadband access across the region to address its limited Internet access, especially in the less developed countries.

However, doing so requires a harmonised broadband plan that will commit each ASEAN member state to have common specific targets. A good example is when member states committed themselves to transfer to digital broadcasting by 2020.

There should also be a special body within the ASEAN Secretariat to serve as an advisory board for setting up a strategic direction towards the development of digital economy. The A.T. Kearney-Axiata study proposed an independent advisory board to provide market analyses and directions for ASEAN’s digital economy.

A digital competitiveness index, which is similar to the European Union’s Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), could be established for tracking and measuring ASEAN’s digital economic performance.

*Phidel Vineles is a Senior Analyst with the Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS) at the S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

I had been thinking what words truly reflect the socio-political atmosphere in global politics? Then, I remembered the great words of Charles Dickens. Dickens begins “The Tale of Two Cities” in the manner that is an accurate reflection of our present time. He writes, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

The time that Dickens describes is parallel to what we witnessed recently with the decision of President Donald J. Trump to make Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Not only such an irrational decision sparked anger worldwide, it spoke of an unsettling situation of Palestinians since the Balfour Declaration, which marked the beginning of Palestinians’ struggle.

The Balfour Declaration, drawn on November 2, 1917 by Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour pledged British government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The statement was written in the form of a letter to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, a prominent Jewish citizen. This was an affirmation of British support of Zionism and part of Britain’s colonial ambitions in the form of what British officials defined as “The Great Game.”

The British supported Zionism, thinking that it would gain Jewish support to aid the Allies. The idea of taking land from the Palestinians and giving it away to support Zionist movement is not new. It directly stems from the Balfour Declaration. In 1931, David Lloyd George who was a British Prime Minister during World War I led the support of Zionism and made it a state policy in British Parliament. The abhorrent effects of British’s decision post World War I are seen to the present day in Palestine where Palestinians are isolated by a wall and given barbaric treatment at the hands of IDF soldiers. At the end of the World War I, British decided to give away the land and now Trump again decided to hand away Jerusalem to Israel meanwhile Israel had been displacing Palestinians from their homes. Trump is not the only accomplice in his decision.

On June 5, 2017, Senator Bernie Sanders and 90 other senators voted in favor of Senate Resolution 176. The Senate Resolution 176 serves as the foundation of Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 that recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and calls for the US embassy’s move to Jerusalem. Yuri Rand in “Key Democratic figures shift positions on Jerusalem when decision is real” reports that “The 2017 vote called on the recognition to be incorporated in ‘United States law, and calls upon the President and all United States officials to abide by its provisions’. Resolution 176 was voted on 90-0.” Although the US presidents in the past did not officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Trump did otherwise despite being warned of the result such a decision could have. Despite being warned by Saudi King Salman to not take any steps on Jerusalem, Trump still made the declaration that “I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”

The negative effect of his statement was expected. The decision sparked global uproar. Trump’s absurd decision further confirmed that the US is, in fact, a modern colonial power that defies its own democratic ideals for its own benefit that it preaches otherwise to the world. The recent UN vote and the US threat to other nations for voting against the US prove two things: US influence on global politics that controls the political processes of another country and a threat of punishment for those nations that stand against Trump’s decisions. Keeping in mind the democratic ideals, majority vote triumphs over the word of a single person, especially the one with fascist or tyrannical tendencies; however, such was not the case.

In the UN, 128 nations, which consisted of majority casted their votes against the Trump’s decision to make Jerusalem the capital of Israel. As a result, The US Ambassador to UN Nikki Haley made an open threat to 128 nations for not supporting the US decision. “The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in this assembly. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit” stated Haley.

Trump words reiterated what Haley expressed, “Let them vote against us. We will save a lot.” This demands no other form of interpretation, but one. It commands the world to nod their head with the US or suffer whereas democratic principles counter this form of thinking. This form of raw power to control the destiny of another nation sheds light on Palestinians’ struggle who have been struggling for basic rights since the Balfour Declaration. Trump’s recent decision now adds to the misery of Palestinian people while giving Zionist movement another green light to commit further crimes against the Palestinians.

The crimes against the Palestinians are not hidden. The evidence against Israel’s government and the IDF soldiers is in abundance yet such evidence is buried under the Western-led political rhetoric and media-led rhetoric that labels Palestinian resistance as terrorist activity. Daily, the news appears from reporters who visit the Gaza Strip and daily, the footage of IDF soldiers appears on social networks, showing the extreme level of brutality against the Palestinian.

“The media also repeats the “terrorist” stereotype when reporting on any act of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation, thus painting the Palestinians as inherently violent and acting ahistorically” writes Zeina Azzam in her “Israel as Oppressor, Palestine as Oppressed: The ‘normalization’ of what is not normal.” Zeina Azzam is an editor for Arab Center Washington, DC. Azzam further discusses that this rhetoric has become so normal that many nations and many organizations around the world accept Israel’s aggressive approach as “normal,” and the normalization of Israel’s behavior is always associated to its biblical legitimacy.

Furthermore, the political debates and the public discourse always renders Israel as the victim that is surrounded by monsters. Let us not forget the words of Ayelet Shaked, the Israeli parliamentarian who called the Palestinians children as “little snakes.” Shaked went further to declare that “Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started.” Israel’s state policy has remained the same where Israel has constantly shifted the blame on Palestinians from the day Palestine was occupied.

Following Shaked’s statement, Khudair, a Palestinian was kidnapped from Al-Qudus and burned alive by Israeli individuals. As recent as December 2017, Oren Hazan who is a right-wing member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) was recorded live shouting and verbally abusing the Palestinians in a bus who were heading to visit family members that IDF had arrested. Hazan’s words prove the horrors that Palestinians face daily. It shows the hostile approach of Israel towards the Palestinian natives. Hazan shouted in the bus, “We will kick you out of here. Those scumbags, those garbage, dogs that sit in our prisons that you call family, they will never see daylight. And as long as I’m a member in this Knesset, I will do the best I can to change the law so you cannot visit here.” This is the worse form of oppression that has been inflicted on the Palestinian citizens. As one can imagine, this form of rhetoric shatters any hopes of supposed peace talks when Israeli government approach is contrary to any peace talks. It is a war waged against the innocent Palestinian civilians who have been morally, physically, and socially marginalized in their own homelands.

In fact, the situation is beyond marginalization of Palestinians. It is a complete takeover with one firm approach, which is to fully torture the Palestinian population. Any effort the Palestinian citizens make against Israel’s aggression, the Palestinians witness the world abruptly labeling their resistance as a terrorist activity. The reality of Israel-Palestine’s matter is that Israel is the oppressor and the Palestinians the oppressed. The Amnesty International reports in “Israel and occupied Palestinian territories 2016/2017” that “Israeli forces unlawfully killed Palestinian civilians, including children, in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and detained thousands of Palestinians from the OPT who opposed Israel’s continuing military occupation, holding hundreds in administrative detention.” This is just the beginning of the report.

The report, moreover, shows that torture and horrific treatment of Palestinians is done with “impunity.” As mentioned earlier, all evidence renders Israel as the oppressor. The Amnesty International report best sums up the takeover of the Palestinian homeland by concluding “The authorities continued to promote illegal settlements in the West Bank, including by attempting to retroactively ‘legalize’ settlements built on private Palestinian land, and severely restricted Palestinians’ freedom of movement, closing some areas after attacks by Palestinians on Israelis. Israeli forces continued to blockade the Gaza Strip, subjecting its population of 1.9 million to collective punishment, and to demolish homes of Palestinians in the West Bank and of Bedouin villagers in Israel’s Negev/Naqab region, forcibly evicting residents.” This follows the excessive use of force that Palestinians do not deserve in any way; however, the reality of the Palestinian citizens is to walk the streets with the worry that a sniper or an M-16 may be pointed at them from any corner of the street where IDF soldier may be deliberately waiting to release the trigger.

In March 2016, Eimear McBride voiced her observation in her recent visit to Israel. McBride’s an author of “A Girl is A Half-Formed Thing, winner of Goldsmiths Prize, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and has traveled with photojournalist Taiye Selasi and many others. In her observation of the Palestinian situation, she tells The Irish Times, “Living in the West Bank is like being trapped in a cage. The walls of the cage are being wound ever tighter around the Palestinian people. It’s hard to see that kind of suffering and believe there is an end in sight.” Her words further express the reality of what she saw. She states, “It was probably one of the most shocking experiences of my life and I saw things I wish I’d never seen, heard things I don’t think I’ll ever forget. It’s important to try and impart some of that – the shame that the international community should feel at what is happening and what is being allowed to happen. That’s all I can do, but it’s something.”

Prominent individuals like her and many journalists from around the world have visited Palestine and have highlighted the shock they faced from what they witnessed. It was nothing pleasant. It showed the reality contrary to what Israeli lobbyists and what Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks of each time he appears in US Congress and the UN.

Dickens’ words are a true fit for the time we are currently living in. The honest and innocent are painted liars and the liars have taken the stage to play victims. In this case, Israel needs to stop playing a false victim. It is the Palestinians who are the victims of Israeli barbaric rhetoric and cruel aggression. The world needs to come together and accept the reality of Palestinian struggle. The International community must recognize the suffering of Palestinians have no basic human rights.

Despite what the larger international community believes about the Palestinians, the Palestinians try to show what each Palestinian native is going through. The truth reveals itself; hence, the daily footage appears of how IDF soldiers use lethal weapons and deadly tactics against the Palestinians. Leaving young Palestinians to bleed to death, bombing Palestinian housing, arresting innocent civilians, evicting them from their own houses, and giving them no sound representation before the international community clearly proves that Israel’s approach is not peace talk but complete annihilation of Palestinian people.

The International community that assembles at the UN needs to implement real and strategic solutions that stops Palestinians from a genocide. Rather than giving a stage to the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the international community needs to hear from the Palestinians. It needs to recognize the Palestinian resistance. Also, the international community needs to recognize that Balfour Declaration was a complete injustice against the Palestinians and has been costing Palestinian lives since the day British executed the Balfour Declaration. The reports that come from Independent forums and major organizations like Amnesty International need to be taken seriously and need to be ready to stop the horrors that Palestinians face daily.

Rather than allowing injustice to prevail, human race that consists of multi races, religions, and nationalities, empathy, just governance, and an equal opportunity needs to remain the core agenda of the internal community because the innocent civilians pay with their lives from the decision and the course major bodies like the UN and the NATO takes. Palestinians need help, require safety, and justly demand that their Holy site be protected. The international community needs to understand and recognize from the words of Israeli parliamentarian that Israel does not want peace. It wants a homogenous society of its own, wrongly justified by using biblical texts. The international community needs to stand up for justice and it must for the innocent Palestinians.

Afghanistan’s mining industry is extraordinary important for the country’s economy, setting up thousands of employments and contributing a broadly economic growth but mining can be immensely harmful if it is not regulated properly-as ran a vital range of abuses and disasters around the country. Also with range of harmful mix of poor policies, weaknesses in the institutions, bad governance and corruption which mess up mining industry and result is chaos.

Lawlessness, that dominants the mining industry in Afghanistan, acknowledged by the international, local investors and even the Afghan government officials that faces a myriad of problems and difficulties which includes a wide spread of ‘illegal Mining’.

According to USIP, the majority of active mines sites in Afghanistan are not government regulated neither controlled. According to the constitution of Afghan mining law- all, mineral resources are the property of the state, but message has not been sent properly to the local communities hosting mineral wealth.

Most of the artisanal mining involved in illegal mineral extraction which lead to conflicts, myriad loss of local and political economy. We have witnessed that certain mines are being operated for decades by the local communities who do not hold any licenses for exploitation, exploration and mining, according to MoMP roughly the government of Afghanistan losses $250-300 million annually since the fall of Taliban.

According to Global Witness, the Taliban and other armed groups are earning up to $20 million/year from Afghanistan famous lapis lazuli of Badakhshan region.

Global standards of mining operations have developed to understand that unless mine operators exercise caution and vigilance, possible direct damage and harmful impacts shall take place on surrounding communities. It is pretty obvious that In Afghanistan and around the globe, studies and experience has shown that without effective government regulation, no company shall behave responsibly. Despite the companies that put on serious efforts to do so most often fall off without proper government attention.

Health, Livelihood and Environmental Concerns

The rapid increase in industrial and technological advancement have a positive impact on humans in terms of producing various industrial products that plays a vital role in quality of life, but also carries a negative impact in form of air and environmental pollution, e.g. industrial waste (tailings) and technology.

One of the major concerns of illegal mining is environmental pollution which stands a great threat to human health. Illegal mining activities of heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, mercury and lead can cause a serious threat to the human, animal and plants life.

We have witnessed environmental pollution cases that actually exceed its limits especially of ongoing illegal mining activities that has resulted in losses and unrest. The workers involved in illegal mining are exposed to heavy metals and transition metals which are extremely dangerous and toxic in certain concentration and doses which results in various health diseases not only of the workers involved in unprofessional and illegal mining but also the surrounding local community.

A survey was conducted from the residents of illegal mining sites and from the patients visiting neighbouring countries for health concerns affected by the dust emission from passing ore trucks and from ongoing illegal mining of talc in Achin of Nangerhar province, coal and heavy metals extraction from various parts of Afghanistan, which are highly linked with respiratory diseases. A farmer claimed that heavily loaded ore trucks passing through their fields leaves a thick dust coats over crops that stands in nearby fields. This is alarming and rapidly increases and the government should consider it foremost of their priorities.

Illegal mining is also responsible for soil erosion, aquatic life and natural water that flows in stream and lakes along with environmental health issues. The processing of certain minerals such as Gold in various provinces highly contaminate water resources with its waste or tailings.

Socio-economic Impacts & a Direct Fruitful Income to Insurgents

A range of actors engaged in illegal and unregulated minerals extraction, which includes the warlords, certain members of the parliament, regional government officials, and various insurgent groups including Taliban, due to which the government of Afghanistan losses $250-300 million annually only to the hands of Taliban. The locality of number of mine sites are in areas which are relatively unstable and out of reach of the central government control, the insurgents and several other mafia groups have made an easy excess to have control on and for decades they are controlled and exploited by Taliban and other insurgents or criminal groups. For instance, the copper and gold deposits of Afghanistan in certain provinces such as Kandahar and Helmand, talc, chromite of Nangerhar, which are sharing border with Pakistan, the insurgents hand on to the direct shared profit of millions of dollars annually.

Similarly, unregulated and illegal small-scale extraction of minerals in Afghanistan contributes to conflict producing a great deal of mining profit by financing insurgents and various criminal mafias using violence against state to gain power, which has deprived the government of Afghanistan of revenue owed in terms of loyalties and taxes. We have witnessed, in various cases the local communities who are hosting mining sites support these mafia groups and insurgency, or various other artisanal mafia controlled mines to refrain from legal taxation by corrupt government officials.

The insurgents and several other actors who are involved in illegal and unregulated minerals extraction smuggle or illegally transport these precious mineral resources to the neighbouring countries where they sell these minerals on less than of its half prices, thus it goes to international market under the name of neighbouring countries and get immense of benefits of Afghanistan natural resources and never benefits the hosts of mineral deposits and local community.

Efforts/Steps to be taken Handling Illegal & Un-Regulated Mining

Getting best outcomes of mineral potential in Afghanistan is a real challenge because of weak state capacity, deliberate failure of the government of Afghanistan and to formalize entire policy and legal provisions. But, certainly it is quite possible to overcome.

A greater majority of people involved in illegal and unregulated minerals extraction are the youth. The government of Afghanistan can do well in offering incentive schemes to promote mineral beneficiation in order to redirect the energy and time of these youth to various productive ventures. It is pretty important to socialize and educate the local community who are hosting mineral resources. This could be done through arranging proper seminars, Promotions, Brochures to be distributed, posters, billboards and leaflets dispersed and television and radio programs shall be on-aired. But unfortunately, socialization and education never reached the hosting mineral communities which has resulted of keeping them unaware of regarding the impacts of illegal mining.

Legal Framework and Advocacy

The government of Afghanistan should be able to assure that the mining projects are subjects to competent and have the ability of dictating the overall undesirable impacts and inevitable violation of law. The present framework remained fail in this case and should be able to do more of creating transparency and accountability initiatives. Unfortunately, the government of Afghanistan lacks effective mechanism and framework to encounter artisanal illegal mining throughout the country. The government failed to oversight mining operations and mines supposed to submit required compliance reports to the mining and environmental ministries every six months.

There should be a mutual commitment from policy makers, but very unfortunately, the role of stockholders/policy makers and the public is still lacking. The government officials, warlord and other and local police officers involved in illegal mining should be prosecuted and legal actions should be taken against them.

Creating a Special Taskforce

There is a need of establishing a special taskforce which should be responsible of awareness of better livelihood, environmental impacts, worth of natural resources, and coordination with local community, controlling and overseeing the mining operations, they are supposed to directly submit compliance reports to the ministry of Mines and Petroleum and to the office of President. This taskforce should also be responsible for creating coordination between the government of Afghanistan and local community hosting mineral wealth.

Facilitating Local Communities

According to global mining principles, the government of Afghanistan, mining companies (national & international) and other stakeholders are supposed to take care of sustainable local community development. The mineral wealth when developed, there should be a sustainable human well-being by incorporating with economic and social infrastructure in terms of creating job opportunities, education, health and transportation. Traditionally, in Afghanistan we have witnessed that mining wealth have always benefited the national economy, but unfortunately the local communities have always been avoided.

Facilitating local communities who are holding national mineral wealth will not only benefit the mining companies and government of Afghanistan, but also will have a great impact to overcome the insurgency and other various actors involved in illegal and unregulated mining.

Conclusion

The important conclusion to be made regarding the illegal mining and unregulated mineral wealth in Afghanistan, that there is an obvious reflection of government’s failure to translate what actually we have in the policy and legal framework which has to be brought into actual practices. The government officials, Parliamentarians, warlords and other actors should be restrained and deprived from indulging in illegal mining of natural resources in Afghanistan. The law enforcement agencies should be committed to have a strong hold on borders insurgency movements, especially related to mineral wealth.

*Mohammad Ismail Amin is a mining expert and is based in Kabul. He can be reached at engismi6@gmail.com

A partnership between the Japan Exchange Group (JPX) and the Singapore Exchange (SGX) could catalyze the growth of the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC) – a geoeconomic infrastructure initiative that is the Indo-Japanese counterweight to China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) – as well as augment the equities markets of both bourses, providing a channel for Japanese capital to access the emerging markets of the Indo-Asia Pacific more deeply.

Given China’s growing economic clout and the emergence of the Indo-Asia Pacific construct – driven by India’s economic rise – collaborations centred on the geopolitically neutral city-state of Singapore and its capital markets, which is at the
relative geographical centre of ‘The Quad’ formed by the USA, Japan, Australia and India – could create synergies between the BRI and AAGC.

2017 has seen both the SGX and JPX augment their capacities amid rising regional competition. For instance, the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) attempted to make itself more attractive to the listing of mega-cap stocks, such as the public float of Saudi Aramco, though the bourses of Hong Kong, New York and London have been shortlisted for the IPO.

However, it has been unable to keep pace with its international rivals, despite seeking the return of international listings to its securities market for a number of years.

Arguably, the TSE has not formulated a coherent strategy to challenge regional and global competitors. While the JPX is highly profitable – its return on equity exceeds 15% and its effective monopoly in Japan grants it solid footing – it still lags in attracting international listings. It needs to overcome a number of barriers, including the language barrier and recruiting more outsiders for key posts.

Meanwhile, in November 2017 the SGX entered into a collaborative listings partnership with New York City’s NASDAQ, in a move aimed at enhancing access to US capital markets.

The move will allow concurrent and sequential listings on both exchanges in a move that Loh Boon Chye, the CEO of the SGX, described in an interaction with the South China Morning Post as his “east-west corridor”; this is part of a wider strategy to draw more technology firms and startup ventures to the Singapore bourse. However, he declined to disclosed further details on the partnership.

Commenting on the NASDAQ listing collaboration partnership, Loh had explained: “The business landscape today is borderless. Fast-growing Asian companies looking to tap the capital markets can choose to list on SGX on Asian home ground, and embark on a listing on Nasdaq as they expand their business globally. We are excited to partner with Nasdaq in this collaboration to provide value-add to SGX’s listed companies who are looking to extend their reach in the capital markets and raise their profile in the United States.”

A partnership between the JPX and the SGX – which is already a shareholder in the SGX following the the TSE acquiring a minority stake in the SGX for $304 million in 2007 – could catalyse the AAGC’s infrastructure financing requirements and complement the BRI, as well as augment and amplify the SGX’s and Singapore’s aims of establishing itself as a global technology hub in the Indo-Asia Pacific.

Infrastructure Financing For BRI & AAGC

China’s BRI raises questions, given concerns over China’s conduct – its questionable practices and laissez-faire attitude highlighted in the wake of Sri Lanka handing over Hambantota to China due to an inability to service its loans – and its broader impact on its foreign relations. Historical precedents established by Tokyo also highlight that Beijing’s BRI ambitions could be compromised by its complex demographic decline and ageing society.

The sustainability of AAGC – as well as the commitment of Japan and India to its various infrastructure projects – is up for questioning, given that Japan and India both need to implement significant structural changes in order to facilitate sustainable people-to-people exchanges. Both countries suffer from varying degrees of protectionism, coupled with barriers in the form of language and cultural barriers that inhibit the operations of foreign businesses.

Given the immense scale of both these geo-economic initiatives, both Singapore and Japan – particularly the SGX and JPX – could stand to benefit from collaborating to advance both the BRI and AAGC through facilitating financing for related projects. It also offers a way to moderate and balance the Chinese influence extended through the BRI. Already,

The SGX-Nasdaq partnership establishes an east-west corridor connecting their capital markets and strengthens Singapore’s key role as an offshore hub in facilitating capital and deal flows for infrastructure and property projects. This could eventually be coupled with a cross-boundary investment channel, such as the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect or the proposed Singapore-Malaysia Stock Connect, set to be operational at end-2018.

A collaboration with the Japan Exchange could potentially have mutually-beneficial multiplier effects, facilitating a seamless connection between private and public fundraising channels for projects under the umbrella of the AAGC.

Meanwhile, Singapore is an international financial centre and one of the largest offshore yuan centres, meaning that it can partner Hong Kong and London in facilitating lending to major infrastructure projects. Besides finance, Singapore also has a wide range of high-quality professional services in urban master-planning, engineering, project advisory, dispute resolution and legal services, which can help make infrastructure projects more bankable. It offers a destination with relative geo-political neutrality, as well as the necessary infrastructure and ecosystem for financing both AAGC and BRI projects.

The city-state has overtaken the US as the most attractive destination for Chinese investments as of December 2017 and can can play a complementary role in financing the BRI; in Southeast Asia, an estimated 65% of project financing is arranged out of Singapore.

This comes at a time when Chinese enterprises and their investments in high technology domains and infrastructure are increasingly shaping ODI (overseas direct investment) efforts.

However, the fundamentals that underpin the Singapore-China relationship have also shifted. Despite this, the city-state is in the process of deepening its financial connectivity with Chinese capital markets; Beijing has a long-term objective of internationalising renminbi capital markets, in the interest of facilitating the financial underpinning of BRI projects.

Given the contours of Chinese investment and the risk it carries – Southeast Asian states will need investment equal to 5% of their GDP to cover infrastructure growth between 2016 and 2030 – Japanese capital channeled through Singapore to the relevant projects could serve as a counterweight to Chinese capital and influence across the region.

China has already made substantial investments in Southeast Asian infrastructure, but tension caused by it South China Sea territorial claims may see countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Myanmar and Vietnam turn to Japan for infrastructure financing.

SGX-TSE Partnership Rationale

The TSE represents a deep and liquid market – the third largest stock exchange by market capitalisations globally and the largest in Asia, though the Hong Kong Exchange (HKEx) isn’t far behind – with relatively low running costs for issuers, while the SGX is the largest bourse in Southeast Asia by market capitalisation, with an investor pool that has substantial expertise in commodities, property and infrastructure, as well as emerging markets.

The TSE, with its Mothers Board, offers a shortcut for technology startups looking to have an early exit or raise capital. It also offers far more liquidity (i.e. turnover velocity) and better valuations for technology stocks than either Hong Kong or Singapore.

Moreover, for Japanese entrepreneurs and investors, whose ventures may face obstacles in reaching a liquidity event, a dual listing on the Catalist secondary board of the SGX may enhance the value of an IPO by expanding the investor pool and enabling expansion into Southeast Asia. Both jurisdiction also offer weighted variable shares (i.e. dual-class share structures)

A partnership along the lines of what the SGX and NASDAQ are developing could help JPX rebuild its pool of international issuers, as well as enable its investor base to gain exposure to emerging market stocks in the form of technology enterprises operating in Southeast Asia and the broader Indo-Asia Pacific, as well as offer a platform for Japanese startups looking to grow their global footprint prior to an IPO.

It also builds upon Japan’s edge in financing infrastructure in Southeast Asia, where it dominates infrastructure investment in the Philippines and Vietnam, among the region’s fastest-growing economies.

Christian Zhang, an infrastructure analyst at BMI Research in Singapore, told Bloomberg in an exchange: “While Japanese companies and government agencies have had a long head start, Chinese companies have key advantages that could see them overtaking Japan in specific sectors,” citing financing of coal-fired power plants as an example.

On the part of the SGX, whose investor base tends to prioritise defensive and income-generating stocks, its telecommunications, media and technology (TMT) sector could benefit from access to a highly liquid investor base that is sophisticated and possesses a deep understanding of and appetite for technology stocks. Moreover, it facilitates access to the strong returns implied by investing in the ASEAN and Indo-Pacific growth narratives.

With the recent announcement of an SGX-Bursa Malaysia Stock Connect, which links the equities markets of the Bursa Malaysia and the SGX, developing a comparable stock connection and listings collaboration with the JPX, an existing shareholder, only serves to strengthen its position.

In the medium and long term, the synergies that could emerge from such a partnership not only enhance Singapore’s equity capital markets and technology ambitions, which are at a inflection point following the public float of both Razer and the Sea Group, but also open Japan to further foreign listings.

Singapore has little hope of beating Hong Kong’s IPO pipeline, given the sheer difference in market size and investor base. Hong Kong continues to remain the gateway and super-connector for what will eventually be the world’s largest economy.

Where the SGX can excel lies in its potential for being an Indo-Asia Pacific capital centre and technology hub that offers both neutrality and a strong business infrastructure. Further alliances and strategic partnerships, such as those like the Nasdaq which create an “East-West capital corridor”, as well as stock connections with bourses in mature markets like Japan are likely to be the way forward in boosting its equities market and catalysing its technology and innovation ambitions amid heightened competition in the region.

*Shiwen Yap is a STEM enthusiast and a pragmatic centrist interested in the intersection of technology, business, entrepreneurship, science and public policy.

Three commercially released facial-analysis programs from major technology companies demonstrate both skin-type and gender biases, according to a new paper researchers from MIT and Stanford University will present later this month at the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency.

In the researchers’ experiments, the three programs’ error rates in determining the gender of light-skinned men were never worse than 0.8 percent. For darker-skinned women, however, the error rates ballooned – to more than 20 percent in one case and more than 34 percent in the other two.

The findings raise questions about how today’s neural networks, which learn to perform computational tasks by looking for patterns in huge data sets, are trained and evaluated. For instance, according to the paper, researchers at a major U.S. technology company claimed an accuracy rate of more than 97 percent for a face-recognition system they’d designed. But the data set used to assess its performance was more than 77 percent male and more than 83 percent white.

“What’s really important here is the method and how that method applies to other applications,” said Joy Buolamwini, a researcher in the MIT Media Lab’s Civic Media group and first author on the new paper. “The same data-centric techniques that can be used to try to determine somebody’s gender are also used to identify a person when you’re looking for a criminal suspect or to unlock your phone. And it’s not just about computer vision. I’m really hopeful that this will spur more work into looking at [other] disparities.”

Buolamwini is joined on the paper by Timnit Gebru, who was a graduate student at Stanford when the work was done and is now a postdoc at Microsoft Research.

Chance discoveries

The three programs that Buolamwini and Gebru investigated were general-purpose facial-analysis systems, which could be used to match faces in different photos as well as to assess characteristics such as gender, age, and mood. All three systems treated gender classification as a binary decision – male or female – which made their performance on that task particularly easy to assess statistically. But the same types of bias probably afflict the programs’ performance on other tasks, too.

Indeed, it was the chance discovery of apparent bias in face-tracking by one of the programs that prompted Buolamwini’s investigation in the first place.

Several years ago, as a graduate student at the Media Lab, Buolamwini was working on a system she called Upbeat Walls, an interactive, multimedia art installation that allowed users to control colorful patterns projected on a reflective surface by moving their heads. To track the user’s movements, the system used a commercial facial-analysis program.

The team that Buolamwini assembled to work on the project was ethnically diverse, but the researchers found that, when it came time to present the device in public, they had to rely on one of the lighter-skinned team members to demonstrate it. The system just didn’t seem to work reliably with darker-skinned users.

Curious, Buolamwini, who is black, began submitting photos of herself to commercial facial-recognition programs. In several cases, the programs failed to recognize the photos as featuring a human face at all. When they did, they consistently misclassified Buolamwini’s gender.

Quantitative standards

To begin investigating the programs’ biases systematically, Buolamwini first assembled a set of images in which women and people with dark skin are much better-represented than they are in the data sets typically used to evaluate face-analysis systems. The final set contained more than 1,200 images.

Next, she worked with a dermatologic surgeon to code the images according to the Fitzpatrick scale of skin tones, a six-point scale, from light to dark, originally developed by dermatologists as a means of assessing risk of sunburn.

Then she applied three commercial facial-analysis systems from major technology companies to her newly constructed data set. Across all three, the error rates for gender classification were consistently higher for females than they were for males, and for darker-skinned subjects than for lighter-skinned subjects.

For darker-skinned women – those assigned scores of IV, V, or VI on the Fitzpatrick scale – the error rates were 20.8 percent, 34.5 percent, and 34.7. But with two of the systems, the error rates for the darkest-skinned women in the data set – those assigned a score of VI – were worse still: 46.5 percent and 46.8 percent. Essentially, for those women, the system might as well have been guessing gender at random.

“To fail on one in three, in a commercial system, on something that’s been reduced to a binary classification task, you have to ask, would that have been permitted if those failure rates were in a different subgroup?” Buolamwini said. “The other big lesson … is that our benchmarks, the standards by which we measure success, themselves can give us a false sense of progress.”

Breeding temperature-resilient crops is an “achievable dream” in one of the most important species of commercially-cultivated plants, according to a new study.

The vision of crop improvement in the face of climate change is outlined in research by the John Innes Centre which establishes a genetic link between increased temperature and the problem of “pod shatter” (premature seed dispersal) in oilseed rape.

Research by the team led by Dr Vinod Kumar and Professor Lars Østergaard, reveals that pod shatter is enhanced at higher temperature across diverse species in the Brassicaceae family which also includes cauliflower, broccoli and kale.

This new understanding brings a step closer the prospect of creating crops that are better adapted to warmer temperatures a step closer.

Dr Vinod Kumar, a co-author of the paper explained the significance of the findings:

“It’s almost as if there is a thermostat that controls seed dispersal, or pod shatter. As we learn how it works, we could in the future ‘rewire’ it so seed dispersal does not happen at the same pace at higher temperatures

“This piece of the puzzle, coupled with the use of advanced genetic tools means that developing temperature-resilient crops becomes an achievable dream.”

Controlling seed dispersal, or “pod shatter” is a major issue for farmers of oilseed rape worldwide, who lose between 15-20% of yield on average per year due to prematurely dispersed seeds lost in the field.

The study set out to find out if temperature increases had a direct influence on pod shatter in oilseed rape, and how this is controlled by genetics.

“Over the last two decades, scientists have identified the genes that control pod shatter. However, it is not until now that we begin to understand how their activity is affected by the environment, and in this case temperature,” explained Professor Lars Østergaard.

To study the effects of temperature on seed dispersal, Dr Xinran Li, a postdoctoral researcher, monitored fruit development in Arabidopsis, a model plant related to the important Brassicaceae crops, at three different temperatures 17, 22 and 27 degrees centigrade.

This showed that stiffening of the cell wall at the tissue where pod shatter takes place is enhanced by increasing temperature leading to accelerated seed dispersal.

Dr. Li demonstrated that this was true not only for Arabidopsis, but across the Brassicaceae family, including oilseed rape.

The team went on to establish the genetic mechanism which organises the plant response to higher temperatures. Previous studies have shown that pod shatter is controlled by a gene called INDEHISCENT (IND). This study reveals that IND is under the control of a thermo-sensory mechanism in which a histone called H2A.Z is a key player.

The report concludes: “Our findings introduce an environmental factor to the current knowledge, which provide alternative avenues for crop improvement in the face of climate change.”

The paper Temperature modulates tissue-specification programme to control fruit dehiscence in Brassicaceae which appears in the journal Molecular Plant also identifies the genetic pathways behind the temperature sensing mechanism which coordinates the crop’s response to rises in temperature.

In addition to funding for a border wall and other border security measures, immigration hardliners are sure to push to include mandatory E-Verify in any immigration legislation considered by Congress. E-Verify is a (currently) voluntary program where businesses check job applicants’ Social Security numbers and other Information — potentially including “biometric” identifiers like fingerprints — against information stored in a federal database to determine if the job applicants are legally in the United States.

Imagine how much time would be diverted from serving consumers and growing the economy if every US business had to comply with E-Verify. Also, collecting the relevant information and operating the mandatory E-Verify system will prove costly to taxpayers.

Millions of Americans could be denied jobs because E-Verify mistakenly identifies them as illegal immigrants. These Americans would be forced to go through a costly and time-consuming process to force the government to correct its mistake. It is doubtful employers could afford to keep jobs open while potential hires went through this process.

A federal database with Social Security numbers and other identifying information is an identify thief’s dream. Given the federal government’s poor track record for protecting personal information, is there any doubt mandatory E-Verify would put millions of Americans at risk for identity theft?

Some supporters of E-Verify deny the program poses any threat to civil liberties, as it will only be used to verify citizenship or legal residency. They even claim a system forcing individuals to have their identities certified by the government is not a national ID system. These individuals are ignoring the history of government programs sold as only affecting a particular group or being used for a limited purpose being expanded beyond initial targets. For example, Americans were promised that only the wealthiest Americans would ever pay income taxes. And some of the PATRIOT Act’s worst provisions that we were told would only be used against terrorists are routinely used to investigate drug crimes.

E-Verify almost certainly will be used for purposes unrelated to immigration. One potential use of E-Verify is to limit the job prospects of anyone whose lifestyle displeases the government. This could include those accused of failing to pay their fair share in taxes, those who homeschool or do not vaccinate their children, or those who own firearms.

Unscrupulous government officials could use E-Verify against those who practice antiwar, anti-tax, anti-surveillance, and anti-Federal Reserve activism. Those who consider this unlikely should remember the long history of the IRS targeting the political enemies of those in power and the use of anti-terrorism laws to harass antiwar activists. They should also consider the current moves to outlaw certain types of “politically incorrect” speech, such as disputing the alleged “consensus” regarding climate change.

Claiming that mandatory E-Verify is necessary to stop illegal immigration does not make it constitutional. Furthermore, having to ask the federal government for permission before obtaining a job is a characteristic of authoritarian societies, not free ones. History shows that mandatory E-Verify’s use will expand beyond immigration enforcement and could be used as a tool of political repression. All those who value liberty should oppose mandatory E-Verify.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

Backed by a robust economic growth, employment in the EU continued to rise more strongly than expected in the third quarter of 2017, while unemployment figures declined further according to the latest Quarterly Review on Employment and Social Developments in Europe.

Marianne Thyssen, Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, said, “Growth is back in Europe. Employment in the EU reached the highest level ever recorded with more than 236 million people in jobs. And unemployment is steadily declining. We should make the most of this positive economic momentum and deliver on new and more effective rights for citizens that we laid down in the European Pillar of Social Rights: fair working conditions, equal access to the labour market and decent social protection. Now is the time to make sure all citizens and workers can benefit from these positive evolutions on the labour market.”

Compared to a year before, EU employment rose by 1.7%. This corresponds to an additional 4 million people employed, of which 2.7 million in the euro area. Permanent jobs and full-time employment were the main contributors to this expansion. Between the third quarter of 2016 and 2017, the number of employees with permanent contracts grew by 2.8 million. This increase is three times higher than the rise in temporary contracts (900.000). The number of full-time workers surged by about 3 million, up to 181 million, while part-time workers increased by about 300.000 up to 42.7 million.

The EU employment rate of 20-64 years olds has increased consistently over the past three years, standing at 72.3% in the third quarter of 2017, the highest rate ever reached. Nonetheless, large disparities among Member States remain. National employment rates ranged from 58% in Greece to 82% in Sweden. The report also shows that unemployment in the EU is approaching pre-crisis levels at a steady pace. Unemployment has receded by around 8.6 million people since its peak recorded in April 2013 and remained below 18 million people in December 2017, the lowest level since November 2008.

Further figures on the labour market in the Quarterly Review also confirm the improved health of the EU economy.

Labour productivity in the EU improved by 0.8% compared to thethird quarter of 2016. By far the strongest increase was recorded in Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania (3% or more year-on-year).

The financial situation of EU households continued to improve at a growth rate of around 1.5% year-on-year, mainly driven by an increase in income from work. Nearly all Member States continued to see growth in household income in the year to the first half of 2017. Nonetheless in the several countries, namely Croatia, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain as well as in the Netherlands, gross disposable household income was still below the level of 2008.

Labour demand and labour shortages continued to increase. The overall job vacancy rate[1] in the EU has reached 2% in the third quarter of 2017. The job vacancy rate was higher in services than in industry and construction. Labour shortages[2] increased, and hiring[3] activity recovered (up 3.7% in a year to the second quarter of 2017). The separation rates[4] declined well below pre-crisis levels, while the job finding rate[5] has accelerated its recovery over the last quarters and approached its pre-crisis rate.

Notes:
[1] The job vacancy rate is a percentage of vacant posts compared with the total number of vacant and occupied posts.

[2] The labour shortage indicator is a share of firms pointing to labour shortage as a factor limiting production.

[3] The hiring indicator is a share of workers who started the job with an employer within the past 3 months.

[4] The separation rate is a share of employed who left the employer in a given period.

[5] The finding rate is a share of unemployed who find the job in a given period.

The “Paris Agreement” adopted by the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties in December 2015 officially included the “2°C Global Temperature Target” in the conference results and pursued efforts “to limit the level of global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”.

At 1.5/2°C temperature warming level, how the global and regional climate will change, is a matter of public concern and relates to the decisions of policies, guidelines and measures on mitigation and adaption of future climate change. Accurate answers to this question are subject to data constraints, as neither of the available projection datasets under future climate change scenarios is designed for a 1.5/2°C temperature warming levels.

Recently, LI Donghuan, a doctoral student from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with her mentors Prof. ZHOU Tianjun and associate Prof. ZOU Liwei, used the long-term impact-relevant coupled climate model data available for stabilization pathways at 1.5°C and 2°C warming levels, which was released by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), to investigate the change of extreme high temperature events over East Asia in 1.5°C and 2°C warmer futures.

Based on the analysis of changes in multiple indices that characterize the intensity, frequency and duration of extreme high temperature events, they show that the magnitude of warming in East Asia is approximately 0.2°C higher than the global mean in both warming scenarios.

Most populous subregions, including eastern China, the Korean Peninsula and Japan, will see more intense, more frequent and longer lasting extreme temperature events under 1.5°C and 2°C warming. The 0.5°C lower warming will help avoid 35%-46% of the increases in extreme high-temperature events in terms of intensity, frequency and duration in East Asia with maximal avoidance values (37%-49%) occurring in Mongolia. This means that it is beneficial for East Asia to limit the warming target to 1.5°C rather than 2°C.

“In contrast to previous work on transient climate change under different temperature warming levels, we focus on equilibrium climate changes at two temperature warming levels and to quantify the changes of extreme high-temperature events over East Asia at 1.5°C and 2°C warming levels. Our results indicate that the 0.5°C less warming will help avoid 35%-46% of the increases in extreme high-temperature events in terms of intensity, frequency and duration in East Asia. As far as we know, this is the first published quantitative estimate of the equilibrium climate response over East Asia under the global 1.5 ° C and 2 ° C warming level,” said one of the authors Zou, “I hope the results are useful for the mitigation and adaption of climate change and the associated government decision-making.”