As Valentine’s Day approaches, it’s reassuring to know many of us are equipped with the basic psychological instincts to have a successful intimate relationship that lasts.

New research from Florida State University highlights ways to keep love and also identifies clear predictors for failed relationships.

In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, FSU psychology researchers Jim McNulty, Andrea Meltzer, Anastasia Makhanova and Jon Maner reveal factors that lead to infidelity, as well as prevent it. Their research is the first to find evidence of psychological responses that help a person avoid infidelity — one of the surest ways to cause a breakup — and stay in a long-term relationship.

The FSU research team followed 233 newly married couples for up to 3 1/2 years and documented intimate details about their relationships, including marital satisfaction, long-term commitment, whether they had engaged in infidelity and if they were still together.

McNulty, Meltzer, Makhanova and Maner tested two psychological processes that everyone shares in varying degrees: Attentional Disengagement and Evaluative Devaluation of potential romantic partners.

Disengagement from possible partners is the ability to direct attention away from an attractive person who could be considered a romantic option.

Devaluation of possible partners is a tendency to mentally downgrade the attractiveness of another person, even if he or she is especially good looking.

The team tested newlyweds on those processes by showing them photographs of highly attractive men and women, as well as average-looking men and women.

Researchers discovered that participants who quickly disengaged their attention from an attractive person were less likely to engage in infidelity. The time of that response was notable: Individuals who looked away in as little as a few hundred milliseconds faster than average were nearly 50 percent less likely to have sex outside marriage.

Conversely, partners who took significantly longer to look away from romantic alternatives had a higher risk of infidelity, and their marriages were more likely to fail.

The tendency to devalue, or downgrade, the attractiveness of potential romantic partners also lowered the risk of infidelity and raised the likelihood of maintaining the relationship. Faithful people evaluated romantic alternatives much more negatively.

Both reactions — disengagement and devaluation — minimized the risk of infidelity and, consequently, were predictors of relationships with a higher likelihood of succeeding.

These reactions are typically automatic, according to McNulty.

“People are not necessarily aware of what they’re doing or why they’re doing it,” said McNulty, the lead author of the study. “These processes are largely spontaneous and effortless, and they may be somewhat shaped by biology and/or early childhood experiences.”

The FSU research team believes these findings could offer mental health practitioners practical suggestions to help people stay committed to their partners. While the processes may be ingrained to some degree, McNulty said a growing body of research suggests people may be able to boost their psychological ability to employ disengagement or devaluation when tempted.

The study also identified some of the strongest predictors of infidelity, including age, marital satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, attractiveness and history of short-term relationships.

Researchers found younger people and those less satisfied with their relationships were more likely to be unfaithful.

Surprisingly, people satisfied with sex in their relationship were more likely to engage in infidelity, perhaps suggesting they felt more positive about sex in general and would seek it out regardless of how they felt about their main relationship.

Another predictor of infidelity was attractiveness. A person’s own attractiveness was negatively associated with infidelity among women but not men — meaning less attractive women were more likely to have an affair. A partner’s attractiveness was negatively associated with infidelity among men but not women — meaning men were more likely to be unfaithful when their partners were less attractive.

A person’s history of sex was a predictor of infidelity, too. Men who reported having more short-term sexual partners prior to marriage were more likely to have an affair, while the opposite was true for women.

These findings are more important than ever. The divorce rate in the United States ranges between 40 and 50 percent, and the ubiquity of social media makes it easier to connect with others. There is a compelling need, the researchers concluded, to develop new ways that help people maintain long-term relationships.

“With the advent of social media, and thus the increased availability of and access to alternative partners, understanding how people avoid the temptation posed by alternative partners may be more relevant than ever to understanding relationships.”

More rap artists are talking about molly, which is the powder or crystal form of ecstasy, and that’s having a big impact on Black listeners. Molly is a synthetic drug that acts as a stimulant and hallucinogenic. While research has shown messages in hip-hop music can influence the use of marijuana and alcohol, no research has looked specifically at whether hip-hop is actually influencing some to try molly.

In a study published in the Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse, researchers surveyed African American young adults who’ve tried molly, and found 82% said hip-hop music influenced their decision to try it. There is an abundance of song lyrics that glorify the drug, describing it as a way to party and lower sexual inhibitions.

“Molly, although not as dangerous as opioids, has been linked to psychiatric problems, sexual risk taking and adverse health outcomes like seizures, irregular heartbeat, hyperthermia and even death,” said lead author Khary Rigg, PhD, professor of mental health law and policy at the University of South Florida.

Study participants said they felt comfortable trying the drug only after trendsetting rappers like Kanye West and French Montana mentioned it in their lyrics, depicting molly as the new “it” drug that has benign consequences, unlike heroin or crack.

“I’m just trying to party like a rock star, not get strung out,” said one study participant. “Whenever they (rappers) mentioned it (molly), they are either partying, drinking (alcohol), smoking (weed), or having sex. All of the things I love to do most. I never heard about anyone getting addicted or dying. That made me feel better about trying it.”

“The behaviors of millennial African-Americans are probably the most likely to be influenced by hip-hop music as the artists themselves are typically from that demographic,” said Dr. Rigg. “This suggests that rappers may be effective sources for prevention, health promotion, and harm reduction messages aimed at African-Americans.”

Previous molly studies mostly focus on populations that are white, European, and regular listeners of electronic dance music involved in the rave scene. This new study is one of the few to focus on African-American molly use and gives us a greater understanding of how hip-hop music influences patterns of molly use among Black users.

Historical radar data from weather monitoring archives have provided unprecedented access to the behaviours of the world’s largest colony of migratory bats and revealed changes in the animals’ seasonal habits with implications for pest management and agricultural production.

The work, which focuses on the Bracken Cave colony in southern Texas, is the first long-term study of animal migration using radar, say Phillip Stepanian and Charlotte Wainwright, meteorologists from Rothamsted Research. The pair’s findings are published today in Global Change Biology.

“These bats spend every night hard at work for local farmers, consuming over half of their own weight in insects, many of which are harmful agricultural pests, such as the noctuid moths, corn earworm and fall armyworm,” said Wainwright.

“Our initial goal was just to show that the populations could be monitored remotely without disturbing the colony. We weren’t expecting to see anything particularly noteworthy. The results were surprising,” said Stepanian.

Millions of bats regularly migrate north from Mexico to Bracken Cave, which is managed by Bat Conservation International in the suburbs of San Antonio. Using the radar data, the pair measured the population exiting the cave every night for 22 years, from 1995 to 2017, enabling them to record seasonal and longer-term changes.

“We found that the bats are migrating to Texas roughly two weeks earlier than they were 22 years ago. They now arrive, on average, in mid March rather than late March,” said Wainwright.

While most bats tend to have left by the end of November, the pair discovered that about 3.5% of the summer population are now staying for the winter, compared with less than 1% 22 years ago and, from written cave surveys, no overwintering bats at all in the mid 1950s.

“We can’t tell if the overwintering bats are bats that arrived in March and have not returned south, or if they migrated to Bracken Cave from farther north,” said Stepanian. “However, the behavioural patterns indicate a response to some environmental change, and to the presence of insect prey earlier in the year.”

This bat study “presents a new perspective on adaptation to global change, answering some longstanding questions while raising many more,” concluded the pair. They also note that “weather radar networks are key infrastructure around much of the world…and hold the promise of providing continental surveillance of bat populations, as well as their ongoing responses to global change.”

Counter-terror efforts based on widely-held assumptions about the ideological motivations of children and youth recruited into extremist groups are unlikely to be effective, and could backfire, concludes new research released today by the United Nations University (UNU), a UN think-tank.

“In many cases, ideology does not appear predominately responsible for driving children into armed groups, even those that are labeled ‘violent extremist’,” says Dr Siobhan O’Neil, lead editor of “Cradled by Conflict: Child Involvement with Armed Groups in Contemporary Conflict”, a new volume based on original field research on three conflict case studies. “Evidence from the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, Mali, and Nigeria suggests that even in cases where ideology plays a role in a child’s trajectory towards an armed group, it is usually one of a number of motivating or facilitating factors.”

O’Neil, the Project Lead for the Children and Extreme Violence project, suggests that ideology is often intertwined with other important factors like community and identity. “Armed groups like Boko Haram have intertwined their ideologies with a rejection of the State to recruit those who have experienced state oppression and violence into their ranks.”

“Cradled by Conflict” points to other factors present in conflict areas, such as physical safety and food security, family and peer networks, financial incentives, coercion, and the allure of armed groups, which provide a ready-made community, identity, and status for young people.

“The international community maintains outdated and unrealistic understandings of how armed groups recruit children and maintain their involvement, as well as of how children leave armed groups and their prospects for reintegration in unstable contexts,” continued O’Neil. “These findings have significant implications for policies and programmes aimed at addressing child recruitment, use and exit from armed groups. Misinterpretations of the problem at hand can result in poorly suited programmatic responses and/or lead to children feeling stigmatized and resentful.”

“We have a responsibility to better tailor our policy and programmatic interventions to prevent child recruitment and use by armed groups. Children are our greatest resource. The international community can do more to harness their positive motivations and engage them as partners on the path to peace.”

“Cradled by Conflict” is the culmination of a two-year research project led by UN University in collaboration with UNICEF, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), and the governments of Luxembourg and Switzerland.

While serious violations like those in the Flint, Michigan, crisis are rare, ensuring reliable access to safe drinking water poses challenges for communities across the country, according to a recent study led by the University of California, Irvine.

Researchers found that between 1982 and 2015, 9 million to 45 million people annually were affected by water quality issues – and that low-income, rural regions were most vulnerable. Infractions were more numerous in “hot spots” in Texas, Oklahoma and Idaho, suggesting that these systems struggle with recurring problems.

For this first nationwide assessment of drinking water quality over several decades, trends in health-related incidents were evaluated along with vulnerability factors possibly influencing the frequency of violations since the 1974 passage of the Safe Drinking Water Act. Not all infractions pose immediate health concerns, but drinking water contaminants can cause short-term illnesses such as gastroenteritis, as well as chronic conditions including cancer and neurological disorders.

“We felt that in the aftermath of the Flint lead crisis, there was an urgent need to assess the current state of drinking water in the U.S.,” said study author Maura Allaire, UCI assistant professor of urban planning & public policy. “Generally, the country’s utilities deliver high-quality water, but every year, about 7 to 8 percent of community systems do not meet health-related standards. Identifying hot spots and vulnerability factors associated with violations indicates the types of communities that can benefit from greater regulatory oversight and assistance to help reduce quality issues, improve compliance and ensure safe drinking water across the nation.”

Study results appear in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the week of Feb. 12.

The research showed that rural areas tend to be less able to comply with quality regulations. Their community water systems experience financial strain due to declining populations, lower incomes, scarcity of technical expertise, and restricted access to loans and outside financing for infrastructure upgrades or major maintenance.

Compliance is associated with purchased water sources and private ownership. Purchased water is supplied by wholesale agencies, which have greater resources to meet federal standards, while private utilities have considerable assets at stake should they deliver poor-quality water and subsequently face lawsuits or takeover by a municipal government.

“Public policies that target underperforming utilities include prioritization of technical guidance and financial support,” Allaire said. “Training can be expanded to address common operational deficiencies, such as protection of source water and better monitoring and maintenance. And, where feasible, purchased water contracts and consolidation of systems could provide a way to achieve economies of scale for improved treatment technologies.”

Kidney stones are a painful health condition, often requiring multiple procedures at great discomfort to the patient. Growing evidence suggests that the incidence of kidney stones is increasing steadily, especially in women.

Using data from the Rochester Epidemiology Project, Mayo Clinic researchers investigated the rise in stone formers to determine if this is a new trend, or simply an improvement in the way kidney stones are detected. Their findings appear in the March issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Focusing on gender, age and stone formation, researchers examined first-time presenters of kidney stones from residents of Olmsted County, Minnesota, between 1984 and 2012. Their findings demonstrated that symptomatic stone formers tended to be female versus male, with the highest increase between women ages 18 to 39. Bladder stones were less frequent and tended to be more noticeable in men due to prostatic obstructions, while women had a higher frequency of infection stones as a result of recurrent urinary tract infections.

“Symptomatic kidney stones are becoming more common in both men and women,” said Andrew Rule, M.D., lead investigator of this study. “This is due in part to the increased use of CT scans to diagnose kidney stones.”

Dr. Rule noted that advances in imaging technology have allowed researchers to better examine and classify stone formation in patients than in days past. “We are now diagnosing symptomatic kidney stones that previously would have gone undiagnosed because they would not have been detected.”

For patients who struggle with painful kidney stones, dietary modifications are suggested to prevent future episodes. Such adjustments include drinking more water, lowering salt intake and cutting back on meat.

While results of this population-based study seem to suggest an uptick in the case of stone formation, further research is needed to clarify findings. The data came from a largely Caucasian area, and white people have a greater tendency toward kidney stones, compared to other racial groups. Imaging techniques also have improved over the span in which the study was conducted.

As Dr. Rule noted, the rise in stone formation among residents is notable; however, further assessment is needed to determine if this is a community increase or simply improvements in diagnostic capabilities.

The death of Pakistani Taliban deputy leader Khalid Mehsud in a U.S. drone strike last week was confirmed Monday by a Taliban spokesman.

Pakistani security officials announced the death of Mehsud, also known as Sajna, soon after the Feb. 8 airstrike in Afghanistan’s Paktika Province, on its border with Pakistan.

Mehsud was a commander in the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, the Taliban’s main faction. He is believed to be the mastermind of a 2011 attack on a naval base in Karachi, as well as a 2012 jailbreak in Bannu.

The spokesman said Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah immediately replaced Mehsud with another commander, Mufti Noor Wali.

The TTP has recently curtailed activities because of a successful Pakistani military offensive, and Mehsud’s death is expected to further weaken the Islamist group.

Many TTP militants have sought refuge in Afghanistan.

Mehsud is the most influential TTP leader killed since 2016, when Afghan and Pakistani Islamic State leader Hafiz Saeed Khan was killed.

Original source

A third suspicious death in Iranian prisons since early January 2018 underscores the need for an immediate independent inquiry, Human Rights Watch said. On February 10, the family of a well-known Iranian environmentalist, Dr. Kavous Seyed Emami, who had been in detention for two weeks on bogus charges, reported that he had died under unknown circumstances.

On January 24 and 25, security forces reportedly arrested seven environmental activists on January 24 and 25, including Seyed Emami, a well-known Iranian-Canadian academic and a faculty member of Imam Sadegh University. On February 10, Ramin Seyed Emami, his son, wrote on social media that authorities had summoned his mother the day before to inform her that her husband had “committed suicide” in detention.

“Iranian judicial authorities think they can get away with claiming that Seyed Emami, a well-known professor, simply committed suicide while being detained in one of the highest-security wards of Evin prison,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The Iranian judiciary long ago lost its credibility after failing to investigate repeated incidents of torture and mistreatment in detention.”

Seyed Emami’s death is the third case of alleged suicide in detention reported by the authorities since early January. On January 7 and 8, in the aftermath of mass arrests that followed protests across the country, activists reported at least two deaths, in the cities of Tehran and Arak.

On the morning of February 10, Abbas Jafari Dolat Abadi, the Tehran prosecutor, said at a news conference that intelligence authorities had arrested a number of activists who they allege were using environmental projects as a cover to collect classified strategic information. The Iran International News website reported that Houman Jokar, Sepideh Kashani, Niloufar Bayani, Amirhossein Khaleghi, Sam Rajabi, and Taher Ghadriain, were the activists arrested on January 24 and 24. They were all members of a local environmental group, the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation. The conservation organization works on protecting Iran’s flora and fauna, including the Asiatic Cheetahs, an endangered species found in Iran.

Leili Hooshmand Afshar, Sam Rajabi’s mother, strongly rejected allegations of his son being a “spy” in an interview with Center for Human Rights in Iran on February 12. “My son was an environmental activist who chose to serve his country,” said Hooshmand Afshar. “I have no information about his condition at this moment and he has not contacted his family since the time of his arrest.”

On February 11, Mahmoud Sadeghi, a parliamentarian from Tehran, tweeted that when he inquired with authorities about Seyed Emami’s death, he discovered authorities had also arrested Kaveh Madani, the deputy head of Iran’s Department of Environment and a faculty member at Imperial College London. Madani recently moved to Tehran to join the administration. On February 12, Madani published a video on his Instagram account saying that he had “returned” to his office without providing any details about whether he was arrested or not.

“This seems to be yet another wave of crackdown against people who want to help with solving the country’s chronic problems. Iranian judiciary should immediately and unconditionally release these activists unless they have credible evidence to charge them promptly with a recognizable crime and guarantee their rights,” said Whiston.

Following Seyed Emami’s death, four independent Iranian scientific associations, the political science society, the social science society, the peace studies society, and the cultural studies society, asked president Rouhani in an open letter to investigate Seyed Emami’s death and ensure that the authorities involved provided a satisfactory response. Several members of parliament also have asked judicial authorities to clarify the nature of his death.

On February 12, Ali Motahari, a parliamentarian from Tehran, told ISNA news agency that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s Intelligence Unit held a meeting with several members of parliament in which they provided some explanations about Seyed Emamdi’s death. Motahari added that authorities presented them a video which purports to show Seyed Emmadi preparing to commit suicide, but which offers no clarity on what happens afterwards.

On February 11, a confidential source confirmed in correspondence to Human Rights Watch that Seyed Emami did not have any contact with his family after he was detained. “Authorities summoned his wife and interrogated her for four hours before telling her that Seyed Emami committed suicide in prison,” the source said.

The source also provided Human Rights Watch with a statement Seyed Emami’s family issued to call for an independent, transparent autopsy so that the family and the public can learn how he died. The statement says that: “The judiciary has told the family to receive the body on Tuesday morning from Kahrizak prison on the condition that they immediately and quietly bury him. They have said they will conduct their own autopsy but have not informed the family of the result yet. A funeral is planned for Tuesday morning in the village of Amameh in the mountains north of Tehran. The family has been banned from holding a funeral service or memorial service for Mr. Seyed-Emami but a steady procession of friends, family members, students, and colleagues visited his home on Monday under the surveillance of police officers stationed near the house.”

The authorities claimed, in reporting the other two deaths, that Sina Ghanbari committed suicide in Ervin prison and Vahid Heidari in Arak prison. However, the government has failed to conduct an independent inquiry into their deaths and has harassed lawyers working on Heidari’s case. On January 15, authorities arrested Mohammad Najafi, a human rights lawyer from Arak who was following Heidari’s case and detained him for several weeks. On January 9, Najafi told Human Rights Watch that “the people who saw Heidari’s body told us that there were cuts and bruises on the left side of his forehead that could be a sign of being beaten by a baton.” Najafi also said that he had “received numerous reports from people who were detained by authorities that they were harshly beaten during their arrest and detention in Arak.”

On January 30, a parliamentary delegation visited Evin prison following allegations of abuse by prisoners’ families, but it has not released its report. Members of parliament who spoke to the media after the visit provided conflicting information about Ghanbari’s alleged suicide.

Allahyar Malekshahi, the head of the parliamentary judiciary commission, told IRNA news agency on January 30 that prison authorities showed the delegation a video of Ghanbari’s suicide. But Alireza Rahimi, a parliament member from Tehran, wrote on his Telegram channel that the video was taken from security cameras in prison and only shows Ghanbari walking into one of the bathrooms, where another inmate discovered his body behind the door two hours later.

Rahimi said the authorities arrested 4,972 people during the recent protests, significantly higher number than the 3,700 previously announced by Mahmoud Sadeghi, another parliament member from Tehran. Rahimi also confirmed that as of January 30, 438 were still in detention, and another 50 were being held by the Intelligence Ministry.

Human Rights Watch and other groups have documented abuses and torture in Iranian prisons, as well as persistent impunity for these serious violations. Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photo journalist, died in July 2003, a few days after Iranian security forces detained her at Evin prison for photographing in a restricted area in front of the prison. Authorities have still not released information on the circumstances of her death.

On January 10, 2010, a parliamentary panel investigating detentions after the disputed 2009 presidential election determined that Saeed Mortazavi, the former Tehran prosecutor general, was directly responsible for the ill-treatment of detainees in Kahrizak prison. On November 26, 2017, the Appeals Court of Tehran sentenced Mortazavi to two years in prison for complicity in the murder of Mohsen Ruholamini’s in Kahrizak detention center after the 2009 crackdown.

“The international community should push for an independent investigation into these deaths without further delay,” Whitson said. “Iranian authorities are failing the victims and their families.”

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio has called on a U.S. firm that sells DNA sequencing equipment to China to explain its relationship to police in the western region of Xinjiang, in light of controversial DNA collection program focused on the Uyghur ethnic minority.

Rubio, a Republican from Florida and chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China wrote a letter Thursday to CEO Marc Casper of Thermo Fisher Scientific, a Massachusetts-based firm raising concern about its role in China’s program.

“The Chinese government’s mandatory data-banking of the entire population’s biodata, including DNA, has understandably raised alarm bells among rights advocates given that China lacks the kinds of legal safeguards that other countries implement to manage their DNA databases,” wrote Rubio.

“These concerns are even more acute when placed in the context of the already repressive policies that exist in China, and specifically in ethnic minority regions like Xinjiang,” said his letter.

Rubio’s letter followed a report issued in December by Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based watchdog group, that said authorities are collecting DNA samples and other biometric data from all residents aged 12-65 in Xinjiang, which is home to more than 11 million Muslim ethnic Uyghurs, under the pretext of a free health care program.

HRW said the campaign also includes the collection of fingerprints, iris scans, and blood types, and expands a program already in place that only required passport applicants in Xinjiang to provide their biodata.

For all “focus personnel”—those authorities consider threatening to regime stability—and their family members, their biometrics must be taken regardless of age, HRW said.

While authorities are collecting biometrics in different ways, DNA and blood types are typically being taken through a free annual physical exams program called Physicals for All, the rights group said, adding that it was unclear whether participants are informed of authorities’ intention to gather, store, or use their data.

HRW identified Thermo Fisher Scientific as a supplier of some of the DNA sequencers to the Xinjiang police with and wrote to the company in June and August 2017 to raise concerns about privacy and other violations of Uyghurs’ rights.

The rights group carried on its website Thermo Fisher Scientific’s response to the June letter, in which the firm said that it “does not share information about our customers or their purchases.”

“Given the global nature of our operations, it is not possible for us to monitor the use or application of all products we manufactured,” wrote a company spokeswoman.

“However, we do expect all of our customers to act in accordance with appropriate regulations and industry-standard best practices,” the spokeswoman said.

Thermo Fisher Scientific did not reply to HRW’s second, follow-up letter, said the group and Rubio.

Thermo Fisher Scientific officials were not immediately available for comment on Friday.

Rubio questioned the firm on what it meant by “best practices” in its reply to HRW and asked it to “provide details of your relationship with the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, and relevant discussions you may have had regarding the intended use.”

“Since the sale of your DNA sequencing equipment to these entities, have you pursued any actions to ensure that such equipment is not misused?” asked the senator.

Omer Kanat, executive director of the Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project called for “an effort to make sure that there is accountability for American companies who provide the means for the Chinese government to engage in rights violations.”

“The collection of DNA is an egregious abuse of the right to privacy, and creates fear among Uyghurs because they do not know how it will be used by the authorities,” he told RFA’s Uyghur Service.

“The Chinese government, through coercion and threat, is claiming the right to the very bodies of Uyghurs in order to categorize and monitor them. The DNA collection scheme, like other policies, is highly racial, as this measure is not implemented elsewhere,” added Kanat.

“To see an American company be complicit in these rights violations by selling equipment is very disturbing, which is why Senator Rubio’s statement is so encouraging,” he added.

Rubio has been a candidate for the Republican nomination for president and has focused on human rights issues in his role on Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a bi-partisan advisory body.

According to Chinese state media reports, Xinjiang’s government authorized the Population Registration Program in February 2017, saying it would be carried out “in stages.” The program is meant for “scientific decision-making” that promotes poverty alleviation, better management, and “social stability.”

While official media reports say that participation in the Physicals for All should be voluntary, HRW cited one Uyghur who took part in the 2016 program in Kashgar (Kashi) prefecture as saying his neighborhood watch committee “demanded” residents complete the physical, adding that not doing so would be seen as a sign of “thought problem”—shorthand for “political disloyalty.”

China regularly conducts “strike hard” campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.

While China blames some Uyghurs for “terrorist” attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.

Reported by Alim Seytoff for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written by Paul Eckert.

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., released the following statement on the Trump administration’s budget proposal to Congress:

“Oregonians raised hell last year when Trump tried to raise power bills for Pacific Northwesterners by selling off Bonneville Power, and yet his administration is back at it again. Our investment shouldn’t be put up for sale to free up money for runaway military spending or tax cuts for billionaires. I fought off efforts to privatize Bonneville a decade ago and I’ll do everything in my power to stop this misguided scheme.

“On top of that, Trump’s cuts to the Hanford nuclear reservation cleanup make this budget proposal downright dangerous for everyone who lives near the Columbia River.

“The rest of the budget isn’t any better. This administration clearly believes in forcing hardworking Americans to work even harder to earn a living. The Trump budget pilfers resources from seniors and families to fund runaway military spending that would do nothing but enrich defense contractors and a ridiculous wall that won’t make us safer.

“Trump’s budget takes food out of the mouths of elderly Americans by cutting funding for Meals on Wheels, makes college more expensive for young people trying to get ahead and shreds support for Americans who need a leg up. Despite his campaign promises to get Americans back to work, Trump is cutting funding for the programs that would help unemployed Americans find work or train for new jobs, while adding impossibly complicated bureaucracy to programs that prevent people from starving.”

Between 2016 and 2017, California’s electricity prices rose three times more than they did in the rest of the United States, according to a new analysis by Environmental Progress.

The increases came despite 2017 having had the highest output of hydroelectricity — the state’s cheapest source of electricity — since 2011. Electricity prices in the rest of the United States outside California rose two percent, the same as the rate of inflation.

Between 2011 and 2017, California’s electricity prices rose five times faster than they did nationally. Today, Californians pay 60 percent more, on average, than the rest of the nation, for residential, commercial and industrial electricity.

California’s high penetration of intermittent renewables such as solar and wind are likely a key factor in higher prices. Economists agree that “the dominant policy driver in the electricity sector [in California] has unquestionably been a focus on developing renewable sources of electricity generation.”

High levels of renewable energy penetration make electricity expensive around the world, not just in California. As Germany deployed high levels of renewables over the last 10 years it saw its electricity prices rise 34 percent. Today, German electricity costs twice as much as that in neighboring France.

California’s RPS increases electricity costs in part by requiring the purchase of renewables even when they cannot be relied on to power the grid, requiring undiminished capacity from the combination of natural gas, hydro, and nuclear power. As a result, California today has a large amount of excess electricity generating capacity without being able to know if much of it will be available from day to day and week to week.

The rising cost of electricity in places with increasing penetration of intermittent renewables was predicted by German economist Lion Hirth. He found that the economic value of wind and solar must decline significantly as they become a larger part of the electricity supply. For example, the value of wind on the European grid drops 40 percent once it becomes 30 percent of electricity, Hirth finds, and the value of solar drops by half when it gets to just 15 percent. 

As wind and solar capacity climbs, the returns of usable power diminish because of increasing curtailment during surges that the grid cannot absorb. More and more intermittent capacity has to be pushed onto the grid to get less and less additional renewable electricity. The dynamic of soaring overcapacity and falling prices is the inevitable result of the fundamental inability of intermittent wind and solar generators to efficiently match supply to demand.

The burden of higher cost electricity and benefits of renewable energy subsidies fall unevenly on Californians. Between 2007 and 2014, the highest-income 40 percent of California households received three times more in solar subsidies — valued between $10,000 and $20,000 per household — as the lowest-income 40 percent. California households with over $100,000 in annual income benefitted from energy efficiency subsidies at twice the rate of households whose income was under $50,000.

Another reason for California’s high electricity prices is the closure of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). “In the twelve months following the closure, natural gas generation costs increased by $350 million,” a pair of UC-Berkeley economists noted. “The closure also created binding transmission constraints, causing short-run inefficiencies and potentially making it more profitable for certain plants to act non-competitively.”

*Michael Shellenberger is president of Environmental Progress, a research and policy organization.

A hole at the heart of a stunning rose-like interstellar cloud has puzzled astronomers for decades. But new research, led by the University of Leeds, offers an explanation for the discrepancy between the size and age of the Rosetta Nebula’s central cavity and that of its central stars.

The Rosette Nebula is located in the Milky Way Galaxy roughly 5,000 light-years from Earth and is known for its rose-like shape and distinctive hole at its centre. The nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases with several massive stars found in a cluster at its heart.

Stellar winds and ionising radiation from these massive stars affect the shape of the giant molecular cloud. But the size and age of the cavity observed in the centre of Rosette Nebula is too small when compared to the age of its central stars.

Through computer simulations, astronomers at Leeds and at Keele University have found the formation of the Nebula is likely to be in a thin sheet-like molecular cloud rather than in a spherical or thick disc-like shape, as some photographs may suggest. A thin disc-like structure of the cloud focusing the stellar winds away from the cloud’s centre would account for the comparatively small size of the central cavity.

Study lead author, Dr Christopher Wareing, from the School of Physics and Astronomy said: “The massive stars that make up the Rosette Nebula’s central cluster are a few millions of years old and halfway through their lifecycle. For the length of time their stellar winds would have been flowing, you would expect a central cavity up to ten times bigger.

“We simulated the stellar wind feedback and formation of the nebula in various molecular cloud models including a clumpy sphere, a thick filamentary disc and a thin disc, all created from the same low density initial atomic cloud.

“It was the thin disc that reproduced the physical appearance – cavity size, shape and magnetic field alignment — of the Nebula, at an age compatible with the central stars and their wind strengths.

“To have a model that so accurately reproduces the physical appearance in line with the observational data, without setting out to do this, is rather extraordinary.

“We were also fortunate to be able to apply data to our models from the ongoing Gaia survey, as a number of the bright stars in the Rosette Nebula are part of the survey.

Applying this data to our models gave us new understanding of the roles individual stars play in the Rosette Nebula. Next we’ll look at the many other similar objects in our Galaxy and see if we can figure out their shape as well.”

The simulations, published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, were run using the Advanced Research Computing centre at Leeds. The nine simulations required roughly half a million CPU hours — the equivalent to 57 years on a standard desktop computer.

Martin Callaghan, a member of the Advanced Research Computing team, said: “The fact that the Rosette Nebula simulations would have taken more than five decades to complete on a standard desktop computer is one of the key reasons we provide powerful supercomputing research tools. These tools enabled the simulations of the Rosette Nebula to be done in a matter of a few weeks.”

An analysis of trends in sudden unexpected infant death (SUID) over the past two decades finds that the drop in such deaths that took place following release of the 1992 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) “back to sleep” recommendations, did not occur in infants in the first month of life.

The report from investigators from MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC) and Newton-Wellesley Hospital (NWH), which has been published online in the Journal of Pediatrics, identifies several potentially modifiable factors that may contribute to the persistent risk of sudden, unexplained death during the first days and weeks of life.

“The frequency of SUID in the first month of life is higher than generally recognized, at an average of 444 cases per year in the U.S., of which 66 per year occur on the first day and 130 occur in the first week of life,” said lead and corresponding author Joel Bass, MD, chair of the NWH Department of Pediatrics. “There actually has been a dramatic and unexpected increase in deaths attributed to suffocation and asphyxiation in both newborns and infants up to 1 year old, and these deaths are potentially preventable.”

SUID is defined as the sudden, unexpected death of an apparently healthy, full-term infant under 1 year of age, the cause of which is not immediately apparent. It encompasses a range of situations, including sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which refers to deaths that remain unexplained after a thorough investigation, and deaths found to result from accidental strangulation or suffocation caused by factors such as unsafe bedding, becoming trapped between a mattress and a wall, or sleeping with a parent or another adult who inadvertently blocks the infant’s airway.

Using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention records of births and infant deaths from 1995 through 2014, the researchers analyzed deaths occurring in the neonatal (first 27 days of life) and postneonatal (28 days to 1 year) periods.

While the rates of postneonatal SUID declined nearly 23 percent from 1995 to 2002, after which they remained stable, SUID rates during the neonatal period remained unchanged. During that 20-year period the percentage of SUID cases attributed to suffocation or strangulation increased in both age groups – from around 2 percent to nearly 23 percent in the neonatal period and from 3.4 percent to almost 25 percent in the postneonatal period.

Almost 30 percent of neonatal deaths occurred during the first 6 days of life. Bass notes that many of these deaths may be the result of sudden unexpected postnatal collapse (SUPC), a sudden collapse – sometimes with full respiratory and cardiac arrest – of an apparently healthy newborn born at more than 35 weeks gestation. SUPC leads to death in around half the cases and serious neurological consequences in half of survivors.

There currently is no standard diagnostic code for SUPC, and Bass and his co-authors – including senior author Ronald Kleinman, MD, MGHfC physician-in-chief – have called for standardizing the definition of the condition and establishment of an SUPC registry to better identify such events and facilitate further study.

The investigators note that several recommended practices designed to promote breastfeeding, the importance of which they fully support, may inadvertently contribute to SUPC risks. The practice of skin-to-skin care, in which an infant is placed in a prone position on the mother’s chest has been noted in other reports to have a strong association with SUPC. If the mother is also exhausted or sedated, she may even fall asleep with the infant on her chest resulting in co-bedding, an established risk factor for SIDS.

Another recommendation that may have unintended consequences is avoiding the use of pacifiers, which some breastfeeding advocates suggest eliminating and the AAP suggests should not be used until breastfeeding is well established. As pacifier use is strongly associated with a reduced risk of SIDS, the authors feel that recommendation should be reconsidered. Since breastfeeding is also associated with a reduced risk of SIDS, the authors recommend that safe-sleep education be integrated with lactation advice.

Kleinman said,”Overall, we think it is possible that certain neonatal practices resulting in unsafe sleep circumstances both during and after the birth hospitalization, along with pacifier avoidance, may have inadvertently interfered with the implementation of safe-sleep messages and prevented a decrease in the death rate. Future research is needed to more fully explore the best messaging during the birth hospitalization that will enhance safe-sleep practices recommended by both the National Institutes of Health and the AAP and help to prevent SUID.”

Heavy air pollution caused by haze and dust particles in Iran’s southwestern city of Ahvaz, Khuzestan Province, has surged to 60 times above safe levels, crossing the “hazardous” level, in which the entire population is likely to experience adverse health effects.

According to the latest data released by the Environmental Protection Organization of the province, the air quality index in Ahvaz on Tuesday showed 9,000 micrograms per cubic meter, indicating that the dust pollution is 60 times higher than the permitted level.

The air pollution in Mahshahr, Khuzestan, has also reached 2,101 micrograms per cubic meter, according to the data.

Last month, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei authorized the Iranian administration to withdraw a sum of $150 million from the National Development Fund for projects to tackle the heavy dust pollution in the country.

The order came as President Hassan Rouhani on January 22 ordered Agriculture Minister Mahmoud Hojjati and Head of Iran’s Environmental Protection Organization (IEPO) Isa Kalantari to pay a visit to the southwestern parts of the country to address the heavy dust pollution in the areas.

Kindergartens, schools and some organizations in many cities in Khuzestan have been closed down in recent weeks because of the heavy dust pollution.

By Kamran Reza Chowdhury

The younger sister of a 24-year-old Bangladeshi woman accused of a militant-inspired knife attack in Australia faces similar charges after she pulled a blade on a law-enforcement official in Dhaka, authorities said Tuesday.

Dhaka police said Asmaul Husna, 22, [alias Sumona] attacked Tohidul Islam, the assistant commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP), while officers were at her apartment Monday night to get information about her sister, Momena Shoma, who is facing terrorism charges in Melbourne.

“As the police personnel were about to leave the apartment, the accused Sumona came out of a room with a knife in hand and started stabbing” Islam, a police report said.

Sumona shouted “Allahu akbar,” which in Arabic means “God is great,” when she began the attack, the report said. The other officers snatched the knife away and Islam was taken to a hospital where he was declared out of danger, the report said.

DMP spokesman Masudur Rahman told BenarNews that police filed anti-terrorism charges against Sumona on Monday after she admitted during interrogation that she and her older sister were members of a faction of the banned extremist group Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

Bangladeshi authorities have blamed that faction, Neo-JMB, for a 2016 terrorist attack at a Dhaka café that left 29 people dead, including 17 foreigners. Middle East-based Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility, but Bangladeshi authorities blame home-grown militants for the massacre.

The two women apparently were radicalized by watching militant videos online and on social media, according to a preliminary police report obtained by BenarNews.

“Both sisters got inspired to devote to ‘jihad’ and vowed to fight for establishing Islamic caliphate in Bangladesh,” the report said, referring to the Arabic term for struggle.

Police seized a laptop and two mobile phones from Sumona’s apartment, officials said.

‘IS-inspired attack’ in Melbourne

Australian police filed terrorism-related charges against Shoma on Saturday over what investigators alleged was an “IS-inspired attack” when the Bangladeshi woman stabbed a 56-year-old man in the neck while he was asleep at his home.

The man was taken to a hospital where he underwent surgery for injuries that were not life threatening, police said. His young daughter was present at the time of the attack, but was not injured.

The man’s neighbor heard a commotion and went to the man’s assistance, police said.

Shoma was arrested at the scene and taken to the hospital after suffering a minor hand injury, according to an Australian police statement.

Shoma, according to the statement, traveled to Melbourne on Feb. 1 on a student visa and moved into the victim’s home six days later as a renter while continuing her studies.

The daily newspaper The Australian said that until late last year Shoma attended the North South University, the same school attended by four of the Holey Artisan Café attackers.

Australian police investigators on Saturday said they were not looking for any other suspect in the Shoma case.

“We will allege this was a standalone, IS-inspired attack, designed to cause harm to our community,” Australian Federal Acting Deputy Commissioner Ian McCartney said in a statement.

Since Sept. 12, 2014, when Australia raised its national terrorism threat level, police have charged 85 people – including Shoma – as a result of 36 counter-terrorism operations around Australia, the statement also said.

The women’s father, Moniruzzaman, declined BenarNews requests for an interview. A friend, who identified herself as Julie, said Sumona used to say prayers regularly.

“But I never thought that she would turn into a militant,” Julie said, adding that Sumona “had always been immersed in social media.”

By Eleanor Beevor

ISIS’s propaganda videos are designed to cause a stir. Yet a new one released on Feb. 7 did so for unusual reasons. It showed a truck carrying women with guns, driving towards the battlefield under the ISIS flag, and then another woman, heavily armed, fighting alongside men. This is a shocking break from previous practice in the terrorist group. However, it is perhaps not entirely surprising.

For every rule there is an exception, and as ISIS’s territory shrank over the last few months, the group was increasingly hinting that it might find some flexibility in its usual ultra-strict codes of female behavior.

But the question of women’s role in jihadist movements does not start and end with ISIS. Rather, what each jihadist group does with female fighters tells us much more about itself than it does about Islamic laws on women and war.

A Women’s Movement within ISIS? 

It is firstly worth confronting some of the widespread assumptions about female jihadists. Despite the tendency in European countries to give female former jihadists more lenient sentences on the assumption that they must have been “brainwashed,”  most women who join these movements know what they’re doing, and make their wishes clear.

And despite the press’s tasteless fondness for the phrase “jihadi brides,”  women in jihadist movements have frequently and publicly voiced their desire to do more than marry. They want to join the fight. One of ISIS’s best-known female poets, Ahlam al-Nasr, wrote in an online essay:

“It is not possible for me to accept any kind of lifestyle except the life of jihad. I strongly desire it. I want to struggle with all types of jihad… and the jihad with weapons also. Both male and female Companions [of the Prophet] did so, so why won’t we do the same?”

This should not be taken to mean that women who join ISIS are fourth-wave feminists. They are not looking for equality with men, and are ready to embrace traditional gender roles, the duties of being a wife and mother, and obedience to their male guardian (mahram).

But, as Ahlam al-Nasr said, in the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammed and his companions, the period that jihadists see as the ideal model for society, women did engage in fighting. Umm ‘Amarah and a number of other women are said to have taken part in the Battle of Uhud, and their names remain lionized by jihadists today, including ISIS.

A Balancing Act 

However, there have always been caveats on women’s participation in battle. Contemporary jihadists have a balancing act to strike. They must address their functional needs, such as the need to recruit women, who might be enticed by the prospect of fighting. However, they also need to showcase a different way of living if they are to offer a real alternative to the world they decry as sinful. For them, this alternative hangs on maintaining the traditional differences between masculine and feminine.

This balance shifts in every new phase of jihadist theology. Abdullah Azzam, the infamous Islamist cleric and founding member of Al Qaeda, is known as the “father of global jihad” for his 1984 treatise Defense of the Muslim Lands. In this text, two radical statements are made that have shaped jihadist theology since.

The first is that jihad to free occupied Muslim lands is a duty of every Muslim around the world. Freeing Palestine and Afghanistan was no longer the duty of Palestinians and Afghans alone. Every Muslim around the world was to take part. And when he said every Muslim, he meant women too. Still, Azzam’s endorsement of female fighters was limited to defensive fighting, rather than giving women an equal status on the battlefield.

ISIS’s forerunner, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), was much more radical when it came to women in battle. Radicalism, in truth, was something of a trademark for its notorious leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His deployment of female suicide bombers was a shock to many jihadists, and indeed a controversial line to walk.

But Zarqawi responded that if women’s participation shamed more men into joining the fight, then the move was justifiable. This wasn’t solely Zarqawi’s doing; the ranks of female bombers in AQI actually increased after his death, up until about the American withdrawal.

Integrating the Sexes: How Far Will it Go?

Why, then, has ISIS been more reluctant than its forebear to accept female help in battle? In fact, it has never issued a concrete declaration saying that women could never fight. More confusingly, it has occasionally celebrated the work of female suicide bombers.

An attack perpetrated by female “supporters” of ISIS against a police station in Mombasa, Kenya in 2016 made the front page of one of their magazines, al-Naba’. They also attempted a prisoner exchange, offering to free the captured Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh in exchange for Sajida al-Rishawi, the woman who had attempted to blow up the Radisson Hotel in Amman on behalf of AQI, but who had been captured in the process.

Yet ultimately, ISIS was not trying to build an army, but a state, and it is for that reason that the domestic role assigned to women needed to be obsessively maintained.

Elizabeth Pearson, Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a PhD candidate at Kings College London, has conducted studies of the role of women in ISIS propaganda. She commented to Al Bawaba:

“The State project needed men to be violent, and women to support Jihad, but primarily to be good citizens, wives and mothers of the next generation of fighters. They had to be ideologues, but not to fight. This was fundamental to the whole Caliphate project. They needed to divide male violence from women’s non-violence in order to recruit, unify and regulate the new State.”

Moreover, on the rare occasion that ISIS did celebrate female participation in suicide attacks, it provoked anxious questions about what that might mean for women’s other freedoms. Terrorism scholar Nelly Lahoud found multiple online responses to ISIS’s magazine praising the female bombers in Kenya. Male ISIS supporters were concerned about where the limits would lie for women’s participation in operations.

Patriarchy vs. Women Fighters

It seems that patriarchal concerns to control female sexuality, if they do not always trump tactical needs, remain of equal or greater importance to battlefield victories. Indeed, the fact that they are now using women in battle may have an impact on ISIS’s ability to recruit men.

Elizabeth Pearson added: “If you want male recruits to join your Caliphate as warriors, those warriors have to have the highest respect. In the strongly patriarchal culture of Jihad, the value of being a warrior would be diluted if women could do it too. For those who do not favor this move to female inclusion, Al Qaeda represents a more conservative approach in this regard, and so a possible alternative. It’s not clear how far ISIS will go with its ‘new era’, but potentially it has the power to provoke schisms, and derail ISIS’s ideology as a whole.”

So even though ISIS has never truly laid down the law against women participating in battle, they are well aware of the risks of including them. When they do celebrate women’s military efforts, they alienate men and gamble with the project of the caliphate. The ideal domestic unit is a small-scale model of the vision for an ideal society.

Upsetting that by forcing difficult questions about women in battle is extremely undesirable for the would-be state. Yet it seems the time has come. Even in this video, women’s involvement is watered down. There is an interview with a disabled man who is also fighting, but no woman speaks to the camera, which suggests that males with disabilities remain a preferable alternative for fighting than women.

Colin Clarke, a terrorism analyst at RAND Corporation, said to Al Bawaba: “What the video signals is that ISIS in Iraq and Syria feels like it must do everything it possibly can to stay relevant.Whether or not women bring an additional dimension to the battlefield, what it does accomplish is getting everyone talking about the group again.”

Even if it does spark anger and doubt among some male supporters, it may galvanize more female ones. Everything has a trade-off, and it seems ISIS is now at a point of no return. It must gamble with its core beliefs if it is to survive.

Original source

Heat waves are among the deadliest and most common of environmental extremes. As the earth continues to warm due to the buildup of greenhouse gases, heat waves are expected to become more severe, particularly for cities, where concrete and a dearth of trees create what’s known as the urban heat island effect.

Using a global climate model, a team led by Princeton University researchers measured how severely heat waves interact with urban heat islands, now and in the future, in 50 American cities across three climate zones.

In terms of relative temperature increase, today’s eastern and southeastern cities are more severely affected by heat waves than arid and semiarid western cities. This is because of the amount of impenetrable, concrete surfaces and lack of moisture in eastern and southeastern cities compared to their rural surroundings. In contrast, both rural and urban dry environments experience similar temperature increases, and both have less annual rainfall than their eastern and southeastern counterparts.

However, by 2100, this is expected to flip. Arid cities like Phoenix will become hotbeds for heatwaves compared to their rural surroundings, while cities on the eastern seaboard will be less severely affected by heatwaves compared to theirs. This is because future arid cities will remain water-limited due to the lack of permeable surfaces in cities, while their rural neighbors are projected to be no longer “dry” due to higher rainfall. The overuse of air conditioners also emits heat into the urban heat islands, playing a significant role.

The findings are tied to urban-rural development. A city’s water availability, through rainfall or irrigation, dictates its evaporative cooling effects on temperature, which reduces the severity of a heat wave. In other words, cities with more moisture will cool more quickly.

“Given that 50 percent of the world’s population currently lives in cities, and that percentage is projected to increase to 70 percent by year 2050, there is a pressing need to understand how cities and landscapes are affected by heat waves,” said Lei Zhao, a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton’s Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (STEP), which is based at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. “Our study explains why cities suffer even more during extreme heat events and highlights the heat risks that urban residents face now and in the projected future.”

The findings, published in Environmental Research Letters, highlight the importance of heat-mitigation strategies and infrastructures such as green roofs — in which vegetation transfers moisture from the earth to the atmosphere by evaporation of water and transpiration from plants.

The research team used a global climate model to measure present-day conditions (1975 through 2004) and future scenarios (2071 through 2100), both at daytime and at night. They restricted their daytime analysis to every day in June through August between 1-3 p.m., when temperatures usually peak. For nighttime estimates, they used midnight, when temperatures are coolest.

Of the 50 cities selected for the study, 21 were in temperate climate zones, 14 were in continental climates, and 15 were in dry climates. Temperate climate zones experience all four seasons with a variety of temperatures throughout the year. Continental climates — where Chicago is located, for example — are known for being relatively dry with very hot summers and very cold winters. Dry and arid climates are usually desert-like with low precipitation and wide temperature swings both daily and seasonally.

The researchers focused on temperate and dry regions to draw the humidity contrasts between these two distinct zones. They measured continental climates because they also experience deadly heat, despite being located in colder climates.

For the daytime findings, the researchers showed that today’s temperate cities are water-limited, while their rural counterparts have plenty of water through ample rainfall. Therefore, cities in temperate zones experience more severe heat waves today. Today’s dry regions — both urban and rural — are both water-limited, the researchers found, because of less rainfall overall.

By 2100, this will flip. Rainfall is expected to increase overall in both climates in the future, but water availability is expected to be limited in dry cities due to impervious surfaces. This, combined with significantly elevated air conditioning energy use during heat waves, contributes significantly to the synergistic effects between heat waves and urban heat islands.

At night, the effects are consistent across climate regions and scenarios, which is concerning. High temperatures at night could cause more heat wave-related deaths, since city dwellers can find no relief.

In terms of health, heatwaves that hit today’s wetter cities increase the mortality risk by 3.2 percent. For arid cities in the future, the mortality risk increases by 2.4 percent.

“Health impacts were a key motivation for our study. Heat extremes have adverse effects on human health and increase the risk of death across regions in the world,” Zhao said.

“Our findings underscore the importance of implementing heat-mitigation strategies today. They also highlight the need for more studies of this nature to give us a better idea of the cities and landscapes that are most affected now and also under additional greenhouse warming,” said co-lead author Michael Oppenheimer, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs and the Princeton Environmental Institute at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Geosciences.

Despite the massive sums of money spent to channel public opinion in the United States in favor of Israel, unmistakable trends in opinion polls are attesting to the changing dynamics of Israel’s support among ordinary Americans.

Not only is Israel losing its support and overall appeal among large sections of American society, but also among young American Jews — a particularity worrying phenomenon for the Israeli government. The trend promises to be a lasting one, since it has been in the making for years, starting some time after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001. It was on that date that the affinity between Israel and the US purportedly grew to unprecedented levels, since both countries claimed to be fighting “Islamic terror.” In reality, the attacks, the ensuing media discourse, and subsequent wars all coagulated the support of Christian Evangelists behind Israel, as they saw the widening conflict in the Middle East as part of a long-awaited prophecy.

It was precisely then that the support for Israel from American liberals, especially those identifying with the Democratic Party, began to weaken. With time, supporting or not supporting Israel became a partisan issue, which is itself unprecedented.

While the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exploits every opportunity to maximize support for Israel in order to achieve objectives deemed important by the Israeli right, ultra-right and religious parties, Netanyahu’s conceited and confrontational style has alienated many Americans, especially Democrats. Worse, Netanyahu’s policies of entrenching the occupation, blocking any peace efforts and expanding illegal Jewish settlements also began to shift the kind of support that Israel has historically taken for granted: That of American Jews.

A comprehensive Pew poll published in October 2013 indicated that a growing number of US Jews questioned the sincerity of the Israeli government in its alleged efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Palestine. Only 38 percent thought Tel Aviv was sincere, and only 17 percent agreed that the illegal Jewish settlements were conducive to Israel’s security, while 44 percent thought the opposite.

The Israeli government, aware of the generational gap within US Jewish communities, seemed more fixated on maximizing the unprecedented trend of support it was receiving from US Republicans and religious conservatives, especially Christian Evangelists.

Fast forward to January 2018, and Israel’s rating among American Jews has plummeted even further. According to a recent Brand Israel Group study, “support for Israel among Jewish college students in the United States has dropped 32 percent between 2010 and 2016,” reported the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The survey was accompanied by stern warnings from the CEO and director-general of the influential Jewish Agency, Alan Hoffman, who described the findings as “extremely worrisome.”

However, no contingency plan is likely to reverse these numbers any time soon, since they are consistent with the overall perception of Israel among the US population. The assumption that US Jews are an insulated group, which lends support to Israel irrespective of political trends in the country as a whole, no longer suffices.

US Jewish communities are changing, and so is the entire country: The number of Democrats identifying as “liberal” leapt from 27 percent to 41 percent between 2000 and 2015. This change has been accompanied by rising sympathy toward Palestinians by that same group, as indicated by a May 2016 Pew poll, which showed that more liberal Democrats said they sympathized with Palestinians than with Israel: 40 percent versus 33 percent.

At the time, it was prematurely concluded by various media analysts that the growing disenchantment with Israel had much to do with the feud between Netanyahu and then-US President Barack Obama. Netanyahu had repeatedly challenged — and often humiliated — popular Democrat Obama on various issues, notably the expansion of the illegal settlements and the Iran nuclear deal. However, the trend continued simply because, once an issue falls into the realm of Washington partisan politics, it immediately becomes a polarizing one.

For decades, Israel was considered the only issue that united all Americans regardless of their political and ideological affiliations. That is no longer valid, and Netanyahu has played a major role in this.

The trend among liberal Democrats was countered with another trend among Republicans, who have adopted the cause of Israel as their own. According to Pew, 79 percent of conservative Republicans support Israel, while 65 percent of liberal Republicans share that view.

While Christian Evangelists succeeded in making unconditional support for Israel the litmus test for any candidate who seeks their vote, the Israeli cause is no longer a rallying cry for Democrats. Pew concluded that “the share of liberal Democrats who side more with the Palestinians than with Israel has nearly doubled since 2014 (from 21 percent to 40 percent) and is higher than at any point dating back to 2001.”

More studies by Pew were conducted in January 2017 and January 2018, all confirming that the trend is a lasting one. Of all Democrats, only 33 percent sympathized with Israel, according to Pew’s January 2017 poll. It was the “first time ever” that the Democratic Party “was nearly equally split between support for Israel and support for the Palestinians.”

And, as support for Palestinians has grown among Democrats, so has the margin between the two major parties, as the most recent Pew research indicates. While support for Israel among Republicans has remained high, a whopping 79 percent, support for Israel among Democrats has sunk even further, to 27 percent.

True, Netanyahu’s strategy in courting US conservatives has proved a success. However, the price of that success is that the relationship between Israel and the American public has fundamentally changed. Netanyahu has shoved Israel into the heart of polarizing American politics and, although he has achieved his short-term goals (for example, obtaining US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel), he has irrevocably damaged the decades-long consensus on Israel among Americans, and in that there is a great source of hope.

By Cornelia Meyer*

The last two weeks have seen turmoil in the markets, which have also not been kind to oil. The price of Brent fell by 8.5 percent, while US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) dropped a whopping 9.5 percent. This was the biggest weekly decline since early 2016.

The price has recovered somewhat and Brent was trading at $62 per barrel on Tuesday.
The price might have looked a little frothy given that Brent flirted with $70 per barrel last month. That was partly a reflection of the agreement between OPEC and non-OPEC producers gaining traction.

In December 2016 the 14 OPEC countries and 10 non-OPEC producers, led by Russia, pledged to take 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) out of the market. It took some time, but the inventory overhang is drawing down nicely. The market turmoil, a spike in the dollar, worse than expected fourth quarter earnings by some oil majors and a stock build up in the US for the week ending Feb. 2, all did their bit.

It was an extraordinary week and it will take all markets time to recover.

As always there is a pull and a push on the oil price. The demand outlook remains strong, although weaker than anticipated. OPEC expects global demand for crude to rise by 1.59 million bpd, a slight upward revision from previous months. The IEA is more bearish in its oil market report, warning that non OPEC supply growth might outpace demand growth in 2018. If nothing else, this certainly makes a strong argument for maimtaining the OPEC/non-OPEC deal for the duration of 2018. The divergence between the two agencies is in line with their reports in previous months. If global growth is in line with IMF forecasts at an average 3.9 percent, demand is likely to be robust. There is a question mark over Venezuela and how many barrels will be lost as a result of the country’s precarious domestic situation and potential US sanctions. There are other trouble spots also.

Despite this, US production has been surprising, passing the 10 million bpd mark at the beginning of February. Some market analysts expect US production to exceed 11 million bpd by the end of the year, while others produce more conservative forecasts.

The UAE welcomed the first US crude cargo to the Middle East last December. The US has emerged as a major producer, and the changes in law permitting US crude exports will have an impact on trade patterns as well as on the relative share of the big players in the major markets. However, there is a question mark over the sustainability of growth in shale oil. The IEA described it as explosive. The question is how much more the basins of the Permian and Eagle Ford and their like have to give geologically. Energy research consultants Wood Mackenzie predicted that shale production will rise until 2024, then decline.

Meanwhile, the agreement to co-operate between OPEC and non-OPEC nations is going strong with compliance sometimes above 100 percent. The Saudi and Russian Energy Ministers Khalid Al-Falih and Alexander Novak have taken full control of the process by co-chairing the influential Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, which oversees implementation and compliance of the deal. They have started to name and shame non-compliant nations, for instance declaring in January that Iraq and Kazakhstan did not comply.

The deal is needed to bring some predictability to the oil market. While Russia’s willingness to stick to the deal throughout 2018 has been questioned, on Monday OPEC’s Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo assured US cable channel CNBC that Russian President Vladimir Putin had promised Russia would keep the bargain. This makes sense: There is pressure on Novak to release the restriction from Russian producers who sit on close to 800,000 bpd of new capacity. However, Russia stands to gain more from higher oil prices than increased production. In addition, no one is interested in upsetting the apple cart until the presidential elections are over.

Oil company chiefs welcomed the increased predictability as they need price ranges to make informed investment decisions. During the years of ultra-low oil prices after 2014 they canceled billions of scheduled investments. Barkindo fears there will be insufficient production to meet global demand, when missing production works its way into the system due to canceled investments, which could be as early as 2020.

All in all the cooperation agreement has more or less achieved what it was supposed to do, even if it took longer than expected.

The right track is being pursued on inventories. However, US inventories are expected to grow during the first quarter of this year. This is seasonal. They always do when refineries go into their maintenance schedule and the growth should not cause alarm.

There will also be market vagaries and currency fluctuations, which all will have an impact on oil prices. There will always be surprises with some producers exceeding expectations and others suffering from geopolitical woes. That is par for the course.

In the meantime, the trajectory is what matters, as well as that both Russia and Saudi Arabia are committed to the deal through 2018. After that, the accord constitutes a useful framework for future co-operation between OPEC and select non-OPEC countries, which will stretch beyond the current deal.

• Cornelia Meyer is a business consultant, macro-economist and energy expert. Twitter: @MeyerResources