Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami said the administration is determined to proceed with the plans to boost the country’s missile industry in the next Iranian calendar year.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a weekly cabinet session in Tehran on Wednesday, the defense minister said he has given the cabinet a report on the status of the country’s missile program and its progress.

He said President Hassan Rouhani and the ministers were impressed by the plans to develop various types of missiles, including air-to-air, ground-to-air, ground-to-ground, surface-to-surface, coast-to-sea, and subsurface-to-surface missiles.

The defense minister stressed that all of the plans for developing the missile industry, particularly for increasing the accuracy of missiles, will be carried out in the next Iranian year (to start on March 21).

Hatami also said that greater missile power will enhance the country’s deterrent capabilities.

In February 2018, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei called for efforts to maintain and boost Iran’s defense capabilities, hitting back at the enemies for disputing the country’s missile program.

“Without a moment of hesitation, the country must move to acquire whatever is necessary for defense, even if the whole world is opposed to it,” Ayatollah Khamenei said on February 18.

Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Labour Party, has come under pressure to support a fresh Brexit referendum as the party’s members overwhelmingly oppose the UK’s exit from the European Union.

According to a polling, part of an ongoing study into attitudes in various parties, 72 percent of Labour members believe that their leader should fully support a second referendum.

While only 18 percent are opposed to Labour campaigning for a second vote, 88 percent would favor remain if such a vote takes place, shows the survey.

Meanwhile, 16 percent say they have contemplated quitting Labour due to its pro-Brexit stand, according to the analysis, which is part of the Party Members Project led by Professor Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London.

The researchers said Corbyn’s own supporters would turn against him if he still opposes another referendum, as he did a few days before Christmas.

“Our survey suggests Labour’s membership is overwhelmingly in favor of the UK remaining in the EU and badly wants a referendum to achieve that end,” said Bale.

“If Jeremy Corbyn genuinely believes, as he has repeatedly claimed, that the Labour party’s policy should reflect the wishes of its members rather than just its leaders, then he arguably has a funny way of showing it – at least when it comes to Brexit,” he added.

“Labour’s grassroots clearly hate Brexit and, although many of them still love Corbyn, he might not be able to rely for much longer on their support for him trumping their opposition to leaving the EU.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May, whose Brexit deal has faced opposition, used her New Year message to urge lawmakers in the parliament to approve her plan for withdrawal from the bloc.

The appeal came as May would go to the House of Parliament in mid-January to face a crunch vote on her Brexit deal. She delayed an original vote planned for early December, fearing that the deal could be rejected.

Original source

Seagrass beds are so effective in protecting tropical beaches from erosion, that they can reduce the need for regular, expensive beach nourishments that are used now.

In a recent article in the journal BioScience, biologists and engineers from The Netherlands and Mexico describe experiments and field observations around the Caribbean Sea. “A foreshore with both healthy seagrass beds as well as calcifying algae, is a resilient and sustainable option in coastal defense”, says lead author Rebecca James, PhD-candidate at the University of Groningen and the Royal Dutch Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), The Netherlands. “Because of erosion, the economic value of Caribbean beaches literally drains into the sea.”

Increasing erosion with climate change

The authors looked at beaches of the Caribbean Sea, where almost a quarter of the Gross Domestic Product is earned in tourism, mainly around the beaches.

“With the increase of coastal development, the natural flow of water and sand is disrupted, natural ecosystems are damaged, and many tropical beaches have already disappeared into the sea”, co-author Rodolfo Silva, professor of Coastal Engineering at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma of Mexico says. “Until now, expensive coastal engineering efforts, such as repeated beach nourishments and concrete walls to protect the coast, have been made to combat erosion. Rising sea-level and increasing storms will only increase the loss of these important beaches.”

Experimental flume

To find out to what extent seagrass beds are able to hold sand and sediment on the beach foreshores, James and her promotor, professor Tjeerd Bouma (NIOZ and Utrecht University), conducted a simple but telling experiment. With a portable and adjustable field flume to regulate water motion in a Caribbean bay, they observed when particles on the sea bed started moving.

“We showed that seagrass beds were extremely effective at holding sediment in place”, James says. “Especially in combination with calcifying algae that “create their own sand”, a foreshore with healthy seagrass appeared a sustainable way of combating erosion.”

More seagrass, less erosion

Along the coastline of the Mexican peninsula of Yucatan, the team put their theory to the test. “By looking at beaches with and without protection of healthy seagrass beds, we showed that the amount of erosion was strongly linked to the amount of vegetation: more seagrass, meant less erosion”, co-author dr. Brigitta van Tussenbroek of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma in Mexico says. “At beaches where seagrass beds were destroyed, the researchers saw a sudden strong increase in erosion, resulting in an immediate need of expensive beach nourishments.

Promising future prospects

Both NGO’s and engineering industry welcome these novel insights. “To date, seagrass beds are too often regarded as a nuisance, rather than a valuable asset for preserving touristically valuable coastlines. This study could change this perspective completely”, Bas Roels of World Wildlife Fund Netherlands says. “The study opens opportunities for developing new tropical-beach protection schemes, in which ecology is integrated in engineering solutions”, adds Mark van Koningsveld, professor at the Delft University of Technology and working for the international marine contractor Van Oord.

According to co-author Johan Stapel of the Caribbean Netherlands Science Institute (CSNI) on St. Eustatius this will require a multilateral approach in conservation and restoration, as seagrass faces increasing pressure from various sources of pollution and invasive species. “Fortunately, NIOZ has a strong tradition in successfully restoring all kinds of coastal vegetation from seagrass to mangroves”, Bouma concludes.

A study carried out by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania finds that low wages and poor benefits leave many female health care workers living below the poverty line. The report that will appear in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health has been published online.

“Every day in the clinic and in the hospital, my colleagues who work in low-wage positions – as cleaners, dietary workers, medical assistants and nurse’s aides – make vital contributions to the care of our patients.” says Kathryn Himmelstein, MD, lead and corresponding author of the paper. “These workers should not have to go home to poverty or be unable to afford health care for themselves and their families.” A resident in the MGH Department of Medicine and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, Himmelstein initiated the study as a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania.

The authors note that more Americans are employed in health care than in any other industry, and three quarters of them are women. Their analysis of data from the 2017 Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, found that 18 percent of employed women responding to the 2017 survey and 23 percent of employed Black women work in health care, many of them in low-paying jobs.

Although the average hourly wage for female health care workers of more than $19/hour was higher than the average of around $16/hour for all other industries, it was almost 25 percent lower than the average for men working in health care. The data suggested that 34 percent of female health care workers, and nearly half of the Black and Latina women working in the health sector, earned less than $15/hour. While the largest number of health care workers making less than $15/hour were employed by hospitals, such workers made up a larger share of the total workforce in home health care and at nursing homes and other residential care facilities. Relatively few women and even fewer women of color worked as physicians or managers.

Projecting the survey’s results across the entire U.S. population suggests that 5 percent of all women health care workers – including 10.6 percent of Black and 8.6 percent of Latina women health care workers – live in poverty, the authors note. Overall, 1.7 million women health care workers and their children lived below the poverty line in 2017, accounting for nearly 5 percent of all people living in poverty in the U.S. The researchers also found surprisingly high numbers of the female health care workers surveyed lack health insurance. Overall, 7 percent – projected to represent more than 1 million women nationwide – were uninsured, including more than 10 percent of Black and Latina women employed in health care.

The researchers also projected the potential impact of raising the minimum wage to $15/hour, a policy already implemented in several cities and some medical centers. They found that adopting such a policy nationwide would decrease poverty rates among female health care workers by up to 50 percent, while increasing U.S. health care costs by less than 1.5 percent.

Himmelstein says, “Public health experts have been urging hospitals and other health care providers to focus on the ‘social determinants’ of ill-health, and these institutions should start by addressing their own employment practices. But we shouldn’t just leave that up to health care employers; lawmakers have a tremendous opportunity to lift millions of people out of poverty and promote racial and gender justice in health care employment by raising statutory minimum wages.”

Senior author Atheendar Venkataramani, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine, adds, “Wage inequality in the health care sector reflects what we are seeing in other sectors of the economy in the United States. In that spirit, these findings should inform active debates around the role of new policies – for example, raising minimum wages, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit or expanding access to higher education – that seek to address widening income inequality and diminishing opportunities for upward mobility.”

U.S. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy says President Donald Trump invited congressional leaders back to the White House Friday for more talks on how to end the government shutdown.

Trump is demanding $5 billion for a wall along the U.S. southern border. Democrats have refused to allocate that amount.

Wednesday’s meeting between Trump and top Democrats and Republicans ended with no sign of progress, beyond the president’s willingness to continue talks.

“We know we have a challenge along the border. We want to solve that issue,” McCarthy told reporters. “We want to make sure we open this government up. And I think at the end of the day, the president, listening to him, he wants to solve this, as well.”

‘As long as it takes’

Before sitting down with members of Congress, Trump said the government shutdown would last “as long as it takes.”

“It could be a long time, or it could be quickly,” he told his Cabinet.

He also insisted that “walls work,” and called the border with Mexico a “sieve.”

Trump said there are as many as 35 million illegal immigrants in the United States, contradicting experts who say the number is far lower.

Incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi plans to introduce a bill to reopen the government when the Democrats take control of Congress Thursday

The legislation would fund all agencies through September and the Department of Homeland Security through February. It would not include money for a border wall. But by temporarily funding Homeland Security, it would spin off the issue from the rest of the funding dispute for separate negotiations.

The White House has called the bill a “nonstarter” and blamed Democrats for the shutdown.

McConnell won’t consider Democrat plan

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday the Senate would not consider bills Democrats plan to vote on in the House on Thursday that don’t include $5 billion for Trump’s border wall.

“We can go back and forth,” Pelosi told NBC News. “How many more times can we say no? Nothing for the wall.”

Pelosi accused Trump of holding the federal government hostage over his campaign promise to build the wall that Mexico would pay for.

“That is so ridiculous. A, Mexico’s not paying for it. And B, we have better use of funds to protect our border. The president knows that,” Pelosi said.

Trump has said without secure borders, you don’t have a country and that $5 billion is very little to pay for national security.

He has also said he welcomes immigrants to the United States but said they must enter legally.

Major D.C. attractions closed

Meanwhile, Washington was full of tourists Wednesday frustrated that major attractions were closed because of the shutdown.

The Smithsonian Institution, which includes the popular Air and Space Museum and the National Zoo, are closed. The National Gallery of Art is out of money and will close Thursday.

Trash in federal parks is not being collected, and more than 800,000 federal workers are either furloughed or working for no pay.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware called the shutdown “senseless” and “without a purpose.”

By Suadad Al-Salhy

A video of an Iraqi member of parliament firing into the air has sparked anger after stray bullets from celebratory New Year gunfire killed a teenage girl.

A further 170 people were either injured by guns or suffered burns from fireworks on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in the Iraqi capital, medical and police sources told Arab News.

Public anger over the number of people hurt was already high when a video circulated on social media late on Tuesday evening, showing Wihdah Al-Jumaili, a Sunni MP sitting in her car next to the driver and firing several shots into the air from a Beretta handgun.

Jumaili said she was celebrating the marriage of a friend’s son when the shots were fired. She wrote on Facebook that she shot in the air as “part of tribal practices adopted by tribes in Ramadi,” the capital of the Sunni-dominated Anbar province. But the video shows her car by the side of a highway in Baghdad’s Dorra district.

Shooting in the air is considered an offense under Iraqi law, and punishments range from between one and three years in prison, lawyers told Arab News.

Thousands of Iraqi Facebook and Twitter users expressed their anger at Jumaili, and demanded she be stripped of her MP’s immunity to face prosecution. 

Many said her actions encouraged others to break the law and use personal weapons irresponsibly.

Several lawyers filed a written request on Wednesday to Iraq’s attorney general, urging him to launch a prosecution.

Every year, dozens of people are injured or even killed by celebratory gunfire on New Year or during other festivities, or events like weddings.  

Hajer Abbas, 14, suffered a head injury from a stray bullet in the Iraqi capital on New Year’s Eve and died from the wound on Wednesday.

Jumaili’s video is the latest in a series of scandals affecting politicians who Iraqis see as behaving as if they were above the law.

Leaked intelligence information this week revealed the brother of the new education minister, Shaimaa Al-Hayali had acted as a leader within Daesh during the extremist’s occupation of Mosul.

Jumaili is a member of the Iranian backed Al-Binna’a parliamentary coalition, which is led by Hadi Al-Amiri, commander of the powerful armed Badr Organization.

Political opponents were quick to link her political loyalties to the video.

“This (Jumaili) lawmaker has proved that she belongs to Al-Binna’a bloc, which means the core of action and weapons,” Muqith Dagher, an Iraqi researcher tweeted late on Tuesday.

“Of course, no one will hold them accountable.”

By Ellen R. Wald*

Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump shook the establishment in Washington by announcing that he would do exactly what he had promised during his campaign. He declared that American military service members would be leaving Syria. As Trump explained: “We have defeated (Daesh) in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump presidency.”

With this, the American media, politicians and the defense establishment flew into a rage.

First, some background. The US has about 2,000 military service members in Syria. They are prohibited from combat roles, though their work there has not been clearly defined for the American people. 

According to a law called the War Powers Resolution, a president must seek authorization from Congress to use military force in combat. In 2013, President Barack Obama asked Congress for the authorization to use military force in Syria to aid rebels fighting Bashar Assad. The US government, under Obama, was already providing aid and training to rebels. Congress refused Obama’s request and instead passed an authorization for the Defense Department to provide training and assistance to “appropriately vetted” rebels. The authorization explicitly prohibits the use of American troops in combat in Syria.

Nevertheless, American service members were sent to Syria during Obama’s second term, and they have remained there under Trump. For some, the small number of troops providing training and support is reminiscent of similar American involvement in past conflicts, most notably Vietnam. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy sent 500 Army Special Forces to train South Vietnamese soldiers. By 1973, when the US involvement in Vietnam ended in defeat, more than 58,000 American service members had been killed.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump called for America to leave Syria. He was clear from the start that his objective was to defeat Daesh, and he even talked about partnering with Russia or others to do this. However, Trump never indicated that he would keep soldiers in Syria to fight Assad, protect Kurds or counteract Turkey, Russia or Iran.

When he made the Syria withdrawal announcement, there was clear shock and fear emanating from the loudest voices in Washington. On cable news channels, from CNN to Fox, pundits said this would be a disaster. They said the absence of this small American force — which was legally prohibited from combat — would allow Iran to build a land bridge to the Mediterranean Sea. They said it would empower Assad to punish his people with more chemical weapons. They said it would embolden Russia to influence Syria (which it already does). They said it would be a signal to Turkey that it could invade Syria to massacre Kurds. They said it would endanger Israel (though Israel fights its own battles in Syria, and the US was not engaging against Hezbollah anyway).

Politicians on Capitol Hill, including Trump’s fellow Republicans like Senators Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio, also excoriated him for the decision. The politicians criticized the way he made the decision, in addition to the call itself, saying Trump did not consult with them or the military sufficiently. The same Congress that refused to allow Americans to enter combat in Syria five years ago became angered that the president did not receive consent from Congress to bring American soldiers home. 

The defense establishment was also furious. Trump’s decision was widely criticized by former generals, think tank analysts who have never held a gun, and seasoned warriors. Jim Mattis, a retired Marine general, resigned as Secretary of Defense. Dan Crenshaw, a wildly popular Congressman-elect from Texas, also criticized the decision. Crenshaw’s views hold a little more weight for many because he was wounded as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan. His argument was that: “We go there so that they don’t come here.” In other words, Americans fight Daesh in Syria so Daesh doesn’t come to the US. On the other hand, Trump has access to the most intelligence information and he seems convinced the battle against Daesh in Syria is won.

To many Americans, the incessant criticism of Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria seems disingenuous. Trump supporters argued first that any decision he makes will face opposition within Washington simply because they oppose everything he does, says or proposes. The second argument was that Washington — media, generals and think tanks alike — desire war because it is good for their business. So many people in the capital make money out of war and they are scared that Trump will minimize US combat (in fact, soon after the Syria announcement, Trump announced that he will be ordering the return of more troops currently in Afghanistan).

Trump does not see the US as the only country capable of calming unstable situations around the world. Saudi Arabia has pledged assistance in Syria, and Trump pointed to this as an example of a regional partner participating in regional issues. Israel continues to hamper Iran’s ambitions in Syria with bombing missions and the demolition of Hezbollah tunnels. In Trump’s estimation, if there is a role for outside forces in Syria, it need not necessarily be filled by the US.

Americans outside of the Washington establishment are tired of sending young men and women into war zones. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks against the US, the American military has suffered almost 6,000 combat fatalities and almost 60,000 wounded, not to mention the psychological issues faced by returning soldiers. The American populace is tired of fighting wars at the other end of the world. Washington may have an unsatiated appetite for fighting, but America prefers to bring its soldiers home.

• Ellen R. Wald, Ph.D. is a historian and author of “Saudi, Inc.” She is the president of Transversal Consulting and also teaches Middle East history and policy at Jacksonville University. Twitter:  @EnergzdEconomy

In 2014, plant biologists with the California Department of Agriculture reported an alarming discovery: native wildflowers and herbs, grown in nurseries and then planted in ecological restoration sites around California, were infected with Phytophthora tentaculata, a deadly exotic plant pathogen that causes root and stem rot.

While ecologists have long been wary of exotic plant pathogens borne on imported ornamental plants, this was the first time in California that these microorganisms had been found in native plants used in restoration efforts. Their presence in restoration sites raised the frightening possibility that ecological restoration, rather than returning disturbed sites to their natural beauty, may actually be introducing deadly plant pathogens, such as those related to Sudden Oak Death, into the wild.

New work by a UC Berkeley team in the College of Natural Resources shows for the first time just how widespread and deadly the threat of pathogens from restoration nurseries may be.

The team surveyed five native plant nurseries in Northern California and found that four harbored exotic, or non-native, Phytophthora pathogens. Strains of the pathogens from native plant nurseries were shown to be at times more aggressive than strains found in the wild, and some of them are rapidly developing resistance to the fungicides that can be used to control them, the researchers found.

Working with restoration nurseries around the state, the researchers showed that new management techniques, coupled with new methods for detecting pathogens, can help these nurseries limit the spread of exotic pathogens.

“Some of these restoration projects cost tens of millions of dollars, but of course their actual value is much higher, because of the wealth of services healthy natural ecosystems provide, including supporting animal and plant biodiversity, providing good water and air quality, and enjoyable recreation sites,” said Matteo Garbelotto, cooperative extension specialist and adjunct professor of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley.

“Such services are highly diminished in ecosystems affected by exotic plant diseases, while water runoff and erosion, the establishment of exotic plants and animals, and even hotter wildfires may increase in conjunction with disease outbreaks in natural ecosystems,” Garbelotto said.

Pathogens evolve to outwit fungicides

Bacteria that make humans sick are constantly evolving to resist the antibiotics designed to fight them, and resistance to fungicides has been documented in microbes causing diseases in agricultural plants. Garbelotto and his team wanted to know if the widespread use of fungicides in in native and ornamental plant nurseries could also accelerate the development of fungicide-resistance in plant pathogens.

Their research was spurred in part by their discovery of a new strain of the Sudden Oak Death pathogen in Oregon forests that is highly tolerant of a fungicide commonly known as phosphite, one of the main weapons used against plant parasites in the wild because its application does not cause any known negative environmental side effects.

Together with a group of New Zealand researchers, they decided to study fungicide resistance of Phytophthora — a genus of plant pathogens that can case lethal cankers and root rot — to two important fungicides, including phosphite.

The researchers gathered numerous samples of Phytophthora from 11 species present both in forests and plant nurseries. They then tested the sensitivity to phosphite of multiple individuals per species.

While most of the species tested were overall still sensitive to phosphite, strains of four species were able to resist the effects of the chemical, the researchers report in PLOS ONE. These include Phytophthora ramorum, the parasite behind Sudden Oak Death in North America and Sudden Larch Death in Europe, and Phytophthora crassamura, a species first discovered recently by the same UC Berkeley researchers in native plant nurseries and restoration sites in California.

Some strains within each of these four species, although genetically almost identical to strains still susceptible to phosphite, were resistant to it. The presence of chemical tolerance or chemical sensitivity when comparing nearly genetically identical strains suggests that the development of resistance occurred relatively recently, perhaps in response to the widespread use of phosphites in native and ornamental nurseries, Garbelotto said.

“These pathogens can be literally flooded with these chemicals in plant production facilities, and at the beginning of the study, we hypothesized that in such predicaments these pathogens would be forced to evolve resistance” Garbelotto said. “Indeed, our hypothesis was correct, and we found that some of them evolved the ability to tolerate exposure to phosphite.”

While phosphite can still help to spur a plant’s immune system, this may not be enough to quell the spread of the disease, Garbelotto said.

“By pressuring these pathogens to evolve resistance to phosphites, we are effectively taking out phosphite as a potential tool to manage these disease outbreaks,” Garbelotto said. “Furthermore, the ability to quickly develop tolerance to a fungicide may be an indication these pathogens can adapt quickly to new environments. Thus, they may become formidable invasive organisms, infesting larger swaths of natural areas and causing significant disease and mortality of essential native flora.”

A widespread – but reparable – problem.

Since the first discovery of Phytophthora in California restoration sites, research by the UC Berkeley team and others have traced the deaths of wild trees and plants back to strains of the pathogen originating in native plant nurseries, rather than strains already found in the wild. However, few studies have documented just how prevalent the problem is.

In a recent study published in the journal Plant Pathology, UC Berkeley researchers examined 203 individual plants across five restoration nurseries in California and found that 55 of the plants were infected with Phytophthora.

“We were able to prove that this is a widespread problem in California,” Garbelotto said. “Most of the stock that they used is infested, and the levels were very high. For some species more than 50 percent of the plants we tested were infected.”

The team then worked with the infected nurseries to implement new best management practices to try to limit the spread of disease without the use of phosphite or of other fungicides. These simple guidelines, which included more careful management of water runoff and soil to reduce cross contamination, reduced the prevalence of disease to nearly zero a year after implementation.

“We were able to prove that after a year of following the guidelines, those facilities were clear of pathogens, and other facilities that did not follow the guidelines still had the pathogens,” Garbelotto said. “As a result of these findings, people are now putting a lot of money and effort into making sure that the plants are clean, by following similar guidelines and by making sure that no fungicides are used to avoid the development of resistance.”

The Sahara desert is one of the harshest, most inhospitable places on the planet, covering much of North Africa in some 3.6 million square miles of rock and windswept dunes. But it wasn’t always so desolate and parched. Primitive rock paintings and fossils excavated from the region suggest that the Sahara was once a relatively verdant oasis, where human settlements and a diversity of plants and animals thrived.

Now researchers at MIT have analyzed dust deposited off the coast of west Africa over the last 240,000 years, and found that the Sahara, and North Africa in general, has swung between wet and dry climates every 20,000 years. They say that this climatic pendulum is mainly driven by changes to the Earth’s axis as the planet orbits the sun, which in turn affect the distribution of sunlight between seasons — every 20,000 years, the Earth swings from more sunlight in summer to less, and back again.

For North Africa, it is likely that, when the Earth is tilted to receive maximum summer sunlight with each orbit around the sun, this increased solar flux intensifies the region’s monsoon activity, which in turn makes for a wetter, “greener” Sahara. When the planet’s axis swings toward an angle that reduces the amount of incoming summer sunlight, monsoon activity weakens, producing a drier climate similar to what we see today.

“Our results suggest the story of North African climate is dominantly this 20,000-year beat, going back and forth between a green and dry Sahara,” says David McGee, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “We feel this is a useful time series to examine in order to understand the history of the Sahara desert and what times could have been good for humans to settle the Sahara desert and cross it to disperse out of Africa, versus times that would be inhospitable like today.” McGee and his colleagues have published their results in Science Advances.

A puzzling pattern

Each year, winds from the northeast sweep up hundreds of millions of tons of Saharan dust, depositing much of this sediment into the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of West Africa. Layers of this dust, built up over hundreds of thousands of years, can serve as a geologic chronicle of North Africa’s climate history: Layers thick with dust may indicate arid periods, whereas those containing less dust may signal wetter eras.

Scientists have analyzed sediment cores dug up from the ocean bottom off the coast of West Africa, for clues to the Sahara’s climate history. These cores contain layers of ancient sediment deposited over millions of years. Each layer can contain traces of Saharan dust as well as the remains of life forms, such as the tiny shells of plankton.

Past analyses of these sediment cores have unearthed a puzzling pattern: It would appear that the Sahara shifts between wet and dry periods every 100,000 years — a geologic beat that scientists have linked to the Earth’s ice age cycles, which seem to also come and go every 100,000 years. Layers with a larger fraction of dust seem to coincide with periods when the Earth is covered in ice, whereas less dusty layers appear during interglacial periods, such as today, when ice has largely receded.

But McGee says this interpretation of the sediment cores chafes against climate models, which show that Saharan climate should be driven by the region’s monsoon season, the strength of which is determined by the tilt of the Earth’s axis and the amount of sunlight that can fuel monsoons in the summer.

“We were puzzled by the fact that this 20,000-year beat of local summer insolation seems like it should be the dominant thing controlling monsoon strength, and yet in dust records you see ice age cycles of 100,000 years,” McGee says.

Beats in sync

To get to the bottom of this contradiction, the researchers used their own techniques to analyze a sediment core obtained off the coast of West Africa by colleagues from the University of Bordeaux — which was drilled only a few kilometers from cores in which others had previously identified a 100,000-year pattern.

The researchers, led by first author Charlotte Skonieczny, a former MIT postdoc and now a professor at Paris-Sud University, examined layers of sediment deposited over the last 240,000 years. They analyzed each layer for traces of dust and measured the concentrations of a rare isotope of thorium, to determine how rapidly dust was accumulating on the seafloor.

Thorium is produced at a constant rate in the ocean by very small amounts of radioactive uranium dissolved in seawater, and it quickly attaches itself to sinking sediments. As a result, scientists can use the concentration of thorium in the sediments to determine how quickly dust and other sediments were accumulating on the seafloor in the past: During times of slow accumulation, thorium is more concentrated, while at times of rapid accumulation, thorium is diluted. The pattern that emerged was very different from what others had found in the same sediment cores.

“What we found was that some of the peaks of dust in the cores were due to increases in dust deposition in the ocean, but other peaks were simply because of carbonate dissolution and the fact that during ice ages, in this region of the ocean, the ocean was more acidic and corrosive to calcium carbonate,” McGee says. “It might look like there’s more dust deposited in the ocean, when really, there isn’t.”

Once the researchers removed this confounding effect, they found that what emerged was primarily a new “beat,” in which the Sahara vacillated between wet and dry climates every 20,000 years, in sync with the region’s monsoon activity and the periodic tilting of the Earth.

“We can now produce a record that sees through the biases of these older records, and so doing, tells a different story,” McGee says. “We’ve assumed that ice ages have been the key thing in making the Sahara dry versus wet. Now we show that it’s primarily these cyclic changes in Earth’s orbit that have driven wet versus dry periods. It seems like such an impenetrable, inhospitable landscape, and yet it’s come and gone many times, and shifted between grasslands and a much wetter environment, and back to dry climates, even over the last quarter million years.”

Pediatric endocrinologists are warning that despite a lack of medical tests to determine its safety, U.S. doctors are increasingly injecting children who have gender dysphoria with a powerful hormonal suppressant normally used to treat prostate cancer.

“[Parents] need to continue to love their children. They need to continue to affirm their human dignity. Yet they shouldn’t have to jettison biological reality to be able to put what they’re being told into practice, in terms of disrupting normally timed puberty,” Dr. Paul Hruz, an associate professor of pediatrics and endocrinology at Washington University in St. Louis, told The Christian Post.

Leuprorelin, sold under the brand name Lupron, has never been green-lighted by the Food and Drug Administration to treat gender dysphoria, nor have there been any peer-reviewed studies done on the drug’s long-term physical and psychological side effects on children, The Christian Post reports.

The Christian Post interviewed several doctors in a recent report who said synthetic hormones could put children on a pathway to permanent sterilization, and many other long-term repercussions which may not be felt for years.

Hormone blockers, like leuprorelin, are approved for use in children to treat precocious puberty— when a child experiences puberty at an abnormally early age— and pediatricians may administer them to children to help them handle hormone drives and avoid peer pressure related to their sexual maturity.

Doctors may diagnose children with central precocious puberty when signs of sexual maturity begin to develop in girls under the age of 8 or boys under the age of 9, according to the drug’s website.

When used normally, the drug suppresses hormonal signals from the pituitary gland which regulate testosterone or estrogen levels. This can aid in the treatment of prostate cancer for men and endometriosis in women.

When used to suppress normally-timed puberty, however, the drug can affect bone density, which increases during a child’s normal pubertal development, Hruz told The Christian Post.

“The reality is that there is no long-term data about treating children, and the only data that we have in adults indicates that medical interventions to align the appearance of the body to a transgendered identity does not fix the problem,” he said, adding that overwhelming evidence exists that most children will realign their gender identity with their biological sex if left alone.

Dr. Michael Laidlaw, a Rocklin, California-based board certified physician, told The Christian Post that a group called the World Professional Association for Transgender Health overhauled and “co-opted” the guidelines regarding gender transition therapy of the Endocrine Society, the largest global professional organization representing the field of endocrinology, to be overwhelmingly pro-transition.

Ladilaw also claimed that parents who change their minds about helping their children transition are often “strong-armed” or “bullied” into continuing the treatment by doctors, who warn that the child may commit suicide without the treatment.

“Gender dysphoria is not an endocrine condition, but is a psychological one, and should, therefore, be treated with proper psychological care,” Laidlaw told the The Christian Post.

“But it becomes an endocrine condition once you start using puberty blockers and giving cross-sex hormones to kids.”

Ladilaw also mentioned that he knows of no psychological condition that is treated by misaligning a patient’s hormones from their normal levels. He said he predicts that a few years down the road, when patients begin to realize the side effects of the treatment, there will likely be medical malpractice lawsuits filed against those who encouraged their transition.

Dr. Quentin Van Meter, a pediatric endocrinologist in private practice in Atlanta, said that doctors who oppose gender transition therapy today face barriers to getting published and are routinely dismissed by the scientific community at large.

“There is a core of very diabolical people who are filtering large sums of money into this and using mass social pressure,” Van Meter asserted.

California passed a law in September 2018 to provide resources for “gender-affirmative” treatment for foster children, despite strong opposition from doctors; a group of endocrinologists have co-authored a letter of protest to the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism regarding the guidelines. Between 2009 and the present, the number of transgender medical clinics in the U.S. has ballooned to 55.

The doctors cited by The Christian Post all recommended appropriate counseling to uncover the root cause of the child’s distress, rather than seeking a gender change.

A team of space scientists has captured new images of a volcanic plume on Jupiter’s moon Io during the Juno mission’s 17th flyby of the gas giant. On Dec. 21, during winter solstice, four of Juno’s cameras captured images of the Jovian moon Io, the most volcanic body in our solar system. JunoCam, the Stellar Reference Unit (SRU), the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) and the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVS) observed Io for over an hour, providing a glimpse of the moon’s polar regions as well as evidence of an active eruption.

“We knew we were breaking new ground with a multi-spectral campaign to view Io’s polar region, but no one expected we would get so lucky as to see an active volcanic plume shooting material off the moon’s surface,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of the Juno mission and an associate vice president of Southwest Research Institute’s Space Science and Engineering Division. “This is quite a New Year’s present showing us that Juno has the ability to clearly see plumes.”

JunoCam acquired the first images on Dec. 21 at 12:00, 12:15 and 12:20 coordinated universal time (UTC) before Io entered Jupiter’s shadow. The Images show the moon half-illuminated with a bright spot seen just beyond the terminator, the day-night boundary.

“The ground is already in shadow, but the height of the plume allows it to reflect sunlight, much like the way mountaintops or clouds on the Earth continue to be lit after the sun has set,” explained Candice Hansen-Koharcheck, the JunoCam lead from the Planetary Science Institute.

At 12:40 UTC, after Io had passed into the darkness of total eclipse behind Jupiter, sunlight reflecting off nearby moon Europa helped to illuminate Io and its plume. SRU images released by SwRI depict Io softly illuminated by moonlight from Europa. The brightest feature on Io in the image is thought to be a penetrating radiation signature, a reminder of this satellite’s role in feeding Jupiter’s radiation belts, while other features show the glow of activity from several volcanoes. “As a low-light camera designed to track the stars, the SRU can only observe Io under very dimly lit conditions. Dec. 21 gave us a unique opportunity to observe Io’s volcanic activity with the SRU using only Europa’s moonlight as our lightbulb,” said Heidi Becker, lead of Juno’s Radiation Monitoring Investigation, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Sensing heat at long wavelengths, the JIRAM instrument detects hotspots in the daylight and at night.

“Though Jupiter’s moons are not JIRAM’s primary objectives, every time we pass close enough to one of them, we take advantage of the opportunity for an observation,” said Alberto Adriani, a researcher at Italy’s National Institute of Astrophysics. “The instrument is sensitive to infrared wavelengths, which are perfect to study the volcanism of Io. This is one of the best images of Io that JIRAM has been able to collect so far.”

The latest images can lead to new insights into the gas giant’s interactions with its five moons, causing phenomena such as Io’s volcanic activity or freezing of the moon’s atmosphere during eclipse, added Bolton. JIRAM recently documented Io’s volcanic activity before and after eclipse. Io’s volcanoes were discovered by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft in 1979. Io’s gravitational interaction with Jupiter drives the moon’s volcanoes, which emit umbrella-like plumes of SO2 gas and produce extensive basaltic lava fields.

The recent Io images were captured at the halfway point of the mission, which is scheduled to complete a map of Jupiter in July 2021. Launched in 2011, Juno arrived at Jupiter in 2016. The spacecraft orbits Jupiter every 53 days, studying its auroras, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

The solar-powered Juno features eight scientific instruments designed to study Jupiter’s interior structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Juno mission for Bolton. Juno is part of the New Frontiers Program, which is managed at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space built the spacecraft, and SwRI provided two Juno instruments to study the massive Jovian aurora.

Researchers have long known that sick children can affect a company’s bottom line, as employees are distracted or have to take time off to care for their children. Far less is known about the impact a parent’s work life has on their children’s health.

In a paper published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, researchers report that children’s health is less likely to be negatively affected when their parents feel a sense of control over their work lives.

“If you can decide how you are going to do your job, rather than having that imposed on you, it is better for children,” said co-author Christiane Spitzmueller, professor of industrial organizational psychology at the University of Houston.

The good news, she said, is that there are things organizations can do to provide employees with that sense of control.

In addition to Spitzmueller, who also is managing director of the Center for ADVANCING UH Faculty Success, authors include first author Eugene Agboifo Ohu of the Lagos Business School in Lagos, Nigeria; Jing Zhang of California State University-San Bernadino; Candice L. Thomas of St. Louis University; Anne Osezua of the Institute for Work and Family Integration; and Jia Yu of the University of Houston.

The researchers collected data from both parents and children in Lagos, Nigeria, targeting one group of low-income families and a second group of more affluent families. Teenage children from both groups were surveyed at their schools and asked to assess their own health.

Spitzmueller said the researchers expect their findings to be applicable in the United States, as the more affluent families had education levels, incomes and expectations of family life that are similar to those in western nations.

While the low-income group included people living in dire poverty, she noted that their responses did not differ markedly from those of the wealthier group. “Economic resources were not as much of a buffer as we would have thought,” she said.

Instead, feelings of autonomy in the workplace accounted for the difference between families where the parents’ work-family conflicts played out in health problems for the children and those whose children fared better.

The researchers look at so-called “self-regulatory resources,” or the amount of self-control parents bring to parenting, including the ability to act in a more reflective manner.

“If a parent has too many stressors, it reduces your self-control,” Spitzmueller said. Parental self-control was linked to better health outcomes for children. In other words, how we parent when we experience high levels of stress is probably fundamentally different from how we parent when we are coping well.

“At lower levels of job autonomy,” the researchers wrote, “employees likely have to rely more on self-regulatory resources to compensate for the impact of limited control over one’s job on one’s personal life. At higher levels of job autonomy, freedom and more decision-making opportunities are likely to motivate the person to engage; however, self-regulatory resources would be less needed.”

The impact was most pronounced when job demands are high and job autonomy is low, and Spitzmueller said that allows for potential interventions and policies to address the issue.

Some are relatively simple, including teaching parents to take a few minutes to recharge before plunging from the workplace into parenthood. Practicing mindfulness, Spitzmueller said, can allow parents to “replenish their resources.”

Businesses and organizations can play a role, as well. Although the researchers say their findings are just the start of understanding how parental stressors affect children’s well-being, they also encourage workplace interventions aimed at promoting job autonomy.

Managers and supervisors can be trained to more effectively deal with their employees and to encourage a greater sense of autonomy, Spitzmueller said.

By Saji Thomas

A newly installed state government in central India plans to form a ministry of spirituality to nurture inter-religious harmony and combat rampant violence by hard-line Hindus against Christians and Muslims.

Religious minority leaders have welcomed the initiative of the incoming Congress Party-led government of Madhya Pradesh that in a Dec. 18 election defeated the pro-Hindu government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The state, governed by the BJP for the past 15 years, reported hundreds of violent incidents against religious minorities such as Christian and Muslims. A Congress Party government communique Dec. 29 said the state’s new chief minister, Kamal Nath, had decided to form a ministry and department to strengthen inter-communal harmony and religious amity.

The communique noted that many countries — including the United States, England, Argentina, Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Myanmar, Tunisia, Indonesia and Denmark — had done likewise.

Church leaders such as Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal told ucanews.com on Jan. 2 the special new ministry would be worthwhile as Madhya Pradesh had been fractured by hate. Religiously, ethnically and culturally diverse countries such as India could not advance unless their various communities collaborated, the prelate said.

He noted that in India there was often false propaganda against Christians and Muslims.

“They are reduced to objects of hate,” Archbishop Cornelio said. “The ministry can help heal such misgivings against religious communities and ensure peace and respect to all.”

Church leaders accused the former BJP-led government in the state of tacitly supporting violence orchestrated by Hindu hardliners against Christians and Muslims in a push for Hindu dominance.

The BJP, despite winning the past three consecutive state elections, could manage only 107 seats in the 230-seat legislative house this time.

Congress emerged as the single largest party with 114 seats, only two short of a simple majority, and formed government with the support of smaller parties and independent legislators. Saji Abraham, state president of the communal harmony division of the Congress Party, said that under the BJP the state became a hotbed of religious violence, especially anti-Christian. He described the new Madhya Pradesh government initiative as an attempt to apply a balm to wounds inflicted by the BJP.

Abraham added that the BJP tried to create divisions among religious communities for political purposes. The state reported the highest number of anti-Christian incidents in the past three years, according to a report by Persecution Relief, an Indian ecumenical forum. Attack against Christians, who constitute less than one percent of the state’s 73 million people, almost doubled in 2017.

Madhya Pradesh witnessed 52 reported attacks against Christians in 2017, up from 28 in 2016. Shibu Thomas, founder of Persecution Relief, said that in 2018, there were at least 24 major incidents against Christians. 

By Jonathan Power*

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman remains at large, the unapologetic murderer (according to the CIA) of the respected dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. Even though President Donald Trump came close to accusing him of the deed, he has pulled back, citing Saudi Arabia’s importance as an oil producer and arms buyer.

The Prime Minister of the UK, Theresa May, is too preoccupied with Brexit to want to give up an important market. President Emanuel Macron of France is silent after an initial outburst. Now pressed by the demands of the demonstrators, he also wants to keep sources of revenue that come from sales of jets.

On December 27 King Salman stepped into the crisis. Whatever admonishment he may have given his son, he is clearly not prepared to sideline him from his seat of power. Instead he has compromised by merely reshuffling the cabinet.

The acceptance of the status quo must be halted. If Russia is to be penalized with sanctions for the murder on British soil of an ex-Russian spy living in Salisbury, so must Saudi Arabia be punished. In today’s world in peace-time such a murder is not just for condemnation, the perpetuators must be punished.

It’s a crime against humanity and UN Security Council members should pass a resolution demanding the crown prince’s arrest and trial at the International Criminal Court. (The U.S., although not a member, has voted for a prosecution before.)

The arms purchases which are huge for Saudi Arabia are in fact only a small percentage of both America’s and Europe’s arms production. Given their brutal anti-civilian use in the war in Yemen they should have been halted long ago. With this added reason for cancellation, again the Security Council should vote on a resolution to ban them.

This will have little effect on Saudi Arabia. It has large stockpiles and spare parts can easily be bought on the black market. However, it is a shot over the bows.

Oil is another question. Oil prices have fallen dramatically the last two months to 50 U.S. dollars a barrel. It’s opening up a great hole in Saudi Arabia’s budget. Oil importing countries have Saudi Arabia “over a barrel”, as the saying goes. The price must be held down until Saudi Arabia cries “uncle”.

Saudi Arabia has tried to persuade OPEC to agree to its members cutting their oil production without much success. Meanwhile, America’s shale oil production isn’t deterred by the low price. Production in the shale formation that stretches from west Texas to New Mexico, the epicentre of production, is still increasing. The U.S. is now the world’s largest producer of oil. This is one of the key factors in the price fall. But the overwhelming majority of large shale oil producers are still making a profit.

Trump has said he is happy with this state of affairs, equating the fall in gas prices for motorists as akin to a tax cut.

The U.S. is in a very comfortable position vis a vis the oil kingdom. So are the other Western nations. Trump has self-interested reasons for continuing on this path. The “tax cut” is worth more to the U.S. economy than the value of arms sales. He is being pressured by a fairly united Congress to be tough on Saudi Arabia. He himself has criticized the murder. If his policy brings down the crown prince he won’t be particularly sorry. It will make him look good.

Saudi Arabia is the middle of a long-term program to diversify its economy so it can be less dependent on oil. Billions are being poured into industrialization and new cities. It is costing more than the country has available.

Its future looks bad. U.S. oil imports have fallen from 13 billion barrels a day in 2005 to 2.4 b/day last year. It’s forecasted that this year they could fall as low as 330,000 b/d.

One would have thought the king, seeing what is going on, would have deposed his errant son by now. The only explanation for him not doing that is the mistaken belief that, under the influence of a further fall in prices, U.S. production will contract and American pressure will ease.

But this is wishful thinking. The U.S. is OK about the present price. Technological and efficiency gains are enabling oil-shale producers to still make a profit. Its production won’t contract. As for Saudi Arabia, it dare not increase production to drive the price further down to put shale producers out of business. It needs every dollar it can get for its own needs.

The Saudi’s bluff will soon be exposed. The Security Council must now make its move.

(RFE/RL) — Pakistan’s military claims it has shot down a second Indian “spy drone” in two days flying in Pakistani airspace over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

In a statement, Major General Asif Ghafoor, an army spokesman, said Pakistani troops downed the drone on January 2 along the Line of Control that divides the Pakistani and Indian-controlled portions of Kashmir.

Ghafoor tweeted a photo purportedly showing the wreckage, but did not provide further details.

Pakistan’s military also reported shooting down an Indian drone on January 1.

There has been no comment from New Delhi.

Kashmir is split between Pakistan and India, both of which claim the territory in its entirety and have fought two wars over it since their independence from British rule in 1947.

[I wrote this for the New Yorker magazine’s issue of November 30, 1998]

It used to be that people who owned a lot of things could protect themselves and their things by erecting sturdy houses and, if necessary, putting a lock on the door. Today, it seems, that’s not enough. It’s estimated that three million American households live within gated communities – twenty thousand of them, often equipped with private security guards and electronic surveillance systems. Some years ago, the town of Rosemont, Illinois, erected a beige wrought-iron fence. Rosemont is a suburb of Chicago, with a population of four thousand, and it has one of the largest auxiliary police forces in the United States.

A wall is being erected around the nation, too – an outer perimeter, separating the United States from the Third World. So far, our national wall extends along only sixty-four miles of the nearly two-thousand-mile border with Mexico, but Congress has appropriated funds for lengthening it and also fortifying it.

The urge to erect walls seems to be growing, just as disparities in wealth are widening. Many of the Americans who reside within gates like Rosemont’s have become substantially wealthier during the past several years, whereas a great many Americans who live outside the gates have not. (One man, appropriately named Bill Gates, has a net worth roughly equaling the combined net worth of the least wealthy forty percent of American households.)

On a much larger scale, inhabitants of the planet who reside at latitudes north of the national wall are diverging economically from those who live south of it. The consequence is that at both perimeters – the town wall and the national wall – outsiders are more desperate to get in and insiders are more determined to keep them out. Yet the inconvenient fact is that increasingly, in the modern world, the value of what the insiders own and of the work they do depends on what occurs outside.

Half a world away from Rosemont are places whose currencies, denominated in bahts, ringgits, rupiahs, and won, began toppling more than a year ago, and seem to have come to rest only in the last several weeks at levels far below where they started. This has caused most of these countries’ citizens to become far poorer. An Indonesian who had worked for the equivalent of three dollars and thirty-three cents a day before the rupiah’s decent is now working for about one dollar and twelve cents. Efforts by the International Monetary Fund to build back the “confidence” of global investors in these nations by conditioning loans on the nation’s willingness to raise interest rates and cut their public spending have had the unfortunate side effect of propelling more of their citizens into ever more desperate poverty. After the tremors spread to Russia last summer, and it defaulted on its short-term loans, the worldwide anxiety grew, spreading all the way to Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America, with the widest gap between rich and poor. In return for its promise of austerity, Brazil is now set to receive an international line of credit totaling forty-one and a half billion dollars, designed to convince global investors that its currency will not lose its value, and that, therefore, there is no reason for them to take their money and run.

All this commotion has also diminished the economic security of quite a number of people who thought of themselves as safely walled in. …. Recent government data show that in the third quarter of 1998 the profits and investments of Americans companies shrank for the first time since the recession year of 1991. This is largely because their exports to Asia and Latin America have continued to drop, while cheap imports from these regions are undercutting their sales in the United States. In consequence, they have been laying off American workers at a higher pace, and creating new jobs at a slower pace, than at any time in recent years.

We do not know how many residents of Rosemont will lose their jobs or the value of their stock portfolios because of the continuing global crisis. No burglars will climb over the steel barrier now walling off the United States and then scale Rosemont’s beige wrought-iron fence, but some residents of Rosemont will lose a bundle nonetheless.

The major risks of modern live now move through or over walls, sometimes electronically, as with global investments, but occasionally by other means. A lethal influenza virus originating among a few Hong Kong chickens could find its way to Rosemont via a globe-trotting business executive. Drugs are flowing across the border as well, not because the walls are insufficiently think but because the people behind them are eager to buy. Something these is in capitalism that doesn’t love a wall.

So why do we feverishly build more walls when they offer us less and less protection? Perhaps it is because we feel so unprotected of late. Amid all the blather about taking more personal responsibility for this or that, there is a growing fear that random and terrible things can happen to us. Solid walls at least create the illusion of control over what we call our own, and control is something we seem to need more of these days, when almost anyone can be clobbered by a falling baht.

There will be important opportunities in the next few years to advance the movement for economic, racial and environmental justice as well as peace. This article will focus on three opportunities: the 2020 elections, the decline of US empire and an economic slowdown.

The movement is in a stronger position than it has been in for years. The current movement took off during Occupy in 2011. Occupy’s headline was “We Are The 99%,” which emphasized inequality and money corrupting government. Occupy included every major front of struggle, e.g., economic insecurity, racial injustice, climate change, massive debt, never-ending wars, the crisis of capitalism and more.

Since then, the movement has grown and matured. We have majority support on many issues, have more experience and are organized to take advantage of upcoming opportunities.

The 2020 Elections: Focus On The Issues

Although the movement is independent of elections, the 2020 elections will present numerous opportunities to build a national consensus on issues. Our actions over the next two years can shape the election narrative.

The movement has already impacted the electoral process. Senator Sanders ran a more successful campaign than expected by focusing on movement issues, e.g., inequality, improved Medicare for all and free college. The movement created an environment where new Members of Congress such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.), won campaigning on our issues.

The media and political parties will make the elections a beauty contest about personalities to avoid the issues. We must keep issues front and center, including confronting candidates, even seeming allies, to demand they represent us. Doing so will build national consensus so our issues cannot be ignored no matter who is elected.

The movement should not be limited by ‘political realities.’ We need to demand what is necessary, a People’s Agenda, to solve the crises the nation and planet face. 

Since the 2016 election, our issues have grown in popularity. Democratic candidates must support improved Medicare for all if they want to be the nominee as 85% of Democrats support it. Support is strong among independent voters, the largest bloc, and now a majority of Republican voters support Medicare for all.

Take action: Demand transparency for the new National Improved Medicare for All bill.

Similarly, the Green New Deal, which has been raised by Greens since 2006, has now entered the Democratic Party dialogue, although Democratic leadership is fighting it. The Green Party version of the proposal requires a rapid transition to a clean energy economy, living wage jobs, public ownership, cutting the budget of the biggest polluter, the military, and building the social safety net. The Democratic Party version will not push for these system-wide changes. 

Dramatic changes are needed in multiple federal agencies to confront climate change. Thanks to Beyond Extreme Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is being forced to consider the climate impact of new energy infrastructure. The FERC must prioritize wind, solar, tidal and other clean energy sources while restricting oil and gas, coal and nuclear. FERC either needs to be part of the energy transformation or be disbanded.

Likewise, the corporate take-over of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Interior Department needs to be reversed. Recent reports indicate urgent and aggressive action is needed. Obama’s “all of the above” approach and business as usual won’t suffice. People who have taken action on climate change should lead those agencies.

The economy is a deciding factor in elections. Do people feel economically secure, are their salaries increasing, do their children have opportunities? A popular position for candidates to take is ending corporate trade. Candidates need to pledge to remake trade so it puts people and planet before big business.

Take action: An opportunity to remake trade is stopping Trump’s NAFTA II.

Workers have been under attack for decades by both Wall Street-funded parties. The movement should use the coming elections to push for a national jobs program, a living wage higher than $15 an hour, and a basic income for all. The right to organize unions must be restored and laws are needed to encourage worker-ownership through cooperatives so workers share in the profits they create and participate in decision-making for their workplace.

Demand A Responsible End to US Empire

Current US foreign policy is expensive, destructive and creates chaos around the world. Movement building to end US militarism and never-ending war are needed.

The national security strategy of the US is great power conflict, i.e. conflict with Russia and China. Obama’s Asian Pivot has evolved into aggressive actions under Trump, along with counterproductive tariffs that threaten the global economy. Russia has become the scapegoat for many problems in the US, such as Clinton’s failed election. The US is lining Russia’s border with NATO military bases while threatening to escalate the conflict in Ukraine and starting a nuclear arms race.

A radical shift is needed with Russia and China. Detente with Russia is needed in order to end the arms race, stop military belligerence and remove bases from their border. The US should develop a win-win relationship with China. If the two largest economies can work together, they can ameliorate many global problems, e.g. poverty, the climate crisis and economic insecurity.

The withdrawal of troops from Syria and Afghanistan needs to be pushed. The movement should demand a full withdrawal including ground troops, Air Force, contractors, and the CIA and a stop to the funding of proxy forces. This should be followed by a full withdrawal from Iraq. Rather than war with Iran, the US should end the Middle East quagmire, which has trapped the US this entire century.

In Latin America, the US has been very destructive. Central American governments in the US orbit are wracked with poverty, misery, and violence causing many to flee north toward the US. Brazil, which had been moving in a positive direction, now has an extreme right-wing government supported by the US.

The economic war, attempted coups and assassinations and military threats on Venezuela are destructive. Russia has sent troops to Venezuela and is considering sending more to counter US threats. The US should be seeking a partnership with Venezuela, not domination.

Economic sanctions are now being used against Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in our hemisphere, after a violent US-supported uprising organized with oligarchs, US-funded NGOs and the Catholic Church. The attack on Nicaragua reignites the Contra War of the Reagan era, targeting a government that resists US domination.

The US is expanding militarism in Latin America by bringing NATO to Colombia. Under their right-wing government, there is extreme violence against labor, environmentalists and Afro-Colombians as well as constant threats to its neighbor, Venezuela. The US relationship with Colombia is a source of instability in the region and needs to transform into a relationship of stability and de-militarization.

Africa is becoming a 21st Century battleground. The US is militarizing Africa through AFRICOM while China is pursuing a win-win economic strategy in Africa. US-China competition in Africa could become another quagmire, i.e. draining US resources while causing destruction and chaos for Africa.

Take action: Support Black Alliance for Peace’s call for US out of Africa. 

Closing US and NATO foreign bases is a key step to ending empire. On April 4, when NATO holds its 70th-anniversary meeting in Washington, DC, on the same day as the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death and his Beyond Vietnam speech, people are organizing in response. There will be a major march on the Saturday before and events throughout the week calling for an end to NATO, as well as highlighting the triple evils King emphasized: militarism, racism and consumerism caused by capitalism. We can create a movement of movements event and change the political dialogue in the US.

These issues show a failing empire They are opportunities to change the course of US foreign policy. Working with people across the country, Popular Resistance will help build the peace movement through regional Peace Congresses in 2019 and a national Peace Congress in 2020. Contact us at info@popularresistance.org if you want to participate in these.

Opportunities For Economic Transformation

The weak stock market in December portends an economic slowdown or collapse worse than 2008. There are other troubling signs, e.g. high government, business, and personal, including student, debt, a fragile international economy, tariff wars and sanctions that create international economic confusion, among others. Further, the US is overdue for a “correction,” recession or worse. Even with the Republican tax cut that caused large buy-backs of stock to grow the stock market, the market is now faltering.

The fundamentals of the US economy have been flawed for years. The wealth divide has been expanding, leaving most people in the US economically insecure, since ‘trickle down economics’ began under Reagan. Corporate trade agreements since Clinton have hollowed out the Midwest economy leaving fly-over states insecure. Urban areas have been neglected leaving primarily communities of color impoverished. Abusive police and mass incarceration have been used to prevent justified uprisings. Military spending takes more than 60% of federal discretionary spending while the social safety net has been shredded.

Unlike 2008, the movement is positioned to push for changes in the economy. An economic downturn will weaken those in power as they will be justifiably blamed. The president, who campaigned on the economic insecurity of workers and the middle class, has governed on behalf of the wealthy. The economic downturn will impact him more than Mueller or the 16 other Trump investigations.

An economic slump will be an opportunity for the movement to push for a new economy. Our It’s Our Economy project puts forward a vision for a new economy based on economic democracy that empowers people through worker-owned businesses, a national jobs program, guaranteed basic income and more.

Economic democracy includes public programs that serve the public interest, e.g., public banks that work with community banks and credit unions to meet the necessities of the people, not serve investors. It includes public utilities and democratized energy production so every home and business is an energy producer spreading the profits, rather than funneling them to concentrated corporations.

Economic democracy also includes confronting issues of communication, equal access to a free and open internet, i.e., net neutrality and high-speed Internet in rural and poor communities. The expanding censorship of social media must be confronted through extending freedom of speech and press along with privacy protections.

If the movement continues to build power and put forward transformational programs such as those outlined above, the next two years will be the beginning of a decade of positive change. We need to prepare now. Over this holiday, we encourage you to listen to this interview with Kali Akuno for more wisdom on how to make transformation a reality.

The fact that one child buried in the rubble at the Magnitogorsk explosion was found alive only because his father overrode representatives of the emergency services ministry to show where his son must be has outraged some Russians as yet another example of their government’s indifference to what happens to them.

Moscow commentator Anastasiya Kirilenko says that in “rotting” Europe, as the Putin regime describes it, those responding to a disaster would have done everything possible to try to save the lives of the victims.  But in Russia, “no such efforts” to do so were in evidence (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5C2BC1BD70D50).

Such reactions to the approach of Russian officials, including the decision to pull most of the ambulances away from the scene even before all the missing had been found, are likely to spark demands for a wholesale housecleaning at the Emergency Services Ministry which has already acquired a horrific reputation.

In an article posted on the Versiya portal two days before the events in Magnitogorsk, commentator Aleksandra Volkova points out that major scandals and the results of audits show that the ministry today “is not in a position to fulfill its functions” in a satisfactory manner (versia.ru/pochemu-ministerstvo-po-chrezvychajnym-situaciyam-stremitelno-teryaet-reputaciyu).

Indeed, she says, arrests of its senior officials for malfeasance have been a daily occurrence in recent months.

This marks a major change, Volkova says. When Sergey Shoygu was in charge, the emergency services ministry was among the most respected institutions in the country, according to numerous polls, with people saying that “they steal everywhere except in the ministry for emergency situations.”

“But time passes” and that image has passed away as well. The ministry’s poor performance at the Kemerovo shopping center fire, an event that cost 60 lives, represented a major turning point.  Ever more often since then both ordinary Russians and other Russian officials have questioned the ministry’s capacity to do its job.

Investigations have revealed cases of major bribes, incompetence, and other forms of malfeasance in the ministry, Volkova says.  She details more than half a dozen of them.  And the failure of the ministry to contain wildfires last summer and reduce deaths from fires throughout the year has highlighted the ministry’s lack of needed equipment and skills.

Now, in the wake of Magnitogorsk and fires in Moscow and other Russian cities in recent days, even more questions are certain to be raised about why the ministry doesn’t have the equipment it requires or apparently the commitment it needs to protect Russians. If the Kremlin doesn’t act quickly, ever more Russians are likely to shift the blame from the ministry to it.

Sheikh Hasina’s party has won the Bangladesh Elections 2018 which gives her third consecutive term as Prime Minister of Bangladesh. For India, this augurs well both for providing a fillip to BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation comprising the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka as well as Myanmar and Thailand) and for India to Act East through Bangladesh.
Given the importance of India’s North East for powering its Act East policy, India’s age-old relations with Bangladesh are also witnessing a fresh momentum with various ongoing initiatives.

First, in terms of connectivity, there is trans-shipment of Indian goods through Bangladesh’s Ashuganj port to Northeast India, expanding of rail links within Northeast India and between the two countries, the BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal) Motor Vehicles Agreement which has the potential to substantially reduce the cost of transportation between Northeast India and the rest of India. Undoubtedly, enhanced welfare of the Northeast is a welcome outcome. India, in 2015, also sanctioned Rs. 1000 crores for a 15 km India-Bangladesh rail link that would help to reduce the 1,650-km distance between Agartala and Kolkata to 515 km; i.e once the rail track is constructed through Bangladesh.

Second area is that of digital connectivity, for which Northeast India is being provided with Broadband connectivity of 10 gbps from Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar to Tripura and beyond.

Third, trade relations have improved, with overall trade expected to cross the $9 billion mark, as of May 2018 and Bangladesh’s exports to India will be almost $900 million, riding primarily on ready-made garments. During the past 11 months Bangladesh’s garment exports to India increased by 113 per cent from $129 million to $276 million. Add to this footwear, fish, beverages etc and India’s imports from Bangladesh increased by a 30 per cent. Since 2011, India’s (dollar value) imports from Bangladesh grew an average of 6% per year over 2012-16, even as its imports from the world dropped by 8% per year.

Investment is the fourth area. At a national level, India is a growing investor in Bangladesh, and now has land earmarked for development of special “Indian economic zones” in Bangladesh. During Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India in 2017, it was confirmed that India will invest up to $10 billion in Bangladeshi sectors including infrastructure and medicine and will provide $5 billion in loans, including $500 million in military assistance.

“The offers of investment and loans were given by the Indian government and private entrepreneurs during my visit to New Delhi,” she told reporters during a news conference. “Both investments and credit will be used for the development of several sectors including power and energy, logistics, education, medical, infrastructures and rail, road and waterways,” she added.

Fifth, energy cooperation is now at the centre of New Delhi’s biggest business commitments, with power and gas leading the $9-billion investment projects India has proposed to make in Bangladesh to help strengthen Dhaka’s emerging industrial base. The Reliance and Adani Groups, and the flagship power corporation National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) were among the Indian blue-chip companies that concluded investment proposals thus ensuring that cross-border power connectivity has emerged as the key bridge of friendship between the two countries over the past few years.

India already exports 600 MW of power (including 100 MW from Tripura) to Bangladesh, and much more is in the offing. In the future, this energy trade could well link up with potential hydropower exports from Bhutan and Nepal to form a BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal) power market. Deeper cooperation would also facilitate access to energy supplies through projects such as the natural gas pipeline linking Myanmar to India via Bangladesh.

Sixth, in terms of connectivity with ports, the Bangladesh Cabinet in September 2018, has approved use of its Chattogram (earlier known as Chittagong) and Mongla ports for Indian shipments to north-eastern states of India. The agreement will provide India access to Bangladeshi ports to carry goods to the landlocked North Eastern states in a very short time. The Chattogram port is the busiest seaport on the coastline of Bay of Bengal, which handles around 90% of import-export trade of Bangladesh. Mongla port is the second largest port of the country and it is located in Bengal Delta. This is a major boost for India’s connectivity both with the North east as well as with Myanmar and beyond.

In an interview published just five days before the elections, in The Hindu newspaper of Dec 26, 2018, Professor Gowher Rizvi, foreign policy adviser to the Sheikh Hasina Government, spoke of the various initiatives taken by the two countries in the past years.

In his words, “In the last decade the relationship between the two neighbors has reached new heights– virtually almost all outstanding issues have been amicably settled including demarcation of boundaries, resolution of adverse territorial possessions including ‘teen bigha’ and the enclaves; cross-border purchase of electricity; joint power ventures, significant Indian private investments in Bangladesh industries; and untied line of credit amounting to nearly 8 billion dollars. Buses are running from Shillong and Guwahati to Kolkata via Dhaka; direct passenger and goods trains have started to operate again; the waterways are being renovated to enable commerce through riverine routes; and the agreement on coastal shipping has cut the cost of cargo massively. The benefits of connectivity – road, air, rail, river and ICT– is fostering sub-regional cooperation and bringing benefits to India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. We are rebuilding the linkages, especially through river and road, the links which were destroyed in 1965 Pakistan-India war, and visa regime is enormously eased. Even though the adverse trade balance prevails, Bangladesh exports to India has almost quadrupled in the last couple of years.”

When questioned on the unresolved issue of the Teesta water agreement, he said, “Indeed, the Teesta water agreement has not yet been signed. But it is important to understand that an agreement on water-sharing has been arrived at; and as far as we are concerned there is no question of re-negotiating the agreement.” On China, Dr. Rizvi confirmed that although Bangladesh considers China as a development partner, it will not allow its territory to be used by one country against another. With respect to the Rohingya issue, he underlined the imperative for international sanctions on Myanmar, but confirmed that no refugee would be repatriated to Myanmar until the country was safe for their return.

Thus, the importance of Bangladesh for India’s initiatives for BIMSTEC and ASEAN cannot be overemphasized. Moreover, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina providing leadership in India’s Eastern neighbor, India feels assured of peace and security in its North East.

*Dr. Reena Marwah
ICSSR Senior Fellow; reenamarwah@yahoo.com

The World Meteorological Organization (WM0) warns there is a 75-80 percent chance of a full-fledged El Nino from January to March of 2019.

It added such a phenomenon will increase in intensity and frequency as the planet warms, worsening their related extreme weather impacts.

“El Niño” meaning “little boy” in Spanish, is a natural weather event that causes warmer than usual waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and cooler than usual waters in the western tropical Pacific and typically occurs in December around Christmas.

The changes drive weather patterns that have global consequences like below-average temperatures and more rain for the southern U.S., but hot dry conditions for ustralia, Philippines, Indonesia, southeastern Africa and northern Brazil.

Typically, El Niño years occur after every seven to ten years, affecting more than 60 million people, causing droughts, wildfires and causing devastating coral bleaching.

Impact on Food Production

Farming is one of the main sectors of the economy that could be severely affected by the El Niño phenomenon. While drought is the main threat to food production, El Niño can also cause heavy rains, flooding or extremely hot or cold weather.

According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), this can lead to pest and disease outrbreaks and animal diseases like zoonosis and food-borne infectious ailments.

It also causes widespread forest fires.

In previous El Niño events, people whose livelihoods depend on fisheries have been heavily affected in certain areas.

This year’s El Nino is going to affect fourteen countries in Africa, the South Pacific, Asia and Central America due to their increased risk to extreme weather while another 19 countries are classed as facing moderate risk.

The above-average ocean temperatures mean that fish migrate further north in search of cooler waters, and their predators follow suit. These migrations affect not only the marine food chain, but also humans that depend on those fish populations for nutrition and income.

El Niño also causes a shift in precipitation, which means some areas may get more rain than usual while others get less, which affects agriculture.
UNFAO said it is observing the current El Nino event and designing and implementing early actions to reduce the effects on vulnerable populations in all high-risk countries and in some of the countries at moderate risk.

In Somalia, riverbanks are being reinforced and sandbagged and plastic is being distributed to protect seed stocks.

FAO is expanding operations in response to growing food insecurity as a result of poor harvests across much of southern Africa. In Malawi, the Organization is assisting governments in the preparation of food insecurity response plan.

In Zimbabwe, FAO is providing support to 40 000 smallholder households to engage in commercial livestock production, and responding to the foot and mouth disease outbreak where 5.4 million doses of vaccines are still required. FAO has also prepared a drought mitigation programme.

FAO is supporting the countries of the dry corridor in Central America to increase the resilience of households, communities and institutions to prevent and address disaster risks that affect agriculture and food and nutrition security in a timely and efficient manner.

El Nino can have profound effects on human societies and ecosystem. It influences extreme events such as drought, floods, and tropical cyclones in many regions of the world, and these conditions can impact agriculture and food security, water resources and health.

Nearly three decades ago, the development of forecasts of El Niño events captured the attention of natural and social scientists, policy makers and resource managers who were eager to see these predictions put to use.

The forecasts on El Niño in most of the tropics and much of the sub-tropics where the phenomenon is most felt benefitted the agricultural sector especially water resources management. It helped farmers about the precise amount of rain in one specific farm, and about the timing of rainfall during the rainy season, while water managers made use of forecasts to plan water conservation.

Impact on Ecosystems

El Nino can have devastating impact on everything from weather systems to ecosystems around the world.

But since El Nino isn’t always predictable, so are its effects. In some parts of world crops may fail due to drought or floods. California may have a drought, and Manila may be flooded.

In the past, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela have already seen bridges, homes and hospitals destroyed by flooding. Crops have been ruined, and the mining industry has cut exports. All this is destabilizing emerging economies.

The situation maybe equally drastic in Indonesia where droughts have hit the country particularly hard, affecting industries like mining, power, cocoa, and coffee.

But biodiversity also pays a price. El Nino can impact the natural world. Much of Australia’s wildlife is adapting to the variable weather caused by El Nino – which appears to trigger green turtle breeding and changes in duck populations.

Also, underwater ecoystems supported by coral reefs are among El Nino’s casualities Native species not only have to cope with the changing weather, but also out-compete with generalist invaders.

The islands’ marine birds – like the blue-footed booby, brown pelican and frigate bird – are struggling to feed their offspring, and are laying fewer eggs. Galapagos penguins and flightless cormorants are also heavily affected by the lack of food.

In marine ecosystems, El Nino is causing sea temperatures in the Pacific Ocean to rise, contributing to corals bleaching. Increasingly strong waves relating to El Nino, along with exploding populations of sea urchins, are also having a devastating impact on the complex coral habitats that sustain a multitude of species.

Meanwhile, the production of phytoplankton is decreasing, causing repercussions through the food chain so that even top predators like sea lions are going hungry due to sea temperature rise.

Algal beds suffer too, affecting the animals that feed on them, including marine iguanas, turtles and many species of fish. Migratory species like sharks are being forced to move further offshore and forage in deeper waters.

About the Author: Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan wrote for the British Panos News and Features and GEMINI News Service, the Brunei Times, and US Environment News Service. In the Philippines, he wrote for DEPTHNews of the Press Foundation of Asia, Today, the Philippine Post, and Vera Files. A practicing environmentalist, he holds postgraduate degrees in environment resource management and development studies as a European Union (EU) Fellow at University College, Dublin, Ireland. He is currently a Fellow of Echoing Green Foundation of New York City. He now writes for Business Mirror and Eurasia Review.