Month: September 2017

London to End Uber Ride Hailing App Over ‘Security Implications’

Posted on by Cobiz

Transport officials in London say they will not renew Uber’s license to operate in the city due to “a lack of corporate responsibility” in dealing with the ride hailing app’s safety issues.

The regulatory body Transport for London said in a statement Friday Uber London “is not fit and proper” to operate in the city.

TfL considers that “Uber’s approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications,” the agency said.

Among the issues cited by TfL are Uber’s approach to reporting serious criminal offenses and its use of “greyball” technology, which can be used to block regulators from fully accessing the app.

Uber said the city’s decision to end the app would show the world that “London is closed to innovative companies.”

“By wanting to ban our app from the capital, Transport for London and the mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice,” the company said in a statement.

Uber has said it will appeal the decision.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan and the city’s taxi drivers union both said they supported the decision not to renew Uber’s license.  

“The mayor has made the right call not to relicense Uber,” Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, said.

“We expect Uber will again embark on a spurious legal challenge against the Mayor and TfL, and we will urge the court to uphold this decision. This immoral company has no place on London’s streets.”

 
…

your ads here!

Solar Boom or Bust? Companies Seek Tariffs on Solar Imports

Posted on by Coeco

Cheap solar panels imported from China and other countries have led to a boom in the U.S. solar industry, where rooftop and other installations have surged 10-fold since 2011.

But two U.S. solar manufacturers say the flood of imports has led one to bankruptcy and forced the other to lay off three-quarters of its workforce.

The International Trade Commission is set to decide Friday whether the imports, primarily from Asia, are causing “serious injury” to the companies. If so, the commission will recommend this fall whether the Trump administration should impose tariffs that could double the price of solar panels from abroad.

President Donald Trump has not cozied up to the solar industry, as he has for coal and other fossil fuels, but he is considered sympathetic to imposing tariffs on solar imports as part of his “America first” philosophy. A White House spokeswoman declined to comment Thursday.

Both sides of the dispute were making their case ahead of Friday’s meeting.

“Simply put, the U.S. industry cannot survive under current market conditions,” a lawyer for Georgia-based Suniva Inc. wrote in a petition filed with the commission. Suniva brought the case with Oregon-based SolarWorld Americas.

Opposition to tariffs

Governors of four solar-friendly states — Nevada, Colorado, Massachusetts and North Carolina — oppose the tariff, warning it could jeopardize the industry. They cited a study showing that a global tariff could cause solar installations to drop by more than 50 percent in two years, a crushing blow as states push for renewable energy that does not contribute to climate change.

“The requested tariff could inflict a devastating blow on our states’ solar industries and lead to unprecedented job loss, at steep cost to our states’ economies,” the two Republicans and two Democrats wrote in a letter Thursday to the trade commission.

A group of former U.S. military officials also urged the Trump administration to reject solar tariffs, noting that the Defense Department is the nation’s largest energy consumer and follows a federal law calling for the Pentagon to procure 25 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025.

Suniva called the case a matter of fairness. Even with better manufacturing methods, lower costs and “dramatically improved efficiency,” the company has “suffered substantial losses due to global imports,” Suniva said in its petition. The company declared bankruptcy this spring after laying off 190 employees and closing production sites in Georgia and Michigan.

SolarWorld Americas, meanwhile, has trimmed its workforce from 1,300 to 300, with more cuts likely.

“After nearly 30 factories have shut down in the wake of surging imports, the legacy of this pioneering American industry hangs in the balance,” said Juergen Stein, CEO and president of SolarWorld Americas.

“We believe that the promise of solar — energy sustainability and independence — can be realized only with healthy American manufacturing to supply growing U.S. demand,” Stein said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Trade group speaks out

In a twist, the main trade group for the solar industry opposes tariffs and calls the trade case “an existential threat” to the industry.

“The stakes are exceedingly high. We are talking about 88,000 people in this country who could lose their jobs if these tariffs are put in place,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, which represents an array of solar companies.

A global tariff could cause a sharp price hike that could force the U.S. to lose out on solar installations capable of powering more than 9 million homes over the next five years — more than has been installed to date, Hopper said. States could lose out on billions of dollars of infrastructure investment, she added.

Suniva and SolarWorld have themselves to blame for their struggles — not pressure from overseas, Hopper said.

“Here is the real story of this case: We have two foreign-owned, poorly managed companies using U.S. trade laws to put U.S. manufacturers out of business and causing U.S. employees to lose their jobs,” she said.

Indeed, while Suniva’s U.S. operations are based in Georgia, the company’s majority owner is in China. SolarWorld Americas is a subsidiary of German solar giant SolarWorld, which declared insolvency last month.

If an injury finding is made, the trade commission would have until mid-November to recommend a remedy to the president, with a final decision on tariffs expected in January.
…

your ads here!

NASA’s Asteroid Chaser Swings by Earth on Way to Space Rock

Posted on by Cosc

NASA’s asteroid-chasing spacecraft is swinging by Earth on its way to a space rock.

Launched a year ago, Osiris-Rex will pass within about 11,000 miles (17,700 kilometers) of the home planet Friday afternoon. It will use Earth’s gravity as a slingshot to put it on a path toward the asteroid Bennu.

If all goes well, Osiris-Rex should reach the small, roundish asteroid next year and, in 2020, collect some of its gravel for return to Earth.

Friday’s close approach will occur over Antarctica. It will be a quick hello: The spacecraft will speed by at about 19,000 mph (31,000 kph). NASA has taken precautions to ensure Osiris-Rex does not slam into any satellites. Ground telescopes, meanwhile, have been trying to observe the spacecraft while it’s in the neighborhood.
…

your ads here!

Tech Under Scrutiny in Russian Investigation

Posted on by Cobiz

The tech industry pitches itself as a force for good, connecting the world and helping information flow freely. But Silicon Valley is under increasing scrutiny with reports that people in Russia were able to use these services to target and influence U.S. public sentiment. At TechCrunch Disrupt, a big tech conference this week in San Francisco, VOA’s Michelle Quinn walked around tech booths to find out how those pitching their startups see tech’s role in society.
…

your ads here!

First of Its Kind, Museum Records Traumatic Legacy of Birth of India and Pakistan

Posted on by Corts

Britain’s division of the Indian subcontinent into two countries 70 years ago led to the largest mass migration in modern history, with more than 12 million people displaced and more than half a million killed.

The traumatic legacy of the birth of India and Pakistan is the focus of a new museum that opened in Amritsar in Punjab, the northern state that witnessed the worst frenzy of violence after its western portions went to Pakistan and the eastern ones to India in 1947.

This violent chapter of history had been almost forgotten, said Mallika Ahluwalia, co-founder of the Partition Museum.

​Telling their stories

Although fiction and cinema have reflected that troubled time, there was until now no memorial or museum to millions of people caught in partition.

“We found that so many people we talked to say to us that finally someone is hearing their story. For a long time there was no space, either metaphorical or physical, where their story could be told,” Ahluwalia said.

An initiative of the Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust, the museum opened in Amritsar’s restored, British-era Town Hall.

Exhibiting ordinary items that people carried as they fled, as well as photos, newspaper clippings and audio recordings, the museum recreates the time when slaughtering mobs and bloody riots ravaged both sides of the newly created border.

The exhibits tell tales of ruined homes, lives shattered and rebuilt, loved ones lost and found as tens of thousands of Sikhs and Hindus crossed to India and Muslims to Pakistan. They crammed into overcrowded trains, trucks or even crossed rivers clutching whatever they could salvage.

Some displays depict the functional and mundane, such as a sewing machine and boxes. Many had emotional value. A woman carried her wedding sari. A heavy embroidered jacket and a briefcase belonged to a woman and her fiancé, who were separated amid the looting and carnage, but were happily reunited at a refugee camp. A woman has donated a box that as an 8-year-old girl, she pulled out of the rubble of a house hoping to put into it new dolls to replace the ones she left behind.

Violence bore by women

In a section devoted to women, who largely bore the brunt of the violence, the central exhibit is a water well, a tribute to thousands who either jumped into wells or were pushed by their families to keep them from being raped or abducted.

But an embroidered fabric strung on the well exemplifies the many instances of humanity found amid the carnage. 

“That phulkari (embroidered fabric) belonged to a woman who jumped into the well along with all her family members when they were attacked, but she was rescued. She was rescued by someone from another community,” Ahluwalia said.

A jute cot, carried by a family, symbolizes the endless stream of refugees, including tens of thousands of affluent families, that huddled in sprawling camps.

​Cherished possession

One of them is Jagat Singh, now 90, who traveled from the neighboring city of Jullundur to Amritsar to relate his story.

He escaped the massacre in his village by crossing the Ravi River on a boat when he was a 19-year-old student. Singh still struggles to understand how the harmony between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, who lived together in neighboring villages and towns, deteriorated into horrific bloodshed.

“In my hostel, we had friendly and affectionate relations with Muslim students. We used to visit each other’s homes. I don’t know why this turned into violence,” he said.

He has donated his most cherished possession — the documents of an $8 student loan that enabled him to graduate and rebuild his life after he arrived as a penniless refugee.

From stories, understanding

Such stories are helping visitors, especially those of younger generations, understand that it was not just leaders of the freedom struggle from British rule, but also countless ordinary people who paid a heavy price for independence.

Praniti, a law student, said the museum left a deep impression on her. 

“It makes me feel so free and so privileged and so aware of how unaware I was,” she said.

It was not just people who were victims. Objects in museums in Punjab also had to be divided between both nations, Ahluwalia said. She points to a necklace dating back to an ancient civilization that had to be split.

“We have come across files which have said half of the beads need to go to Pakistan and half to India. Our entire history in a sense they were trying to divide it in a way that is sad — how do you divide a shared heritage?” she asked.

The answer to that question still eludes the South Asian nations that, 70 years on, remain bitter rivals. But even as the scars of partition continue to fester, for many, the exhibit keeps the hope of reconciliation alive.
…

your ads here!

Stronger: Jeff Bauman’s Tale of Survival, Recovery After the Boston Marathon Bombing

Posted on by Corts

On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three people were killed and more than 260 injured, including Jeff Bauman, who lost both his legs. Hours later, when he awoke from surgery, Bauman helped identify one of the terrorists. Now, the film Stronger, based on Bauman’s memoir by the same name, recounts how that terrorist attack changed Bauman’s life and for the better. Jake Gyllenhaal portrays Bauman; they spoke to VOA’s Penelope Poulou.
…

your ads here!

California Condor, a Rare Environmental Success Story

Posted on by Cosc

At their low point in the late 1980s, there were 22 California condors left in the world. But in 1992, after dedicated efforts to save them, the condors began rebounding. Today, these magnificent raptors are coming back. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

your ads here!

For Africa’s Poorest, Cutting-edge HIV Drugs for $75 a Year

Posted on by Cosc

In a landmark deal, HIV patients in Africa will now have access to the latest drugs for $75 a year. The arrangement is a major victory for the poorest nations fighting AIDS, a health epidemic with unrestrained global reach.
…

your ads here!

Mercedes-Benz to Invest $1 Billion in US Electric Car Plant 

Posted on by Coeco

German carmaker Mercedes-Benz has announced plans to invest $1 billion to start making electric vehicles at its manufacturing plant in the southern U.S. state of Alabama.

The luxury automaker said it will manufacture electric SUVs under Mercedes’ EQ subbrand at the plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in just more than three years. The expansion is expected to create 600 jobs.

Daimler-Benz, which has more than 30 plants worldwide, said the Tuscaloosa plant will become the first in the U.S. to produce electric vehicles, and only the sixth in the world to do so.

Construction is to begin next year on the 92,900-square-meter facility. Daimler also said it will build a new global logistics center and aftersales North American hub in Bibb County, Alabama, about 8 kilometers from the Tuscaloosa plant.
…

your ads here!

As Africa Warms, Mosquito Carrying Zika, Dengue More Likely to Thrive

Posted on by Cosc

From deadly droughts and destroyed crops to shrinking water sources, communities across sub-Saharan Africa are struggling to withstand the onslaught of global record-breaking temperatures.

But the dangers do not end there. Rising heat poses another threat, one that is far less known and studied but could spark disease epidemics across the continent, scientists say.

Mosquitoes are the menace, and the risk goes beyond malaria.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads debilitating and potentially deadly viruses, from Zika and dengue to chikungunya, thrives in warmer climates than its malaria-carrying cousin, known as Anopheles, say researchers at Stanford University.

In sub-Saharan Africa, this means malaria rates could rise in cooler areas as they heat up, but fall in hotter places that now battle the disease. In those areas, malaria, one of the continent’s biggest killers, may be rivaled by other vector-borne diseases as major health crises.

“As temperatures go past 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit), you move away from the peak transmission window for malaria, and towards that of diseases such as dengue,” said Erin Mordecai, an assistant professor at Stanford.

“We have this intriguing prospect of the threat of malaria declining in Africa, while Zika, dengue and chikungunya become more of a danger,” she said. 

Besides a warming planet, scientists fear growing urbanization across Africa could also fuel the transmission of diseases carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which flourishes in cities and slums, the opposite of the country-loving Anopheles.

Half of Africans are expected to live in cities by 2030, up from 36 percent in 2010, according to World Bank data.

A soaring number may become prey to vector-borne viruses like dengue, which have struck Africa at a record pace in recent years, fuelled by urbanization, population growth, poor sanitation and global warming, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

“We see poorly planned development in Africa, not just with megacities but smaller settlements … which often lack proper water and sanitation,” said Marianne Comparet, director of the International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases.

“Climate change, disease and the interaction between man and habitat — it is a crisis going under the radar … a time bomb for public health problems,” she added.

Neglected diseases

Last year was the hottest on record, for the third year in a row, with global temperature rise edging nearer a ceiling set by some 200 nations for limiting global warming, according to the European Union’s climate change service.

Parts of Africa were among the regions suffering from unusual heat.

As temperatures keep rising, mosquitoes in low-latitude regions in East African countries are finding new habitats in higher altitude areas, yet malaria rates are falling in warmer regions, such as northern Senegal in the Sahel, studies show.

So as cooler parts of sub-Saharan Africa gear up for the spread of malaria, hotter areas should prepare for future epidemics like chikungunya and dengue, experts say.

While not as lethal as malaria, chikungunya lasts longer and can lead to people developing long-term joint pain. Dengue causes flulike symptoms and can develop into a deadly hemorrhagic fever.

There is a danger that the global drive to end malaria, which absorbed $2.9 billion in international investment in 2015, has left African countries ill-prepared to deal with other vector-borne diseases, said Larry Slutsker of the international health organization PATH.

“Diseases such as dengue and chikungunya have been neglected and under-funded,” said Slutsker, the leader of PATH’s malaria and neglected tropical diseases programs. “There needs to be much better surveillance and understanding.”

Malaria kills around 430,000 people a year, about 90 percent of them young African children.

Dengue, the world’s fastest-spreading tropical disease, infects about 390 million annually but is often badly recorded and misdiagnosed, health experts say.

Some experts believe the global alarm triggered by Zika, which can cause birth defects such as small brain size, may see more money pumped into fighting neglected tropical diseases in sub-Saharan Africa, especially after outbreaks in Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau in the last year.

Although 26 African nations, almost half of the continent, have strategies in place to fight vector-borne diseases, most of them only target malaria, according to data from the WHO.

Malaria rates have been slashed in recent decades through the use of bed nets, indoor spraying and drugs. But there are no dedicated treatments or vaccines for chikungunya and dengue.

“The most important preventive and control intervention is vector management, particularly through community engagement,” said Magaran Bagayoko, a team leader for the WHO in Africa.

Disentangling data

However, efforts to beat back mosquitoes are hampered by a lack of quality and affordable climate data that could help predict outbreaks and indicate risks, said Madeleine Thomson of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society.

“What countries really want to know is what they can do to improve their programs, as well as the capacity of their health workers,” said the scientist at the Columbia University-based institute.

But to do that, “climate information must be put into practice,” Thomson added.

African nations also must improve coordination between their health ministries and meteorological agencies, said the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), a new continentwide public health agency launched this year by the African Union.

“They are not linked, or talking to each other,” said Sheila Shawa, a project officer at the Africa CDC headquarters in Ethiopia. “There needs to be better communication in order to model neglected diseases, such as chikungunya, across Africa.”

Yet climate scientists and health experts warn of the difficulty of analyzing the impact of rising temperature on mosquito-borne diseases without looking at other factors.

“We have a major challenge of isolating effects of rising temperatures — which are really variable — from all the other aspects like rainfall patterns, humidity, mobility and migration, as well as socioeconomic factors,” said Stanford’s Mordecai.

“They are all changing at the same time, making individual drivers very difficult to isolate and disentangle for analysis.”
…

your ads here!

Deep Sleep: Even Jellyfish Need Their Slumber

Posted on by Cosc

Even a jellyfish — one of Earth’s first and most ancient animals — needs its sleep.

Scientists said on Thursday they have demonstrated that a primitive type of jellyfish called Cassiopea goes to sleep nightly. While sleep has been confirmed in other invertebrates such as worms and fruit flies, the jellyfish is the most evolutionarily ancient animal that has been shown to slumber.

“These results suggest that even those animals that lack a centralized nervous system require sleep, which means that sleep is one of the most ancient behavioral states, deeply rooted within the animal lineage,” California Institute of Technology biologist Ravi Nath said.

Jellyfish have thrived in the seas for at least 600 million years, longer than nearly any other animal. By comparison, dinosaurs appeared roughly 230 million years ago and humans appeared roughly 300,000 years ago. The findings involving such a primordial creature raise fresh questions about sleep’s origin and purpose.

“We do not know if sleep is limited to just animals,” said Nath, who helped lead the study published in the journal Current Biology.

“Sleep is a genetically encoded behavioral state. Genes and neural circuits interact to generate the sleep state,” Nath added. “I think it would be hard to demonstrate a sleep state in an organism that is not an animal, but I think the sleep state that we know may have been co-opted from periods of quiescence in organisms as diverse as plants, bacteria and fungi.”

Jellyfish are among the first animals to have developed neurons — nerve cells — though they lack a brain, spine or central nervous system.

Cassiopea jellyfish live in clear, shallow, tropical waters of the Pacific and western Atlantic oceans, eating plankton.

Measuring about 1-2 inches (2.5-5 cm) in diameter, they are dubbed the “upside-down jellyfish” because they lie on the seafloor inverted in the water with their tentacles upward.

Through lab experiments, the researchers determined Cassiopea met three important sleep criteria: periods of decreased activity known as behavioral quiescence; a decreased response to stimuli; and an increased sleep drive after being sleep deprived.

The jellyfish were found to display periods of inactivity at night, pulsing their bodies 30 percent less often than during daytime. When a platform underneath them was removed, they took up to 5 seconds to “wake up” and reorient themselves. And when deprived of nighttime sleep by being nudged with a squirt of water, they became more likely to sleep during the day.

The researchers did not examine whether jellyfish dream.
…

your ads here!

Human Frontiers: How Much Heat Can the Body and Mind Take?

Posted on by Cosc

What Christian Clot remembers most vividly from his days in Iran’s boiling Dasht-e Lut desert was having to stay completely still for 12 hours a day — or die.

“It was so hot I had to lie down behind some rocks between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Staying in a tent was too dangerous as it would have instantly overheated,” he recalled.

Clot, a French-Swiss explorer, is testing the limits of human endurance, including to worsening temperature extremes.

In the Iranian desert and on three other 30-day expeditions alone in the world’s harshest climates, he has explored what impacts extreme weather might have on people, both physically and mentally.

“Most studies on the human body have been done in labs rather than in real settings,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “I wanted to experience what you can’t find in scientific journals.”

If planet-warming emissions continue to rise at their current pace, three in four people in the world will face deadly heat by the turn of the century, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change in June.

Emily Y.Y. Chan, a professor of public health at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, expects heatwaves to become not just more frequent but also longer by the end of the century.

That could lead to a range of worsening health problems — including some unexpected ones, such as more malnutrition.

Ability to keep cool

For his experiment with heat, Clot chose Iran’s Dasht-e Lut desert, where the daytime temperature can reach nearly 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit).

“I knew I could die within hours of exposure to such high temperatures,” he admitted. Each day, Clot collected data, including his heart rate and body temperature, and carried out tests to assess the heat’s impact on his mental abilities, including his decision-making and memory.

Although his scientific team are still analyzing the results, Clot said the biggest challenge was extreme physical and mental tiredness.

“Every movement I made was slower and demanded more effort,” he explained. “I was conscious of the threat surrounding me but found it extremely challenging to stay attentive at all times.”

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, thinks Clot’s struggle with excessive heat is hardly unique.

“The average human doesn’t tolerate heat well,” he said — but some can cope better than others.

“The human body functions like the radiator of your car: your ability to cool yourself down depends on a range of factors like your age, your capacity to sweat, whether or not you’re taking any medication,” he said.

For those unable to regulate their body temperature effectively, the spectrum of heat-related illness ranges from simple sunburn to severe dehydration and heatstroke, which can be life-threatening, he added.

Pressure on hospitals

Another study, published in the journal Science Advances in June, found that expected future increases in temperatures globally could result in a “drastic” hike in deaths in India and other developing countries.

Separately, Chan and her team identified temperature thresholds beyond which deaths and hospital admission rates start to rise in Hong Kong.

“We found that daily mortality increases by 1.8 percent for every degree above the threshold of 28.2 degrees Celsius, while daily hospitalization — for respiratory and infectious diseases, for example — increases by 4.5 percent for every degree above the threshold of 29 degrees Celsius,” she said.

That suggests increasingly hot temperatures could leave health systems overwhelmed by surging demand, she added.

She worries that governments and the public are ill-prepared to deal with rising temperatures because of a general lack of awareness about how heat can impact people’s health.

Benjamin of the American Public Health Association agrees.

“Human beings are terrible at evaluating risk in a pro-active way. We rationalize why not to do things,” he said.

Being prepared is key

To limit deaths, governments should try to understand better where the most heat-vulnerable people, such as the elderly, live so they can swiftly open emergency cooling centers nearby and boost electricity supplies when it gets too hot, Benjamin said.

In rural areas, ensuring that people have access to enough water and shelter in times of extreme heat is crucial, he said.

Chan said extreme weather warnings that take into account people’s age and literacy level can help reach and protect the most vulnerable groups.

Other ways to cope with heat include adjusting the schedules of outdoor workers based on temperature, she said.

Clot said getting people to listen to, and take into account health warnings can be tough.

“We tend to think we’re stronger than nature,” he said. “But we’re not.”

He plans to repeat his desert heat expedition next year, this time with a group of 10 men and 10 women. The aim is to assess how climate extremes affect group dynamics, something he hopes will help people “better adapt to weather extremes and other environmental challenges that might come our way.”

 
…

your ads here!

Next Round of NAFTA Talks Take on Thornier Issues

Posted on by Coeco

The United States will present new proposals and begin to weigh into thornier issues of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the third round of negotiations starting in Ottawa Saturday, U.S. chief negotiator John Melle said Thursday.

The stepped-up negotiations come with four more rounds of talks left after Ottawa and a self-imposed year-end deadline to finish the talks before Mexico launches campaigning for its July presidential election.

“With progress made in several issue areas in the first two NAFTA negotiation rounds, USTR (United States Trade Representative) looks to move forward with additional new text proposals in round three of the negotiations,” Melle said in comments emailed to Reuters.

“At this point in the negotiations, more challenging issues will start taking center stage,” he added, without elaborating.

Third round

The first two rounds of talks between the United States, Canada and Mexico focused on consolidating language on chapters covering small- and medium-sized enterprises, competitiveness, digital trade, services and the environment.

Now, negotiators will begin to weigh into more contentious issues such as rules of origin — how much of a product’s components must originate from within North America — labor standards aimed at increasing Mexican wages and mechanisms for resolving trade and investment disputes.

In its negotiating strategy for revising NAFTA ahead of the start of the talks in July, the United States said it would emphasize reducing the U.S. trade deficit as a priority.

It also said it wanted to eliminate an arbitration system for resolving trade disputes, known as Chapter 19, that has largely prohibited the United States from pursuing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases against Canadian and Mexican firms.

Canada has suggested it will walk away from the talks if Chapter 19 is tossed aside.

Dispute resolution, sunset clause

Politico reported Thursday that the United States was considering dropping a binding mechanism in NAFTA for resolving government-to-government disputes in favor of an advisory system.

The proposal would be a major shift away from a decades-old push by the United States to build an international system of enforceable trade rules, Politico reported.

Canada and Mexico have dismissed a proposal by the Trump administration to add a five-year sunset provision to NAFTA.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said last week such a provision was needed because forecasts for U.S. export and job growth when NAFTA took effect in 1994 were “wildly optimistic” and failed to live up to expectations.

Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray told Reuters Sept. 15 that the sunset clause was unnecessary because the pact’s members can trigger a renegotiation or leave it at any time.

Since U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked NAFTA and threatened to tear up the agreement, Mexico has pushed to secure more access to the European Union, Brazil, Israel, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

Polls show support for NAFTA

A Reuters poll of economists Thursday found that Mexico and Canada will survive current talks with the United States on trade relatively unscathed.

Meanwhile, a separate poll by IPSOS published Thursday showed broad-based support among Americans, Canadians and Mexicans for NAFTA.
…

your ads here!

Rohingya Crisis Dents Myanmar Hopes of Western Investment Boom

Posted on by Coeco

When officials from Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon toured six European countries in June, they were hoping to drum up investment in transport, energy and education.

Instead, they were bombarded with questions about the country’s treatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority, who have long complained of persecution by the Buddhist majority in the oil-rich, ethnically divided, western state of Rakhine.

“In each of every country, that issue was always brought up,” Hlaing Maw Oo, secretary of Yangon City Development Committee, told Reuters after the 16-day trip.

The situation in Rakhine has worsened dramatically since then, with more than 400,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh to escape a military counterinsurgency offensive the United Nations has described as “ethnic cleansing.”

Western trade and investment in Myanmar is small, but there were hopes that a series of reforms this year would pry open an economy stunted by international sanctions and decades of mismanagement under military rule.

With most sanctions now lifted, an expected flood of Western money was seen as a key dividend from the transition to civilian rule under Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Regional diplomats saw it balancing China’s growing influence over its neighbor.

But Aung San Suu Kyi has been beset by international criticism for saying little about human rights abuses against the Rohingya, and lawyers, consultants and lobbyists say the European and U.S. companies that had been circling are now wary of the reputational risks of investing in the country.

Louis Yeung, managing principal of Yangon-based investment firm Faircap Partners, said one of his business partners — a listed, U.S.-based food and beverage company — decided to hold off its plan to enter the Myanmar market for three to five years, citing factors including slower-than-expected reforms and the Rohingya crisis.

“Their conclusion is that it wasn’t the right time for them,” he said. “They want to see more traction from the government and Rakhine is not helpful.”

On hold

The pressure has been growing in recent months, even on existing investors, with rights group AFD International calling on foreign firms to stop investing in Myanmar.

A small group of investors in U.S. oil major Chevron filed an unsuccessful motion at its annual general meeting urging it to pull out of its production-sharing contract with a state-run firm to explore for oil and gas, while Norwegian telecoms firm Telenor, which runs a mobile network in Myanmar, issued a statement calling for human rights protection.

Chevron declined to comment on its investment in Myanmar, while Telenor did not respond to several requests for comment.

Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament Committee on International Trade, said last week his delegation postponed a visit to Myanmar indefinitely, saying the human rights situation “does not allow a fruitful discussion on a potential EU-Myanmar investment agreement.”

Khin Aung Tun, vice chairman of the Myanmar Tourism Federation, told Reuters that global firms planning to hold conferences in Myanmar were now considering other locations.

“People were just starting to see Myanmar as a ‘good news’ story,” said Dane Chamorro, head of South East Asia at Control Risks, a global risk consultancy.

“Now you can imagine a boardroom in which someone mentions Myanmar and someone else says ‘hold on, I’ve just seen something on Myanmar on TV: villages burned down, refugees, etc.'”

In an interview published in Nikkei Asia Review on Thursday, Aung San Suu Kyi acknowledged it was “natural” for foreign investors to be concerned, but repeated her view that economic development was the key to solving poor Rakhine’s long-standing problems.

“So, investments would actually help make the situation better,” she said.

In China’s orbit

Myanmar’s $70 billion economy should be a strong investment proposition for Western firms. It boasts large oil and gas reserves and natural resources such as rubies, jade and timber.

Wages are low and its youthful population of more than 50 million is eager for retail and manufacturing jobs.

In April, Myanmar passed a long-awaited investment law, simplifying procedures and granting foreign investors equal treatment to the locals. A game-changing law allowing foreigners to buy stakes in local firms is expected later this year.

“The investment conditions were improving,” said Dustin Daugherty, ASEAN lead for business intelligence at Dezan Shira & Associates, a consultancy for foreign investors in Asia.

Myanmar’s economy may not suffer much, however, if Western firms shun the country — or even if their governments were to reimpose some sanctions, although that appears unlikely for now.

Aung San Suu Kyi has sought to deepen relations with China at a time when Beijing is keen to push projects that fit with its Belt and Road initiative, which aims to stimulate trade by investment in infrastructure throughout Asia and beyond.

Myanmar trades with China as much as it does with its next four biggest partners: Singapore, Thailand, Japan and India.

None of that top five participated in previous sanctions.

Trade with the United States is only about $400 million and U.S. investment is just 0.5 percent of the total. Europe accounts for around a 10th of investment, while China and Hong Kong make up more than a third, and Singapore and Thailand another third.

Than Aung Kyaw, Deputy Director General of Myanmar’s Directorate of Investment and Company Administration, told Reuters that European investors might have “second thoughts,” but he expected Asian investors to stay put.

China is already in talks to sell electricity to energy-hungry Myanmar and pushing for preferential access to a strategic port on the Bay of Bengal. In April, the two countries reached an agreement on an oil pipeline that pumps oil across Myanmar to southwest China.

“It is going to feed Aung San Suu Kyi straight into the hands of [Chinese President] Xi Jinping,” said John Blaxland, director at the ANU Southeast Asia Institute and head of the Strategic and Defense Studies Center.
…

your ads here!

In Glossy Bollywood, Stories of Ordinary Indian Women Shine

Posted on by Corts

An elderly woman seeks a romance with her swimming coach in the Hindi film Lipstick Under My Burqa, which battled the Indian censors ahead of its release in theaters last month and is now going strong on streaming service Amazon Prime.

In another Bollywood film this year, Anaarkali of Aarah, inspired by a true story, a dancing girl who sings innuendo-laden songs at functions in a small town called Aarah takes on a powerful official who molests her in public.

A fresh crop of Hindi films — or Bollywood, as the industry is popularly known — are telling stories of ordinary women seeking sexual and financial freedom.

“Bollywood is a male-dominated industry, but there is a sudden influx of women-oriented films that are also doing well,” Avinash Das, writer-director of Anaarkali of Aarah, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Triggering the change in Bollywood’s narrative was the brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old woman on a bus in New Delhi in 2012, which led to massive protests across the country and put a spotlight on women’s safety in India.

Bollywood films, often characterized by their song and dance sequences and male-dominated story lines, are influential in India and beyond, and objectification of women and their use in titillating songs is often blamed for stoking sexual crime in the country.

India has only 10 cinema screens per million people, compared with 124 in the United States and 90 in China for the nearly 1,000 films Bollywood churns out every year, but it has the largest number of people going to the cinema.

The films that tell women’s stories, though still perceived as commercially unviable, have done well at the box office.

Alankrita Shrivastava, director of Lipstick Under My Burqa, said viewers were drawn to her film as “an honest story about them” and that the film remains the most watched since Amazon Prime’s launch in India last December.

The makers of Anaarkali too could prove naysayers wrong when the film did commercially well, and even a movie exploring lack of sanitation as a women’s rights violation — Toilet: A Love Story — has been a major hit this year.

“When issues matter to people … they are bound to come into popular entertainment media,” said veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal, whose award-winning films explored India’s caste divide and told stories of ordinary women. “Films like Toilet: A Love Story ring a bell with a large section of the audience who identity with the problem, and that explains why they are doing well.”

Off-screen voices

In April, popular actor Abhay Deol took on fellow actors for endorsing skin-whitening creams and slammed the popular Indian belief of “fairer is better” as racist.

This off-screen voice of leading actors is creating awareness on subjects that were never discussed, be it fairness creams or even sex trafficking, campaigners said.

“Celebrities have a huge following and the message goes out to people that campaigners would never be able to reach out to,” said Samarth Pathak, spokesman at U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Pathak interviewed Bollywood heartthrob John Abraham on World Day Against Trafficking in July, when he described trafficking as a “serious threat to humanity.”

“This was our first interview with a film star, and it created quite a buzz. A lot of young people are reaching out [to understand] trafficking, which is unprecedented,” Pathak said.

A couple of days before the interview, Bollywood’s most sought-after actor, Akshay Kumar, who plays the male lead in Toilet and is now working in a film on menstrual hygiene, spoke at an international sex trafficking conference in Mumbai about the need to protect children from abuse.

These star voices matter as Bollywood’s handling of prostitution had been restricted to portraying women as “call girls” without delving into the problems of sex trafficking and modern-day slavery, said Sanjay Macwan, regional director of the anti-trafficking charity International Justice Mission.

“When Bollywood celebrities speak against sex trafficking, exploitation and bonded labor, it brings the issue before every Indian,” Macwan said.

‘Fashionable again’

Last year’s release, Dangal, which shows an aging father train his two daughters to become wrestlers, defying social norms in conservative Haryana state in northern India, is among Bollywood’s biggest hits, beating fluffy romances and epic revenge dramas in box office collections.

While arthouse films in the 1980s and a crop of independent filmmakers have tackled social issues, gender and small-town India in their films, the backing of such projects by major studios seems a recent phenomenon — but in some ways is simply following an old Bollywood tradition.

“Hindi cinema has been dealing with social issues since the 1920s, even in the silent era,” Meenakshi Shedde, South Asia consultant to the Berlin and Dubai film festivals and festival curator, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

A 1937 film, Duniya Na Mane (The World Does Not Agree), showed a young schoolteacher from a poor family refusing to consummate her marriage with an old man.

Some of India’s most successful filmmakers from the 1930s to ’60s such as V Shantaram and Bimal Roy had social themes at the center of their stories.

“Bollywood is often perceived as monolithic, masala films with stars, six songs and a happy ending. But it is many different things,” Shedde said. It is wonderful that social issues are becoming fashionable in Bollywood again.”
…

your ads here!

New African Art Museum Aims to Provoke, Question

Posted on by Corts

The new Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa is, in a word, ambitious.

 The museum opens its doors Friday, Sept. 22, 2017. The building is itself a work of art, a century-old grain silo on Cape Town’s historic waterfront that has been slickly overhauled by star British architect Thomas Heatherwick to house the continent’s largest collection of contemporary art — in the case of this museum, all of it made after the year 2000.

The nine-floor museum strives to show that African contemporary art — so long overlooked on the international stage — is worthy of appreciation and attention. It attempts to thrill visitors with its array of exhibits. Some are inventive, some confrontational, some whimsical, and some, puzzling.

But, says curator Mark Coetzee, the museum’s true ambitions are grander still.

“I think the first and foremost gesture of the museum is a political one,” he told VOA. “And that is to say that for a very long time, the narrative of Africa and the representation of Africans has been defined by others, by outsiders. And the museum’s motivation is to say, let’s create an institution where people from Africa, whether we were born here thousands of years or whether we immigrated yesterday, can contribute to the writing of our own history. Let us also define how we want to be represented to the world.”

He says their work gives rise to many pressing issues in the modern world.

“What contemporary art museums do is, basically, they give us the tools to be able to negotiate the time that we are living in,” Coetzee said. “So, artists ask very difficult, complex questions of society: ‘Why is there separation of wealth and power? Why does the ability to represent culture or represent people rely on a few people’s input and  and not a holistic group of people? How do we negotiate difference in society when we have different religions, or different genders, or different orientations?’

“And so what a museum does is, it’s a very safe space to discuss very difficult issues which impact all of us in the 21st century.”

Dragons, Zebras and Cows

But, Coetzee says, if you’re not inclined toward deep thought, the art is pretty cool too. The museum houses the private collection of Jochen Zeitz, a German art collector and philanthropist, and former CEO of athletics brand Puma.

Visitors will be greeted by a massive dragon, made of bicycle inner tubes, with a 100-meter-long tail, the work of South African artist Nicholas Hlobo. They’ll be dazzled by the whimsical, eye-searingly bright images of zebras and balloons and richly costumed figures, composed by South African photographer Athi-Patra Ruga.

They will be dragged into the undertow of “Ten Thousand Waves” — a video exhibition by of British installation artist Isaac Julien that assaults the senses on nine screens. They’ll be able to touch — and take home — prints of the stark, bold images of Angolan photographer Edson Chagas. And they’ll be haunted by room after room of ghostly cow hides, plastered into ethereal shapes by Swaziland’s Nandipha Mntambo.

Time for African Art

What visitors will not be able to do — at least not on opening weekend — is linger. That’s because when the museum offered 24,000 free passes for two-hour blocks during the grand opening, they were snapped up in just nine minutes.

In the last few years, African contemporary art has started to receive its due, says Hannah O’Leary, head of modern and contemporary African art for international auction house Sotheby’s. While the market is still new, she says, and African artists have yet to command top dollar price, the auction house’s first auction earlier this year brought in $3.8 million (2.8 million pounds).

In doing do, it broke multiple records, including the highest sales in a single auction of contemporary African art. While South Africa has always had a vibrant art scene, she says other African countries are on the rise — both in making art, and in consuming it.

“From the results of our first sale, we had buyers from 29 different countries, in six different continents,” she told VOA, from London. “And that’s really very significant. We’re not talking about just selling South African art to South African buyers. We are taking the greatest art from across the continent and we know that that has an international appeal, so we are are selling to collectors in Africa , but also in North America and Europe. Anyone who is a collector and can appreciate great contemporary art should also be looking at Africa.”

Coetzee says visitors should not be intimidated, though, by the museum’s $38-million renovation, its untold millions of dollars worth of art, or its elegant exterior. Nor, he says, should they be scared away by the $13 ticket — citizens of African nations get free admission every Wednesday, and children’s passes are always free. That’s because, he says, art is something everyone needs.

“The thing that separates us from animals, the thing that makes us unique is our identity. It’s the pride in who we are. And I think that if you remove cultural representation, and say it’s not a basic need, where does that leave us? What meaning does that give us in life?”

Deep questions, indeed. And one that the museum hopes to provoke — if not to answer — when it opens its doors.
…

your ads here!

China’s Small Factories Fear ‘Rail Armageddon’ with Orders to Ditch Trucks

Posted on by Coeco

Thousands of small factories in China, making everything from steel to chemicals, are scrambling for access to the country’s clogged rail network as Beijing curbs the use of diesel trucks in an effort to tackle air pollution.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) last month gave tens of thousands of companies in 28 cities until Nov. 1 to halve their use of diesel trucks over the winter months, when pollution is at its worst.

The ministry, in a policy document, also set more stringent, permanent targets for more than 20 power and steel companies, including Zhengzhou Xinli Power, Xingtai Iron & Steel and Hebei Risun Coke, directing them to send at least half their shipments by rail.

Trucking is a cheaper and preferred mode of transport for heavy industry in China, especially for inland companies moving goods over relatively short distances and those far from railways.

Some provinces have taken even tougher stances on trucks.

In Hebei and central Henan, some steel producers must deliver as much as 90 percent of their products via rail on a permanent basis, up from around 50 to 60 percent currently.

The moves are the latest in Beijing’s years-long battle to tackle the pollution that blankets the north as houses turn up the heat between November and March, drawing on the nation’s power plants, which are mainly fueled with coal.

China is also forcing steel mills and other factories to shut up to 50 percent of capacity across the north to try and prevent toxic air during the winter.

The truck restrictions follow bans earlier this year on transporting coal by diesel trucks in major port cities.

A shift to using more of the country’s 120,000 km of railroads, one of the world’s largest networks, is also a cornerstone of Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative, which aims to revive old trade routes linking Chinese companies with overseas markets.

The scale of the change under way is immense. Highways accounted for 77 percent of more than 43 billion tons of freight transported last year, compared with 8 percent for rail.

“It’s another indication of how seriously they’re taking the environmental impact, although it’s a blunt way of doing it and some trips won’t make sense by rail,” said Jonathan Beard, head of transportation and logistics in Asia for Arcadis, a design and consultancy company.

The Ministry of Rail declined to comment. The MEP and the state planner that oversees rail freight prices did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

‘Railway Armageddon’

Companies were already preparing for a grim winter, having been ordered to slash output as part of measures to clean up the air in Chinese cities.

Now, many are struggling to get space on the rail network by the Nov. 1 deadline.

Major state-owned companies like Sinopec and Aluminium Corp. of China have long-term access to the railroad, leaving little room for smaller companies. Many of the factories are also hundreds of miles away from any station.

There are also concerns that bottlenecks could create chaos, cutting off supplies of critical raw materials and hurting the ability of companies to get products to market, executives interviewed by Reuters said.

Rail is also more expensive and takes longer for some routes.

An executive from Xingtai Iron & Steel estimated that using rail will add as much as 40 yuan per ton, or 10 percent, to his costs. The executive and others interviewed by Reuters requested anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

“We might resort to reducing production in the winter if we cannot get enough supplies and have difficulties sending our products due to the railway Armageddon,” said a manager with Yanzhou Coal Mining Co’s coke plant in Shandong province, which produces two million tons per year.

In Shandong, the nation’s eastern industrial and agricultural heartland, the rail bureau proposed hiking freight rates by 1 cent per ton per kilometer at an internal meeting with key clients two weeks ago, according to the Yanzhou Coal manager.

That is equivalent to an almost 10 percent increase to move products to Jiangsu, about 100 miles to the south. It is not clear whether the plan has been submitted to the state planner for approval. The state planner sets freight prices.

“Some of our clients are only 40 miles away from us,” said a sales manager with Xingtai Iron & Steel’s steel wire subsidiary.

“Trucking is more flexible than rail and cheaper,” the manager said. “For our clients in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, about 500 miles away, rail takes almost a week but trucking takes one or two days.”

Under orders

Rail traffic has increased this year due to increased shipments of coal. Rail is the most popular mode of transport for coal, which accounted for a third of traffic last year. China’s rail network is mainly run by China Railway Corp.

State-owned companies such as China National Coal Group and coal miner China Shenhua Energy also own some specific routes, giving them lower transportation costs.

Many are bewildered by the enormity of the undertaking ahead. A manager with Longyu Chemical Co. in central Henan province said he had no access to rail.

“I honestly have no idea how we are going to deal with it this winter,” he said. “The trucking freight rate is also rising because of the crackdown on diesel trucks.”
…

your ads here!

Trafficking, Debt Bondage Rampant in Thai Fishing Industry, Study Finds

Posted on by Coeco

More than a third of migrant fishermen in Thailand clearly were victims of trafficking over the past five years, and even more workers in the industry were possibly trafficked as well, according to a report published Thursday.

Routinely underpaid and physically abused, three-quarters of migrants working on Thai fishing vessels have been in debt bondage, working to pay off an obligation, said the study by the anti-trafficking group International Justice Mission (IJM).

Thailand’s multibillion-dollar seafood sector came under fire in recent years after investigations showed widespread slavery, trafficking and violence on fishing boats and in onshore food-processing factories.

The politically unstable country, which is under military rule, has vowed to crack down on trafficking and recently introduced reforms to its fisheries law.

The IJM study of 260 fishermen from Myanmar and Cambodia found 38 percent were clearly trafficked and another 49 percent possibly trafficked.

Only 13 percent reported fair labor conditions at sea and no exploitative recruitment, it said.

Three-quarters reported working at least 16 hours a day, and only 11 percent said they were paid more than 9,000 Baht ($272 U.S.) per month, the legal monthly minimum wage in Thailand.

One fisherman was quoted in the report as saying he was held in debt bondage, owing 20,000 Baht ($604) to his brother, who worked as a supervisor overseeing fishermen.

In debt to brother

“I fear for my life as he has killed in front of me before,” he was quoted as saying. “I don’t dare to run. He would kill my children.”

Field researchers surveyed the 260 fishermen in 20 Thai fishing localities in 2016, collecting information on fishing jobs they had held in the previous five years.

Thailand, the world’s third-largest seafood exporter, had more than 42,000 active fishing vessels as of 2014, and more than 172,000 people were employed as fishermen, the study said.

The study was funded by the Walmart Foundation, the charitable arm of giant U.S. retailer Walmart. With release of the study, the foundation announced a grant to help the IJM improve law enforcement efforts against human trafficking in the Thai fishing industry.

Neither Walmart nor the charity would specify the value of the grant.

Walmart spokeswoman Marilee McInnis told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by email that “combating forced labor remains a key challenge throughout the world.”

“Regardless of where it occurs in the global supply chain, Walmart is committed to help eliminate forced labor through transparency and collaboration,” she wrote.

Gary Haugen, the chief executive of IJM, said in a statement that “no person should have to live under the oppression or ownership of another.

“As consumers, we shouldn’t have to wonder if the products we’re purchasing are the result of violent injustice,” he said.
…

your ads here!

Iraqis Track Abandoned Homes With Digital Tools

Posted on by Cobiz

In camps across northern Iraq, people forced from their homes by Islamic State militants are using their phones to track what is happening to their properties, according to researchers who say returning home is crucial for building a safe future in the war-torn nation.

More than three million Iraqis have been driven from their homes, land and farms, according to the United Nations, many of them by armed groups like Islamic State (IS).

As pro-government forces intensify the fight against IS, clearing militants from much of Mosul and other cities they once held, displaced people are hoping to return home soon.

Before leaving the camps, they are keeping a close eye on Facebook and digital messaging services to better understand what they will be returning to or who might be occupying their homes, said Nadia Siddiqui from Social Inquiry, a research group based in northern Iraq.

With conflicting land claims and weak property rights in parts of Iraq due to years of violence, establishing who rightfully owns what is crucial for reducing violence and building social trust, Siddiqui said.

Digital tools are helping establish ownership by allowing them to build dossiers of what belongs to them with photographic evidence, title deeds and other data which could be used in court to prove their claims.

“In the long-term, land and property issues are some of the root causes (of strife),” Siddiqui told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from Erbil, Iraq.

Disputes over property exacerbate communal or religious tensions, she said, and lingering issues over unclear ownership can fester for generations, making it difficult to build the economy and move past a history of violence.

“People remember these kinds of things,” Siddiqui said of land disputes.

Clearing up ownership conflicts and creating arbitration processes for competing land claims can help ease social tensions, she said.

Evidence

More than 60 percent of displaced people use digital tools like Facebook, camera phones and messaging apps to actively monitor the status of their properties, according to a July survey in Erbil supported by Social Inquiry.

The average household of displaced people has three mobile phones, the small survey said, meaning tools to collect data on properties are accessible even to those who fled their lands in the dead of night.

Thirty-two percent of displaced people surveyed share information about the status of their properties on social media.

“What is so exciting about the process is that people have this evidence already on their phones or on their Facebook page,” said Emily Frank, an anthropologist turned marketing executive in Montreal, Canada, who has monitored property rights in countries facing conflict.

Many people, however, do not realize these digital documents and photos of the land where they once lived can be used as evidence in court or a property restitution process once it is safe enough to return home, said Frank.

Along with helping individuals claim their homes from armed groups or others who have been occupying them, photos, videos and other digital data become increasingly powerful as more displaced people collect them, she said.

“If more people can submit evidence, it becomes more widely corroborated,” Frank told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “It will be a more just and transparent process.”

Domino effect

Jon Unruh, a professor at McGill University in Montreal who studies land rights, has watched the process happen in Iraq first hand.

Unruh interviewed a 76-year-old man in Erbil who, after fleeing an IS-controlled area, asked a relative still living near his home to walk around the property and take pictures to see who was living inside.

IS and its supporters had occupied homes in the area, and the militant group even issued its own property title deeds, so the displaced man used digital tools and family networks to try and gather information about his home to claim it upon return.

This kind of data could be presented before a government arbitration panel or via a transitional justice plan from the U.N. or a similar international agency when the man attempts to reclaim his property, Unruh said.

Iraqi government officials working on property restitution could not be reached for comment.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Iraq, a U.N.-linked body working with the government on property restitution for refugees, was unavailable for comment.

Officials in Kurdistan, the northern semi-autonomous region of Iraq of which Erbil is the capital, are planning a referendum vote on independence for Sept. 25.

The move, opposed by Iraq’s central government, could complicate efforts for displaced people living in the region to claim properties in other parts of Iraq once it is safe enough to leave camps in the Kurdish region.

It is unclear what moves Iraq’s government will make on property rights in areas once controlled by IS based on digital data, Unruh said.

But officials in the capital Baghdad who he met recently understand the importance of property rights in reducing violence.

“The Iraqi government is most concerned people returning home to ISIS-held areas are going to default to armed kin to resolve their property disputes,” Unruh told the Thomson Reuters

Foundation.

“That returnee who finds their property destroyed moves into someone else’s house. When that person returns there is a conflict —It creates a domino effect.”
…

your ads here!

Play Brings Syria’s Heartbreak to American Kitchens

Posted on by Corts

Twenty strangers have gathered in the dining room of a New York City apartment as a woman with long dark curly hair putters around the kitchen, putting a package of meat in the fridge, sauteing pine nuts.  They settle into chairs, and she begins to speak.

“Since I came back,” she tells them, “I make kubah, again and again, as if I want to close a hole in my soul.”

Welcome to Off Off-Broadway, and the one-woman play “Oh My Sweet Land.”  It is a harrowing story of a Syrian-American woman who follows her Syrian lover to the Middle East, and actress Nadine Malouf whips up meat croquettes as she tells it.

An attack on a way of life

The play, written and directed by Amir Nazir Zuabi, was produced in London in 2014, and is now being performed in different kitchens all around New York. 

Zuabi, a Palestinian, got the idea for the play several years ago, when he traveled to Syrian refugee camps in Jordan.  He adapted several of the stories he heard and, since food and hospitality are a cornerstone of Arab culture, he included cooking.

“I didn’t want to do a horror show.  It’s important to remember that this is an attack on a culture; not just the political situation, it’s an attack on the way of life.  And the loss in Syria is also this – it’s the loss of normality, of just the ability to break bread together and meet.”

Malouf, an Australian actress of Middle Eastern and European descent, says it’s a challenge to deal with the emotions of the story while cooking.

She compares it to rubbing your belly and tapping your head at the same time, adding, “I have nicked myself a few times, I’ve burnt myself with oil.  You know, wounds.  War wounds.”

No safe space

Watching the play in this setting becomes almost painfully intimate, for both the audience and the actor.

“You tell immediately, you know, who doesn’t want you to look at them,” Malouf says.  “And I understand that because there’s, you know, a safety in the audience being in the dark and the actors on stage.  That’s very safe for both parties.  Here no one is safe,” she notes with a small laugh.

Watch: Nadine Malouf in a scene from Amir Nizar Zuabi’s play, Oh My Sweet Land at a home in Brooklyn. (By The Play Company)

After the show, audience members milled outside on the sidewalk to chat and enjoy some baklava.  Among them was Michael Yuen-Killick, the host for this evening’s performance.  He had to clean out his kitchen and dining room for the event, but was happy to open his personal space to 20 strangers.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity,” he insisted.  “I mean, how often do you get to have a show performed in your house?  Not very often.”

One of those strangers, Allison Martin, a nurse practitioner, called the experience “incredibly visceral.”  “Being in the small space and the smell of the onions midway through … It really brings the far away to right here in front of us.”

And that’s the point of “Oh My Sweet Land” – to have the onions, spices and stories linger long after the final bow.
…

your ads here!

Facebook to Release Russia Ads, Beef Up Election ‘Integrity’

Posted on by Cobiz

Facebook is slowly acknowledging the outsized — if unintended 0151— role it played in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

 

Bowing to pressure from lawmakers and the public, the company said it will provide the contents of 3,000 ads bought by a Russian agency to congressional investigators, while also pledging to make political advertising on its platform more “transparent.”

 

“I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook video and wrote in an accompanying post . “That’s not what we stand for.”

The moves Thursday come amid growing pressure on the social network from members of Congress, who pushed Facebook to release the ads after the company disclosed their existence in early September. Facebook has already handed over the ads to the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

 

Facebook’s reluctance to be more forthcoming with information that could shed light on possible election interference has prompted the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee to call for the company to testify in its election-meddling probe.

 

A More Transparent Facebook

 

In one of the first steps Facebook has ever taken to open up its secretive advertising system to observation, the company will now require political ads to disclose both who is paying for them and all ad campaigns those individuals or groups are running on Facebook.

 

That’s a key step that will allow outsiders to see how many different variants of a given ad are being targeted to various groups of individuals, a tactic designed to improve their effectiveness. At the moment, there’s no way for anyone but Facebook to track these political ads, or for recipients to tell who is sponsoring such messages.

 

Since average users “don’t know if you’re seeing the same messages as everyone else,” Zuckerberg said, Facebook will “make it so you can visit an advertiser’s page and see the ads they’re currently running to any audience on Facebook.”

 

The company will hire 250 more people in the next year to work on “election integrity,” Zuckerberg said.

The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel would go farther. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner is writing a bill that would require social media companies to disclose who funded political ads, similar to rules on television broadcasters. In an interview with The Associated Press, Warner said he hoped to work with social-media companies on the bill.

 

And Yet Still Secretive

 

Zuckerberg suggested that the company may not provide much information publicly, saying that the ongoing federal investigation will limit what he can reveal.

 

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee have sought to bring Facebook executives before their committee for the past couple of weeks. But critics say Facebook should go further. They say the company should tell its users how they might have been influenced by outside meddlers.

 

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, for instance, stressed again on Thursday that the company should make the ads public, “so that everyone can see the nature and extent of the use of Facebook accounts by Russia.”

 

Zuckerberg also warned that Facebook can’t catch all undesirable material before it hits its social network.

 

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you we’re going to catch all bad content in our system. We don’t check what people say before they say it, and frankly, I don’t think our society should want us to,” Zuckerberg said. But those who break the law or Facebook’s policies, he added, “are going to face consequences afterwards.”

 

Facebook won’t catch everyone immediately, he added, but it can “make it harder to try to interfere.”

 

Twitter Also Heads to Capitol Hill

 

Zuckerberg’s move came a day after Twitter confirmed that it will meet next week with staff of the Senate intelligence committee, which has been scrutinizing the spread of false news stories and propaganda on social media during the election.

Warner said the committee wanted to hear from Twitter to learn more about the use of fake accounts and bot networks to spread misinformation.

 

“Twitter deeply respects the integrity of the election process, a cornerstone of all democracies, and will continue to strengthen our platform against bots and other forms of manipulation that violate our Terms of Service,” the company said in a statement.
…

your ads here!

Fergie Says She and Josh Duhamel Still ‘Great Friends’

Posted on by Corts

Fergie says even though she and husband Josh Duhamel are splitting up, they’re still “great friends” who love one another and their young son.

The singer talked about her marriage at a screening Wednesday for her new visual album, “Double Dutchess,” at iPic Theaters Fulton Market in New York. She told The Associated Press “the important thing is we’re a family” with 4-year-old Axl and “there’s so much love” that they share.

She says her new songs are about “a lot of different relationships,” adding “feelings are feelings” and “they have to come out somewhere.”

The Black Eyed Peas singer and actor confirmed last week that they had decided to break up earlier this year, but decided to keep the news quiet. They have been married for eight years.

 
…

your ads here!