Wednesday, February 22, 2017

America's extremist battle: antifa v alt-right

A protester lobs a brick at police during protests in Washington during the inauguration of Donald Trump

20 February 2017

In a divided America, two groups at the extreme ends of the political spectrum are doing battle online, and on the streets.

The alt-right - a disparate group of pro-Donald Trump provocateurs who critics say are bigoted white nationalists - has a reputation for trolling and online bullying. Now some believe they may have met their match in the form of a group of left-wing anarchists whose tactics are arguably more extreme.

They're called "antifa", short for "anti-fascist". The movement has its roots in 1930s Europe, but has had a low profile for much of the intervening period. Now the recent surge in nationalist movements across the globe has given it a new enemy to fight.

Antifa activists say they are committed to fighting fascism and racism in all its forms. Some aren't averse to violence, and the movement wasted little time in making its presence felt. Protests held during Donald Trump's inauguration turned violent. Restaurant windows were smashed, a car was set on fire and objects were thrown at the police. More than 200 arrests were made.

A Trump campaign hat set on fire by protesters during demonstrations in Washington

But the video which went viral that day wasn't of the rioters; it was one that featured the white nationalist Richard Spencer being punched by a masked man. Almost immediately mocking memes flooded the internet, including a number of videos of the attack set to music.

Far from condemning the attack, many antifa activists revelled in it.

"Every time anyone replays that video, 11 million ghosts rejoice along with them," an anonymous activist who runs an antifa Reddit group told BBC Trending. The 11 million figure, they say, refers to the victims of fascist regimes through the ages. "We as a society are so unwilling to condone Neo-Nazi philosophies ... that the video has become a part of the popular zeitgeist is a beautiful thing."

Not surprisingly, the fact that an act of violence has been turned into a propaganda coup infuriated many on the alt-right, amongst them Chuck Johnson, an influential figure in the movement.

"We've certainly reached a very tribal point in the culture where people cheer on violence," he told Trending. "Richard is not my favourite person on the right, but you should be able to give an interview on the street without being assaulted.

"I thought that was pretty disturbing to say the least."

Last week the alt-right got a measure of revenge when Johnson published, on his website, the names, dates of birth and addresses of the 223 people who've been charged in connection with the Washington protests.

In internet speak, this is called "doxxing" - publishing someone's details without their permission, potentially laying them open to the threat of being harassed by anyone with a personal or ideological grudge against them.

It's a tactic used both by the alt-right and antifa. Johnson himself is perhaps most famous for publishing the home addresses of New York Times reporters and trying to reveal the personal information of a woman who was subject of a retracted Rolling Stone article about an alleged campus rape. He runs another site which crowdsources "bounty" rewards for actions against liberals. Some of the rewards are offered for revealing personal information.

Johnson defended the doxxing of the Washington protesters to BBC Trending.

"I don't have an issue with accused criminals having their addresses published," he says. "I don't think it's a problem."

The antifa activist whom we spoke to was equally unapologetic.

"Antifascists absolutely do engage in doxxing active members of hate groups." the anonymous activist said. "To ensure the safety of those who they would victimise from the shadows, we must bring them into the light."

At the same time, they don't like doxxing - when it happens to them.

"Many of those arrested in DC had absolutely no connection to any illegal action," the activist claimed. "Now, they face the threat of harassment by the most hate filled elements of society."

Online, there's a constant cat-and-mouse game. On alt-right and antifa message boards there's waves of trolling, spies, and constant rumours about infiltration. But the fight is also happening on the streets. In addition to the Washington protests, in recent weeks there have been a number of incidents in which both sides say they have been targeted for attack solely on the basis of their political beliefs.

Mexicans fear Trump deportation plan will lead to refugee camps along border

US has announced plans to deport third-country nationals to Mexico
Country unprepared for scale of problem if mass deportations go ahead

Haitian migrants talk after washing their clothes at an evangelical church, being used as a shelter for stranded immigrants on their way to the US, in Tijuana, Mexico. Photograph: Jorge Duenes/Reuters

Wednesday 22 February 2017

Mexicans fear deportee and refugee camps could begin popping up along their northern border under the Trump administration’s plan to start deporting to Mexico all Latin Americans and others who entered the US illegally through this country.

Previous US policy called for only Mexican citizens to be sent to Mexico. Migrants known as “OTMs” – Other Than Mexicans – were flown back to their homelands.

Now, under a sweeping rewrite of enforcement policies announced on Tuesday by the US Department of Homeland Security, immigrants might be dumped over the border into a country plagued by violence where they have no ties while their asylum claims or deportation proceedings are heard in the United States. US officials did not say what Mexico would be expected to do with them.

The only consensus so far in Mexico about the new policies of Donald Trump is that the country is not remotely prepared.

“Not in any way, shape or form,” said the Rev Patrick Murphy, a priest who runs the Casa del Migrante shelter in the border city of Tijuana, which currently houses about 55 Haitian immigrants. They were part of wave of thousands who rushed to the border in the closing months of the Obama administration in hope of getting asylum in the US.

Tijuana was overwhelmed, and while the government did little, a string of private Christian groups pitched in to open shelters with improvised bedding, tents and sanitary facilities. Donated food kept the Haitians going.

Mexicans quake at the thought of handling not thousands but hundreds of thousands of foreigners in a border region already struggling with drug gangs and violence.

“Just look at the case of the Haitians in Tijuana – what were they, seven or eight thousand? And the situation was just out of control,” said Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City-based security analyst. “Now imagine a situation 10 or 15 times that size. There aren’t enough resources to maintain them.”

It is unclear whether the United States has the authority to force Mexico to accept third-country nationals. The DHS memo calls for the department to provide an account of US aid to Mexico, a possible signal that Trump plans to use that funding to get Mexico to accept the foreigners.

“I hope Mexico has the courage to say no to this,” Murphy said.

Victor Clark, director of Tijuana’s Binational Center for Human Rights, said Mexico could simply refuse to accept non-Mexican deportees. “They come through one by one, and when the Mexican immigration agent sees a person who isn’t Mexican, he tells the Ice agent: ‘I can’t accept this person, he’s not Mexican,’ and they return him to the United States.”

Hope said the new US policy could create an “explosive situation”, noting that some anti-foreigner sentiment already exists in Mexico’s northern border region and that Central American migrants have been recruited, sometimes by force, into drug gangs like the Zetas and the Gulf cartel.

The United States could pay to build the needed facilities. There would be precedents for such a deal. Turkey has agreed to house Syrian refugees headed for the European Union in exchange for at least $3bn in aid.

“For this to be politically acceptable in Mexico, it would have to be paid,” said Hope. “No Mexican administration could accept this kind of thing unless it were accompanied by billions of dollars.”

Mexico’s government did not formally react to the DHS policy statements.

But in a hearing with Mexican senators, Mexico’s new ambassador to the United States, Gerónimo Gutiérrez, said: “Obviously, they are a cause for concern for the foreign relations department, for the Mexican government, and for all Mexicans.”

But Gutiérrez praised the Trump administration’s release of the policies before this week’s visit to Mexico by the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, calling that “a position that is much more straightforward and honorable, to make these positions known beforehand … so they can be discussed”.

There are precedents in Mexico for refugee camps.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Mexico took in about 46,000 Guatemalans fleeing civil war. With help from the United Nations, camps were set up in the southern states of Chiapas, Campeche and Quintana Roo. When peace accords were signed in Guatemala in the mid-1990s, almost 43,000 refugees and their children went home, but more than 30,000 Guatemalans and their children born in Mexico decided to stay.

The same thing could happen with any migrants housed in Mexico.

Haitians streamed into Tijuana last year to seek asylum in the US, but since January they have stopped applying after hearing that other Haitians’ requests were being denied and US authorities were sending them back to Haiti. Murphy estimated the 3,000 Haitians still in Tijuana had mostly decided to seek asylum in Mexico.

He said many Latin American migrants might do the same.

“You know, a lot of Central Americans would rather be deported to Mexico than their own countries,” Murphy said.

Court rules ICC withdrawal plan unconstitutional

South African government wanted to leave the ICC as a result of the court's alleged bias against African nations.

‘Our Worst Fears Have Been Realized’: The Famine We Could Have Stopped in South Sudan

BY ROBBIE GRAMER-FEBRUARY 21, 2017

The South Sudanese government and United Nations declared Monday a famine in parts of the country devastated by conflict. One hundred thousand people are “already starving” and nearly 5 million are in need of urgent help in war-torn South Sudan, according to U.N. humanitarian agencies.

“Our worst fears have been realized,” said Serge Tissot, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) spokesman in South Sudan. “Many families have exhausted every means they have to survive.” Nearly 275,000 children are at risk of starving to death unless the international community intervenes in a rapid and meaningful way, the U.N. warned.

The worst-hit region is Unity state in the north of the country. That’s also the scene of brutal fighting between government and rebel forces — and experts say that’s no coincidence.

“Conflicts are one of the key causes of food insecurity,” Lorenzo Bellu, a senior economist for the FAO, told Foreign Policy. Violent conflict disrupted agricultural production and led to surging food prices in the country. The region is also experiencing a prolonged drought that experts blame on climate change.

In other words, the crisis is largely man-made — and could have been averted. In December, the U.N. blocked an arms embargo on South Sudan that experts say would have mitigated the conflict fueling the food shortages. And humanitarian groups urged the international community for months to funnel aid and food to South Sudan to avert famine — to little avail.

The famine has arrived, but humanitarian workers still don’t have enough resources to cope. “We are quite concerned that we do not have the resources,” said George Fominyen, a U.N. spokesman in South Sudan’s capital, Juba. “We could run out of food by the end of June. The needs are so huge; every time you are entering a new front, a new battle.”

“In 2011 after the famine that hit Somalia, the world said never again,” said Emma Jane Drew, humanitarian program manager for Oxfam in South Sudan. “The declaration of famine in South Sudan reflects the collective failure to heed the countless warnings of an ever-worsening situation.”

It’s driven the most afflicted to desperation. “People have been pushed to the brink of surviving on what they can find to eat in swamps,” Drew said.

The U.N. has a technical definition for famine to distinguish it from other variants of food insecurity. At least 20 percent of households must face extreme food shortages, 30 percent or more of the population must face acute malnutrition, and the death rate must exceed two people per 10,000 per day for a country or international bodies to declare famine. The U.N. and its members aren’t bound to take any specific actions once a famine is declared. Rather, the declaration can highlight global attention to the problem.

Humanitarian aid in the region is already thinly stretched, but it could get even worse. Somalia, Nigeria, and Yemen also face “unprecedented” need for emergency food assistance to prevent famine, according to the U.S. government-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

But South Sudan’s three-year old civil war makes the situation especially dire there, making aid deliveries even trickier. “I wasn’t prepared for the shocking devastation I witnessed,” said Andrew Gilmour, U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights, last week after he traveled to areas of South Sudan ravaged by fighting between the government and rebel forces.

Civilians are caught in the middle of that fighting, with brutal results. Government soldiers and militias operate with ruthless impunity in the region, carrying out war crimes including murders, torture, forced cannibalism, and mass rape.

“It is utterly abhorrent that women in this area have to choose between getting raped or getting a livelihood,” Gilmour said. “But this seems the brutal reality of what South Sudan has become.”

Photo credit: Nichole Sobecki/AFP/Getty Images

India needs to create 'bad bank' quickly - Arvind Subramanian

Arvind Subramanian, chief economic adviser at India's Finance Ministry, attends an interview with Reuters in New Delhi, India, September 23, 2015. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi/Files

By Manoj Kumar | NEW DELHI-Wed Feb 22, 2017

India's finance ministry on Wednesday backed a call by the Reserve Bank of India to set up an institution similar to a "bad bank," saying urgency was needed to address troubled loans weighing on the banking sector that were hobbling investment and growth.

Arvind Subramanian, the finance ministry's chief economic adviser, said that delaying a cleanup would further reduce private-sector investment and make the problem worse for Asia's third-largest economy.

His comments backed forthright views expressed in a speech on Tuesday by Viral Acharya, the new deputy governor of the RBI, who said India's failure to tackle bad loans was the result of a piecemeal approach that had given "all discretion" to lenders.

"There is very much urgency," Subramanian told a news briefing in New Delhi, adding that the government was in touch with the RBI on the matter.

"The government is looking at it very closely. I think the more you delay the problem more private investment will remain weak. That is, I think, the big cost we face now, and of course, losses of the government keep mounting."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, which is approaching three years in power, has taken little action to strengthen stricken public sector banks that account for around 70 percent of lending in India.

The renewed sense of urgency comes as economic growth slows due to weak credit and investment, as well as the lingering impact of Modi's abolition of 86 percent of the currency in circulation in November in a crackdown on tax evasion and the black economy.

Subramanian has proposed setting up a so-called Public Asset Rehabilitation Agency (PARA) that would handle the biggest, toughest problem loans and take politically difficult decisions to reduce debt.

Banks in India had record stressed loans of $133 billion, or 12.34 percent of their total loans, as of last September.

About two dozen state-owned lenders have an even higher stressed-loan ratio of 15.88 percent, according to data compiled by India's central bank.

In his pre-budget Economic Survey released on Jan. 31, Subramanian said banks might have to write off as much as 75 percent of the amount owed by 57 out of India's top 100 debtors as they could not even afford to pay interest.

"Is there an alternative?" he told reporters. "We know that there is a big problem and we need lot of money, we need a lot of talent, but the heart of the problem is how do you get political cover to write down debt. The public is already on the hook, it is a matter of how quickly you do it and you limit the losses."

(Reporting by Manoj Kumar; Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Rafael Nam)

Scientists discover 7 Earthlike planets orbiting a nearby star

Astronomers found a new solar system just 39 light years from ours, full of Earthlike planets. Here’s what you should know about the TRAPPIST-1 system. (Jenny Starrs, Sarah Kaplan/The Washington Post)

By Sarah Kaplan February 22 at 1:00 PM

A newfound solar system just 39 light-years away contains seven warm, rocky, Earthlike planets, scientists say.

The discovery, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, represents the first time astronomers have detected so many terrestrial planets orbiting a single star. Researchers say the system is an ideal laboratory for studying distant worlds and could be the best place in the galaxy to search for life beyond Earth.

“Before this, if you wanted to study terrestrial planets, we had only four of them and they were all in our solar system,” said lead author Michaël Gillon, an exoplanet researcher at the University of Liege in Belgium. “Now we have seven Earth-sized planets to expand our understanding. Yes, we have the possibility to find water and life. But even if we don't, whatever we find will be super-interesting.”

The newly discovered solar system resembles a scaled-down version of our own. The star at its center, an ultra-cool dwarf called TRAPPIST-1, is less than a tenth the size of our sun and about a quarter as warm. Its planets circle tightly around it; the closest takes just a day and a half to complete an orbit and the most distant takes about 20 days. If these planets orbited a larger, brighter star they would be fried to a crisp. But TRAPPIST-1 is so cool that all seven of the bodies are bathed in just the right amount of warmth to hold liquid water. And three of them receive the same amount of heat as Venus, Earth and Mars, putting them in “the habitable zone,” that Goldilocks region where it's thought life can thrive.

Still, “Earthlike” is a generous term to describe these worlds. Though the planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system resemble Earth in terms of size, mass and the energy they receive from their star, there's a lot that makes our planet livable besides being a warm rock. Further observation is required to figure out what the TRAPPIST-1 planets are made of, if they have atmospheres and whether they hold water, methane, oxygen and carbon dioxide — the molecules that scientists consider “biosignatures,” or signs of life.

“You can bet people will be rushing to take those measurements,” said Elisabeth Adams, an exoplanet researcher at the Planetary Science Institute who was not involved in the study. “That's going to be fascinating to see.”

Whatever secrets it may harbor, the TRAPPIST-1 system would surely be a sight to behold. Though the star is small, its nearness to the planets means that, from their perspective, it appears about three times as large as our sun. The outermost planets enjoy the daily spectacle of their neighbors passing across the sky and in front of their shared sun, each world a large dark spot silhouetted against the salmon-colored star. Its dim glow, which skews toward the red and infrared end of the light spectrum, bathes the planets in warmth and paints their skies with the crimson hues of a perpetual sunset.

[Dear Science: How do scientists find planets outside our solar system?]

Gillon and his colleagues have been interested in TRAPPIST-1 since late 2015. Using the European Southern Observatory's Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile, they sensed small dips in the star's brightness at regular intervals. These dips were caused by planets transiting — crossing between the star and Earth — and blocking some of its light. Last May, the scientists published their discovery in Nature: three rocky bodies, dubbed TRAPPIST-1b, -1c and -1d, orbited the small star, they said.

But right around the time the study was published, Gillon noticed that TRAPPIST-1d was behaving oddly. When he went to get a closer look with the Very Large Telescope, the ESO's gigantic observatory in South America's Atacama Desert, he realized that the dip in brightness he thought came from 1d was actually caused by three planets, all transiting at the same time.

[From 2016: These three Earthlike planets may be our best chance yet at detecting life]

This happens only once every three years, said Julien de Wit, a planetary scientist at MIT and a co-author on the study. “The chance of catching it is less than one in a thousand,” he explained. “It's funny because it’s such a huge paper with amazing results, and we got it from sheer luck.”

Next the team hurried to request time at the Spitzer Space Telescope, whose Earth-trailing orbit around the sun offered an uninterrupted view of TRAPPIST-1 and its companions. During 20 days with the Spitzer telescope, the team witnessed 34 transits.

These observations “lifted the veil on the architecture of the system,” as de Wit put it. Instead of three planets, TRAPPIST-1 had seven, renamed TRAPPIST-1b through -h in order of their distance from the star.

The scientists determined that the six inner planets are locked in an orbital resonance, meaning that the lengths of their orbits are related by a ratio of whole numbers. Because of this, the bodies exert regular gravitational influences on one another. By measuring those influences, the astronomers could determine the mass of the planets, something that is impossible to figure out from transiting data alone. That in turn allowed them to loosely calculate their densities — giving a sense of how much iron, rock, water and gas the bodies contain.

The fact the planets are in orbital resonance also suggests that they formed farther out from their sun and then migrated inward, Gillon said. This makes it more likely that they will contain water in some form, since water and other volatile compounds (molecules that readily turn to gas) tend to concentrate on the outer edges of solar systems.

Coincidentally, TRAPPIST-1 is in the constellation Aquarius — the water-bearer.

[NASA’s Kepler telescope confirms a record-breaking 1,284 new planets]

For years, evidence has accumulated that the Milky Way galaxy is full of Earthlike planets. The discovery of seven such worlds around a single, faint star suggests that they may be even more common than originally thought.

Three planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system resemble Earth in terms of size, mass, and the energy they receive from their star. (Reuters)

Gillon and his colleagues plan to seek out similar solar systems with a new project, Search for Habitable Planets Eclipsing Ultracool Stars, or SPECULOOS. (Like Trappist beer, speculoos cookies are a Belgian delicacy. His next effort will have to be called WAFFLES.)

Meanwhile, scientists are scrambling to get a better look at Proxima b, a rocky world that was discovered orbiting our sun's nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, last August.

[Scientists say they’ve found a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, our closest neighbor]

But the TRAPPIST-1 researchers, along with several astronomers not involved with the study, say this system is our best target yet to search for extraterrestrial life. Though exoplanet scientists often focus on worlds orbiting sunlike stars, the brightness of those stars makes it difficult to spot small, rocky planets. TRAPPIST-1's planets are easy to find amid its dim, cool glow.

The system is also incredibly close to Earth. Though 39 light-years would be a long way for humans to travel, it's practically next door when you consider that the Milky Way galaxy alone is 100,000 light-years across. The closeness of TRAPPIST-1 puts it within the reach of the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be able to detect atmospheric components and thermal emissions from the planets after it launches in 2018.

In the meantime, telescopes on several continents have been trained on the system to search for signs of life. Last summer, the scientists published an early analysis of the atmospheres of planets b and c using data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

“This is direct exploration of another solar system that is happening right now,” Gillon said.

Planets e, f and g are the most intriguing targets for astrobiologists because of their position in TRAPPIST-1's habitable zone. But even if they turn out to be warm and wet, these worlds might not be great places to live. The planets' proximity to the star and one another means that they are probably tidally locked, like Earth's moon. One side of each planet always faces the sun; the other is stuck in constant darkness. This would make for a dramatic temperature gradient that could generate powerful winds — not exactly an earthling's idea of a cozy home.

And Adams, of the Planetary Science Institute, cautioned that it's very hard to tell whether a planet is habitable from a distance. An observer outside our solar system might look at Venus, Earth and Mars and reason that the sun hosts three habitable worlds. The alien would need to travel here in person to discover that Venus is a cloudy hell-scape with a runaway greenhouse effect, while Mars is a barren, frozen desert with a defunct internal dynamo.

“There are a lot of ways in which a planet could be like Earth, but not enough,” Adams said.

Another major caveat, she added, is that the very idea of a “habitable world” is purely theoretical.

Scientists have only one source of data on habitable planets, and that's Earth. “We don’t actually know the parameters that are needed for life on another world,” Adams said, “how much it has to look exactly like Earth and how different life could be elsewhere.”

Still, even if no life is discovered on them, the TRAPPIST-1 planets present an unprecedented new window on how solar systems work. Though the planets are more or less Earth-size, their varying densities and distances allow for detailed comparisons of the worlds. It's almost as if someone designed an experiment in planet formation, controlling for the bodies' size.

De Wit compared the new planets to seven new languages, each offering a new vocabulary for describing its corner of the universe.

“They all have a slightly different perspective on the same story,” he said, “the story of this solar system.”

India: Orphanage shut down for selling babies, 18 arrested

A newborn baby boy is weighed on a scale at a government hospital in Mumbai, India. Source: AP.

22nd February 2017

POLICE in eastern India have shut down an orphanage and arrested its owner for illegally selling babies to childless couples, and were investigating whether the adoption racket was part of a wider human trafficking operation, officials said on Tuesday.

The orphanage in the city of Jalpaiguri in West Bengal, run by a non profit organisation, sold at least two dozen children for adoption, police said.

“What is shocking is that the head of the (orphanage) was also running a shelter for destitute women and selling their babies,” Rashmi Sen of the West Bengal state women and child development ministry told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Ongoing investigations will also probe if the women were trafficked to the home to keep the adoption racket going.”

The weekend raids come three months after 13 babies were rescued and skeletons of two other infants found near the port city of Kolkata.

SEE ALSO: India: Impending surrogacy ban provokes surge in demand

Eighteen people, including doctors, midwives and the owners of charities and clinics, were arrested, suspected of taking babies from women immediately after they had given birth and telling them their children were stillborn.

“There are at least 17 children who were housed in this home (in Jalpaiguri) who are untraceable,” Subodh Bhattacharjee of the Jalpaiguri child welfare committee told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“They were giving children for adoption without our knowledge, violating laid down guidelines.”

Police said the West Bengal orphanage was using forged documents, fake stamps and certificates to sell the babies and had been warned multiple times by the government in the past.

The orphanage was registered with the Central Adoption Resource Authority and is the only one in Jalpaiguri district permitted to put up children for adoption.

The babies were being sold for 100,000-200,000 rupees (US$1,500-3,000).

SEE ALSO: India: Police uncover ‘baby farm’ which sold and swapped infants for US$1,400

“Our own enquiry last year revealed that the children had not been entered into the government system, which mandates recording of every abandoned child,” Sen said.

“In January we moved 15 children from the orphanage to other homes for their safety. They were all below the age of five, some just a few months old.”

Baby trafficking is becoming an organised crime in India, experts say.

“These incidents are gross violations of child rights in both letter and spirit of the existing laws,” said Mohua Chatterjee of human rights group Child Rights and You.

“Despite the guidelines and instruments available under the law, the technicalities of adoption process still remains a grey area for the prospective parents, who due to lack of proper knowledge often fall prey to the evildoers.”

Reports of human trafficking in India increased 25 per cent in 2015 compared to the year before, with more than 40 per cent of cases involving children, according to government crime data. – Reuters

Brain scans 'may spot teen drug problems'

22 February 2017

An international team of scientists say the way teenagers' brains are wired may help predict whether they will develop drug problems in the future.

The team looked at adolescents who were generally more impulsive than their peers - a trait sometimes linked to the misuse of drugs.

They found teenagers who had a particular pattern of activity on brain scans were more likely to misuse drugs.

The early work appears in the journal Nature Communications.

Scientists asked 144 adolescents who had not previously used recreational drugs to fill in questionnaires and take part in behavioural tests to assess how impulsive they were and how attracted they were to trying new things.

'Experimental methods'

Researchers then conducted a range of brain scans, while asking the adolescents to carry out tasks that could win them cash prizes at the same time.

The tests were designed to look at how particular parts of the brain responded to the prospect of getting a reward.

They found those teenagers who had less nerve activity in these brain areas during these tasks, were more likely to have drug problems two years later.

One theory behind this, the scientists say, is that teenagers who are more likely to take drugs have less motivation for traditional rewards like money, and more for less conventional rewards.

Prof Brian Knutson, at Stanford University, says he hopes with more work, these types of tests could help identify vulnerable teenagers who could be offered help before problems arise.

Meanwhile Prof Derek Hill, of University College London, said the study was "interesting" with carefully collected and analysed data.

But he cautioned that the methods used in the study were still experimental.

He added: "It is therefore important that results like this are replicated in separate studies before the results in this paper should be used to change the way these young people are diagnosed and treated."

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Sri Lanka: Pledge to End Police Abuse Not Met

Repeal Prevention of Terrorism Act, Prosecute Torture

Members of the Sri Lankan police march with an elephant during Sri Lanka's 69th Independence day celebrations in Colombo, Sri Lanka February 4, 2017.© Reuters/Dinuka Liyanawatte

Brutality claims: Hakmana residents stage a street protest on Monday over the wounded boy's claims he was badly assaulted while in police custody

FEBRUARY 20, 2017

(New York) – The Sri Lankan government has not met its pledge to curtail police abuses prior to the March 2017 session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch said today. Security sector reform was one of 25 undertakings by Sri Lanka in the Human Rights Council resolution adopted by consensus in October 2015.

The Sri Lankan government has failed to repeal the abusive Prevention of Terrorism Act or take serious measures to reduce torture in custody.

“It’s crucial that the Human Rights Council consider closely whether Sri Lanka made progress in the security sector as well as its other commitments such as transitional justice,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “Nearly 18 months after making important promises to the council, Sri Lanka’s leaders appear to be backtracking on key human rights issues, including reforming the police.”

Reform of the security sector has lagged behind action on the council resolution’s four pillars of transitional justice: accountability, the disappeared, truth-seeking, and reconciliation. A recent report from the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, highlighted the ongoing “culture of torture” in the country. A 2015 report by Human Rights Watch also found that Sri Lankans routinely face torture and other ill-treatment by the police. In the vast majority of cases, the victims were unable to obtain any meaningful redress.

The government has also yet to repeal the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which has been used to arbitrarily detain terrorism suspects and others without charge for years. During the country’s 26-year-long civil war, the government asserted that the PTA was a necessary tool in its battle against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Yet, nearly eight years after the war’s end in May 2009, the PTA not only remains on the books but continues to be used to arrest and detain people.

Lawyers and relatives of PTA detainees told Human Rights Watch in May 2016 that police arrests were still being made in the notorious white vans used by the previous government, creating fear of a return to a culture of enforced disappearances. The practice has abated somewhat after an outcry from the rejuvenated national Human Rights Commission and rights lawyers. Lawyers, families, and the Human Rights Commission report having access to PTA detainees, an improvement from past practice.

Curtailing torture in Sri Lanka requires serious reforms of the security sector, prosecutions of those responsible, and sustained political will from the top.

Brad Adams

Asia Director

“A number of those arrested in 2016 under the Prevention of Terrorism Act were implicated in committing or plotting terrorist crimes,” Adams said. “Yet there was no good reason for not using the regular criminal code rather than an abusive law that should have been repealed years ago.”

The Special Rapporteur on torture, following a May 2016 visit to Sri Lanka, found that torture to produce confessions, including beatings, sexual violence, extreme stress positions and asphyxiation, was being committed in police stations, military facilities and detention centers throughout the country.

Human Rights Watch’s own investigations found that police routinely use torture to compel confessions for even minor offenses, such as petty theft and making illicit alcohol, and this affected all ethnicities and social groups. The Special Rapporteur described a “worrying lack of will within the Attorney General’s Department and the judiciary” to investigate and take action against those considered responsible for torture, noting that authorities kept repeating to him that there had been no complaints of ill-treatment or torture, and consequently no investigations.

“Deeply embedded practices linked to the war, like police torture, don’t just go away once the war is over,” Adams said. “Curtailing torture in Sri Lanka requires serious reforms of the security sector, prosecutions of those responsible, and sustained political will from the top.”

In June 2016, President Maithripala Sirisena issued a directive to the police and military to refrain from torture but the impact of the directive has gone unreported. Legal provisions in violation of international law remain on the books, such as permitting criminal liability at the age of 8. Ensuring the right to counsel at all stages of detention has also not been remedied.

The upcoming Human Rights Council session provides an important opportunity for UN member countries to closely examine the Special Rapporteur on torture’s report and the problem of torture and other police abuse in Sri Lanka. They should press the government to address these concerns as part of the overall reform efforts underway under the Human Rights Council resolution. And they need to be careful not to endorse measures that would set back human rights protections, such as earlier draft counter-terrorism bills to replace the PTA.

“The Mendez report on torture maps out a detailed reform proposal that the Sri Lankan government should embrace and implement,” Adams said. “The Human Rights Council can rev up this process by addressing torture and police reform in its review of Sri Lanka’s compliance with the council’s resolution.”