Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (L) holds a AK-47 assault rifle as Russian Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu looks on, during a inspection of donated firearms and trucks onboard the Russian destroyer Admiral Panteleyev docked at the port in Metro Manila, Philippines October 25, 2017. Source: Malacanang Presidential Photo/Handout via Reuters
THE PHILIPPINES has been once again been recognised as one of the world’s most deadly countries for journalists, who are targeted by corrupt political and business actors with impunity.
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) Impunity Index for 2017, which calls itself “a ranking of countries where journalists are murdered and their killers go free”, lists the Philippines as the fifth nation worldwide after Somalia, Syria, Iraq and South Sudan.
Released annually for the past ten years, the report calculates the number of unsolved murders over the past decade as a percentage of each country’s population. The report found that across the world, 93 percent of journalists murdered are local rather than foreign reporters.
The CPJ noted that in the Philippines, local journalists covering politics, business, corruption and crime are most likely to be targeted for murder. Some 42 journalists have been killed with “complete impunity” in the past decade, said the report.
The country’s controversial President Rodrigo Duterte has regularly chided the media, noting shortly after his election in June 2016 that “just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination.”
“Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong.”
CPJ noted that two people including a former police officer have accused Duterte of ordering the murder of radio announcer Jun Pala in 2003 when he was the mayor of Davao City, Mindanao.
While he has denied connection to the assassination, Duterte has said Pala was killed because he was a “rotten son of a bitch.”
Since last year’s Impunity Index, another journalist Joaquin Briones was murdered. The families of some 32 journalists and media workers killed during the 2009 Maguindanao massacre, meanwhile, have not been given justice.
It was the biggest massacre of journalists anywhere, at any time in history, the CPJ has claimed.
Filipino student journalists hold slogans to commemorate the first anniversary of the country’s worst election-related violence during a rally near the Malacanang Presidential Palace in Manila. Source: AP
Moreover, the Impunity Index highlights a case from April 2014 when Filipina tabloid reporter Rubylita Garcia was shot multiple times in her home after investigating wrongdoing within the Cavite province police force.
Nobody has been prosecuted for her murder, despite the fact that senior police officer was named by the justice department as a major suspect.
Two other Asian nations – Pakistan and Bangladesh – were named in the top 10. This was primarily because of the threat of violent extremist groups operating “beyond the reach of authorities”, the report said.
Barcelona anger at detention of Catalan leaders - video
Thursday 2 November 2017 21.40 GMT
Former ministers remanded in custody as prosecutors seek European arrest warrant for region’s ousted president
A judge in Madrid has ordered eight members of the deposed Catalan government to be remanded in custody pending possible charges over last week’s declaration of independence.
Carmen Lamela, sitting in Spain’s national court, jailed the eight former ministers – including Puigdemont’s deputy, Oriol Junqueras – on Thursday while they are investigated on possible charges of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds.
Lamela ruled that a ninth, who resigned the day before the Catalan parliament voted to declare independence last Friday, could remain at liberty on bail of €50,000 (£44,600).
Lawyers for those under investigation said their clients would appeal against the judge’s decision, which they described as unjustified, disproportionate and predetermined.
In a written request to Lamela, prosecutors said that Puigdemont and four other members of his administration were aware that they had been ordered to testify, but had chosen not to attend.
Former members of the Catalan government arrive at Spain’s national court in Madrid. Photograph: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
“Repeated attempts to deliver the summons at home and repeated phone calls have been ignored,” they said. “For his part, Carles Puigdemont has publicly stated his intention not to appear and has requested … to make a statement via videoconference, without giving any information about his current whereabouts.”
Consequently, they added, they were requesting Puigdemont be found and arrested, along with the four other regional ministers who are also in Belgium.
Late on Tuesday, Puigdemont’s Belgian lawyer Paul Bekaert claimed to state broadcaster VRT that a warrant had been issued for the five Catalan politicians, but this was contradicted by a Spanish judicial source.
“I have just heard from my client that the warrant has been issued for the president and four of his ministers who are in Belgium,” he said.
“Mr Puigdemont will stay here. He has said that he will fully cooperate with Belgian authorities during the procedure,” Bekaert said.
First to arrive at the court was the dismissed Catalan vice-president, Oriol Junqueras, right. Photograph: Javier Barbancho/Reuters
A Spanish court source later told the Reuters news agency that this was not true
Lamela’s decision to remand the leaders in custody on the grounds that they could be a flight risk was swiftly condemned by politicians and civil society groups in Catalonia and beyond.
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Catalonia last month after the same judge ordered the jailing of two prominent pro-independence leaders, Jordi Sánchez, the president of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), and Jordi Cuixart, the president of Òmnium Cultural.
Both men are under investigation for alleged sedition in the run-up to the unilateral independence referendum on 1 October.
The ANC’s vice-president, Agustí Alcoberro, said the arrested leaders were political prisoners, and tweeted: “Vice-president and ministers, we will not stop until we secure your freedom.”
The mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, described it as a black day for Catalonia. “A government democratically elected at the ballot box is in jail,” she said. “There is a common front to achieve the freedom of the political prisoners.”
Puigdemont reacted to the judge’s decision in a televised address on Thursday evening, in which he branded the move a “very serious attack on democracy” and a “coup against the [regional] elections” on 21 December.
Speaking as thousands of people protested across Catalonia, he said: “Imprisoning political leaders for fulfilling an electoral commitment breaks down the basic principles of democracy.”
The Catalan leader called on people in the region to protest “without violence, peacefully and with respect for everyone’s opinions”, but said Thursday’s events had shown that Catalan independence was no longer an internal Spanish matter.
“The fury with which the Spanish government has attacked a beautiful European nation is outrageous and is threatening us all,” he said.
The Catalan regional parliament speaker, Carme Forcadell, arrives for questioning. Photograph: Javier Soriano/AFP/Getty Images
“As a legitimate president of Catalonia, I demand the release of the ministers and the vice-president. I demand respect for all political options and an end to the political repression.”
Pablo Iglesias, the leader of the anti-austerity Podemos party, said: “I’m ashamed that they lock up opponents in my country. We don’t want Catalan independence, but today we say ‘free the political prisoners’.”
A parallel supreme court session for six Catalan MPs, including Carme Forcadell, the speaker of the regional parliament, was postponed for a week following a request from their lawyers.
The nine members of the separatist government had appeared at the national court early on Thursday morning.
Junqueras was the first to arrive at the court. He entered the building accompanied by lawyers, passing by dozens of journalists and declined to answer questions.
Assumpció Lailla, a former politician with Catalonia’s Democrats party, said she had travelled to Madrid to join about 100 other politicians and elected officials to show support to those under investigation for rebellion.
“This is an unjust situation in which they are being investigated for facilitating democracy,” she told the Associated Press. “I don’t understand how Europe can look away from democracy.”
Supporters outside court cheered and shouted “freedom, freedom” and “we are not afraid”.
Members of the Catalan parliament’s governing body, from left: Joan Josep Nuet, Lluís Corominas and Lluís Guinó. Photograph: Sergio Perez/Reuters
Across the street, police stopped a handful protesters with Spanish flags. Addressing the Catalan politicians, they shouted “cowards” and “to jail, to jail”.
Spain has been convulsed by its worst political crisis in four decades since Puigdemont’s government held the unilateral independence referendum in defiance of Spain’s government, constitution and constitutional court.
MPs in the 135-seat regional parliament voted for independence last Friday by a margin of 70 votes to 10.
Dozens of opposition MPs boycotted the secret ballot, walking out of the chamber in Barcelona before it took place and leaving Spanish and Catalan flags on their empty seats in protest.
Minutes later, the Spanish senate granted the government in Madrid unprecedented powers to impose direct rule on Catalonia under article 155 of the constitution.
President Trump on Oct. 31 refused to answer questions from reporters about the special counsel's investigation.(The Washington Post) THE MORNING PLUM: By Greg SargentNovember 2 at 9:57 AM
We all need to do a better job stating clearly what President Trump’s position on the Russia probes really is and what it really means. When Trump dismisses discussion of Russian interference in the 2016 election as a hoax, he isn’t merely saying the charge of collusion with that meddling is a hoax. He’s also saying that the alleged Russian sabotage itself, irrespective of whether his campaign colluded with it, definitively never happened at all and, by extension, doesn’t merit any inquiry or discussion.
Some new reporting out this morning underscores in a fresh way just how reckless, irresponsible and potentially dangerous to our democracy this stance has become.
The Associated Press reports that the Russian effort to swing the election to Trump may have been much broader than previously known. The AP reports on extensive new data collected by a cybersecurity firm — which accessed it via a misstep by hackers — that experts say leaves little doubt of direct Russian involvement in the hacking and reveals a much broader set of targets for it than previous reporting had indicated. One key revelation concerns how many Democratic Party officials were hit by the hacks, per the AP: “More than 130 party workers, campaign staffers and supporters of the party were targeted, including [campaign chair John] Podesta and other members of [Hillary] Clinton’s inner circle.”
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Justice Department has identified “more than six members of the Russian government” who were allegedly behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee. If charges are filed, the Journal notes, “the case would provide the clearest picture yet of the actors behind the DNC intrusion.”
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe is tasked, first and foremost, with investigating “the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” in addition to looking at any “coordination” with U.S. campaign officials. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s charge is similar. But Trump has repeatedly dismissed the very idea that there was any Russian interference at all as a hoax. To be fair, at times, he has acknowledged it may have happened and that we need to investigate the details, but far more often, his stance has been to dismiss the whole story as a “big Dem HOAX” and an “excuse for losing the election.”
This undermines efforts to develop a full accounting of that interference — which, in turn, undermines efforts to prevent it from happening again, something U.S. intelligence services have warned is likely. The new AP reporting, by revealing just how ambitious that interference appeared to be, underscores how much is riding on developing this full accounting, and it should prompt us to revisit just how destructive Trump’s blithe dismissals threaten to be.
The new reporting is also cause to revisit the posture of Republican lawmakers toward the Russian meddling efforts during the 2016 election. As The Post has reported, Obama administration officials privately asked senior congressional officials in both parties to show a united front against Russian sabotage, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refused, claiming (in The Post’s words) that “he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.”
“In those briefings of Congress, some of the individuals expressed concern that this was motivated by partisan interests on the part of the [Obama] administration. And I took offense to that. I told them that this is an intelligence assessment; that this is an intelligence matter.”
The key here is that we don’t know just how extensive a case for Russian meddling was presented to these lawmakers. It is plausible that it was quite extensive. And as Brennan notes, it was backed up by U.S. intelligence and represented a request for a non-partisan, bi-partisan response. Yet McConnell killed this effort at bi-partisanship by claiming he would cast any public warnings as “partisan.”
To be clear, if Trump wants to say that the Russian sabotage has not been fully verified and that we don’t know the full story; that the Obama administration didn’t do enough on its own to counter the meddling; and that collusion has not been proven — well, all of that is defensible and true. But Trump is going a lot further than that. He’s saying definitively that the meddling itself never took place. The true nature of his position keeps getting lost in a fog of charges and countercharges about collusion. But we shouldn’t let that happen.
In the interview, Mr. Trump added that he was buoyed by fresh polling he said he had seen from swing states, supplied to him by the Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna Romney McDaniel, earlier on Wednesday. “I just got fantastic poll numbers,” the president said, listing what he saw as his biggest accomplishments, including a focus on deregulation and low unemployment rates. He did not cite any specific polls or reveal any numbers from Ms. McDaniel.
Yep, just keep feeding that presidential ego and hope for the best, guys.
The bill repeals the estate tax — though it’s phased in. And after much angst, Republican tax-writers have decided there’s too much political pain in meddling with 401k retirement benefits.
Trump will claim both of these as huge wins for the middle class, arguing that estate-tax repeal will be a huge boon to family farms and truckers, which is complete baloney.
Mr. Trump has insisted on “massive” tax cuts, including reducing the top corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent and delivering a tax cut for the middle class. … [Republicans] are running into political challenges as they try to offset lost revenue to stay within the confines of the $1.5 trillion tax cut that lawmakers have voted to allow.
The middle-class cut will not end up happening. And needless to say, Trump can blame others if the middle class hates the plan or if it fails.
“I think that less than 24 hours afterward, we ought to not apportion blame and actually try to find out the facts and be a little more unified,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) added,“I don’t think it’s particularly helpful, no.”
Meanwhile, behold this, from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.): “I think the president’s entitled to do what he wants to do, and Sen. Schumer is very capable of defending himself.”
It opens with archive video of a shackled man in an orange prison jumpsuit. A gravelly-voiced narrator says: “Illegal alien and child rapist Jose Carranza shot four New Jersey students in the head. Three died, shattering their families.” The murders on a Newark schoolyard in 2007 became one of the grisliest crimes in recent memory in New Jersey. … Carranza, one of six perpetrators, was in the country illegally.
Even if Guadagno gets crushed (which looks all but certain), 2018 will be awash in stuff like this if Republican Ed Gillespie wins in Virginia.
* AND TRUMP FOLLOWS THE AUTOCRAT’S PLAYBOOK: E.J. Dionne Jr. casts Trump’s ongoing embrace of loopy conspiracy theories about Mueller (while denying the realities revealed by the Russia probes) as something we’ve seen before:
Trump is faithfully following the autocrat’s playbook. He’s trying to undermine a lawful inquiry that endangers his hold on power. He has suggested that his opponent in the last election deserves to be jailed. He’s inventing stories about dark coverups by his enemies to sow confusion about the proven facts of his own team’s skulduggery. … What’s going on cannot be written off as normal partisanship. The push to discredit and derail Mueller risks becoming an existential threat to our democratic values and republican practices.
Yes, and all of this should be seen not merely as an effort to “distract,” but also as a clear sign of his fundamental unfitness to serve.
As our federal debt spirals up and up, military readiness will inevitably suffer.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (right) talks with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) as they attend a press event on tax reform on Sept. 27, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
BYKORI SCHAKE-
Republicans control both houses of Congress and the presidency, which conservatives of yore would anticipate would result in a sustained assault on the most important national security challenge facing the United States. That yawning vulnerability in our defenses is the national debt. But the tax plan released Thursday by the congressional leadership would have Dwight D. Eisenhower weeping. Not only will it increase the debt, but it also has no reasonable prospect of providing the money the administration argues the defense enterprise requires.
The U.S. government now owes roughly $20.5 trillion, more than double what our debt was 10 years ago. President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress have introduced a tax reform bill that would decrease federal revenue by a projected $5.5 trillion. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are congratulating themselves on committing to increase the debt by only $1.5 trillion over 10 years and are currently wrangling over possibilities — capping 401(k) deductions, taxing college endowments — to close the gap. Even if they succeed in finding a formula that can attract sufficient votes to pass into law, the tax reform is likely to worsen rather than improve on our security.
The debt is important in three ways. First, in relation to GDP, it is an important indicator of the country’s risk of stagnation that prevents growing the economy — even middle school students know that increasing the denominator makes the numerator relatively less important. Second, it exposes us to risk in credit markets: Should holders of U.S. debt become skeptical of our creditworthiness, interest rates will increase, making our debt costlier and putting further pressure on the government’s ability to provide services, including defense. Third, debt service is impinging on the funds available for discretionary spending, including defense spending, and that is likely to get much worse if either interest rates rise or the economy sputters.
The United States has been extraordinarily lucky that we have accrued such staggering debt in a time of historically low interest rates
. We have also been lucky that other prospective holding currencies have not become genuinely substitutable: The euro has its troubles with shaky eurozone finances, the renminbi its opaque stewardship, and cryptocurrencies their cybervulnerabilities. But none of these conditions is likely to remain fixed over time, especially if the political dysfunctionality of spending by the U.S. government continues.
Republicans assert that widening the tax base and freeing up the economy will provide new revenue. That would be a reasonable prospect if the administration had a theory of victory for passing a budget aligned to its spending priorities. It does not. The budget submitted by the Trump administration is, to quote a leading Republican committee chair, “dead on arrival.” The Budget Control Act will remain the law of the fiscal land, the Damoclean sword of sequestration hanging over the Defense Department’s head.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kori Schake is a fellow at the Hoover Institution.
A decade ago, Congress reached a bipartisan agreement that cuts to federal spending would be applied with 50 percent to domestic priorities and 50 percent to defense. It has become the closest thing to an immutable law of federal spending. Secretary of Defense James Mattis has argued that the Pentagon deserves a disproportionate amount of federal spending. But his appeals have not changed a single vote.
Defense Department spending has been declining for more than a decade, due first to President Barack Obama’s policy choices and then the mandatory cuts required when the Budget Control Act spending ceilings were breached — which they have been for the past nine years. Congress could not reach agreement on prioritized reductions and so agreed to limit federal spending by cutting everything proportional to existing budgets. Which is, needless to say, terrible management. In 2010, Mike Mullen, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, identified the debt as “the most significant threat to our national security.”
In 2012, a subsequent chairman assessed that the defense strategy could not be carried out if “even $1” were cut from the Pentagon budget. And yet $50 million was cut from that budget, even before the Budget Control Act kicked in. In the six years since the act became law, the military chiefs and their civilian superiors have uniformly and repeatedly argued that resources are inadequate to their assigned missions and that Congress tying their hands against sensible management of their budget compounds the problem.
The Office of Management and Budget must privately believe that it is giving fiscal conservatives in Congress political cover to vote for deficit spending. That is, in order to get needed defense spending, Republicans will vote for domestic spending and increasing the debt. Republican leaders must be banking on tax reform spurring economic growth sufficient to dull the edge of fiscal husbandry and making painful trade-offs unnecessary.
This is wildly unlikely unless Republican leaders — in the White House and in Congress — do the hard work of persuading their colleagues on both sides of the aisle to adopt a set of national priorities. Nothing in the behavior of President Trump, his budget team, or Republican leaders in Congress indicates that will be the case. And if it is not, the Republican tax reform proposal, even if it passes, will leave our greatest national security vulnerability exposed and continue the emaciation of our defense program.
Lacking an authoritative power like the CPC, India achieved little in land and labor law reform in recent years, another weakness for Modi’s government. India’s private ownership of land is the big obstacle when it comes to infrastructure construction.
by Liu Zongyi-
( November 1, 2017, Beijing, Sri Lanka Guardian) Why is India having trouble promoting economic reform? It may be due to the political ecology of this country. India lacks a centralized authority similar to that of China, led by the Communist Party of China (CPC), which is the driving force of the nation’s rapid economic development.
China and India carried out similar economic reforms in the last century. India began to implement comprehensive reform and opening-up in 1991, just like China did in 1978, but the results can’t be compared. A crucial reason is that India’s political party and federal systems have seriously hindered reform. The multiparty system makes it impossible for Indian leaders to concentrate entirely on economic reform; instead, they become mired in political disputes.
India’s economic reform faces “three mountains” – land, labor and taxes. The traditional tax system divides the Indian states into independent tax jurisdictions, resulting in economic and trade fragmentation. As a result, internal transportation of goods becomes extremely complex.
Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts, the Indian government has made great progress in tax reform. A goods and services tax implemented on July 1 greatly simplified the system, which helped to carry out Modi’s commitment to facilitate business. Even so, his reforms are still meeting strong resistance in India, and a group of chambers of commerce in India have launched a protest over the new tax laws. Because of regional resistance, the new tax system had to be conservatively implemented in some states, reflecting the defects of India’s federalism and power-sharing.
Lacking an authoritative power like the CPC, India achieved little in land and labor law reform in recent years, another weakness for Modi’s government. India’s private ownership of land is the big obstacle when it comes to infrastructure construction.
Meanwhile, while labor laws and regulations protect the rights and interests of employees, and not just in terms of working conditions, they also impose harsh restrictions on hiring and firing. Because of this, some companies avoid expansion, which hurts the development of India’s economy.
Being subject to party politics, there are different types of political logic behind some economic reforms in India. In November last year, Modi’s demonetization had a strong influence. It was an effective way to combat the shadow economy, but it also cut the campaign funding of opposition parties. India’s largest opposition party, the Congress Party, strongly condemned the government move.
If economic reforms are based on the political interests of certain parties rather than the general public, it is hard to implement changes systematically.
In terms of reform and opening up as compared with China, there wasn’t much of a time gap, but India’s GDP is only one-fifth of China’s.
The Modi government seems to have realized the negative impact of the political system and power divergence on the promotion of economic reform and hopes to learn from the Chinese model, shaping the Bharatiya Janata Party as a political party with influence and competence like the CPC and gaining prestige for Modi.
But realizing this goal is not an easy job. This will be a very controversial tactic for Modi in a country as diverse as India in terms of society, culture and religion. Political turmoil may also be triggered by this, which will be a great challenge for Modi.
Over the past 30 years, India’s stalled reform made it miss the golden age of rapid globalization, while China successfully seized the opportunity and achieved rapid economic growth through reform and opening-up.
After Modi came to power, he hoped to learn from the Chinese model and become part of the global industrial chain by promoting “Make in India” and taking up comprehensive reform. However, with a wave of anti-globalization sentiment in recent years, Western countries have established trade barriers to reshore their manufacturing. China became the new standard-bearer of globalization.
But the Modi government chose to compete with China instead of cooperating, and it displayed a negative – even confrontational – attitude to the cooperation frameworks proposed by China, including the Belt and Road initiative. These errors may hamper India’s economic development and cause an even greater disappointment in the country.
The author is a senior fellow of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies and a visiting fellow of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China.
“The truth is that when you look at those who voted to remain, most of them were the better educated people in our country”
By Georgina Lee-1 NOV 2017
That’s what the Labour MP for Huddersfield, Barry Sheerman, told a BBC interviewer this week, prompting an angry response from some leave supporters on social media.
FactCheck looks at whether he’s right.
What were the main features of remain and leave voters?
In its analysis immediately after the referendum result, pollsters YouGovsaid: “The most dramatic split [between voters] is along the lines of education.
“70 per cent of voters whose educational attainment is only GCSE or lower voted to Leave, while 68 per cent of voters with a university degree voted to Remain in the EU. Those with A levels and no degree were evenly split”.
But they also cited age as “the other great fault line” – with people aged under 25 more than twice as likely to vote remain than leave (71 per cent versus 29 per cent). The reverse is true among older people, with 64 per cent of over-65s voting to leave.
Overall, YouGov concluded that “older people with fewer formal qualifications were most likely to have voted Leave”.
But is it really education that makes the difference between remainers and leavers?
Some commentators have questioned whether the relationship between education and voting to remain is as clear as it first appears.
The number of people in higher education has gone up significantly in recent decades, as this graph from the House of Commons Library shows.
According to research by the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, participation in higher education increased from 3.4 per cent in 1950, to 8.4 per cent in 1970, to 19.3 per cent in 2000.
This means that today’s over-65s are much less likely to have a degree than today’s under-25s.
Education was a bigger factor than age in determining how people voted
So when we say that graduates are more likely to vote remain, are we actually saying that younger people are more likely to vote remain?
No, says Paula Surridge, senior lecturer in the department of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol.
She told FactCheck: “There is strong evidence that education levels are connected with referendum voting, with those with degree level qualifications being much more pro-remain.”
But she was clear that “this is not explained by age – the education effect is stronger”. She says that “even within generations, the more highly qualified you are, the more likely you are to support remain”.
She pointed us to this data, which shows that people with lower levels of education were more likely to vote to leave the EU than people of the same age with higher levels of education.
FactCheck verdict
Barry Sheerman is right: better educated people are more likely to have voted remain in last year’s EU referendum.
It is true that age also played a part, with older people more likely to vote to leave and younger people more likely to vote to remain.
However, analysis of voting behaviour shows that education was a more significant factor. Even among people of the same age, those with more qualifications were much more likely to vote to remain than those with few qualifications or none.
Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrives at Sittwe airport after visiting Maungdaw in the state of Rakhine November 2, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer
SITTWE, Myanmar (Reuters) - Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, on Thursday urged people “not to quarrel” as she visited Rakhine State for the first time since a military crackdown that drove more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee the country.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has faced heavy international criticism for not taking a higher profile in responding to what U.N. officials have called “ethnic cleansing” by the army.
Myanmar has rejected the accusations of ethnic cleansing, saying its security forces launched a counter-insurgency operation after Rohingya militants attacked 30 security posts in northern Rakhine on Aug. 25.
On Thursday, amid heightened security, Suu Kyi boarded a military helicopter at Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State, to be taken to Maungdaw, one of the districts worst hit by the violence.
Suu Kyi met a group of Muslim religious leaders, said Chris Lewa, of the Arakan Project monitoring group, citing Rohingya sources.
“She only said three things to the people - they should live peacefully, the government is there to help them, and they should not quarrel among each other,” Lewa said, quoting information from a religious leader who was present.
Rohingya began fleeing predominantly Buddhist Myanmar for neighbouring Bangladesh in late August to escape violence in the wake of a military counter-insurgency operation launched after Rohingya militants attacked security posts in Rakhine State.
A U.S. State Department delegation will be in Bangladesh on Friday and Saturday to discuss the humanitarian crisis and human rights concerns stemming from the crisis in Rakhine state.
The delegation will be led by Simon Henshaw, acting assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, the department said in a statement.
On Wednesday, Reuters photographers saw thousands of desperate Rohingya wade through shallows and narrow creeks between islands of the Naf river to reach neighbouring Bangladesh as the exodus begun two months ago was far from over.
Some had small boats or pulled makeshift rafts to get to Bangladesh on the river’s western bank, but most walked, children cradled in their arms and the elderly carried on their backs, with sacks of belongings tied to staves on their shoulders.
Reaching the far side, some women and older people had to be pulled through the mud to reach dry land atop steep banks.
More than 4,000 crossed at different points on the river on Wednesday, Major Mohammed Iqbal, a Bangladesh security official in the southern district of Cox’s Bazar, told Reuters.
Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrives at Sittwe airport in the state of Rakhine November 2, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer
TALKS ON REPATRIATION
Suu Kyi had not previously visited Rakhine since assuming power last year following a landslide 2015 election victory. The majority of residents in the northern part of the state, which includes Maungdaw, were Muslims until the recent crisis.
Suu Kyi was accompanied by about 20 people travelling in two military helicopters, including military, police and state officials, a Reuters reporter said.
Businessman Zaw Zaw, formerly sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury for his ties to Myanmar’s junta, was also with the Nobel laureate.
Suu Kyi, who does not control the military, has lately appeared to take a stronger lead in the crisis, focusing government efforts on rehabilitation and pledging to repatriate refugees.
She launched a project last month to help rehabilitation and resettlement in Rakhine and has urged tycoons to contribute.
Suu Kyi has pledged to allow the return of refugees who can prove they were residents of Myanmar, but thousands of people have continued to flee to Bangladesh.
Refugees in the Bangladesh camps say the Myanmar army torched their villages, but Myanmar blames Rohingya militants.
Talks with Bangladesh have yet to deliver a pact on a repatriation process made more complex because Myanmar has long denied citizenship to the Rohingya.
Suu Kyi’s spokesman voiced fears on Tuesday that Bangladesh could be stalling on the accord to first get millions of dollars of international aid money, an accusation a senior Bangladesh home ministry official described as outrageous.
United Nations refugee official Volker Turk appealed for the safe, voluntary and sustainable repatriation of Rohingya.
In a statement issued on Thursday after a two-day visit to Myanmar, Turk, the U.N.’s assistant high commissioner for refugee protection, said he hoped the UNHCR would be involved in the government’s plans for voluntary repatriation.
But the scenes at the Naf river showed Rohingya were still ready to risk being destitute in Bangladesh, rather than stay in Myanmar in fear for their lives.
Thanks to the clocks going back, many of us managed to grab a little bit of extra shut-eye over the weekend.
And that's no bad thing because, as a country, we seem to be chronically sleep-deprived. According to the Sleep Council, the average Briton gets six-and-a-half hours sleep a night, which for most people is not enough.
Lots of studies have shown that cutting back on sleep, deliberately or otherwise, can have a serious impact on our bodies.
A few nights of bad sleep can really mess with our blood sugar control and encourage us to overeat. It even messes with our DNA.
Dr Simon Archer, who helped run the experiment, found that getting an hour's less sleep a night affected the activity of a wide range of our volunteers' genes (around 500 in all) including some which are associated with inflammation and diabetes.
Disturbed nights
So the negative effects on our bodies of sleep deprivation are clear. But what effect does lack of sleep have on our mental health?
To find out Trust Me teamed up with sleep scientists at the University of Oxford to run a small experiment.
This time, we recruited four volunteers who normally sleep soundly. We fitted them with devices to accurately monitor their sleep and then, for the first three nights of our study, let them get a full, undisturbed eight hours.
For the next three nights, however, we restricted their sleep to just four hours.
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Each day our volunteers filled in a psychological questionnaire designed to reveal any changes in their mood or emotions. They also kept video diaries. So what happened?
Sarah Reeve, a doctoral student who ran the experiment for us was surprised by how quickly their mood changed.
"There were increases in anxiety, depression and stress, also increases in paranoia and feelings of mistrust about other people", she said.
"Given that this happened after only three nights of sleep deprivation, that is pretty impressive."
Three of our four volunteers found the experience unpleasant, but one of them - Josh - claimed to be largely unaffected.
"This week probably hasn't taken as much of a toll as I thought it would on me," he said. "I feel perfectly fine - not happy, sad, stressed or anything."
Yet the tests we did on him showed something very different.
His positive emotions fell sharply after two nights of disturbed sleep, while negative emotions began to rise.
So even though he felt OK there were signs that he was, mentally, beginning to suffer.
Researchers recruited more than 3,700 university students from across the UK who had reported problems sleeping and randomised them into two groups.
One group received six sessions of online CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) aimed at improving their sleep; the other group got standard advice.
Ten weeks into the study, the students who received CBT reported a halving in rates of insomnia, accompanied by significant improvements in scores for depression and anxiety, plus big reductions in paranoia and hallucinations.
This is thought to be the largest ever randomised controlled trial of a psychological treatment for mental health, and it strongly suggests that insomnia can cause mental health problems rather than simply be a consequence of them.
Daniel Freeman, professor of clinical psychology at Oxford University, who led that study thinks one of the reasons why sleep deprivation is so bad for our brains is because it encourages repetitive negative thinking.
"We have more negative thoughts when we're sleep-deprived and we get stuck in them," he said.
Reassuringly he doesn't think a few nights of bad sleep means you will become mentally ill. But he does think it increases the risk.
"It's certainly not inevitable," he said. "In any one night, one in three people is having difficulty sleeping, perhaps 5% to 10% of the general population has insomnia, and many people get on with their lives and they cope with it. But it does raise the risk of a whole range of mental health difficulties."
The positive side of this research is it implies that helping people get a good night's sleep will go a long way to helping improve our sense of well-being.
Norbert Schwarz, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, has even put a figure on it.
He claims: "Making $60,000 (£48,400) more in annual income has less of an effect on your daily happiness than getting one extra hour of sleep a night."
So, sleep well.
Trust Me I'm a Doctor - Mental Health Special is on BBC2 at 21:00 GMT on Wednesday 1 November .
There is a disputed statement that the two Mahanayake Theras of the Malwatte and the Asgiriya Chapters issued a special announcement saying Sri Lanka does not need a new Constitution or amendments to the present Constitution of the country.
It further states that, the Anunayake of the Malwatte Chapter, Ven. Dimbulkumbure Wimaladhamma Thera told the media that the proposed Constitution is detrimental as it will devolve so much power to the provinces, that not even the Parliament will have power to control the Provincial Councils and Pradeshiya Sabhas.
Apparently the Thera has emphasized that the Mahanayakes of the other two Buddhist chapters, Ramanna and Amarapura, as well, agree to this. Hence the entire Maha Sangha, will be enlightened on the reforms and their strong opposition to a new Constitution will be expressed. However, there were disagreements and contradictions. Most certainly many other Nayake Theras disagree with these statements.
"Buddhists in Sri Lanka talk highly of their rich past of 2,500 years and believe they have a great treasure to give to the whole world. This makes Sri Lanka a country of boasts – very proud of a vast and rich culture spanning over 2,500 years. Through this rich past, Buddhist Sri Lankans are hell-bent on recreating identity as missionaries of future mankind, taking the message of Meththa, Karuna, Muditha and Upekkha, sticking to it, practising and ever moving forward, never aspiring to be more than what Ananda and Olcott did in the past. But unfortunately they have nothing to do now, except spreading greed, hate and misunderstanding among other nationalities. They talk about a past that is gone with nothing valuable to do in the present. Strangely they yearn for a future of sacrifice and sacred commitments. They continuously assert the whole world will be Buddhist and that is the end of civilization. All what they do today is speak of the history of this country without truly attempting to add a treasure to this history. Sinhala Buddhists have gone stagnant and rooted," said one intellectual in a discussion recently.
Lord Buddha preached equality and unity
It is correct to say that considering the state that some countries that have achieved only in the last 400 to 500 years, Sri Lanka is nowhere near that rate of development. Sri Lanka could have developed with the rest of the world instead of wrongly analyzing the past and wasting time dreaming about the past, living in the past. There is simply no point taking pride in all historical artefacts and stupas if people do not also make use of them to develop as a nation uniting all communities in the country. One devout Buddhist said, "I would like to mention that Lord Buddha never preached his Dhamma for it to mix with policy and governing. He did not attempt to advise the country's leaders on how to lead. As time went on, Kings and Maha Rajas made way for monks to be a part of governance, and today, we have mistaken this, and have allowed religion to govern the land. We are told to give priority to Buddhism, but how are we to do that when there are multiple Chapters in this country alone? Lord Buddha preached equality and unity. How then, were these Chapters formed? What foundations are these Chapters based on? It is indeed ironic that many of these Chapters are founded on caste basis, and Lord Buddha has always rejected the caste system. This issue is not just something we can avoid or ignore. It is a truly heartbreaking fact that we have held on to our 2,500-year-old past so much that it has now become a cause for that very same pride inducing past to destroy a potential future for the country. It has annihilated the entire system of this country.
We need to create a generation that is willing to think anew and to think out of the box. The path that the current Government is taking is appropriate. This Government has united and has agreed to bring in a new Constitution. This is beneficial. Furthermore, it is still under discussion and nothing has been finalized yet."
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