Honda event in Israel with Joe Roberts is canceled

A Honda-sponsored event in Israel, featuring Moto GP rising star Joe Roberts, has been canceled. The Japanese motor giant had faced intense criticism from human rights defenders for teaming up with Israel’s government. (RW Racing)

Ali Abunimah-22 February 2018

Palestinians are welcoming the cancellation of a racing event sponsored by Honda in Israel.

The event, due to feature rising US motorcycle racing star Joe Roberts, had been condemned by human rights groups.

Honda Israel announced on its Facebook page Thursday that the meet-up scheduled to be held in the city of Arad on 23-24 February was canceled “due to the lack of a track suitable for riding.”

However, Israeli media are attributing the difficulties in going through with the event to the pressure Honda faced from the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign for Palestinian rights, with one headline declaring, “BDS – now also against motorsports.”

That report claims that “extreme left-wing activists” in Israel associated with the BDS movement had contacted counterparts abroad to coordinate a campaign to persuade Honda and Roberts to abandon the event, citing Israel’s human rights abuses.

Activists had also appealed to Roberts directly through social media.

Track “unsafe”

The Israeli media report notes however that the official reason for the cancellation given by the Israel Motor Sports Federation is that the Arad track was deemed unsafe.

Omer Shoshani, a representative of the federation, told media that Roberts had visited the Arad track on Wednesday and decided it was not safe for him to ride on.

Shoshani also claimed that the alternative track at Petzael was flooded due to heavy rains.

In fact, the event had originally been scheduled for the newly built track in the Petzael settlement in the occupied West Bank in an area of the Jordan Valley where the Israeli military has been engaged in the forced displacement of Palestinians.

All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Syria’s Golan Heights, are illegal under international law.

Human rights and peace groups in Japan had urged Honda to cancel the event and the Palestinian BDS National Committee warned the Japanese motor giant it could face “international boycotts” if it went ahead.

Honda Israel then abruptly announced that the event would be moved out of the West Bank, to Arad.

Roberts himself told +972 Magazine that he had not been informed by organizers that the event was slated to be in the West Bank.

“I wasn’t given a lot of details in the beginning, other than that the track was in Israel,” Roberts wrote to the publication. “I would not have attended the event had it been in the West Bank.”

Roberts, 20, won the 2015 MotoAmerica Superstock 600 Championship. He recently signed with the RW Racing team to compete in the Moto2 World Championship.

Roberts arrived in Israel earlier this week according to posts on his Instagram account.

Forced displacement and racism

Palestinians welcomed last week’s decision to move the race out of the West Bank as a sign of the strength of the BDS movement, but this did not allay their concerns.

The BNC pointed out Israel’s forced removals of Bedouin communities in the Arad region, as well as the mayor of Arad’s policy of refusing to allow African refugees to settle in his city.

Moreover, the event was still being sponsored by Israel’s sports ministry, led by Miri Regev, a far-right politician notorious for her racist incitement against Palestinians and people from African states.

Sportswashing

Palestinian and Japanese human rights activists continued to press Honda – and Joe Roberts – to cancel the event altogether.

The BNC urged Roberts not to let the Israeli government use his “good name to sportswash its crimes and blatant violations of human rights.”

Sportswashing is a term describing Israel’s strategy of using athletes and sports events – such as the Giro d’Italia bicyle race, or the recent junket by NFL players – to burnish its international image.

“The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) welcomes Honda’s cancellation of the Moto GP event hosted by Israel after an effective pressure campaign by Japanese, Palestinian, Israeli and other BDS activists around the world,” Jamal Juma’, a member of the committee, told The Electronic Intifada.

“Hosting a race in an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian territory constitutes complicity in a war crime, no less,” Juma’ stated. “Equally troubling for Honda would have been its sponsorship of a race in Arad, where Palestinian Bedouin communities are being expelled, their homes demolished and their communities dispossessed.”

Roberts has not responded to requests for comment via Facebook.

Cambodia, North Korea the most corrupt Asia Pacific states

North Korean cheerleaders wave flags at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, February 22, 2018. Source: Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach

By Max Walden | 22nd February 2018

HERMIT dictatorship North Korea is the most corrupt country in Asia according to a newly released index, followed closely by an increasingly authoritarian Cambodia.

The Corruption Perceptions Index 2017 was released by Berlin-based anti-corruption non-profit Transparency International on Wednesday, which found that “the majority of countries are making little or no progress in ending corruption”.

Out of a possible score of 0 to 100 – 0 being “highly corrupt” and 100 being “very clean” – North Korea scored just 17. According to US thinktank the Heritage Foundation, “bribery is pervasive and corruption is endemic at every level of the state and economy” in the repressive, one-party state.

SEE ALSO: How do Cambodians feel about Hun Sen’s war on democracy?

Cambodia wasn’t much better with a score of only 21 on the CPI – ranked 161 out of 180 nations and territories surveyed. GAN Integrity says that while Cambodian anti-corruption law is of international standard, it is “poorly enforced and public officials continue to engage in corrupt practices with impunity.”

Prime Minister Hun Sen and his family have been described by UK NGO Global Witness as having a “stranglehold” on the economy of the small Southeast Asian nation.

In contrast, New Zealand and Singapore were the best performers in the region on the CPI, despite both experiencing “their share of scandals in the last year”. NZ was in fact the highest-ranking country in the world, while neighbouring Australia’s index score has declined since 2012.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen arrives to attend the ceremony to mark the 39th anniversary of the toppling of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, January 7, 2018. Source: Reuters/Samrang Pring

Other countries in the region fared poorly with Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines being ranked 96, 107 and 111, respectively.

Malaysia – whose Prime Minister Najib Razak has been accused by the US Department of Justice of siphoning almost $700 million from state development fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad – was ranked 62 behind its tiny oil-rich neighbour Brunei Darussalam at 32.

“There are clearly significant issues which remain unaddressed, to the detriment of the country’s international standing and the ability of Malaysian companies to operate successfully in the global economy,” said Dr Mark Lovatt of the Kuala Lumpur-based Business Integrity Alliance in a statement.

SEE ALSO: US calls Malaysia’s 1MDB corruption scandal ‘kleptocracy at its worst’

One positive case study was Indonesia, which while scoring just 37 “has a long way to go in the fight against corruption” has also seen a modest improvement in reducing public sector corruption in the past five years.

This “could” stem from the work of Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency taking action against corrupt officials despite “strong opposition” from parliament, Transparency International said.

The watchdog noted that while corruption was still strong in many countries in the Asia Pacific, journalists, activists or other whistle-blowers were increasingly being threatened for speaking out, including in some cases being killed.

Maldivian Police officers push back opposition supporters near the main opposition Maldives Democratic Party (MDP) headquarters during a protest in Male, Maldives February 9, 2018. Source: Reuters

“CPI results correlate not only with the attacks on press freedom and the reduction of space for civil society organisations,” said Delia Ferreira Rubio, the Chair of Transparency International. “In fact, what is at stake is the very essence of democracy and freedom.”

The Philippines, India and the Maldives were the worst off in terms of intimidation and violence against those who report or lobby against corruption. In highly corrupt countries, a journalist is killed every week, said its analysis.

SEE ALSO: Philippines remains one of the most dangerous places on earth for journalists

“No activist or reporter should have to fear for their lives when speaking out against corruption,” Transparency International’s Managing Director Patricia Moreira said. “Given current crackdowns on both civil society and the media worldwide, we need to do more to protect those who speak up.”

The NGO recommended that governments impement tougher legal frameworks to prevent corruption, to reduce impunity, increase space for civil society to hold power to account, and for education systems and the corporate sector to promote greater integrity and ethics.

“Rather than focus solely on scores, rankings and methods, countries across the region should decide where to make substantial changes that will bring about real improvements in their countries,” it said.

Don’t Make African Nations Borrow Money to Support Refugees

Burundian children, who fled their country, stand behind a fence as they wait to be registered as refugees at Nyarugusu camp, in north west of Tanzania, on June 11, 2015. (Stephanie Aglietti/AFP/Getty Images) 

 

BY ALEXANDER BETTS-

FEBRUARY 21, 2018, 1:47 PM

The European refugee crisis has deluded many voters into believing that most refugees are coming to rich countries. They are not — 84 percent are in low- or middle-income nations. Tanzania is one such country; it hosts over 350,000 refugees mostly from Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has had a long-standing commitment to offering sanctuary to persecuted people, despite being among the poorest 30 countries in the world.

In contrast to other countries in the region such as Kenya, Tanzania’s reputation for hosting has been generally positive; it pioneered rural self-reliance programs for refugees under its founding president, Julius Nyerere, and offered naturalization to tens of thousands of Burundians under President Jakaya Kikwete from 2005 to 2015. Recently, though, it announced its withdrawal from the so-called Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF), a centerpiece of the United Nations’ current reform plans for the refugee system. The CRRF is the operational pillar of a new U.N. Global Compact on Refugees, and one of its main aims is to better support refugee hosting countries like Tanzania, including through greater development assistance.

After months of discussions, Tanzanian President John Magufuli rejected a bill on the compact. The apparent sticking point was that the country would have to borrow money from the World Bank in order to support greater opportunities for refugees. As part of the bank’s annual lending window for poor countries, known as IDA18, Tanzania was offered $100 million, split between a loan and a grant. The idea that a country like Tanzania should have to borrow, even at preferential rates, to host refugees on behalf of the international community was roundly derided by Magufuli when he addressed foreign ambassadors in Dar es Salaam on Feb. 9. The government has been clear that it supports refugees but rejected the plan on principle because it wants rich countries to pay Tanzania rather than forcing it to borrow.

U.N. officials in Geneva and New York perceive the Tanzanian decision as an attempt by a nationalist leader to elicit more funding. But it is about much more than money. It is clear to me, having recently spoken with government officials and leaders of nongovernmental organizations, that Tanzania is a country committed to supporting refugees but which feels that international lenders and the United Nations have consistently let it down. The government worries about the security implications of small arms coming to the camps from Burundi and Congo, environmental degradation around the camps, and competition for resources. Above all, what stands out is a sense of historical injustice. Tanzania, having consistently upheld its end of the bargain, has been disappointed by donor states not delivering on their funding commitments.

Tanzania may be a small country, but its reaction has wider ramifications for the global refugee system.

Western leaders are especially focused on finding solutions for refugees in havens like Tanzania that are close to conflict zones. And yet, if donors are not even prepared to adequately fund them, there is a real risk that other host countries may follow suit.

Tanzania has been hosting refugees continuously since 1959. During the anti-colonial liberation wars of the 1960s and 1970s, Nyerere offered an open-door policy to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing southern African nations including South Africa and what was then Rhodesia. Tanzania’s government gave refugees access to land, making it one of the most progressive refugee-hosting countries in the world. But when Tanzania finally approached international donors for support to make this approach sustainable at the first and second International Conference on Assistance to Refugees in Africa in 1981 and 1984, major donor countries made pledges but failed to deliver. In the mid-1990s, when Tanzania received mass influxes from Burundi in 1993 and then more than 250,000 Rwandans in just a matter of days in 1994, it faced criticism for its forced repatriation of many Rwandans but received only limited support. In 2008, Tanzania announced that it would naturalize 162,000 Burundian refugees who arrived in 1972. Once again, commitments of international support went unfulfilled.

Today, less than 40 percent of the humanitarian budget for refugees in Tanzania is being met. Local concerns from district and regional commissioners in the border regions feature prominently on the radar of the government. In regions such as Kigoma, they have consistently expressed anxiety about the destabilizing effects of small arms and environmental degradation. In this context, and against the backdrop of history, it is understandable that the request to borrow money to implement a plan agreed far away in New York and largely delivered as a fait accompli feels like another bad deal.

Most of the other 12 countries involved in the CRRF rollout seem likely to stick with the process, but there are still broader lessons for refugee politics. Tanzania’s central message to international lenders is: Don’t be so arrogant as to believe you don’t have to build partnerships among equals. Inevitably, a fundamental feature of the refugee system is its glaring power asymmetry. Rich donors fund at their discretion, and poor countries in unstable regions face an international legal obligation to admit refugees. Unlike a growing number of rich countries, poor countries rarely shirk that responsibility or try to weasel out of it. Their willingness to offer sanctuary on their territory risks being taken for granted. Tanzania’s announcement is a reminder that if the refugee system is to be sustainable, distant donor states must listen more attentively to the concerns of host countries.

A new approach will require systemic improvements to the refugee system — beginning with more engaged humanitarian diplomacy, better political analysis to understand local and national interests, and more creative financing models.

The World Bank’s role in responding to refugee crises should be welcomed. But asking Tanzania to borrow in order to assist refugees is a mistake.

Debt forgiveness would be a better way to support host states, especially given that structural adjustment programs and the accumulation of debt underlay Tanzania’s shift toward more restrictive refugee policies in the 1990s.

Elsewhere, partnerships have been built with major host countries based on mutual respect. In Jordan, for example, a combination of trade concessions from the European Union and loans and grants from the World Bank and bilateral donors led Jordanian politicians to make it easier for Syrian refugees to work.

If the rich world wants countries adjacent to conflict zones to continue hosting refugees, it needs to begin by recognizing that African politicians face the same constraints as their European or North American counterparts and that they cannot bear the financial burden of accepting refugees alone.

Millions of jobs are still missing. Don’t blame immigrants or food stamps.

Prisoners wait for breakfast at California Men's Colony prison in San Luis Obispo, Calif., in 2013. Rising incarceration rates are one of a handful of factors that help to account for the United States' missing jobs. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

By Andrew Van Dam February 22 at 7:00 AM

Where did all the jobs go? Well, we're finally starting to find some satisfactory answers to the granddaddy of all economic questions.

The share of Americans with jobs dropped 4.5 percentage points from 1999 to 2016 — amounting to about 11.4 million fewer workers in 2016.

At least half of that decline probably was due to an aging population. Explaining the remainder has been the inspiration for much of the economic research published after the Great Recession.

Economists and politicians have pointed at immigration, China, video games, robots, opioids, universities, working spouses — everything up to and including the academic equivalent of shrugging their shoulders and muttering, “Kids these days.”

Until recently, there was no good system to untangle it all.

University of Maryland economists Katharine Abraham and Melissa Kearney built one. After reviewing the most robust research available and doing some rough-but-rigorous math to estimate how much job loss each phenomenon can explain, the duo discovered something surprising: pretty much all the missing jobs are accounted for.

Just as important, they pinpointed the culprits. In a draft paper released by the National Bureau for Economic Research this week, Abraham and Kearney find that trade with China and the rise of robots are to blame for millions of the missing jobs.

Other popular scapegoats, such as immigration, food stamps and Obamacare, did not even move the needle.

During this time, there were other changes in the labor force (particularly an increase in educated workers) that pushed the employment rate upward. As a result, their research needed to account for more than just the 4.5-percentage-point drop and offset those gains.

Factors that mattered

Competition from Chinese imports

The era of vanishing jobs happened alongside one of the most unusual, disruptive eras in modern economic history — China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 and its subsequent rise to the top of the global export market.

There’s a deep body of research into the manufacturing jobs that were lost to competition from cheap Chinese imports, as well as those that vanished from related industries. On the basis of that research, Abraham and Kearney estimate that this competition cost the economy about 2.65 million jobs over the period.

Robots

Automation also seems to have cost more jobs than it created. Guided by research showing that each robot takes the jobs of about 5.6 workers and that 250,475 robots had been added since 1999, the duo estimated that robots cost the economy another 1.4 million workers.

Minimum wage increases

Abraham and Kearney used previous research into how teens and adults respond to rising wages to produce a high-end estimate of the impact of minimum wages over this period. Other recent research has found either a small effect or no effect. In the end, they combined those figures to find that about 0.49 million workers were lost.

That number does not account for the benefits that the broader labor force derived from higher wages, Kearney said.

Social Security Disability Insurance

The number of people receiving Social Security Disability Insurance nearly doubled from 1999 to 2016, from 4.9 million to 8.8 million. The population has aged, but that is still 1.64 million more people than there should have been, had rates remained steady for each age group, the researchers found.

Abraham and Kearney estimated that the labor force shrank by about 0.36 million as an increasing number of workers drew disability benefits.

Veterans benefits

The economists estimated that roughly 0.15 million people were not working because of the expansion of a disability insurance program run by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Between 2000 and 2013, the share of veterans receiving such benefits rose from 9 percent to 18 percent.

Mass incarceration

There were about 6.5 million former prisoners in the United States between the ages of 18 and 64 in 2014, according to the best available data. Assume that 60 percent of them served time as a result of policies implemented since the 1990s, account for their ages, time served, and pre-prison earnings, and you get a conservative estimate of 0.32 million lost jobs.

What did not reduce employment

Immigration

Most research indicates that immigration does not reduce native employment rates. And even if it did, it is unlikely that it would reduce overall (native and foreign-born) employment. Immigrants’ employment rates are higher than those of native-born residents.

Food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)

SNAP benefits average about $4.11 per person per day. Able-bodied adults are generally cut off from benefits unless they are working. Furthermore, the program itself did not change enough over the period in question to alter people’s behavior. It grew, but that was because of fallout from the Great Recession, not because of permanent policy changes that made nutrition assistance more accessible.
The Affordable Care Act

Obamacare went into effect in 2014 and has not had a noticeable impact on jobs to date. It is safe to assume it was not a decisive factor in the 1999-2016 period.

Working spouses who allow men to stay home

While this is a popular theory, the share of men who are not in the labor force but had a working spouse actually fell slightly between 1999 and 2015, according to a 2016 report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

The unknowns

Along with an aging population, the first six factors (competition from China and automation in particular) account for the majority of the jobs lost during the recession. But the U.S. labor market is colossal and complicated, and other explanations are out there, pushing and pulling the estimates in either direction.

It might be harder to change jobs now

Americans are not moving as often as they once did. It seems reasonable to assume, on the basis of recent research, that employment rates would be higher if people were more willing or able to relocate for work. But there is not yet enough evidence to state this conclusively.

Likewise, it is possible that the skills possessed by the available workers are becoming increasingly unrelated to the skills required by the available jobs. But this “skills mismatch” has not yet been proved over the long term.

Finally, there has been speculation that the rapid rise — from 5 percent in the late 1950s to about 30 percent today — in the share of workers in jobs that require a local or state government license has limited folks’ ability to switch careers and respond to labor-market requirements. We do not yet know enough to put a number on it.

Video games, opioids and changing youth culture

U.S. youth employment rates fell rapidly over the period. Economists have grabbed headlines recently by blaming the precipitous drop in young males in the workforce on a variety of factors including video game playing and prescription painkiller abuse.

But there is not yet enough evidence to prove that either phenomenon is a cause of low youth employment or a result of it. According to Kearney,  both issues could, at their root, be the result of shifting views of what is acceptable for a young man to be doing with his life.

“For whatever reason, these men seem more willing to stay home, live with their parents, live off their girlfriends,” Kearney said.

The paper’s most striking finding is not, however, speculation on idle American youths. It is that many of the topics that dominate political discourse about the labor market — such as immigration, food stamps and Obamacare — are unlikely to bring back lost jobs.

Instead, policymakers should be focusing on the forces that took those jobs in the first place: import competition, automation, incarceration and disability insurance.

“There’s not much we can do about the fact that our population is aging,” Kearney said. “But it’s pretty imperative that we figure out why younger individuals aren’t working at the rates they used to and do something to change that.”

The headline of this story has been updated.

Correction: A drop in the employment-to-population ratio of 4.5 percentage points would have been equivalent to about 11.4 million workers in 2016. An earlier version of this post put that number at 6.8 million. 

Trump’s Budget Priorities: Crimes Against Humanity?

By Frank Vogl-2018-02-21

US President Donald J. Trump's new budget proposes a dramatic cut in spending on diplomacy and economic assistance, while advocating further major boosts to defence outlays. The numbers: The White House proposes a 30% cut ($8.9 billion) to take total spending for the US State Department, US Aid and Treasury international programmes to $29.8 billion. The budget plan sees a gain of 14% ($73.9 billion) in Defence Department outlays to total $597.1 billion.

The plans highlight the increasing White House determination to find military solutions to the world's ills. President Trump's willful neglect of the vast humanitarian crises that now abound - the worst since World War Two - is a crime against humanity.

These crises have been building for years. To be fair, this isn't just about Trump. There has been insufficient leadership by the US Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations as well.

They, too, failed to address the causes, prevent the disasters and build sufficiently powerful international responses to what can only be described as man-made horror stories. To be sure, much good was also achieved by these Presidents in the field of development.

Values hurled aside

Now, under the leadership of President Trump, Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the values-driven international leadership of the United States has been hurled aside. And their timing is criminal.

Consider, for example, the plight of the Rohingya in Bangladeshi camps, the Syrians in camps in Jordan, the thousands of people from sub-Saharan Africa who take staggering personal risks to try and find refuge in Western Europe and the gathering nightmares faced by the citizens of oil-rich Venezuela.

The United States under Trump washes its hands from the need to help in any of those urgent crises. Such is the ultimate consequence of Trump's irrepressible need to see the United States as a victim on the global stage.

More generally, consider, for example:

• According to CARE: "An unprecedented 81 million people are in need of emergency assistance food assistance," and that the United Nations has declared the world hunger emergency "the gravest since World War Two."

• According to the World Food Programme: "Some 20 million face catastrophe in Sudan, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen."

• According to UNHCR: "We are now witnessing the highest levels of human displacement on record. An unprecedented 65.6 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 22.5 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. There are also 10 million stateless people who have been denied a nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement."

• According to Human Rights First, quoting data from the International Labour Organization and Walk Free Foundation: "An estimated 24.9 million victims are trapped in modern-day slavery. Of these, 16 million (64%) were exploited for labor, 4.8 million (19%) were sexually exploited, and 4.1 million (17%) were exploited in state-imposed forced labour."

Abandoning the United Nations

The US has long seen the United Nations as playing important roles in explicitly addressing humanitarian crises - no longer.

The budget cuts now proposed by the Trump administration, range for example from 20% for UN Peacekeeping; to 50% for the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization; and, to 100% for several leading agencies dealing with economic development assistance, women's rights issues and the environment.

We have the science to prevent most of the starvation and health epidemics. But at a time when entrepreneur Elon Musk is sending commercial rockets into space and talking about shuttling tourists between earth and Mars, the US administration is sharply reducing basic support that could save lives.

Encouraging authoritarianism

Worse still, the Administration is encouraging some of the kleptocratic authoritarian leaders who are most responsible for the unfolding disasters. Many of the man-made crimes against humanity are the product of extreme violence and grand corruption - corruption, which according to the International Monetary Fund now reduces annual global GDP by between 1.5% and 2.0%.

For years, the United States provided aid, for example, to the corrupt regimes in Egypt and Pakistan that stole the cash - this continues. President Sisi has ruthlessly crushed civil society and imprisoned scores of journalists, but the United States turns a blind eye.

Secretary of State Tillerson is on a Middle East tour where his sole agenda is to support militarism. He started in Egypt, where The New York Times headlined the event: "Visiting Egypt, Tillerson Is Silent on Its Wave of Repression."

The United States has spent around $120 billion of reconstruction aid in Afghanistan and its troops have been engaged there for over 16 years. The Pentagon is now preparing to increase the number of US soldiers to be deployed.

The level of corruption, the scale of daily violence and the enormous unemployment in Afghanistan today is powerful evidence of just how misguided US policies, which are hugely based on military approaches, have been and continue to be. The White House is in no mood to learn the lessons of this adventure.

From promoting democracy to America First

From the ashes of World War Two, and the strident spread of Communism, the United States sought to create order in a world of disorder. It pledged to promote freedom and democracy and human rights as the means to provide hope and opportunity to all peoples.

The United States led brilliantly, from the forging of the United Nations, to the implementation of the Marshall Plan, in an endeavour to make this a peaceful and prosperous world.

Now, President Trump is telling the world that those values are irrelevant to the goal of putting the United States first. The result will be that the statistics highlighted above will become even larger in the course of this year and in 2019.

The combination of rising human trafficking, mounting millions of refugees and vast grand corruption, is the single greatest threat to international security. It is a threat that cannot be contained by the American military, irrespective of its size and sophistication.

Late this year, we will mark the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Human Rights. It will be an event, probably ignored by the White House that will not be joyous. Today, as the World Food Programme reports: "In South Sudan alone, one million children are estimated to be acutely malnourished."

Their deaths could be avoided.

Justin Trudeau's India visit overshadowed by invitation to attempted murderer

Canada rescinds dinner invite to Jaspal Atwal, who India says was part of a Sikh terrorist group

 The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is in India for a week. Photograph: Canadian Press/Rex/Shutterstock

Michael Safi in Delhi @safimichael Thu 22 Feb 2018 15.28 GMT

Justin Trudeau’s state visit to India has been overshadowed by revelations that a businessman convicted of trying to assassinate an Indian minister in the 1980s was invited to several official events.

The week-long tour of the subcontinent has been dogged by suggestions the Canadian prime minister is being snubbed by his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, over Canada’s alleged indulgence of Sikh separatists aiming to create an independent state within India for the religious minority.

The Canadian high commission in Delhi confirmed on Thursday it had sent, and has now rescinded, an official dinner invitation to Jaspal Atwal, a former member of a Sikh organisation regarded by India as a terrorist group.

Atwal was convicted in 1986 of trying to kill Malkiat Singh Sidhu, then a minister in the Punjab government, who was on holiday in Canada at the time. Sidhu survived the attempt but was later assassinated in India.

Photos were circulated on Thursday showing Atwal posing with Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, at an event in Mumbai earlier this week.

Trudeau told journalists he took the matter very seriously. “The individual in question should have never received an invitation,” he told reporters in Delhi. “The person and department responsible will take full responsibility for his actions.”

His office clarified Atwal was not part of Trudeau’s official delegation. A Canadian MP, Randeep Surai, admitted organising the invitation. “I should have exercised better judgment, and I take full responsibility for my actions,” he said in a statement.

On Wednesday, Trudeau met Amarinder Singh, the chief minister of Punjab state, which was the centre of decades of violent clashes, bombings and assassinations between Sikh separatists and the Indian state.

About 80,000 people are estimated to have died in the conflict, including the former Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi, who was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguard after ordering Indian troops into Amritsar’s Golden Temple, one of Sikhism’s most revered spiritual sites.

The campaign was crushed in India by 1993 but its embers have been fanned by Sikh diasporas, especially in Canada, where Punjabi migrants and their descendants have become a rich voting block. About 1.4 million Canadians claim Indian descent.

Trudeau has previously boasted that his cabinet has more Sikhs than Modi’s and Canadian Sikh activists have succeeded in passing bills in provincial legislatures describing the anti-Sikh riots that followed Gandhi’s assassination as a “genocide” – terminology India balks at.

In past months, dozens of Sikh temples in Canada have banned Indian officials from visiting in their official capacity.

After meeting Trudeau, Singh’s administration released a statement saying it had received “categorical assurance” that Canada rejected the idea of creating a separate Sikh state.

“Citing the separatist movement in Quebec, Trudeau said he had dealt with such threats all his life and was fully aware of the dangers of violence, which he had always pushed back with all his might,” the statement said.

Indian commentators have been watchful of any signs of frostiness between the two governments, highlighting the fact Modi sent a junior minister to greet Trudeau when he landed in India on Saturday.

View image on Twitter

Narendra Modi

✔@narendramodi

I hope PM @JustinTrudeau and his family had a very enjoyable stay so far. I particularly look forward to meeting his children Xavier, Ella-Grace, and Hadrien. Here is a picture from my 2015 Canada visit, when I'd met PM Trudeau and Ella-Grace.

9:14 AM - Feb 22, 2018

Others pointed to the fact Modi, a prolific social media user, had not greeted Trudeau on Twitter, as he had sometimes done with other leaders.

India’s ministry for external affairs denied suggestions of a snub. Modi and Trudeau will meet on Friday.

Indian investigators seize Nirav Modi's Rolls-Royce, Porsche in $1.8 billion PNB fraud probe

A man talks on a phone as he walks past a Nirav Modi showroom during a raid by the Enforcement Directorate, a government agency that fights financial crime, in New Delhi, India, February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

Devidutta Tripathy-FEBRUARY 22, 2018

MUMBAI (Reuters) - The Enforcement Directorate (ED) said on Thursday it has seized a Rolls-Royce Ghost, a Porsche Panamera and some half a dozen more luxury vehicles belonging to billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi and his firms, in a probe into an alleged $1.8 billion fraud against state-run Punjab National Bank.

Modi, his companies, and other firms with links to his uncle Mehul Choksi, are at the heart of the alleged fraud that involved illegally issued letters of undertaking (LOUs) from the second-largest Indian state-run lender that were used to get loans from overseas branches of other, mostly Indian banks.

In what has been dubbed the biggest fraud in India’s banking history, police have so far arrested a dozen people - six from the bank and six more from Modi and Choksi’s companies - as they continue the probe.

A lawyer for Modi has denied his client was involved in any fraud. Choksi has not commented but his firm, Gitanjali Gems, has also denied involvement in the alleged fraud.

The Enforcement Directorate, an agency focused on foreign exchange and money laundering offences, has been conducting separate searches at homes and offices of Modi. As of last Saturday, it had seized jewellery, gold, diamonds, precious metals and stones that it said were worth 56.74 billion rupees ($872.5 million).

In a Twitter post on Thursday, the ED detailed the seizures of the cars from Modi and his companies. It also said it had frozen shares and mutual funds worth 78 million rupees held by Modi and 867.2 million rupees by Choksi.

Modi, who police say left India with his family in January, before the bank filed a police complaint triggering an inquiry, has not publicly commented on the case yet.

However, in a letter to PNB, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, Modi had said that his companies owed the bank less than 50 billion rupees, well below the amount alleged by the bank. He also said PNB had jeopardized its prospects of recovering the sums owed by going public with its allegations.

SHARES FALL FURTHER  

Indian jeweller Nirav Modi poses during the launch of his store in Mumbai, India, March 14, 2015. Picture taken March 14, 2015. Fotocorp/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY NO ARCHIVES NO RESALES

Indian jeweller Nirav Modi poses during the launch of his store in Mumbai, India, March 14, 2015. 

Picture taken March 14, 2015. Fotocorp/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY NO ARCHIVES NO RESALES

PNB responded to Modi’s letter on Thursday.

In its letter of reply, seen by Reuters, the bank said the LoUs in question were illegally obtained by Modi’s firms and it was compelled by law to report it to law enforcement agencies, as they were potential violations of money laundering laws and the Foreign Exchange Management Act.

It urged Modi to respond with a “concrete and implementable” repayment plan on outstanding dues.

Earlier on Thursday, Reuters reported that PNB had stepped up its controls on the use of global interbank payments network SWIFT in the aftermath of the fraud.

Separately, on Thursday, responding to clarifications sought by the stock exchange, PNB in a regulatory filing said it had followed all “lawful avenues available” to recover its dues.

The bank reiterated that it had enough assets and capital to meet any liabilities from the fraud.

In a note issued late on Wednesday, Goldman Sachs trimmed its earnings estimates for the top three Indian state-run banks, including PNB, saying recent capital injections announced by the government would dilute earnings.

It cut PNB’s earnings estimate by nearly 30 percent for the current fiscal year ending March 31, saying it expected a larger earnings slide in PNB’s case due to the fraud-related liability.

PNB shares fell 2.3 percent on Thursday. The stock has lost more than a quarter of its market value since disclosing the $1.8 billion fraud on Feb. 14.

Gitanjali Gems fell almost 5 percent, its maximum daily limit, to all-time lows.

Junk Planet: Is Earth the Largest Garbage Dump in the Universe?

While this substantial pollution and health problem has attracted little research attention, some researchers in a variety of countries have been investigating the problem.

Sri Lanka Guardian The Long Read

by Robert J. Burrowes- Feb 23, 2018

( February 23, 2018, Victoria, Sri Lanka Guardian) Is Earth the largest garbage dump in the Universe? I don’t know. But it’s a safe bet that Earth would be a contender were such a competition to be held. Let me explain why.

To start, just listing the types of rubbish generated by humans or the locations into which each of these is dumped is a staggering task beyond the scope of one article. Nevertheless, I will give you a reasonably comprehensive summary of the types of garbage being generated (focusing particularly on those that are less well known), the locations into which the garbage is being dumped and some indication of what is being done about it and what you can do too.

Junk Planet Is Earth the Largest Garbage Dump in the Universe.docx by Thavam on Scribd

Is this the world's largest brain tumour to have been removed? Indian man has 4lb mass extracted by surgeons in mammoth 7-hour surgery

The grueling procedure, which took place at the BYL Nair Charitable Hospital, lasted seven hours, local reports state (pictured in hospital)-Senator John McCain was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in July 2017

Santlal Pal, a cloth seller, had a 4.1lbs (1.9kg) mass pulled out by a team of experts in Mumbai in a mammoth operation.

PUBLISHED: 13:33 EST, 21 February 2018 | UPDATED: 17:21 EST, 21 February 2018


Santlal Pal had a 4.1lbs (1.9kg) mass pulled out by a team of experts in Mumbai

The grueling procedure took place at the BYL Nair Charitable Hospital

Medics claim the previous heaviest brain tumour weighed just 3.1lbs (1.4kg)

Indian surgeons claim to have removed the world's largest brain tumour from a 31-year-old man that had left him blind.

The grueling procedure, which took place at the BYL Nair Charitable Hospital, lasted seven hours, local reports state.

Medics claim the biggest brain tumour that was successfully removed before this weighed just 3.1lbs (1.4kg).

Mr Pal had complained of a progressive swelling of his scalp, headaches and a loss of vision in both eyes.

It is believed he had endured the agonising symptoms, which are tell-tale of a brain tumour, since he was just one.  

By the time he was admitted to hospital he was blind and his scalp has swelled to appear as if he had two heads mounted on top of each other.

But in a seven-hour operation, surgeons successfully removed the massive tumour along with skull

bone which had invaded into the brain.

Mr Pal needed a transfusion of 11 units of blood and then spent three days on life support afterwards but has since made a good recovery.

However, it is unsure whether Mr Pal's vision has been restored. It is also unclear what type of brain tumour he was suffering from. 

Professor Trimurti Nadkarni who led the surgery said: 'Such large tumours are rare and are a surgical challenge.

'There was a heavy blood loss and this required great team skill in perioperative monitoring for a successful result.

'The weight of a similar case reported earlier has been 1.4kg.

'The patient has made good recovery and is now ambulatory and on full diet. He feels relieved of 'a large burden on his head.' 

WHAT IS A GLIOBLASTOMA AND JUST HOW DEADLY IS IT? THE AGGRESSIVE BRAIN TUMOUR SUFFERED BY JOHN MCCAIN

 

Senator John McCain was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in July 2017

Glioblastoma is considered the most aggressive tumour that can form in the brain. Senator John McCain was diagnosed with one in July 2017.

Patients have a 10 per cent chance of surviving five years after their diagnosis, according to figures. 

The average lifespan is between 14 and 16 months.

Three adults per every 100,000 will be struck down with a glioblastoma, says The American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS).

It is most commonly found in men aged 50 to 60, and there is no link between developing glioblastoma and having a previous history with other cancers.

WHAT IS THE TUMOUR MADE OF? 

The tumour is made up of a mass of cells growing quickly in the brain, and in most cases patients have no family history of the disease.

It won't spread to other organs, however, once it is diagnosed, it is nearly impossible to target, surgeons claim.

Unlike other types of brain cancer which are more specifically located, glioblastoma can occur in any part of the brain. 

WHAT TREATMENT IS AVAILABLE? 

Because the tumour likely already spread deep into the brain by the time it is diagnosed, the cancerous tissue is incredibly difficult to remove. 

Surgeon will only ever remove the tumour, or part of the tumour, if it won't do any damage to the surrounding brain tissue.

Dr Babcar Cisse, a neurosurgeon at the Weill Cornell Brain and Spine Center, told Daily Mail Online in July 2017: 'By the time a glioblastoma is diagnosed, microfibers can spread to the rest of the brain which an MRI would not spot.

'So even if the main tumor is removed and the patient receives radiation and chemotherapy, it will come back.' 

GRADING A GLIOBLASTOMA

Brain tumours are graded from between one to four, depending on how fast they grow and how aggressive they are.

Malignant tumours are either given a high-grade three or four, while benign ones are given a lower grade one or two. 

Glioblastoma is often referred to as a grade four astrocytoma - another form of brain tumour, says the AANS.

SYMPTOMS

Patients typically complain of symptoms such as confused vision, trouble with memory, dizziness and headaches.

The symptoms are somewhat nonspecific, and vary from person to person, and may not persist. 

The disease is therefore impossible to diagnose based on symptoms alone.