Pakistan's Imran Khan declares victory as rivals cry foul

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani cricket legend Imran Khan declared victory on Thursday in a divisive general election, and said he was ready to lead the nuclear-armed nation despite a long delay in ballot counting and allegations of vote-rigging from his main opponents.

Straits Times

JULY 26, 2018

His success in Wednesday’s election is a stunning rise for an anti-corruption crusader who has spent much of his political career on the fringes of Pakistan politics, but now stands on the brink of becoming the country’s prime minister.

“God has given me a chance to come to power to implement that ideology which I started 22 years ago,” Khan, 65, said in a televised speech from his house near the capital Islamabad.

Supporters of jailed former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who accuse Khan of colluding with the still powerful army, said the vote count was rigged in what it termed an assault on democracy in a country with a history of military rule.

Oxford-educated Khan, in the past a fierce critic of U.S. policy in the region, called for “mutually beneficial” ties with Pakistan’s on-off ally the United States, and offered an olive branch to arch-foe India, saying the two nations should resolve their long-simmering dispute over Kashmir.

In a speech peppered with populist pledges, Khan promised to create jobs for the poor and said he would turn the palatial prime minister’s official residence in the capital into an education facility instead of living in it.

With about half the votes counted, Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), or Pakistan Movement for Justice, had a wide lead in the Muslim-majority nation, the country’s election commission said.

“SHEER RIGGING”

Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and rival Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) both said their party monitors at many voting centres were either kicked out during counting or had not received the official notifications of the precinct’s results, instead being given handwritten tallies they could not verify.

“It is a sheer rigging. The way the people’s mandate has blatantly been insulted, it is intolerable,” Shehbaz Sharif, PML-N president and Nawaz’s brother, told a news conference.

Khan has staunchly denied allegations by PML-N that he is getting help from the military, which has ruled Pakistan for about half of its history and still sets key security and foreign policy.

 Supporters of cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan, chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), wait outside his residence, a day after the general election in Islamabad, Pakistan, July 26, 2018. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

The army, which dismisses allegations of meddling, deployed 371,000 soldiers at polling stations across the country, nearly five times the number as in last election in 2013.

Khan offered to investigate all the allegations of rigging and said he wants to “unite” the country under his leadership.

Pakistan faces a mounting economic crisis that is likely to require a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, the likely conditions of which could complicate Khan’s spending pledges. PTI has also not ruled out seeking succour from China, Islamabad’s closest ally which has in recent years been investing heavily in infrastructure in the country.

Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) secretary Babar Yaqoob told reporters early on Thursday that counting had been delayed by technical failures in an electronic reporting system and the tallying was now being conducted manually. The results had been due by around 2 a.m. (2100 GMT on Wednesday).

By early Thursday evening, a full day after polls closed, he told reporters 82 percent of results had been received and rejected the allegations of tampering in the vote count.

“The complaints we have been receiving, they could be of procedural level, but not any kind of rigging,” Yaqoob said.

With 48 percent of the total vote counted, Khan’s PTI was listed by the ECP in its provisional results as leading in 113 of 272 contested National Assembly constituencies.

Sharif’s PML-N was ahead in 64 constituencies, and the PPP, led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of assassinated two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto, led in 42 constituencies.

Although Khan still appeared likely to fall short of the 137 seats needed for a majority in the National Assembly, he should have no problems finding coalition partners from smaller parties and independents.

Pakistan’s election monitoring body and the European Union’s were scheduled to deliver their assessments of the conduct of the election on Friday.

POPULIST PLEDGE

An icon of Pakistani cricket and a one-time London playboy who has since transformed himself into a pious, firebrand nationalist, Khan’s campaign speeches were littered with anti-America rhetoric and baiting of India.

Slideshow (7 Images)

But in his victory speech, Khan pledged to improve ties with Washington and Pakistan’s neighbours at a time the country is becoming increasingly isolated over its alleged links with Islamist militants in Afghanistan.

He called for a “balanced relationship” with the United States, which has taken a firmer line on Pakistan under President Donald Trump, suspending aid and even convincing Western allies to put Pakistan on a terror financing watchlist earlier this year.

Quipping that Indian media had recently portrayed him like a “villain in a Bollywood movie”, Khan’s overtures to New Delhi included calls for better trade ties and to sit down and discuss Kashmir, a disputed region that was the cause of two of the three wars between the neighbours.

Khan also said he wants deepen ties with old ally Beijing and emulate China’s success in reducing poverty.

Investors welcomed Khan’s election success, with Pakistan’s benchmark 100-share index surging as much as 1.9 percent to 42,136 points in early trade, before closing 1.8 percent up. Analysts said there was relief Khan was unlikely to have to rely on major opposition parties in a messy coalition.

Khan has promised an “Islamic welfare state” and cast his campaign as a battle to topple a predatory political elite hindering development in the impoverished nation of 208 million, where the illiteracy rate hovers above 40 percent.

“Accountability will start with me, then my ministers, and then we will work our way down,” Khan said. “I want all of Pakistan to be united in this moment.”

Additional reporting by Kay Johnson and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad, Syed Raza Hassan in Karachi. Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Alex Richardson

Brexit: Is stockpiling of foods and drugs reassuring?

Siobhan Kennedy-25 Jul 2018Business Editor

Project Fear or Project Near?

As the prospect of the UK falling out of the EU without a deal looms, Theresa May says precautions to stop supplies of medicines and basic foodstuffs running low should reassure us all.

Brexiteers, though, say talk of stockpiling is scaremongering to persuade wavering MPs to back the Prime Minister’s watered-down plan.

Siobhan Kennedy visited a drugs company which has ordered in extra quantities of stock should we leave the EU with no trade agreement, and we speak to the economist Andrea Hosso and Alastair Campbell, editor-at-large at the New European newspaper.

Over $118bn wiped off Facebook's market cap after growth shock

Shares crash as platform admits user growth fell after Cambridge Analytica breach

 Facebook lost 3 million European users after the Cambridge Analytica data breach. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Thu 26 Jul 2018 

More than $110bn (£84bn) has been wiped off Facebook’s market value, which includes a $16bn hit to the fortune of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, after the company told investors that user growth had slowed in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Facebook’s shares plunged by 18% on Thursday when the stock market opened in New York, a day after the Silicon Valley company revealed that 3 million users in Europe had abandoned the social network since the Observer revealed the Cambridge Analytica breach of 87m Facebook profiles and the introduction of strict European Union data protection legislation.

The collapse of Facebook’s share price puts the social network on track for the biggest ever one-day drop in a company’s market value. Shares fell to $177, valuing the company at $508bn, a drop of $111bn from a record high of $619bn on Wednesday.

The previous biggest collapse came in 2000, when Intel lost $91bn in a day. The amount of money wiped off Facebook’s market value on Thursday is equivalent to nearly the whole of McDonald’s or almost three times as much as Tesco.

The single biggest loser is Zuckerberg, who owns nearly 17% of the company and whose paper fortune fell from $86.5bn to about $71bn, sending him tumbling from the third-richest person on the planet to the sixth.

The collapse came after the company told investors to expect a significant decline in growth rate, and revealed that the number of users in Europe had fallen from 282 million to 279 million.

David Wehner, Facebook’s chief financial officer, said on Wednesday that the company’s decision to give its users “more choices around data privacy” following the Cambridge Analytica scandal “may have an impact on our revenue growth”.

“Our total revenue growth rates will continue to decelerate in the second half of 2018, and we expect our revenue growth rates to decline by high single-digit percentages from prior quarters sequentially in both Q3 and Q4,” he said. “Looking beyond 2018, we anticipate that total expense growth will exceed revenue growth in 2019.”

He told investors to expect a big jump in costs related to its efforts to improve data handling and an advertising drive to reassure users.

Costs in the latest quarter rose by 50% to $7.4bn as the company spent vast sums on improving data security and increased policing of the site after Zuckerberg admitted to Congress that the company had been too slow to react to Russian meddling in the runup to the 2016 presidential election.

“We were too slow to spot and respond to Russian interference, and we’re working hard to get better,” Zuckerberg said in testimony to the House energy and commerce committee in April. “Our sophistication in handling these threats is growing and improving quickly.”

Zuckerberg was hauled before Congress to answer questions about the data breach scandal, in which information from 87m user profiles, the majority based in the US, was harvested for use by Cambridge Analytica in targeted political advertising. Facebook is also under investigation by the FBI, the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Zuckerberg said his company aimed to hire 20,000 people by the end of the year to boost its security and help review suspect content on the site. It has been hiring extra bodies at a vast rate, with its headcount increasing by 47% since last year to more than 30,000 people.

“Looking ahead, we will continue to invest heavily in security and privacy because we have a responsibility to keep people safe,” he said last night.

Zuckerberg refused to appear before MPs in the UK despite the threat of a formal summons in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data breach. The information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, fined Facebook a maximum £500,000 earlier this month for breaches of the Data Protection Act.

“Facebook has failed to provide the kind of protections they are required to under the Data Protection Act,” she said. “Fines and prosecutions punish the bad actors, but my real goal is to effect change and restore trust and confidence in our democratic system.”

Facebook’s revenues are such that it would take only five and a half minutes for it to earn enough to pay the fine.

Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Baird, a US investment bank, said Facebook’s shares had fallen after the company “dropped two bombshells” on a conference call with analysts after releasing its results on Wednesday. “A significant slowdown in revenue growth for the third and fourth quarters, followed by operating margin declines over the next three-plus years,” Sebastian said. “Importantly, these are ‘self-inflicted’ issues to a large degree, as Facebook sacrifices core app monetisation to drive usage/engagement of Stories.”

Brent Thill, an analyst at banking group Jefferies, told Zuckerberg that “many investors are having a hard time reconciling that deceleration” in revenues. “It just seems like the magnitude is beyond anything we’ve seen, especially across a number of the tech [companies] we cover,” he said on the conference call with Facebook’s top executives.

At the start of the call, before the shares started to tank in after-market trading, Zuckerberg had described the results as “a solid quarter” and talked about the company’s “amazing success”.

Some investors last night called for Zuckerberg to be removed as the social network’s chairman due to his “mishandling” of the Cambridge Analytica crisis.

Trillium Asset Management, a small activist investor that has questioned Zuckerberg’s role as both chairman and chief executive before, said allowing Zuckerberg to have so much power had “contributed to Facebook missing, or mishandling, a number of severe controversies, increasing risk exposure and costs to shareholders”.

“A CEO who also serves as chair can exert excessive influence on the board and its agenda, weakening the board’s oversight of management,” Trillium said. “Having an independent chair helps the board carry out its primary duty – to monitor the management of the company on behalf of its shareholders.”

However, the proposal is unlikely to succeed as Zuckerberg holds Class B shares that give him the majority of the voting power in the company’s governance. Last year, 51% of independent investors voted to oust Zuckerberg as chairman.

Trump cannot keep his corruption hidden forever. Here’s what’s coming.

CNN aired audio from 2016 of Trump and Cohen discussing paying for a story about an alleged affair, after months of Trump and his advisers claiming ignorance. (Jenny Starrs /The Washington Post)

by Greg Sargent July 26 at 10:44 AM

THE MORNING PLUM:

Two of the biggest stories in Washington right now — President Trump’s battle with lawyer Michael Cohen, and a federal judge’s decision to let a lawsuit alleging ongoing violations of the emoluments clause proceed — are both converging toward one endpoint. Both demonstrate the degree to which Trump places his personal interests before those of the American people, and both may shed light on that wretched reality in much more detail in coming days than Trump ever bargained for.

Thursday morning, news reports tell us that Trump’s allies view future disclosures from Cohen — who released audio showing Trump was aware of a hush-money scheme to quiet an alleged mistress before the election — as a serious threat to his presidency. Meanwhile, the judge’s ruling Wednesday means the court battle over whether Trump is violating the Constitution with his business profits shifts into a new phase that could bring more revelations.

In that ruling, a federal judge denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C., which alleges that Trump, whose businesses are regularly patronized by foreign officials, is violating the Constitution’s ban on officials accepting emoluments from foreign governments. The court rejected Trump’s effort to define “emoluments” very narrowly, and instead accepted the plaintiffs’ argument that they constitute “profit,” “gain” or “advantage,” i.e., the sort of profits that go to Trump’s businesses. This means the case now moves forward to determine whether Trump reaped such profit, gain or advantage from foreign governments.

In an interview with me, Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is involved in the lawsuit, laid out the next steps: D.C. and Maryland will now seek discovery access to the financial records of Trump’s businesses — in particular, the hotel he owns in D.C. “We’re going to seek records to show what benefits and payments the president got, and that’s going to include extensive business and financial records,” Bookbinder said.

[Cartoons: A visual history of Trump’s conflicts of interest]

It’s possible Trump could block the discovery process, through an unusual appeal or other means. But if he fails, Bookbinder said, the discovery process could “prove that the president has been receiving payments,” demonstrating this in a new level of detail documenting “foreign officials staying at the Trump hotel,” which could in turn show that “the president is violating the constitution.”

The goal is to get the court to flatly declare that in accepting these payments, Trump is violating the Constitution, and even better, for the court to order Trump to stop. For instance, Trump might have to divest from his businesses (which he has refused to do), or his hotel might have to stop accepting forms of business that constitute the violation, among other possibilities. The case would probably go to the Supreme Court, and it’s possible the plaintiffs could lose or gain only a partial victory, in which the courts declare that Trump is violating the Constitution but not order an end to it. Another possibility, of course, is that Trump defies a court order to stop, which would precipitate a crisis.

But whatever happens, along the way we may well learn much more about the scope and nature of the payments themselves. This will boost pressure on congressional Republicans to exercise real oversight (which may happen only if Democrats take back the House). Barring that, the public will learn a good deal more about Trump’s questionable profiteering — and about the congressional GOP’s abdication in the face of it.

This case goes directly to the core of Trump’s blending of private and public interests at the expense of the country. It is of course completely possible for Trump to continue to profit this way without letting it influence his decision-making. But importantly, Wednesday’s ruling explicitly confirmed that the goal of the Constitution’s ban on emoluments is to remove any possibility that this might happen. The framers “made it simple,” the ruling states. “Ban the offerings altogether.”

Trump’s interests always come first

The crucial point here is that Trump should not be receiving these payments — and should have divested from his businesses at the outset — to remove any doubt for the American people that in his official decision-making capacity, he is acting in their interests at all times, and not in his own. But Trump does not see any institutional obligation of any kind to reassure the people — all the people — in this regard. Instead, he has placed his personal interests first — a form of corruption in its own right. This lawsuit may end up shedding new light on just how much this has lavished on his personal bottom line.

This is the through line to Trump’s battle with Cohen. At a minimum, the audio released Tuesday demonstrated that Trump knew during the election that his lawyer was making a hush-money payoff to an alleged mistress that functioned as a campaign-related expenditure, while not publicly disclosing it as such. Whether or not that is a crime, the Trump campaign falsely claimed “no knowledge of any of this” at the time, misleading the press and the public, thus putting Trump’s seamy personal interests first. And this is only the beginning of what Cohen-related revelations may reveal, when it comes to Trump’s prioritizing of his own interests over those of the rest of the country.

* TRUMP TEAM WORRIES ABOUT MICHAEL COHEN: After Cohen released the audio of the phone call with Trump, The Post reports that Trump’s allies are worried about more to come:

Within Trump’s political orbit, the uncertainty about what other damaging information Cohen may possess — and if he plans to weaponize it against the president, as now seems possible if not likely — has allies worried. “The general feeling inside and outside the building is that if there was anything, this would be the guy who would know it and now give it up,” said the operative close to the White House.

Intriguingly, The Post reports, both Trump and Cohen privately are angry at each other for what they see as betrayal. No honor among thieves …

* COHEN HAS LOTS OF TAPES. PROSECUTORS HAVE THEM: Another key nugget from the Post story:

The government has seized more than 100 recordings that Cohen made of his conversations with people discussing matters that could relate to Trump and his businesses and with Trump himself talking, according to two people familiar with the recordings. Cohen appeared to make some recordings with an iPhone — without telling anyone he was taping them.

There may be only one tape that features Trump speaking at any length, The Post reports, but there’s no telling what Cohen said about Trump in the other ones.

* ANGRY COHEN SEEN AS ‘GREATEST THREAT’ TO TRUMP: The Associate Press reports on their rapidly deteriorating relationship:

Cohen … is viewed by many in Trump’s orbit as the greatest threat to the former businessman’s presidency. … Cohen … now feels increasingly isolated and burned by the attacks against him by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and by the president’s efforts to play down his former fixer’s role.

Nothing gets a self-respecting fixer more worked up than playing down his fixer prowess. Sad!

*  A TRUCE IN TRADE WAR OR JUST A LULL? Trump and the European Union have backed away from a destructive trade war and have pledged to negotiate to lower tariffs, but the New York Times points out:

It was hard to say, given Mr. Trump’s bluster and unpredictable negotiating style, if the agreement was a genuine truce or merely a lull in a conflict that could flare up again. Twice, Mr. Trump’s aides have negotiated potential deals with China, only to have him reject them and impose further tariffs.

The problem: It’s never clear what Trump will need to declare victory, because he often rails at mistreatment of America that isn’t real. If he starts feeling like a loser again, all bets are off.

* DRIVE TO IMPEACH ROSENSTEIN PUTS GOP IN TOUGH SPOT: House conservatives allied with Trump have introduced impeachment articles against Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. But The Post reports:

House Republican aides said that if a member tried to force a vote on the measure, leaders probably would move to send it to the House Judiciary Committee for further review, effectively bottling it up indefinitely. But that could still be an uncomfortable vote for many Republicans who are under pressure from conservative groups — and the voters who follow them — to unseat the man who oversees the investigation Trump routinely denigrates as a “witch hunt.”

So GOP leaders don’t want a full vote on this to happen. Let’s see if they strongly defend the integrity of the investigation and forcefully denounce this bad-faith nonsense for what it is.

* ROSENSTEIN IMPEACHMENT WILL FIZZLE: Congressional reporter Steven Dennis makes a good point about Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who is leading the drive to impeach Rosenstein:

In other words, Trump’s allies know this has no chance whatsoever to get support, even among most Republicans.

* TRUMP TAX CUT BALLOONS THE DEFICIT: Jim Tankersley has a useful look at how the Trump/GOP tax cut is pushing up the deficit to nearly $1 trillion over the next decade. And it could get worse:

The drop in tax payments has come as the American economy is already the healthiest it has been since the crisis, raising questions about whether the deficit could balloon further if growth begins to slow. … Analysts … expect growth to slow in the second half of the year, as interest rates continue to rise and trade tensions weigh on the economy.

Growth in the second quarter looks as if it has been very robust, however, and Trump will proclaim this proves the tax cut is awesome, so never mind what will happen after that. It’s all good.

THE ONE THING MODERN VOTERS HATE MOST

Charges of corruption are toppling leaders at a growing clip. That's a good thing for global politics.



BY THOMAS CAROTHERS AND CHRISTOPHER CAROTHERS  |  JULY 24, 2018

There is a striking trend in global politics: A growing number of presidents and prime ministers are being toppled before the end of their term by public anger and legal action relating to corruption. In just the last six months, corruption dominoes have fallen in countries as diverse as Armenia, 

Malaysia, Peru, Slovakia, South Africa, and Spain. Stepping back a bit, a startling fact deserves attention: In the past five years, more than 10 percent of countries in the world have experienced corruption-driven leadership change.

THE ONE THING MODERN VOTERS HATE MOST.docx by Thavam on Scribd

Urgent Need to Ensure Quality Education for Poor School Children in India

It is encouraging to note that the poor families all over India now realise that the best that they can do for their children is to provide them quality education, that would enable them to equip themselves to improve their life prospects.

by N.S.Venkataraman- Jul 24, 2018

( July 24, 2018, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The most serious harm and injustice being done to the millions of poor families all over India is the lack of availability of quality education for their children.

No doubt, government of India and state governments repeatedly say that they are committed to the task of providing good education to the poor children and have been allotting several millions of rupees year after year towards improving and maintaining infrastructure facilities in the government schools from primary class level. Several states provide noon meal to the poor children studying in the schools apart from providing free uniforms, text books and note books and in some states even foot wear, school bags, cycles and laptops.

These government schools are solely meant for the benefit of the students from poor families, where the fees are low or nil and teachers are reasonably qualified and well paid. But, the problem is that the school administration, which are under the control of state governments are poor. While the funds are allotted, even the basic amenities are not available or they are maintained in very poor condition in several schools ,as the money allotted for the purpose is often diverted and misused.

No minister , members of legislative assemblies and parliament or government employees or teachers serving in the government schools send their children to study in government schools.

It is encouraging to note that the poor families all over India now realise that the best that they can do for their children is to provide them quality education, that would enable them to equip themselves to improve their life prospects. Parents keep track of the progress of their children in the schools as best as they can, given their poverty conditions and day today struggle to make a living.

However, finding the extremely poor conditions in several government schools particularly in rural areas and lack of discipline there due to poor administration, the poor families think that education in private schools would alone meet the quality education need for their children. However, they do not have the money and resources to pay the exhorbitant fees demanded by the private schools , which are now mostly run like business enterprises, with some of them being owned by politicians or their family members.

It is reported that in several government schools and those run by local administration like corporation and municipalities and panchayats, the number of students joining are steadily coming down. In recent times, governments have been forced to close down some of these schools due to want of students , particularly in rural areas.

Poor families are pained by the desperate conditions that they face due to their inability to ensure quality education for their children. They run from pillar to post to find money to meet the fees demanded by the private schools and beg and plead for support from those in the affordable income group and non governmental organisations. . Some of them do help but it nowhere meet the need of lakhs of poor families. In desperate conditions, poor families borrow money at exhorbitant interest from private money lenders to pay the fees demanded by the private schools and in the process, the poor families get into debt trap.

In such situation, the only way out is to ensure that the government schools would be better administered. One rarely hears about the ministers or top bureaucrats visiting the government schools to see the conditions for themselves and motivate the officials and teachers to turn out better performance. If at all they visit occasionally, such visits are made only with much fanfare and treating them like photo opportunity.

There is urgent need to retrieve the government schools from the present deplorable conditions.

Many poor families seem to wonder as to why Prime Minister Modi who has paid so much of attention to many basic issues such as clean India, construction of toilets for poor families etc. have not kept his focus on improving the government school administration.

In today’s India where there are around 1.3 billion people, several state governments , hundreds of ministers and thousands of bureaucrats, people look upon to Prime Minister Modi to find solution even for their problems.

Many people now think that the only way to visibly improve the conditions in the government schools all over India is that the Prime Minister Modi should make it a point to visit government schools whenever he goes on tour, though most of the government schools are run by state governments. He may also ask his ministers and state ministers to follow this practice.

This would certainly promote better conditions and climate in the government schools and ensure better supervision., apart from focusing the national attention on this much needed support for the poor students.

Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the highly respected former President of India did a world of good for young student community by visiting the schools regularly and interacting with them when he was the President of India. This gesture was much appreciated by everyone. But, most of the schools that he visited were not government schools.

While Prime Minister Modi is an extremely busy person and he is already reported to be working more than eighteen hours a day, many people think that Prime Minister should still find sometime to visit the government schools often , as no function can be more important than ensuring quality education for poor students of India who are in the formative age group.

Today, it appears that every initiative in India has to be taken only by the Prime Minister for the matter to move on with the speed that it deserves and people think that unless Mr. Modi intervenes, visible and positive change for the better will not happen in the government schools.

By this exercise, the Prime Minister would benefit the poor families immensely and catch their imagination, which is important to give them hope that the government understands their plight and which would improve their morale.

This is one sure way to strengthen fibre and fabric of Indian society.

25 million people in Asia are enslaved

image: https://asiancorrespondent.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/000_AD2IF-940x580.jpg

A worker sorts through silk at a silk factory in Pyongyang on May 9, 2016. Source: Ed Jones / AFP

By Max Walden | 26th July 2018

AN estimated 24.9 million men, women and children were living in modern slavery in Asia and the Pacific in 2016, newly compiled data has shown.

According to the 2018 Global Slavery Index released by the Australia-based anti-slavery organisation Walk Free Foundation last week, some 40.3 million people were living in modern slavery across the globe during 2016 – 71 percent of whom were female.

While the Asia Pacific constitutes 56 percent of the world’s population, it is home to an estimated 62 percent of the global slave population, showed the report.

SEE ALSO: Forced labour persists in the Thai fishing industry

“This report demonstrates, straight from the mouths of some of the 40.3 million victims of modern slavery, that these deplorable crimes continue happening out of sight, and at a tragic scale,” said Australian philanthropist Andrew Forrest in a press statement.

“We cannot sit back while millions of women, girls, men and boys around the world are having their lives destroyed and their potential extinguished by criminals seeking a quick profit.”

The report showed North Korea had by far the highest prevalence of modern slavery as part of “well documented state-imposed forced labour”, while India, China and Pakistan had the highest absolute number of people enslaved – accounting for 60 percent of victims in the region.

A migrant worker from Myanmar walks on her way to collect jellyfish caught from the sea at Ban Nam Khem, Thailand on December 24, 2009. Source: Christophe Archambault / AFP

The government of North Korea was also named as doing the least to combat slavery, it found.

There were 104.6 victims per 1000 population in North Korea, followed by 16.8 in Cambodia, 11 in Burma (Myanmar), 10.9 in Brunei, 9.4 in Laos, 8.9 in Thailand, 7.7 in the Philippines, and 6.9 in Malaysia.

Southeast Asia’s fishing industry has seen some progress in terms of governmental response due to media scrutiny of widespread slavery and labour abuses.

“While the Thai and Indonesian governments in particular have taken steps to respond to the issue,” wrote the Slavery Index’s authors, “more remains to be done to reduce the endemic abuse that occurs in the fishing industry.”

Forced labour was the most common form of slavery at 4 in every 1000 people across the Asia Pacific, while two in every 1000 were living in forced marriages. A whopping 66 percent of people in forced labour globally are in Asia and the Pacific.

Source: Walk Free Foundation

The region also had the highest number of victims across a range of forms of slavery, accounting for 73 percent of victims of forced sexual exploitation, 68 percent of those forced to work by state authorities and 42 percent of all those in forced marriages worldwide.

According to the report, “a key flash point in the region has been the mass displacement, abductions, sexual violence, and murders committed against the Rohingya population.”

“International organisations have already warned that the likelihood of sexual enslavement and human trafficking occurring as a result of this crisis,” it added.

SEE ALSO: In the shadow of the World Cup: Slavery and human rights abuses in Qatar

Walk Free Foundation’s executive director of research Fiona David said that the 2018 Index showed modern slavery is far more common in developed countries such as the United States than previously thought.

“The prevalence of modern slavery is driven through conflict and oppression, but it’s also derived in more developed countries from consumer demand for the latest goods at the best possible price,” she said.

“The common element is that every country must act.”

Dizziness when getting up could increase dementia risk, US study says

Image copyright

25 July 2018

Middle-aged people who feel dizzy when standing up from a lying-down position may be at a higher risk of dementia or a stroke in the future, a report says.

The light-headed feeling is caused by a sudden drop in blood pressure, which is known as orthostatic hypotension (OH).

Participants with the condition in the study of 11,709 people in the USA had a significantly higher risk of developing dementia or having a stroke.

However, feeling dizzy sometimes is often not a sign of a serious illness.

The American Academy of Neurology studied people for an average 25 years. And the average age of the participants was 54.

Study author Andreea Rawlings said OH had been previously linked to heart disease, so her team wanted to know if it could also be responsible for brain conditions.

"Measuring orthostatic hypotension in middle age may be a new way to identify people who need to be carefully monitored for dementia or stroke," she said.

"More studies are needed to clarify what may be causing these links as well as to investigate possible prevention strategies."

• An insole with GPS tracking for dementia patients
• Over-40s health check to include dementia advice
• Wearable tech aids stroke patients
• Average age of first stroke in England falls, figures show

One limitation of the study was that participants were tested for OH only during the initial examination, so it may not reflect any change in blood pressure over time.

During the study:

• Of the total number of 11,709 participants, 1,068 (9.1%) developed dementia and 842 (7.1%) had an ischaemic stroke, where blood flow is blocked to part of the brain
• Of the 10,527 participants who did not have OH at the time of their initial examination, 9% developed dementia and 6.8% had a stroke
• Of the 552 participants who had OH at the time of their initial examination, 12.5% developed dementia and 15.2% had a stroke

None of the participants had any previous history of heart disease or stroke

Symptoms of low blood pressure (hypotension)

• light-headedness or dizziness
• feeling sick
• blurred vision
• generally feeling weak
• confusion
• fainting

Source: NHS Choices

Dementia UK's chief executive and chief admiral nurse, Dr Hilda Hayo, told the BBC: "This study adds to our recognition of low blood pressure as a potential risk factor for dementia in some people.

"The advice on keeping the heart and blood vessels healthy in order to delay or prevent the onset of dementia applies equally to people with low or high blood pressure."

Dr Shamim Quadir, research communications manager at the Stroke Association, told the BBC that because OH was measured only at the start of the study, it "limits the conclusions we can draw".

He said: "We would like to see more research which could explain the associations observed between OH and stroke and dementia.

"The Stroke Association recommends that you get your blood pressure checked regularly, know what your numbers are and make sure you speak to your GP if anything changes or if you are concerned."