BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Google was fined 1.49 billion euros ($1.7 billion) on Wednesday for blocking rival online search advertisers, the third large European Union antitrust penalty for the Alphabet business in only two years.
The European Commission, which said the fine accounted for 1.29 percent of Google’s turnover in 2018, said in a statement that the anti-competitive practices had lasted a decade.
“Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites,” European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said.
The case concerned websites, such as of newspaper or travel sites, with a search function that produces search results and search adverts. Google’s AdSense for Search provided such search adverts.
The misconduct included stopping publishers from placing any search adverts from competitors on their search results pages, forcing them to reserve the most profitable space on their search results pages for Google’s adverts and a requirement to seek written approval from Google before making changes to the way in which any rival adverts were displayed.
The AdSense advertising case was triggered by a complaint from Microsoft in 2010. Both companies subsequently dropped complaints against each other in 2016.
Last year, Vestager imposed a record 4.34 billion euro fine on Google for using its popular Android mobile operating system to block rivals. This followed a 2.42 billion euro fine in June 2017 for hindering rivals of shopping comparison websites.
Google is now trying to comply with the order to ensure a level playing field with proposals to boost price comparison rivals and prompt Android users to choose their preferred browsers and search apps. Critics however are still not happy.($1 = 0.8811 euros)
Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Alexander Smith
Americans aren’t the only one paying for the process.
More than 3,000 students draw together at Hubei University during a mock college entrance exam for art on October 29, 2017 in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China. (Photo by VCG/Getty Images)
BYAMY HAWKINS|$90,000 can still buy you a lot in China, whether it’s paying 25 minimum wage workersfor a year or four nights of ultraluxury accommodation at Beijing’s Bulgari Hotel (with some change left over). If you know where to look, it can also help buy your way into a U.S. college—by any means necessary. That means a lot to Chinese parents, for whom an education in the United States is seen as a way to guarantee a child’s future. And it means a lot of money for the people involved in helping them get there.
Last week, the news broke that dozens of wealthy American parents had paid up to $1.2 million apiece in bribes to guarantee their children places at top universities. Methods of cheating included doctoring images to claim that their children were accomplished athletes, falsifying SAT results, and lying about ethnic heritage in order to take advantage of affirmative action policies.
That’s a familiar story for Chinese. There have been numerous reported cases of students caught cheating the system. Last week, five California residents were arrested on charges of helping more than 40 Chinese nationals obtain student visas by taking their English tests for them, using fake passports in the process. The scheme was allegedly masterminded by 23-year-old Liu Cai, an international student at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2018, professors at the University of California, Santa Barbara, complained that many Chinese students lacked adequate English language proficiency, and it’s common for international students who have been coached into U.S. universities to struggle to keep up.
The man at the center of the U.S. scandal was William Singer, founder of a college-preparatory business known as The Key. He told a federal court in Boston that he created a “side door” of admissions that guaranteed access to top institutions. That was an alternative to the “front door of getting in, where a student just does it on their own,” and the “back door,” where people “make large donations, but they’re not guaranteed in.”
International students are generally trying for the front door—but others may be holding it open for them.Thousands of international students, particularly from China, have been gaming the college application process with intensive coaching that sometimes tips over into fraud. Tutoring is common in American families as well, but the wealth and determination of many Chinese families can take this approach to a new level.
One Chinese student’s parents paid 600,000 RMB, or $90,000, for a personal agent to help him through the university application process, Foreign Policy discovered. The package guaranteed between three and five offers from universities in the Top 60. Now in his first year at a top West Coast university, the student, who is unaware of the scale of his parents’ financial contribution, said that the agent helped him polish the grammar and structure of his personal essay, and “made a few suggestions regarding what topics or things that I [could] include.” The agent also suggested extracurricular activities that would boost the student’s application, as well as going through practice SAT and ACT papers. He said that almost all of his Chinese friends at university “contacted an agent somewhere in the process of application.”
Much of this process focuses on the dreaded personal essay, a format almost completely unfamiliar in Chinese schools but which can make or break an application in the United States. Feedback and advice is perfectly legitimate for such essays—but some tutors write the whole thing for the student, or even craft fictions to aid them. Another sticking point can be extracurriculars, vital for American universities but unimportant in Chinese schools, which build toward a single exam. Sometimes tuition companies push students toward the kind of things U.S. colleges look for—or sometimes they just help invent them.
Accessing an elite American education is big business in China. The test preparation industry alone was worth $3.9 billion in 2016. There are now 340,000 Chinese nationalsseeking degrees in the United States, about one-third of all foreign students. Of course, many of these students will have gotten into their schools through pure hard work, and preapplication tutoring doesn’t necessarily undermine the students’ own achievements. But there are now hundreds of companies in China that promise to help students navigate the admissions system and put together an application that guarantees success.
One of these companies is Bonday, which is headquartered in Shanghai. Prices for Bonday services start at 200,000 RMB ($29,800) for packages that include soft-skills training, advice on summer schools, and help with editing personal essays. Bonday has placed students at universities such as Princeton, Harvard, and the University of Chicago. Another company, Guangzhou-based Jiazhou Education, offers a more affordable option: a U.S. college application prepared by them costs 48,000 RMB ($7,150), and they claim to have a 99 percent success rate in receiving offers from top American universities.
Like most companies interviewed for this article, Jiazhou insisted that its tutors are not ghostwriters. Other companies are less scrupulous. Yingtai Education, based in Xi’an, charges up to 100,000 RMB ($14,900) for a package of services that includes selecting appropriate schools, preparing a study plan, suggesting extracurricular activities, and “guidance about [personal statements].” Yingtai tells students what to emphasize in their personal statements and, a spokesperson said, “sometimes for the very lazy student we [have] to help [them] to compose.” Yingtai doesn’t charge an additional fee for cases where ghostwriting is deemed necessary, because for such students, “sometimes teaching and giving guidance is more time-consuming.”
“It’s a real shame,” said Nini Suet, founder and CEO of Shang Learning, an education consultancy. She said that “unethical behavior is still pretty rampant” in the education industry, and that many parents expect ghostwriting as standard. Shang Learning is a member of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, which requires adherence to strict ethical standards, but she admits that some parents “flip out” when her company refuses to produce fraudulent essays for their children.
One of the most significant elements of a university application in the United States is the SAT. In Asia, the exam has been beleaguered by leaks and accusations of inadequate security measures. Over 10,000 Chinese students take the test every year, usually travelling to Hong Kong to do so, as there are no test centers on the mainland. But because test papers used in the United States are often reused in Asia in the same cycle, the SAT’s credibility has been repeatedly called into question. In 2013, the College Board, the nonprofit that administers the SAT, canceled the scheduled exam across South Korea after South Korean law enforcement officials discovered that test-prep schools had obtained a copy of test questions in advance. In 2014, the College Board withheld the scores of every test-taker in China and South Korea after another leak, leaving 55,000 students in limbo.
The College Board insists that test-prep schools are at fault for distributing leaked papers, though the College Board created the opportunity by recycling the tests. But other cases of unfair advantages for Chinese students are more clear-cut.
In 2016, a Shenzhen-based company called Transcend Education was found to have created fake high-school transcripts on behalf of clients, doctored a teacher’s reference without his knowledge, and essentially ghostwritten college application essays. Emma Pu, director of Cambridge Youth Summer Camps, an English-teaching company based in Kunming, also believes that fraudulent activity is commonplace. Rather than producing totally fake documents, though, she said it’s more common for companies to “make your background look good, so they list some fake event or activities you have done.” In other cases, she said, companies will use sample essays found online, although most wealthy clients will use an agency that offers tailor-made fakes.
The tides in the education industry may be changing, though. In light of the bribery scandal in the United States, universities are under renewed pressure to better scrutinize their processes. Suet said that many schools have already started looking more deeply at applications, checking specifically for authenticity, and parents in first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have reacted accordingly, reducing the demand for fraud. Some universities already employ third-party companies to meet Chinese students in person to check if their real-life persona matches what is written in their applications. For the minority of students who cheat the system, the game may finally be up.
The ruling temporarily blocks drilling on 300,000 acres of leases in Wyoming.
Scientists say that as global warming nears an irreversible level, the president has been promoting business growth, not climate fixes.(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
A federal judge ruled late Tuesday that the Interior Department violated federal law by failing to take into account the climate impact of its oil and gas leasing in the West.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras of Washington could force the Trump administration to account for the full climate impact of its energy-dominance agenda, and it could signal trouble for the president’s plan to boost fossil fuel production across the country. Contreras concluded that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management “did not sufficiently consider climate change” when making decisions to auction off federal land in Wyoming to oil and gas drilling under President Barack Obama in 2015 and 2016. The judge temporarily blocked drilling on about 300,000 acres of land in the state.
The Washington Post
The initial ruling in the case, brought by the advocacy groups WildEarth Guardians and Physicians for Social Responsibility, has implications for oil and gas drilling on federal land throughout the West. In the decision, Contreras — an Obama appointee — faulted the agency’s environmental assessments as inadequate because they did not detail how individual drilling projects contribute to the nation’s overall carbon output. Since greenhouse gas emissions are driving climate change, the judge wrote, these analyses did not provide policymakers and the public with a sufficient understanding of drilling’s impact, as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
“Given the national, cumulative nature of climate change, considering each individual drilling project in a vacuum deprives the agency and the public of the context necessary to evaluate oil and gas drilling on federal land before irretrievably committing to that drilling,” he wrote.
Asked about the decision Wednesday, Interior Department spokeswoman Molly Block said in an email, “We do not comment on ongoing litigation."
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R) criticized the ruling in a statement, and suggested that the state might appeal it.
“We will be exploring options and following up with our state, federal, and industry partners,” Gordon said. “Our country’s efforts to reduce carbon should not center on the livelihoods of those committed workers and industries who seek to provide reliable and affordable energy, especially when we don’t look to the detrimental effects of other expansive industries. Bringing our country to its knees is not the way to thwart climate change.”
Contreras did not void the leases outright, but instead ordered the bureau to redo its analysis of hundreds of projects in Wyoming.
The Trump administration released on Nov. 23 a long-awaited report outlining that climate change impacts "are intensifying across the country."(Luis Velarde/The Washington Post)
Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma, whose group is one of the defendants in the case, said in a phone interview that she was confident that the ruling could be overturned on appeal. She noted that the Obama and Trump administrations had conducted similar climate analyses in their leasing documents, and that it was impossible to predict the cumulative impact of these auctions because just under half of all federal land leased for drilling is eventually developed.
“This judge has ignored decades of legal precedent in this ruling,” she said. “The judge is basically asking BLM to take a wild guess on how many wells will be developed on leases, prematurely.”
Jeremy Nichols, who directs WildEarth Guardians’ climate and energy program, said in a phone interview that the decision would force the administration to reveal how its policies are helping to fuel climate change. He said his group would take steps to try to block federal oil and gas lease auctions scheduled in the coming week, which encompass an additional 511,000 acres of western land.
“It calls into question the legality of the Trump administration’s entire oil and gas program,” Nichols said. “This forces them to pull their head out of the sand and look at the bigger picture.”
Federal oil, gas and coal leasing — both on land and offshore — accounts for a quarter of America’s total carbon output, according to a report issued last year by the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological Survey. Oil and gas drilling accounts for about 40 percent, or 500 million metric tons, of that total.
Last month, a U.S. magistrate judge in Montana ordered the agency to redo its environmental impact analysis of mine expansion on federal land there to reflect factors including the climate impacts of moving the coal by rail and the economic impact of climate change spurred by the burning of coal mined on site.
University of Chicago clinical law professor Mark Templeton, who filed an amicus brief in the case involving Montana’s Spring Creek Coal mine, said federal law imposes these procedural requirements to give the public and federal officials a better sense of what’s at stake in these decisions.
“We all know climate change is bad, in broad scale and scope,” he said, adding that when it comes to Tuesday’s case, “What this ruling shows is individuals in government are making decisions that contribute to climate change, and therefore they need to be considering those effects when they’re making those decisions.”
Even if Contreras’s decision stands, however, it may not block the administration’s energy agenda. Although BLM would be required to disclose the overall climate impact of its leasing decisions, it could still go ahead and open those lands up for development.
While the Interior Department began to take into account the climate impacts of federal oil, gas and coal leasing toward the end of Obama’s second term, administration officials jettisoned those plans when President Trump took office.
The agency lifted Obama’s moratorium on federal coal leasing. The White House also slashed the projected economic damage that stems from burning fossil fuels from about $50 per ton under Obama to between $1 and $7 per ton. The numbers are based on cost-benefit analyses for rules affecting methane leaks from oil and gas operations on public land, as well as pollution from coal-fired power plants. Trump officials reached a lower estimate by excluding climate effects outside the United States and by putting a reduced emphasis on how global warming will affect future generations.
The Trump administration is working to overhaul a 2016 policy that requires federal agencies to assess the global climate impact of their actions.
Trump and several of his top deputies have dismissed recent federal findings that the United States and other countries must curb their carbon output in the next decade or face potentially disastrous consequences from climate change. In a draft analysis last year of its plan to freeze fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration projected that if the United States continued on its current path, the globe could warm by 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. It suggested that this trend illustrated why curbing carbon emissions would make little difference to the planet.
Even though Tuesday’s ruling eventually could be overturned, proponents of oil and gas drilling cautioned that it could still have a chilling effect on development out West.
“Any time there’s a ruling that sows more uncertainty on federal land, that has a ripple effect not just on these leases in question, but throughout the entire federal onshore system,” Sgamma said.
And Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement: “This bad decision will hurt workers in Wyoming, reduce revenue for the state and slow America’s energy production."
Darryl Fears and Brady Dennis contributed to this report.
Javan banteng (Bos javanicus), also known as the tembadau. Source: Shutterstock
19 Mar 2019
AT THE headwaters of the Belantikan River on the island of Borneo, an organisation committed to protecting orangutans is extending its efforts to a slightly less charismatic megafauna: the endangered Bornean banteng, a type of wild cattle.
Long thought to be subspecies of the banteng found on Java, Bos javanicus, a growing body of DNA evidence suggests the Bornean banteng may be its own species — a distinction conservationists hope will earn the animals the attention they need to help ensure their survival.
“We’ve been researching them since 2003,” said Eddy Santoso, the director of the Indonesian Orangutan Foundation, known by its local acronym of Yayorin.
A master’s degree student initially caught wind of the elusive population in 2003, through stories from the local community, but it wasn’t until 2007 that the first tracks were confirmed. Eventually researchers found droppings and horn marks deep in the forest.
Motion-activated cameras placed near mineral salt licks in 2013 captured the first photographic proof that the small population indeed exists. Ultimately, a network of 32 video cameras placed throughout the 64-square-kilometer (25-square-mile) study area recorded the banteng.
Several were traveling in family groups, with calves up to 3 years old following their mothers through the thick forest. The best estimates put the total number of wild cattle living in the Belantikan area at no more than 20 animals.
Scientists estimate somewhere between 5,000 to 8,000 Bos javanicus remain in the wild, but habitat loss, hunting, and crossbreeding with domestic cattle have placed the species on the IUCN’s Red List as endangered.
Three distinct subspecies are currently recogniz=sed: B. j. javanicus occupy the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali, while B. j. birmanicus are found throughout mainland Southeast Asia.
The Belantikan population of banteng, along with a few other isolated groups found on the island of Borneo, have long been considered a third subspecies, B. j. lowi, but physiological differences, and now genetic markers, suggest they may be their own species entirely.
“Because accurate baseline data about the banteng is lacking in Indonesia, it has long been assumed that these animals are descendants of the Javan banteng,” said Iman Safari, program manager at Yayorin.
But according to Iman, recent genetic tests conducted by researchers at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture indicate that the Bornean banteng may actually be more closely related to the gaur (Bos gaurus) than B. javanicus. Ranging from India to mainland Southeast Asia, the gaur is the world’s largest wild bovine.
Yayorin director Eddy Santoso displays kekali and pompaan fruit that grow only in the area around the Belantikan River headwaters. Source: Budi Baskoro/Mongabay
The genetic analysis of a protein known as Cytochrome C oxidase I found a 4.3 percent difference between the Bornean banteng and the Javan banteng. Analysis on a different protein, Cytochrome B, put the species separation at 5.5 percent.
New species have been declared based on a genetic difference of only 3 percent, Iman said, so the findings support the notion that the Bornean banteng may actually be a separate species.
“What this means, anyway,” Iman said, “is that it has given us the confidence to push to declare this group a new species.”
He pointed to the 2017 declaration of the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis) as a separate species from the Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) as a precedent. This, Iman said, could serve as a roadmap for how the Yayorin researchers can go about getting their banteng recognised. He said he hoped to speed through the typically long and laborious process of declaring a new species.
If the Bornean banteng is indeed a separate species, it would likely be listed as critically endangered, given the small remaining population size and rapidly shrinking habitat. This distinction could help bring new attention and resources to help protect the animals, who share the forest with Yayorin’s main species of concern: the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus).
“Orangutans are an umbrella species that exist as part of a greater ecosystem,” Eddy said, “and if there are banteng in the orangutan’s ecosystem, we will work to protect the banteng as well.”
In the early 2000s, the Belantikan forest was home to some 6,000 orangutans — the largest wild population found outside of a national park, wildlife reserve or other protected forest. Around the same time, only about 30 banteng were thought to exist in the same area. A census conducted two years ago now puts the number of banteng closer to 20.
The Belantikan River runs along the Schwaner Mountains, a natural barrier between Indonesia’s Central and West Kalimantan provinces. Yayorin’s center of operations is in Lamandau district, near Nanga Matu, the furthest upstream village. Nanga Matu, like most villages around the headwaters, is surrounded by an area classified by the government as production forest, which means it’s open to logging and other commercial activity.
But the lands around the village are in better shape than in many other parts of the district that have been converted to oil palm plantations. The Belantikan forest still contains trees with trunks more a meter (3 feet) in diameter, and support some 56 species of plants known to be eaten by the banteng.
This isn’t to suggest that the forest around Nanga Matu is pristine. On the contrary, a logging company previously held a concession covering some 980 square kilometers (380 square miles) in the district, although Eddy said the total area had since decreased. Yet despite this disturbance, monitoring by Yayorin has confirmed that a small population of banteng has been able to sustain itself up to this point, and conservation efforts are expected to protect their future.
Deforestation destroys the habitat of the critically endangered orangutan. Source: Bay Ismoyo/AFP
According to Iman, 17 square kilometers (7 square miles) of the headwaters area have been designated as conservation forest by the Lamandau government, and he is encouraged by the efforts of several villages in the region that have issued bylaws to protect the banteng. Some communities have invoked customary law to fine their own members and outsiders who hunt the banteng, and community planning has spaced rice fields farther apart so that the banteng have room to travel.
“In the past the fields were planted too close together,” Iman said, “and if a banteng trampled a field, damaging the harvest, the villagers would automatically kill it.”
Nanga Matu village is also considering developing a conservation tourism package, though they admit it won’t likely be of mass appeal, and will probably be quite expensive.
Other proposals for helping to protect the species include a sanctuary breeding program, but Iman is concerned that this will be difficult, as banteng are easily stressed; calves separated from their mothers don’t often survive.
These ideas are being discussed for possible implementation by the newly established Forum for Conservation of Belantikan Banteng, which will work with the local government and communities to develop a conservation plan that meets the needs of all parties.
“If nothing else, we hope to increase awareness of the banteng,” Iman said, “and maybe get its status raised.” He points out that orangutans, he pointed out, are classified as critically endangered, despite there being far more of them than the banteng — which is only listed as endangered.
First it was inaccessible, then it appeared to be rotten. But on Wednesday the United Nations confirmed to Middle East Eye that much of the vital grain stored in Yemen’s Hodeidah is fit to eat, a lifeline for starving Yemenis.
Grain silos in the Red Sea port city were inaccessible to the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) from September to February, just as eight million Yemenis were being pushed to the brink of famine.
A pro-Yemeni government assault on Houthi rebels-held Hodeidah, the gateway for some 70 percent of humanitarian aid, had plunged the country into further crisis and cut the grain stores from the UN.
Once the agency gained access to the silos, however, hopes were raised that the 51,000 tonnes of wheat may be released for consumption by Hodeidah’s starving population.
Yet soon after, reports emerged that the wheat, which constitutes one-quarter of WFP’s in-country stock, was infected by weevils and rotten.
'We anticipate the flour yield will be slightly lower than normal'
- WFP
Following testing, those reports appear correct, though much of the wheat is salvageable.
"WFP carried out a full assessment of the condition of the wheat and laboratory tests confirmed it was infested with insects, which has resulted in some hollow grains,” one of the agency’s spokespeople, who preferred not to be named, told MEE.
“The wheat needs to be fumigated before it can be milled into flour. We anticipate the flour yield will be slightly lower than normal due to the hollow grains that will be sifted out during the milling process.”
The convoy of a team from the United Nations and the World Food Program crosses from Houthi-controlled areas to government-controlled areas to reach grain mills in Hodeidah (Reuters)
According to the spokesperson, the grain stored in the Hodeidah silos when WFP lost access in September was enough to feed 3.7 million people for one month.
“At this stage, we cannot confirm how much flour we will be able to get from the wheat at the Red Sea Mills,” the spokesperson conceded.
Now WFP is awaiting clearance from local authorities to begin fumigating the wheat and milling it to make it fit for consumption.
A lifeline
Nasr Abdul Hamid, a father of six living in Hodeidah’s Ghulail neighbourhood, lost his job as a fisherman when Yemen’s war broke out in 2015, and he is now one of 22 million Yemenis dependent on food aid.
“Aid organisations are playing a major role in helping needy people in Hodeidah, and if not for them, we would have died,” he told MEE.
“During recent months, we heard that huge quantities of food in the silos were rotten, which was bad news for us as we may not have been able to find aid in future. But today I am happy to know that the food is still useable.”
Abdul Hamid struggles every day for food, though he just about manages to feed his children.
Yemen's farmers forced to eat leaves as war devastates harvests
“Sometimes we do not find enough food, but we prioritise the children and this is the most important thing for us,” he said.
“We hope to receive the WFP’s wheat before it expires and I trust the WFP is doing its best to help us.”
WFP currently manages to deliver aid to some 10 million Yemenis a month, though this year the UN agency is seeking to increase that to 12 million.
Around 2 million Yemeni children suffer from malnutrition.
Last year, Save the Children estimated that 85,000 children under five had died from acute malnutrition since a Saudi-led coalition entered the conflict on the government's behalf in 2015.
Those gazing up into the sky on Wednesday night are set to witness an unusual event: a super worm moon that coincides with the equinox.
It will be the third time this year a full moon has occurred near to the moon’s closest approach to the Earth – making it a supermoon – and will be the last such event in 2019. Those venturing out can expect to see the moon looming larger than usual in the night sky.
Its unusual moniker is rooted in agricultural practices and is a nod to the emergence of worms in the soil around the time of the March full moon, although it is not the only sobriquet applied to a full moon in March: such an event is also known as a sap moon.
“A lot of the names that are used to describe the full moons throughout the year come from a native North American tradition so things like the appearance of wolves or the snow,” said Tom Kerss, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
However, it isn’t only the name that makes this lunar event different: this supermoon will occur on the same night as the northern hemisphere’s spring equinox where day and night are of the same duration – albeit with full illumination taking place at just before 2am GMT, a few hours after the equinox itself.
“We don’t always have, during the equinox, a full moon, it can be any phase of the moon,” said Dr Emily Brunsden, director of the University of York’s Astrocampus.
Sophie Yeomans, a meteorologist at the Met Office, said there is a good chance that sky-gazers, particularly in England, will be able to catch a glimpse of the super worm moon.
“Western Wales might be quite difficult, north-west England, some parts of Northern Ireland and Western Scotland I think might struggle a bit,” she said. “Elsewhere there will be gaps in the cloud, it’s just a matter of waiting.”
Kerss said it is a rare event for a supermoon to coincide with the equinox. “We have been looking at the records for the occurrence of what we call supermoons today. The last time that this occurred so close to the point of the equinox was in the year 1905, in March over 100 years ago,” he said, although he noted the term “supermoon” is a recent term. “It looks to us that the next time we see this with the spring equinox, at least, won’t occur until the year 2144. So for most of us this could be called a once in a lifetime coincidence.”
Joy Milne can smell Parkinson's disease before it is medically diagnosed
By Elizabeth Quigley-20 March 2019
A Scottish woman who astonished doctors with her ability to detect Parkinson's disease through smell has helped scientists find what causes the odour.
Researchers in Manchester said they had identified the molecules on the skin linked to the smell and hope it could lead to early detection.
The study was inspired by Joy Milne, a 68-year-old retired nurse from Perth.
She first noticed the "musky" smell on her husband Les, who was years later diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
Joy has worked with the University of Manchester for three years
Joy, who has worked with the University of Manchester on the research for three years, has been named in a paper being published in the journal ACS Central Science.
She has also been made an honorary lecturer at the university because of her efforts to help identify the telltale smell.
Prof Perdita Barran designed experiments with a mass spectrometer to mimic what Joy does with her nose
The research revealed that a number of compounds, particularly hippuric acid, eicosane, and octadecanal, were found in higher than usual concentrations on the skin of Parkinson's patients.
They are contained in sebum - the oily secretion that coats everybody's skin, but which is often produced in greater quantity by people with Parkinson's, making them more likely to develop a skin complaint called seborrheic dermatitis.
Lead author Prof Perdita Barran, from the school of chemistry at the University of Manchester, told BBC Scotland: "What we found are some compounds that are more present in people who have got Parkinson's disease and the reason we've discovered them is because Joy Milne could smell a difference.
"She could smell people who've got Parkinson's disease.
"So we designed some experiments to mimic what Joy does, to use a mass spectrometer to do what Joy can do when she smells these things on people with Parkinson's."
One in 500 people in the UK has Parkinson's and that rises to about one in 100 among the over-60s.
Joy's noticed the musky smell on her husband Les before he was diagnosed
It can leave them struggling to walk, speak and sleep.
Currently there is no cure and no definitive test for the disease, with clinicians diagnosing patients by observing symptoms.
Prof Barran said she hoped the "volatile biomarkers" they identified could lead to a simple early detection test for the disease, such as wiping a person's neck with a swab and testing for the signature molecules.
She said: "What we might hope is if we can diagnose people earlier, before the motor symptoms come in, that there will be treatments that can prevent the disease spreading. So that's really the ultimate ambition."
Les died in 2015, 20 years after being diagnosed
Joy's husband Les, who died in 2015, was told he had Parkinson's at the age of 45 but Joy said she detected the unusual musky smell about a decade earlier.
The retired nurse only linked the odour to the disease after meeting people with the same distinctive smell at a Parkinson's UK support group.
She told BBC Scotland that not knowing Les had Parkinson's put her family in a "negative spiral".
"What if we did know?," she said
"It would have changed things dramatically.
"The fact that he became withdrawn, reserved, he had bouts of depression and mood swings, if I had understood what was happening it would have changed our total outlook on life."
The presentation of the Report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on ‘Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka’ will take place at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on 20 March 2019. Some of the recommendations contained in this report are contentious ones. They will not be viewed favourably by the majority of people in Sri Lanka. One of these calls for the setting up of a hybrid court to look into war crimes allegations. Such hybrid courts, which include international judges, are set up where the justice system (and the country itself) has largely collapsed, which is not the case in Sri Lanka. Another recommendation calls on the international community to apply the principle of universal jurisdiction on Sri Lankans accused of crimes such as torture, enforced disappearance and war crimes.
The High Commissioner’s recommendations are not decisions of the international community but are recommendations that could become unnecessary if Sri Lanka takes sufficient corrective action. The more important matter to be taken up by the UN Human Rights Council will be the draft resolution on Sri Lanka on the same theme of ‘Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka’. This is the one that Sri Lanka has agreed to sign as co-sponsor, and is scheduled to be taken up on the following day of 21 March 2019. Unlike the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights which contains observations and recommendations, the resolution on Sri Lanka will contain the decisions and pledges made by the Sri Lankan government at the prodding of the international community for implementation. But these are the same commitments that Sri Lanka made three and half years ago when it co-signed UNHRC resolution 30/1 of October 2015.
Both extremes of Sri Lanka’s ethnically divided society have sought to prevent the government getting a further two year extension to implement UNHRC Resolution 30/1 of October 2015. Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapaksa announced his stance in parliament that Sri Lanka should withdraw as a co-sponsor of the resolution. He said "It is reported through the media that a hybrid court will be formed for violations related to human rights in Sri Lanka and a UN human rights office should be established here as well. The stance of the president and the prime minister is contradictory and I believe that we should withdraw from this motion". Until the last moment it appeared that President Maithripala Sirisena himself was in opposition to what the government was doing. He planned to send a special three member delegation to the UNHRC to represent him. While no separate presidential delegation will be going now, there is still a question mark as to what the position of the president’s representatives will be in Geneva on March 20 and 21.
EXTREMES MEET
Those who oppose the co-sponsoring of the UNHRC resolution by the Sri Lankan government need to also consider what might have happened if the government had not agreed to it. The pre-2015 government led by opposition leader and former president Rajapaksa took the position that Sri Lanka did not need to heed the international community on matters of its own internal affairs. But the resulting outcomes were fraught with difficulty and loss to the country. Due to the Rajapaksa government’s refusal to cooperate with the international community Sri Lanka lost the GSP Plus tariff concession of the European Union and thereby lost markets in garment and fisheries exports at the cost of income and livelihoods within the country. In addition, there was a looming prospect of tougher sanctions including travel bans being imposed on Sri Lankan government and military personnel and barriers in their path to participate in UN peacekeeping forces.
At the other extreme, Tamil nationalist parties and the Tamil Diaspora have also called upon the international community not to provide Sri Lanka with an extension of the time frame to implement its commitments under Resolution 30/1 of October 2015. University students and even mainstream Tamil politicians in Jaffna have protested against the extension of the UNHRC resolution. The Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE), reiterated its call for a referral to the International Criminal Court. "Sri Lanka’s complete and utter failure to make even the most minimal efforts to deliver justice to victims and their families cannot be tolerated. The international community must end its complacency with the impunity Sri Lanka extends to the perpetrators of some of the gravest crimes committed this century…The Human Rights Council must pass a resolution establishing an international investigative mechanism including a referral of the situation of Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court."
The important thing to note is that the latest resolution that Sri Lanka has agreed to co-sign will contain no more than what Sri Lanka agreed to implement in October 2015. Therefore, it is inaccurate to claim, as some members of the opposition claim, that the government has got the country deeper into an international trap. The latest resolution gives Sri Lanka more time to implement the pledges and commitments it made in October 2015. The resolution of March 2019 will be on the same lines of Resolution 34/1 of March 2017 that gave Sri Lanka two more years to implement its pledges and commitments. As the government has been slow in implementing the pledges and commitments it made in October 2015, the UNHRC will be giving the government yet another two more years to fulfill them. It is also important to note that there is a difference between the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which is an administrative document of that office, and the UNHRC resolution which is a political document obtained through the concurrence of the member countries of the UN Human Rights Council.
CREDIBLE PROCESSES
In view of the controversy surrounding the Geneva process, Sri Lankans need to be informed about the main issues that continue to be matters of concern for the international community and human rights organisations. The latest update of these concerns are to be found in the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. It has stated that slow progress in establishing meaningful transitional justice measures has engendered mistrust among victims and other stakeholders. The slow progress covers nearly all the main areas that Sri Lanka had committed itself to delivering on, including finding missing persons, returning land, release of detainees held without trial, replacing the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and bringing those accused of war-related crimes and other serious crimes to justice. It is the last of these issues that is the most politically contentious and given rise to most misgivings among the population.
At the same time, the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights also stated that there had been progress in some significant areas. It noted that "Since 2015, the general situation has improved with regard to civil and political rights: there have been advances with respect to freedom of expression and assembly, incipient efforts made to consult representatives of civil society, a robust right to information framework has been established, and independent commissions, such as the Human Rights Commission, have been strengthened, and relations between security forces and civilians have improved. As noted above, commendable progress has also been witnessed in the State’s cooperation with United Nations human rights mechanisms." It also commended Sri Lankan state institutions for holding to their mandates during the two month long political crisis at the end of last year. The report stated that "The High Commissioner joins the Secretary-General in welcoming the resolution of the political crisis in Sri Lanka through peaceful, constitutional means, and applauds the resilience of the country’s democratic institutions."
Sri Lanka will soon be facing the international community in Geneva. We can draw inspiration from a poem that Nelson Mandela recited to his fellow prisoners to encourage them to overcome their present and look to a better future. "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." (English poet William Ernest Henley 1849–1903). The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ call to Investigate and prosecute in accordance with universal jurisdiction principles is in the absence of credible domestic processes. During the political crisis at the end of last year, the UN High Commissioner’s report itself pointed out that Sri Lankan institutions were able to conduct themselves in a peaceful and constitutional manner. If Sri Lankan institutions act with integrity and do their duty in a sustained manner there will be no need for either universal jurisdiction or hybrid courts to become operational or for further international interventions to facilitate national reconciliation.
Foo Yun Chee-MARCH 20, 2019
More than 3,000 students draw together at Hubei University during a mock college entrance exam for art on October 29, 2017 in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China. (Photo by VCG/Getty Images)
