EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker questioned Ankara’s long-standing aspiration to join the EU.
« I believe that Turkey, in its current state, is not in a position to become a member any time soon and not even over a longer period, » Juncker said on French television France 2.
Juncker also said that if Turkey reintroduces the death penalty – something the government has said it must consider, responding to calls from supporters at public rallies for the coup leaders to be executed – it would stop the EU accession process immediately.
Turkey abolished capital punishment in 2004, allowing it to open EU accession talks the following year, but the negotiations have made scant progress since then. The country plays an pivotal role in the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State and in containing the flow of refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria.
Erdogan reiterated his government’s stance on the possible restoration of capital punishment in an interview with German television station ARD broadcast on Monday.
« What do the (Turkish) people say today? » Erdogan asked in the interview. « They want the death penalty reintroduced. And we as the government must listen to what the people say. We can’t say ‘no, that doesn’t interest us.' » Responding to Juncker’s comments, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Haberturk TV that Europe cannot threaten Turkey regarding the death penalty.
Erdogan has declared a state of emergency, which allows him to sign new laws without prior parliamentary approval and limit rights as he deems necessary. The government has said these steps are needed to root out supporters of the coup and will not infringe on the rights of ordinary Turks.
NTV reported that among the 42 journalists subject to arrest warrants was well-known commentator and former parliamentarian Nazli Ilicak.
Hinting at a possible concentration of more power in the presidency in the aftermath of the abortive coup, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Monday that political parties have enough common ground to pass limited constitutional changes and aim to eventually draft a whole new charter.
He spoke to reporters after a cabinet meeting chaired by Erdogan, who met with two out of three opposition party leaders earlier in the day.
« There is unity of understanding among the party leaders to carry out work on drafting a new constitution … Small-scale constitutional changes could be done through consensus, » Yildirim said.
He also said that the gendarmerie and Coast Guard would now report to the civilian Interior Ministry and no longer the Turkish Armed Forces.
U.S. TIES Seven soldiers from a group which attacked a hotel in the coastal town of Marmaris where Erdogan had been staying, in an apparent attempt to capture or kill him during the coup bid, were detained at a police checkpoint on Monday.
Erdogan accuses U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has many followers in Turkey, of masterminding the plot.
In his first decree since the state of emergency was declared, Erdogan ordered the closure of thousands of private schools, charities and foundations with suspected links to Gulen, who denies involvement in the coup.
Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, says the coup may have been orchestrated by Erdogan himself.
Turkey wants the United States to extradite the cleric, while Washington has said it will do so only if there is clear evidence. Cavusoglu said that ties with Washington will be affected if it fails to extradite Gulen and that he would hold meetings with political and judiciary officials during a coming visit to the United States.
Erdogan has accused Gulen, his former ally, of attempting to build a « parallel network » of supporters within the military, police, judiciary, civil service, education and media with the aim of toppling the state.
« They are traitors, » Erdogan told Reuters in an interview last week. He described Gulen’s network as « like a cancer » and said he would treat them like a « separatist terrorist organisation » and root them out, wherever they may be.
Gulen denies the allegations.
Authorities have detained 13,000 people over the coup attempt, including 8,831 soldiers, the government says, and has promised a fair trial.
The officers accused of staging the coup will stand trial in an Ankara district laden with symbolism for Turkey’s recent history – the scene of an army show of strength before a « post-modern coup » ousted its first Islamist-led government in 1997.
Rights group Amnesty International said it had received credible evidence of detainees being subjected to beatings and torture, including rape, since the coup attempt.
At least 246 people were killed and 2,000 wounded in the attempted coup.
Erdogan has extended the maximum period of detention for suspects from four days to 30, a move Amnesty said increased the risk of torture or other maltreatment of detainees. Photographs on social media have shown some of the detainees bruised and bandaged.Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Twitter that Amnesty’s allegations were false, describing them as Gulenist « slander ». « Absolutely none of those detained were subject to torture or bad treatment during or after their detention, » he said.
Turkish coup trial to be held where army once flexed its muscles Officers accused of staging a failed coup in Turkey will stand trial in an Ankara district laden with symbolism for the country’s recent history – the scene of an army show of strength before a « post-modern coup » ousted its first Islamist-led government in 1997.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said a new court house will be built in the district of Sincan, where the army paraded several dozen tanks and armoured vehicles on Feb. 4, 1997 after an Islamist protest attended by the Iranian ambassador.
Within months, Islamist prime minister Necmettin Erbakan was forced from power by secular generals who used pressure behind the scenes rather than the kind of overt military force employed in three earlier coups.
Another Islamist politician at the time, the mayor of Istanbul, was tried for reading a poem which was seen as inciting hatred and jailed for four months in 1999. That man was Tayyip Erdogan, who is now Turkish president.
More than 13,000 people have been detained in connection with the July 15-16 attempt to overthrow Erdogan. Among the nearly 9,000 soldiers under arrest are around 160 generals and admirals.
Late last week, Bozdag said there are currently no courts in Turkey capable of handling such large numbers of defendants, hence the need for a new building.
« It will be within the district borders of Sincan, » he told broadcaster CNN Turk. « We have to create a place where the trial can be held in a sound way. » The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper made clear the site was no coincidence. « Sincan was chosen especially for the prosecution of the putschists, » it said.
The new court house, Turkey’s largest, would accommodate 900 people within a prison complex in Sincan, it reported.
In the past decade, Turkey has held trials for hundreds of defendants, including many military officers, accused of involvement in two previous alleged coup attempts, dubbed « Ergenekon » and « Sledgehammer ».Those trials were held in a court house in the Silivri prison complex, west of Istanbul.
Bavarian bomber pledged allegiance to Islamic State – minister The Syrian who blew himself up in southern Germany, wounding 15 people, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State on a video found on his mobile phone, the Bavarian Interior Minister said on Monday.
On searching the bomber’s room, Nuremberg police found diesel, hydrochloric acid, alcohol, batteries, paint thinner and pebbles – the same materials used in the bomb – and computer images and film clips linked to the militant group, they said.
« A provisional translation by an interpreter shows that he expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to (Islamic State leader) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi … an act of revenge against the Germans because they’re getting in the way of Islam, » Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told a news conference.
« I think that after this video there’s no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background. » Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bombing, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports Islamic State.
Nuremberg police chief Roman Fertinger said the influence of Islamic State could be seen on the bomber’s computer.
« There was also a laptop that showed pictures and film sequences that glorify violence and are unequivocally linked to Islamic State, » he told a news conference.
The attack on Sunday, outside a music festival in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that has a U.S.
Army base, was the fourth act of violence by men of Middle Eastern or Asian origin against German civilians in a week.
The 27-year-old arrived in Germany two years ago and claimed asylum, a federal interior ministry spokesman said. He had been in trouble with police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences and had faced deportation to Bulgaria.
Fertinger added that police had arrested a suspect who knew the bomber. They were trying to find out if the attacker had help making the bomb and whether it exploded prematurely, which could suggest he wanted to kill as many people as possible.
The incident, after three other attacks since July 18 that left 10 people dead and dozens injured, will fuel growing public unease about Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy. More than a million migrants entered Germany over the past year, many fleeing war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.
Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said no decision would be made on changing asylum or immigration rules until investigations into the recent incidents are finished.
« Of course I would and will initiate appropriate amendments if they are necessary or if I think they are necessary, but only then, » he said.
Germany’s federal and state security authorities have more than 400 leads on fighters or members of Islamist organisations among refugees in the country, the BKA federal police said.
THREE OTHER CASES The suicide bomber had been denied entry to the Ansbach Open music festival shortly before detonating the bomb outside a restaurant, Herrmann said. More than 2,000 people were evacuated from the festival after the explosion, police said.
Ansbach prosecutor Michael Schrotberger said the attacker had suffered episodes of depression. Fertinger, the Nuremberg police chief, said he had made superficial suicide attempts by cutting his arms, resulting in him receiving psychiatric care.
Herrmann told Reuters the recent attacks raised serious questions about Germany’s asylum law and security nationwide. He planned to introduce measures at a meeting of Bavaria’s conservative government on Tuesday to strengthen police forces, in part by ensuring they have adequate equipment.
It was the second violent incident in Germany on Sunday and the fourth in the past week, including the killing of nine people by a deranged 18-year-old Iranian-German gunman in the Bavarian capital Munich on Friday.
Earlier on Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested after killing a pregnant woman and wounding two people with a machete in the southwestern city of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart.
A week ago a 17-year-old youth who had sought asylum in Germany was shot dead by police after wounding five people with an axe near Wuerzburg, also in Bavaria. He was initially thought to be Afghan but federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has since said he may have been from Pakistan.
Police said neither Sunday’s machete attack nor Friday’s shooting in Munich bore any sign of connections with Islamic State or other militant groups. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Wuerzburg attack as well as the July 14 rampage in the French Riviera city of Nice in which a Tunisian man drove a truck into Bastille Day crowds, killing 84 people.
Nineteen killed, dozens wounded in Japan knife attack-media reports Nineteen people were killed and dozens were wounded after an attack by a knife-wielding man at a facility for the disabled in central Japan early on Tuesday, media reported, in Japan’s worst mass killing in decades.
Police in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, about 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Tokyo, have arrested Satoshi Uematsu, a 26-year-old former employee at the facility, Japanese media reported.
They said staff called police at 2.30 a.m. local time (1730 GMT Monday) with reports of a man armed with a knife on the grounds of the Tsukui Yamayuri-En facility.
The 3-hectare (7.6 acre) facility, established by the local government and nestled on the wooded bank of the Sagami River, cares for people with a wide range of disabilities, NHK said, quoting an unidentified employee.
Police had recovered a bag with several knives, at least one stained with blood, NHK said. No details were provided about where the knives were found.
The man, wearing a black T-shirt, did not have a knife when he turned himself in at a nearby police station, other reports said. Police said they were still investigating possible motives.
Asahi Shimbun reported that the suspect was quoted by police as saying: « I want to get rid of the disabled from this world. » Fifteen people were initially confirmed dead, while four were said to be in cardiac arrest, media reports said. Kyodo later said the death toll stood at 19.
There was confusion about the number of wounded, with reports fluctuating between 20 and 45.
Twenty-nine emergency squads responded to the attack, Kyodo reported, with those wounded taken to at least six hospitals in the western Tokyo area.
A man identified as the father of a patient in the facility told NHK he learned about the attack on the radio and had received no information from the centre.
« I’m very worried but they won’t let me in, » he said, standing just outside a cordon of yellow crime-scene tape.
The man, who arrived at the scene around 5 a.m. (2000 GMT Monday), said he had never heard of trouble at the facility before.
NHK reported that the facility is usually locked at night but the man broke into the building by smashing a window.
The facility’s website said the centre had a maximum capacity of 160 people, including staff.
Social media went into overdrive as news of the mass stabbing broke. « I can’t stop shaking. What a terrible incident, it’s just too much, » one post on Twitter said.
Such mass killings are extremely rare in Japan and typically involve stabbings due to Japan’s strict gun laws.
Eight children were stabbed to death at their school in Osaka by a former janitor in 2001. Seven people died in 2008 when a man drove a truck into a crowd and began stabbing people in Tokyo’s popular electronics and « anime » district of Akihabara. Members of a doomsday cult killed 12 and made thousands ill in 1995 in simultaneous attacks with sarin nerve gas on five Tokyo rush-hour subway trains.
Olympic plotters saw ‘opportunity to reach paradise’ -prosecutor Twelve Brazilian suspects arrested for discussing a potential attack during the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro were « no joke, » the prosecutor for the case told Reuters on Monday.
Dismissing criticism that the recent arrests were a calculated move to show Brazil taking the threat of terrorism seriously, Rafael Brum Miron said the suspects, alleged sympathizers of the Islamic State militant group, discussed an attack with at least two foreigners who formed part of a messaging group.
One suspect, he said, wrote via the Telegram messaging service that « the Olympics are an opportunity to reach paradise. » Another, who was detained on Sunday following a search after initial arrests last Thursday, had discussed acquiring heavy weaponry.
Miron’s comments follow some questioning of the operation because Brazil’s justice minister, when announcing the arrests, called the suspects « absolutely amateur » and said they had no specific plans or capabilities to attack the Games that begin on Aug 5.
« They were amateurs, but they were not a joke, » Miron said in his office in the southern city of Curitiba. « There’s no such thing as an experienced suicide bomber. » Justice Minister Alexandre Moraes, who has faced criticism for minimizing the threat of an attack during the Games, said security agencies were watching anyone who visited websites that « make an apology for terrorism » even if they were just curious and not planning to do anything.
« Our police and intelligence agencies are continuing to monitor more than 100 people so that we can have tranquility during the Games, » Moraes told reporters after inspecting security equipment at the Brasilia airport at the start of a tour of the country’s main entry ports for visitors for the Games.
Moraes said he had instructed the high security prison in southern Brazil where the 12 men are being held to allow them immediate access to lawyers to guarantee their legal rights.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation gave Brazil the tip that led to the arrests, according to Miron, by sending a succinct report that said « these people merit investigating. » He said the last of those arrested, detained Sunday in the state of Mato Grosso, is actually a leader of the group.
Officials initially played down his importance in order to prevent a panic at the possibility of an alleged militant on the loose, he added.
At least two members of a wider group of about 20 people investigators monitored were foreigners, Miron said, explaining that sometimes awkward messages from them appeared to have gone through Google Translate.
The foreigners, he added, are believed to be from Africa.
Brazilian police are now investigating possible connections with Islamist groups there.
As police scour seized computers and phones, initial evidence suggests that Brazil itself was not the target, but that the suspects saw the Games as such because « there are lots of people coming from abroad, » Miron said.
No specific country was singled out for attack, nor was any date or target finalized, but investigators have said the group was interested in striking countries currently in conflict with Islamic State.
Miron would not specify how investigators intercepted messages via Telegram, a service that encrypts data between users. He said, however, it did not require help from the company. In a separate interview televised Sunday, the judge overseeing the investigation said investigators had obtained data from Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. because the suspects had also used those platforms.
Security concerns fail to quell cheers at German Wagner fest Security concerns after killings in Germany, coupled with Islamic elements in a new production of Richard Wagner’s opera « Parsifal », created a nervous opening for the annual Wagner festival in Bayreuth on Monday.
But at the end, the capacity audience cheered.
A police roadblock at the bottom of the drive leading up the « Green Hill » to Wagner’s specially built 19th-century opera house forced people in formal evening wear to walk in the muggy summer air. Women’s handbags were opened for inspection.
The traditional red-carpet arrival for German celebrities and politicians was cancelled, as were the post-premiere champagne receptions, after the Bavarian government said its officials would not attend the opening out of respect for the nine people killed by a German-Iranian teenager in Munich last week.
Peter Emmerich, the festival’s spokesman, said security concerns were clearly having an impact. On Sunday, a 27-year-old Syrian man denied asylum in Germany a year ago blew himself up outside a crowded music festival in Ansbach, 135 km (84 miles)from Bayreuth, injuring 12 people in the country’s fourth violent attack on civilians in less than a week.
« The whole situation in this land in Germany and Bavaria, of course, that is a problem but not for the festival – for the artistic aspects of the festival – but for the mood, » Emmerich told Reuters.
In the end, the production went off without a hitch. Russian soprano Elena Pankratova as the temptress Kundry, German bass-baritone Klaus Florian Vogt as the « holy fool » Parsifal and German bass Georg Zeppenfeld as Gurnemanz, one of the caretakers of the Holy Grail, got the lion’s share of the applause.
Almost as strongly appreciated was German conductor Hartmut Haenchen, who stepped in at the last minute when conductor Andris Nelsons left due to artistic differences with the festival.
There were a few inevitable boos but also strong applause for German director Uwe Eric Laufenberg, whose new version of the opera sets the action in a deteriorating church, which German press reports have quoted him as saying was meant to be in Iraq.
With soldiers traipsing through the church and arrogantly ignoring the « Knights of the Grail » and women in the cast in what strongly resembled Moslem niqabs covering all of their faces apart from the eyes, the production was the subject of numerous press reports suggesting that it might offend Moslems.
Laufenberg countered that his work was « pan religious » and underscored the point in the finale, departing from Wagner by having a coffin filled with symbols from several major religions, including Christian crosses, Jewish menorahs and religious books.
Despite the recent incidents, the opera house was packed and the mood was festive – though more subdued than usual. »I had some days when I was thinking about it (security), » said Esther Perbrandt, a designer from Berlin attending with friends. « But we still need the beautiful things. »
Cooperation with Russia in Syria would not be based on trust -U.S. general Any military or intelligence cooperation between the United States and Russia to strike targets in Syria would include measures to ensure U.S.operational security and would not be based on trust, a top U.S.military official said on Monday.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that he would meet his Russian counterpart in the coming days to discuss an American proposal for closer military cooperation and intelligence sharing on Syria.
The proposal, which Kerry hopes to conclude within weeks, envisions ways in which Washington and Moscow would share intelligence to coordinate air strikes against the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front and prohibit the Syrian air force from attacking moderate rebel groups.
The proposal has met with deep skepticism by top American military and intelligence officials.
« We’re not entering into a transaction that is founded on trust, » Marine General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford said at a news conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter.
« There will be specific procedures and processes in any transaction we might have with the Russians that will account for protecting our operational security. » The negotiations Kerry is having with the Russians, Carter said, are based on « mutual interest to the extent and when and as we are able to identify that with the Russians. » Many U.S. officials are concerned that sharing intelligence with Russia could risk revealing U.S. intelligence sources, methods and capabilities.
Israel says aircraft strikes in Syria after errant Syrian fireIsraeli aircraft attacked a target in Syria on Monday after errant fire from fighting among factions in Syria struck inside Israel, Israel’s military said.
The Syrian fire had hit an open area near the border causing no injuries, and in retaliation the airforce « successfully targeted the source of the fire in Syria », said an army spokeswoman.
The Syrian army said two missiles from Israeli reconnaissance planes hit a residential building in Baath City in the Syrian Golan Heights, near the border with Israel.
The army statement, carried on state news agency SANA, said the strikes on the city caused « material damage » and said they were aimed at « raising the morale of terrorist groups it (Israel) supported » after losses inflicted by the Syrian army.
The town is held by pro-Syrian government forces, including the army and Hezbollah fighters. The al Qaeda offshoot the Nusra Front, Western-backed rebels, and groups which have pledged allegiance to Islamic State also operate in the region.
Though formally neutral in the civil war, Israel has targeted Hezbollah officials and arms convoys inside Syria several times during the conflict.
Syrian rebels and a monitoring group said two explosions that struck the same town on Wednesday were caused by an Israeli air strike but Lebanon’s Hezbollah blamed rocket fire by al Qaeda-linked militants. Israel declined to comment at that time.Israel captured the western Golan in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it, a move not recognised internationally.
South Sudan’s president replaces his rival Machar as deputy South Sudan President Salva Kiir replaced his vice president and rival Riek Machar on Monday, a move that could potentially undermine last year’s peace deal and reignite war in Africa’s youngest nation.
Machar was sworn in as first vice president only last April, eight months after a peace agreement that ended two years of fighting that broke out the last time that Kiir sacked him as his deputy in 2013.
But the rivalry between the two men led to violence in the capital Juba early this month as forces from both sides battled each other with tanks, helicopters and other heavy weapons.
Machar, from the minority Nuer ethnic group, left Juba with his troops, saying he would only return when an international body had to set up a buffer force between his fighters and those supporting Kiir, leader of the dominant Dinka group.
Kiir issued an ultimatum last week, saying Machar had 48 hours to contact him and return to Juba to salvage last year’s peace deal, or face replacement.
He made good on that threat on Monday when he issued a decree « for the appointment of the first vice president of the republic of South Sudan », naming General Tabal Deng Gai to the post.
A former minister of mining, Deng Gai was a chief negotiator on behalf of Machar’s SPLM-IO group in the talks that led to last year’s deal. But last week, he broke ranks with Machar and backed Kiir’s ultimatum to him.
South Sudan’s politics has long been plagued by splits and rivalries as leaders switch allegiances in a struggle for power an influence in the oil-producing nation, which only emerged from Sudan five years ago.
Its last war, which started after Kiir sacked Machar as vice president in 2013, killed more than 10,000 people and displaced over 2 million, many of whom fled to neighbouring countries.
The most recent fighting in Juba has forced 26,000 people to flee to neighbouring Uganda, according to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.
In a bid to prevent a return to full-scale war in the crude oil producer, the African Union and the Inter Governmental Authority of Development, an east African bloc, have backed the deployment of a regional force and also want the UN force UNMISS’s mandate changed to that of an intervention force.
Five Saudi border guards killed in clashes in south-TV Five Saudi border guards were killed on Monday in clashes with armed groups seeking to enter from Yemen, state television al-Ekhbariya reported, citing the Saudi interior ministry.
A ministry statement added the border guards detected attempts by « hostile » armed groups to cross the border on several fronts in the southern region of Najran on Monday morning. Eight hours of clashes ensued.
The statement did not identify the armed groups, but Saudi forces and fighters from Yemen’s Houthi movement have traded fire across the border frequently during Yemen’s more than 15-month-old war.
Peace talks in Kuwait between Yemen’s government and the Houthis to end the conflict have dragged on for more two months with few concrete results. A truce that began on April 10 has dampened fighting, but skirmishes continue almost daily.
Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies intervened in Yemen’s war in March 2015 on behalf of the internationally backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The conflict has killed at least 6,400 people and caused a humanitarian crisis.
In a separate incident, the Saudi-led military coalition said an Apache helicopter crashed in the Yemeni city Marib, east of the capital Sanaa due to bad weather, state news agency SPA reported.The pilot and co-pilot from the Saudi Royal land forces were killed, SPA added from the statement.
Libyan deal to end oil ports blockade still needs signing – Guard’s Jathran Libyan Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) commander Ibrahim Jathran said on Monday he was ready to end a blockade at key oil terminals, but the U.N.-backed government still needs to sign an agreement for exports to resume.
The PFG has been demanding payment of workers’ wages as part of any deal to end the blockade of Ras Lanuf, Es Sider and Zueitina. Details of the negotiations have not been made public.
A deal was thrown into doubt when the head of Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) in Tripoli, Mustafa Sanalla, wrote to the U.N. Libya envoy on Friday saying that it would set a « terrible precedent » to make payments to Jathran, who he blamed for the loss of some $100 billion in export revenue.
The NOC has expressed concerns that Jathran’s demands have exceeded salary needs.
Sanalla said the NOC would not lift force majeure at export terminals if a payout went through due to the risk that the corporation would face liabilities over losses stemming from the blockade.
Jathran dismissed Sanalla’s letter, saying it was « not worth the ink it was written with » and that it « neither advances nor delays » an agreement to resume exports between the PFG and the U.N.-backed government’s Presidential Council.
The PFG was in the « highest state of readiness » to resume exports, he said. « The ball is now in the Presidential Council’s court, it only has to come to Ras Lanuf to sign the agreement for exports to start. » The PFG was created as a national force to guard Libya’s oil facilities. It is now internally divided, and Jathran’s powerful unit, based in Libya’s Oil Crescent region, has acted largely independently, switching political allegiances in recent years.
Jathran led blockades of the ports starting in 2013 saying he was trying to prevent corruption in oil sales, though others have disputed his motives.
The NOC is trying to revive Libya’s oil production, crippled since the country slid into conflict following the uprising that toppled long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi five years ago.
Political quarrels, labour disputes, security threats have reduced output to less than a quarter of a 2011 high of 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd).
The NOC says that even if Jathran lifts his blockade, damage to the ports means exports would struggle to surpass 100,000 bpd in the near term, a fraction of their designed capacity. Sanalla said in his letter that money would be better spent funding the NOC’s largest subsidiary, Arabian Gulf Oil Company (Agoco). Agoco said on Monday that the eastern Sarir oil field, which normally produces about 100,000 bpd, remained closed as the company waited for funds to fix equipment and pay off debts.
Regional armies struggle in last push against Boko Haram« You’ll all be able to go home soon. Boko Haram is nearly finished, » Niger’s Interior Minister Mohamed Bazoum told a crowd of refugees seated quietly on dusty, sun-baked flats.
His words of optimism were belied by the dozens-strong security detail required to protect him as he toured his country’s southern border.
Seven years into an insurgency that spread from Nigeria into Chad, Niger and Cameroon, regional armies are now in a final push to defeat Boko Haram, a once obscure Islamist sect turned deadly militant group.
But lingering divisions in the countries’ multi-national joint task force (MNJTF) are complicating that mission.
« If there’s no strategy to attack Boko Haram together, we won’t ever finish with them, » Mahamadou Liman Ali, an opposition lawmaker from southern Niger, told Reuters in Niamey.
At a time when the world’s wealthy nations are focused on the fight against Islamic State and al Qaeda, financial support for the MNJTF’s efforts against Boko Haram, which has pledged its allegiance to IS, have fallen short of targets.
That has left the task force’s members – including Chad, the region’s capable but increasingly reluctant military powerhouse – to shoulder the bulk of the costs of fighting the group.
Boko Haram’s victims, which include 2.4 million displaced, live in hope that this month-old offensive – dubbed Operation Gama Aiki, or « finish the job » in the local Hausa language – might succeed where others have failed.
Some have doubts. From where he stays in southern Niger, refugee Usman Kanimbu sees smoke rising from the coalition’s air strikes on insurgent positions in Nigeria, the home he fled.
« We’ve fled eight times. Each time we arrive somewhere Boko Haram attacks again. We would keep running, but we can’t afford to anymore, » he said. « I’m not sure this will ever end. »
FRAGILE PROGRESS As the sun sets over the Nigerian border, a featureless expanse of sand and scrub trees, soldiers from Niger peered over an earthen bern at territory held by Boko Haram.
The skies above the borderlands now rumble daily with the sound of fighter jets. Chadian troops have ventured onto Lake Chad, a Boko Haram stronghold. Regional military officers say they are taking back ground from the insurgents.
The task force may indeed be making headway against Boko Haram, which has fewer footholds than it once did. Its leader, Abubakar Shekau, may even be dead.
But the MNJTF is a far cry from what it was conceived to be, a dedicated 8,700-strong force blending soldiers from Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Chad and Benin.
Instead, the nations rely on their own armies to deal with Boko Haram threats. Troops from Chad, which has the region’s strongest military, reinforce when needed then head back home.
« Each force is based in its country of origin. There’s no integrated force with battalions moving in perfect coordination, » said Vincent Foucher, West Africa researcher at International Crisis Group (ICG).
The need for operational integration in the fight against an enemy that knows no borders was exposed during a similar regional offensive early last year.
After troops from Chad and Niger drove Boko Haram from a string of towns in Nigeria’s far north, they waited in vain for the Nigerian army to arrive and hold them.
« We were there for three or four months, but the Nigerian troops that were meant to take over from us were not ready, » Niger’s Brigadier General Abdou Sidikou Issa told Reuters.
Niger and Chad withdrew, according to a source with knowledge of the operation, because they feared becoming an occupying force. Issa said the troops were overstretched logistically, however. Either way, the vacuum they left allowed Boko Haram to reclaim positions and carry on cross-border raids.
« That’s what’s created problems for us again today, » Issa said.
The MNJTF was meant to prevent a repeat of those kinds of incidents. The African Union endorsed the force in January 2015 and a headquarters was established in Chad’s capital N’Djamena to coordinate forces against the ever-evolving threat of Boko Haram.
The AU has struggled to rally contributors to foot the bill for the MNJTF’s $700 million budget, however. Donors, led by Nigeria and France, pledged $250 million in February, just over a third of what was needed, but dispersal has been slow. The United States has also aided with intelligence and training.
A senior MNJTF officer, who asked not to be named as he was not authorised to speak, told Reuters the money received so far was so little that it only had covered the cost of 11 vehicles and some radio equipment, with the individual armies bearing the rest of the costs.
« There are all these declarations of intentions, but, in concrete terms, nothing has been done yet, » he said.
A spokesman for the MNJTF did not respond to a request for comment.
« HURTING » A Boko Haram attack last month on Bosso, in southeastern Niger, which killed 32 soldiers and a number of civilians, was the kind of incident the MNJTF was created for.
But rather than the multinational force kicking into action as it is supposed to, Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou had to fly to N’Djamena to lobby neighbour Chad for help.
Having played a lead role along with France in a 2013 intervention in Mali to drive back jihadist groups there, Chad’s President Idriss Deby has become indispensable in the fight against West African Islamists.
But with low oil prices now causing Deby economic headaches at home and little direct financial support coming from his allies, analysts say he has grown resentful.
Two weeks after President Issoufou’s visit, Reuters visited a half-finished hotel complex in the southern Niger city of Diffa that had been fully booked out by the Chadian army. The Chadians were nowhere to be seen. Dozens of bungalows sat empty.
It would take more than a month for them to arrive.
Excluding its oil sector, after 7 percent growth in 2014, Chad’s economy contracted by 1.5 percent last year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Oil output rose to record levels, but low prices meant revenues dipped.
« This is costing (Deby) a lot of money. There’s a big budget crisis … He’s definitely hurting, » said Nathaniel Powell, a researcher with the Swiss-based Fondation Pierre du Bois.
A Chadian government official did not respond to a request for comment.
Niger’s tiny army – 15,000 troops to cover 1.2 million square kilometres (463,300 square miles) of territory – is overstretched by Boko Haram, but also by the overflow of unrelated Islamist violence from Mali to its west.
Cameroon has meanwhile deployed thousands of troops, including special forces, to its north to secure its own territory against a suicide bombing campaign.
And while Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has shown more willingness than his predecessor to take on the insurgents, decades of graft have hollowed out his military and it now faces resurgent militancy in the oil-producing Niger Delta.
The senior MNJTF officer said the regional neighbours would continue to improve the force. In the meantime, they had no other choice than to act. »If we wait, Boko Haram isn’t going to wait for us, are they? » he said.
Syrians in Lebanon hit by arrests, curfews and hostility after bombings Suicide bombings in Lebanon last month have prompted mass arrests, curfews and reported vigilante-style attacks directed at the large Syrian refugee population, leaving many Syrians in the country feeling fearful and cornered.
The security measures are making it harder for Syrians, who already fear arbitrary arrest, to move around or work, according to refugees and rights activists. Some also feel increasing hostility being directed at them from the general population in some areas, they added.
« We’re scared, » said one refugee in a camp in the Bekaa valley, asking not to be named. « There was a big raid at dawn a few days ago. (The army) came in, hit people and arrested people with no papers, or expired papers.
« If anyone tried to run away they would fire in the air. » Lebanon, a country with a long history of sectarian strife, has been strained by the five-year-old civil war next door and hosts more than a million Syrian refugees, who make up about a quarter of its population.
It has been repeatedly hit by security incidents linked the Syrian conflict, including Sunni militant attacks. Powerful Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim movement Hezbollah is fighting in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad.
In the latest attack, on June 27, eight suicide bombers blew themselves up in the Lebanese Christian village of Qaa near the Syrian border, killing five people.
Authorities have made no direct links between the militant attacks and the mainly Sunni Syrian refugee population. They said they believed Islamic State was responsible for the Qaa bombings, and that the attackers came from inside Syria, rather than from refugee camps.
But Lebanese army commander General Jean Kahwaji said late last year that camps represented a growing security risk as potential hideouts for militants. After the Qaa attacks, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said terrorists had « infiltrated » the refugee population.
Security raids in response to the Qaa bombings mainly targeted refugee camps, including the one in the Bekaa valley.
More than 700 Syrians were arrested in a week, many for having expired residency papers or no proof of legal stay. Some 450 of those are still detained, security sources say.
The crackdown has frightened refugees, many of whom already avoid straying from their dwellings fearing arrest at checkpoints. Many are illegally staying in Lebanon because they cannot afford a $200 annual residency fee, even if they are registered with the U.N. refugee agency.
Some politicians’ concerns over the refugees stem from Lebanon’s experience with Palestinian camps set up after the creation of Israel. Some of those became bases for armed groups, who were blamed for playing a role in triggering Lebanon’s own 1975-1990 civil war.
They also fret about the impact of refugees on the delicate sectarian balance in Lebanon, where power is divided between Christians, Shi’ites, Sunnis and other groups.
CURFEWS Security raids in camps have also confiscated unlicensed motorbikes, hampering movement for refugees.
At the same time, many local municipalities have imposed night-time curfews on Syrians.
« The noose has tightened around us after the attacks in Qaa, » said 25-year-old Syrian Rabie, who lives in a town outside Beirut.
« I want to be able to leave the house at night but I can’t because the town hall imposed a curfew, » he said, speaking at an anti-racism march in support of refugees in the capital.
The curfews have made it hard for Syrians who work night shifts to get to their jobs, he said.
« Last night my brother-in-law went to get his son some medicine for a fever. He was stopped and told he wasn’t allowed to be out, » Rabie said.
Police confiscated ID cards belonging to Rabie and friends as they gathered at home late one night this week, he added.
Officials say the curfews are security precautions.
In Marjayoun in southern Lebanon, the curfew runs from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. « We’ve made a decision to prevent foreigners from being out » during that time, deputy municipality head Sari Gholamia said.
« The most important thing is to strengthen monitoring of what’s happening in the town and to inform the authorities of anything suspicious. » Two senior aid workers, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic, told Reuters the curfews were illegal. Municipalities do not have authority to impose curfews, and the government and military can only do so after declaring a military zone or state of emergency, they said.
ATTACKS Foreign Minister Bassil last month urged increased police patrols to search Syrians.
He said municipalities had a key role in « preventing security breaches » and should « stop any gatherings or camps of Syrian refugees ».
Bassil has vocally opposed what he says is an international plan to resettle Syrian refugees permanently in Lebanon – something which the United Nations has denied.
Rights groups have expressed concern about the crackdown and anti-Syrian sentiment.
« There have been lots of arrests and lots of beatings, unfortunately many of them have been tolerated by local leadership or even by municipal police … and justified within the current security situation, » said George Ghali of Lebanese rights group ALEF.
« What is concerning for us is not just retaliatory arrests but general xenophobia, » he said.
A number of attacks against Syrians have been reported by local media in recent weeks, including the beating of several men in a Christian village north of Beirut, two separate stabbings elsewhere and a fatal shooting in the Bekaa valley.
Anonymous leaflets circulated in one area of the Bekaa valley threatened Syrians with rape or murder if they failed to leave within 48 hours. The local municipality condemned the leaflet.
In the current climate many Syrians are too afraid to speak out about any abuses, a rights activist said. « This has been happening for a while but no one has wanted to talk about it, » Ashraf Alhafny said. « Every year it’s the same – it gets worse, people are frightened to talk, and so the issue goes away. »
Stranded in the Gulf, duped Indian workers call for help Indians workers stranded in the United Arab Emirates with expired work permits, no pay and limited food, water and sanitation have appealed to the Indian government for immediate repatriation and financial assistance.
« Please help us reunite with our families, » a migrant said in a video clip, adding that there were nearly 100 workers stuck with no money or documents to get back home.
Fifteen workers from southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, who are among those at a camp for migrant workers, have urged the Indian government to bring them home immediately.
« We received their complaint a few days back and sent it to our mission in Abu Dhabi asking for immediate repatriation and ensuring the companies they were working for pay their salaries, » said an official in the Indian foreign ministry, who declined to be named.
Government figures show there are an estimated six million Indian migrants in the six Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman.
Josephine Valarmathi of the non-profit National Domestic Workers’ Movement, based in Chennai, said the number of workers being trafficked to the Gulf from India was rising. But no action was being taken against the agents « sending them with false promises and no proper documentation, » she said.
« It’s time the government investigated how workers are sent through these agencies without proper documentation, » she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
According to the video appeal, the workers are confined to a camp at Ghayathi in Abu Dhabi and include migrants from Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
« I last spoke to my husband a month back, » said P. Chitra, the wife of one of the men who made the appeal.
« He said he hadn’t been paid for nine months and was finding it difficult to buy food. Since then I haven’t heard from him. » The UAE embassy in New Delhi did not respond to a request for comment.
The migrants say they have not been paid wages since November 2015.
« Our employment contract, visas, labour card and the resident identity card has expired, but the sponsor has not renewed them, forcing employees to work without wages, » said the video and written appeal produced by the migrants.
Each migrant paid up to 200,000 rupees ($3,000) to an agent to get a job overseas. The complaint lists the names of the agents and demands action against them, besides compensation. ($ 1 = 67.33 Indian rupees)
Europe’s « deplorable » child migrant response raises trafficking risk- report Children who flee poverty and war zones without their parents are falling prey to traffickers and smugglers once they arrive in Europe because of a disjointed response by governments, a group of British parliamentarians said on Tuesday.
The European Union committee in the House of Lords said in a report it was alarmed by a lack of strategy to cater for the needs of unaccompanied migrant children, with police and governments avoiding taking responsibility for them.
« There appears to be a culture of suspicion at every level … questioning whether the children are telling the truth, » said Usha Prashar, a member of the upper house of parliament, who chaired the research panel.
« Yes, these children may be unaccompanied migrant children, but they are children first and foremost, » Prashar told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.
Around 90,000 unaccompanied children, many fleeing conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan, sought asylum in the EU’s 28 member states last year, more than three times as many as in 2014, according to Eurostat, the EU’s data service.
Many of those who survived perilous journeys to Europe found themselves housed in poor conditions – either placed in prison cells or centres ringed with barbed wire, the United Nations found, while others simply disappeared.
At least 10,000 unaccompanied migrant children have gone missing since they arrived in Europe, according to the European Union police intelligence agency, Europol.
With so many children disappearing off the radar, the report singled out the British government for its « reluctance » to help other EU member states relocate a number of them.
« We deplore the failure by EU Member States, including the United Kingdom, to take urgent action following the announcement of Europol’s latest figures, » the report said.
While some countries badly needed to revisit their pledges to relocate unaccompanied migrant children, Germany and Sweden were « notable exceptions » because they proactively integrated and protected child migrants, the researchers found.
The report also highlighted that data collection on child migrants was limited, with many being counted more than once, hindering authorities’ powers to trace them and increasing their vulnerability to criminal groups. « Children lose trust in the authorities and that is when they become vulnerable to smugglers and human traffickers, » Prashar said.The committee said better data, improved child protection systems and more robust legal advice were essential to ensuring unaccompanied migrant rights were protected.
Daughter of Sudanese film legend preserves his legacy As she drove past an apartment complex on a street in Khartoum, Sara Jadallah turned silent.It was here that her late father, the legendary film-maker Jadallah Jubara, set up Sudan’s first private film studio in the 1970s.
But in 2008, following an eight-year court battle over ownership of the land, the government demolished Studio Jad.
The demolition, shortly before the film-maker’s death at the age of 88, left little trace of the studio.
But stopping next to the blocks of flats that now stand in its place, Jadallah pointed at a white patch on an old wall among the new buildings.
« The screen is still there, » she said.
With her father’s studio gone, Jadallah has vowed to preserve his life’s work.
With help from German experts, she has started digitising his entire film collection to create what she believes is Sudan’s first private archive of 15 and 35mm films.
« Through his camera he documented Sudan’s history. I want to preserve this legacy, » Jadallah, 66, told AFP at her home in a southern Khartoum district.
Jubara was once an officer in the British army. Shortly after World War II he began work as a projectionist in a British mobile film unit.
He went on to capture iconic moments in Sudan’s history, including the hoisting of the country’s flag as it gained independence from Britain in 1956.
In a career spanning more than five decades, he produced more than 100 documentaries and four feature films, including a famous 1984 love story « Tajooj ».But years of storage in poor conditions have taken a toll on his film archives.
« Film rolls have a life span and because of exposure to heat and dust they have been damaged, » said Jadallah.
– Journey into the past –
In his early years, Jubara faced resistance from a conservative Sudanese society, making it difficult for him to find actors.But a determined Jubara encouraged family members to work with him, including Jadallah.
« He believed that cameramen were the most important people in the world… and in their hands was the most important weapon, » she said.
Jadallah, who made a name for herself as a national swimming champion despite having polio as a child, also studied film in Cairo.
She worked with her father when he began to lose his eyesight due to old age, helping him film part of an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s « Les Miserables ».
Jubara’s documentaries included films on Darfur, where a deadly conflict since 2003 has killed tens of thousands of people.
His early films preserved a snapshot of Sudanese society before the 1989 coup that installed an Islamist-backed regime.
Prior to the coup, Sudan was home to more than 60 cinemas, including 16 in Khartoum that often screened films from Hollywood and Bollywood.
Today, after years of economic hardships and government restrictions on importing foreign films, just three cinemas operate in Khartoum.
German film-maker Katharina von Schroeder, who is helping Jadallah to digitise Jubara’s collection, said watching his work was like taking a journey into the past.
« There were lot more enterprises and factories at that time, a lot more night clubs, » she told AFP.
« Without any judgement, it was a different place, » she said as she showed footage from Jubara’s collection.
In one commercial, a young Jadallah is seen dressed in a red top and a skirt.
In another clip, Sudanese couples in Western clothes danced at an late evening open-air party — something rare in today’s Sudan.
« There is no conflict between religion and cinema, » said Jadallah, « but some extremists reject cinema without even understanding it. »
« If you don’t have cinema, you don’t have a voice, » she said.
– A gift to Sudan –
Over his five-decade career, Jubara produced more than 100 hours of film.
Digitising them is an enormous job. Around 40 hours have been processed so far, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars.
The project has received backing from a German foundation, the Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art, and the German embassy in Khartoum.
« It was definitely worth saving this heritage… and Sara had this wish to preserve her father’s legacy, » said Schroeder.
The processing was done in Berlin. Jadallah was initially hesitant to hand over rare footage.
« I could understand that… in films as opposed to digital, you just have one copy and there’s nothing you can do if it’s gone, » said Schroeder.
« As far as I know this is the only private film archive for 15 and 35 mm materials in Sudan, » she said.
Tayeb Mahdi, director of a Khartoum-based film school, said the project was a fitting tribute to Jubara.
« This government doesn’t care about cinema, while the private sector is disinterested, » he said.
« Despite this, Jubara kept on making films. »
For Jadallah, preserving her father’s legacy is a gift to Sudan. « I feel sad when I remember my father witnessing his studio being demolished… I feel sad when there is no cinema, » she said, wiping away tears. »I want to preserve his films, because Sudan’s future generations should see their country’s history. »
Cold War ghosts haunt Latvia amid renewed NATO-Russia tensions Hidden in the forests of Aluksne, near Latvia’s north-eastern border with Russia, the remains of a former Soviet nuclear missile base are a magnet for tourists now rather than a top-secret site manned by soldiers.
The Zeltini missile launch site, operational during the Cold War years from 1962 to 1984 when Latvia was under Soviet rule, at one time concealed at least eight nuclear missiles in its hangars.
« Missiles were erected, everything was ready. We waited for a command, » said Leonid Konovalov, a 74-year-old pensioner and ethnic Russian, as he stood on the concrete field surrounded by trees.
He served at the Zeltini base during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when his job was to fuel the 22 metre-high 8K63 nuclear rockets.
« We slept with machine-guns by our sides. We were not allowed to take off our clothes, » said Konovalov. « Conditions were really tense. » The nuclear rockets at the base were the same model as those whose deployment on Cuba triggered the Cold War standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union.
« Those missiles could reach a radius of 2,000 km (1,250 miles), » said Ilgonis Upmalis, a former member of the Soviet military and an 80-year-old expert on Soviet military bases in Latvia.
« They could reach parts of Europe. They could really (hit) London, » he said.
It was only in the early 1990s when Latvia regained its independence from a collapsing Soviet Union and Moscow recalled its military that Latvians found out about the existence of the Zeltini base, just one of several such in the country.
Upmalis says that Latvia, as a borderland of the Soviet empire, was crammed with military installations ranging from tanks, artillery and ammunition stockpiles to submarine bases, military airfields and five bases for nuclear missiles.
The Soviet military was deployed in 24 of Latvia’s 26 regions, Upmalis said.
The now abandoned former military buildings and missile hangars attract thousands of tourists each year. Latvia is now a member of the U.S.-led NATO alliance awaiting deployment of a NATO combat battalion intended to serve as a deterrent to a Russia once again seen as a threat to the West.
NATO leaders agreed in July to deploy military forces to the Baltic states and eastern Poland for the first time and increase air and sea patrols.
FOREX-Dollar slips ahead of Fed, yen firms The dollar slipped ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting that begins later on Tuesday, while the yen gained despite expectations that the Bank of Japan will ease later this week.
The U.S. central bank is widely expected to stand pat on policy, but investors were bracing for any possible signals from the Fed about a tightening later this year. Fed fund futures on Monday indicated that the market sees nearly no chance of a rate hike this week, but the chances of a December hike rose to 56 percent, up from 48 percent on Friday.
The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major rivals, edged down 0.1 percent to 97.228 , below the previous session’s high of 97.569, its loftiest peak since March.
The dollar slipped 0.5 percent against the yen to 105.23 , while the euro shed 0.5 percent to 115.66 yen.
Most economists surveyed by Reuters expect the BOJ to take some form of easing steps at its two-day meeting that ends on Friday.
The Japanese government is also putting together a massive spending package worth about 20 trillion yen ($189 billion), government sources told Reuters last week, though actual public spending will be far less than the headline number suggests.
A Nikkei report on Tuesday said Japan is likely to inject 6 trillion yen in direct fiscal outlays into the economy over the next few years.
« For the yen, what matters most in our opinion is the ‘mamizu’ or real water content of the fiscal package – more so than the headline total which is easily inflated, » said Ray Attrill, global co-head of FX strategy at National Australia Bank. « The bigger this is, the more stock market supportive it will be and negative for the yen. » While the news had no direct market impact, sentiment was also subdued after 19 people were feared dead and 45 injured in an attack by a knife-wielding man at a facility for the disabled outside of Tokyo. Such mass killings are extremely rare in Japan.
The Australian dollar was steady at $0.7468 as investors awaited inflation data on Wednesday which many believe will send a signal on whether interest rates will be cut as early as next month.
Underlying inflation is expected to fall to a record low of 1.4 percent, a Reuters poll showed, which is seen prompting the Reserve Bank of Australia to trim its cash rate. ($1 = 105.5800 yen)
GLOBAL MARKETS-Asia shares slip, yen gains as uncertainty grips Caution gripped Asian markets on Tuesday, sending the safe-haven yen higher ahead of central bank meetings in the United States and Japan, while a fresh skid in oil dampened energy stocks on Wall Street.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.2 percent, consolidating after recently topping out at nine-month highs.
Japan’s Nikkei shed 1 percent, with investors seemingly unimpressed by a Nikkei report the government planned a direct fiscal stimulus of around 6 trillion yen ($56 billion) over the next few years.
Early action in currencies saw sterling take a knock when the Financial Times reported Martin Weale, a member of the Bank of England’s rate-setting committee, had dropped his opposition to an easing and now favoured immediate stimulus.
The pound slipped to $1.3093, from around $1.3140 late in New York, but has chart support in the $1.3060/76 zone.
Going the other way, the yen pushed higher to 105.26 per dollar amid uncertainty as to what the Bank of Japan may offer at its policy meeting on Friday.
« We think they’ll deliver a bit of everything, but not quite the bazooka some may be hoping for, » said Frederic Neumann, co-head of economics at HSBC in a note.
Expanded asset purchases or a further rate cut into negative territory were possible, but the extent of actual stimulus provided would depend on how they were implemented.
In all, it’s a recipe for volatility.
« Our recent conversations with investors suggest that expectations are all over the place, » he added. « The BoJ could simply do nothing. In the age of shock and awe, that would certainly deliver plenty of that. » Markets see almost no chance of a hike by the Fed at its meeting on Wednesday, but are wary in case it acknowledges a recent improvement in U.S. economic data in a way that adds to the risk of a move later in the year.
Fed fund futures <0#FF:> imply a 56 percent chance of a rate hike in December, up from 48 percent on Friday.
The uncertainty kept the dollar steady at 97.256 against a basket of currencies, while the euro was range-bound at $1.0990.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had ended Monday with a mild loss of 0.42 percent, while the S&P 500 dipped 0.3 percent and the Nasdaq 0.05 percent.
Apple shares fell 1.3 percent after BGC cut the stock to « sell » ahead of its earnings report on Tuesday.
In commodities, oil languished near three-month lows as a global glut of crude and refined products weighed on markets.NYMEX crude was quoted 7 cents firmer at $43.20, after losing 2 percent overnight, while Brent added 12 cents to $44.84 a barrel.
Cranes stand idle as Myanmar businesses bemoan economic policy drift Aung San Suu Kyi’s ruling party will offer a glimpse of its plans for Myanmar’s economy this week, in a long-awaited announcement that seeks to reassure businesses and investors who have grown increasingly worried by a lack of firm policy detail.
A burgeoning private sector had hoped the National League for Democracy’s (NLD) emphatic triumph in a historic election last year would spur a quickening of reforms, but eight months on the NLD’s economic strategy remains largely a mystery.
« We have not heard their broad economic policy and direction yet. Not much interaction has happened, » said Win Win Tint, the CEO of City Mart Holdings Co. Ltd., which runs the country’s largest supermarket chain.
She said the company’s expansion plans for new supermarket, hypermarket and convenience store outlets were being scaled back for next year due in part to a lack of « encouraging economic policies ».
While the government’s economic plans will add some clarity, they are unlikely to go far enough to fully quell concerns over the early economic direction of the government.
The scrapping by parliament of developments approved by the last administration, and a sweeping review of construction projects that has halted work on half-built high-rises that dot the Yangon skyline, has fuelled disquiet.
A senior NLD official said the government would outline parts of its economic vision for the impoverished country of 51 million later this week.
Han Tha Myint, a representative on the newly formed National Economic Coordination Committee (NECC), said policies would focus on agricultural development and the creation of jobs in the private sector.
But he admitted the policy paper would be light on detail.
« It covers many things, but is not very specific, it’s quite general, » he said.
A STUMBLING START Myanmar’s long-closed economy is now one of the world’s fastest-growing, expanding at 7-8 percent a year since the military relinquished direct control in 2011, ushering in a period of wide-ranging reform under former President Thein Sein.
Although barred from the presidency by the military-drafted constitution, Suu Kyi is the ultimate decision maker in the NLD government that took power in April.
But the Nobel laureate’s chief focus has been on the ethnically divided country’s complex peace process, and without her driving the economic agenda critics in the commercial world say that decision-making has been sluggish.
« It seems they have not put business as a priority, » said City Mart’s Win Win Tint.
Responsibility for steering economic policy rests with Kyaw Win, the Minister of Finance and Planning, a career civil servant who heads what was previously two separate ministries that were merged by the NLD.
With just one deputy minister, and responsibilities that include also heading the Myanmar Investment Commission (MIC), there are concerns he is overstretched.
The reformation of MIC, a key body that approves domestic and foreign investment projects, did not take place until June, more than two months after President Htin Kyaw’s inauguration.
The delay led to a backlog of $2.3 billion in foreign investment projects awaiting approval and, business officials said, was an early indicator that the NLD’s focus lay elsewhere.
Kyaw Win Tun, director of the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration, said the MIC has meet twice since it was reformed last month and approved 11 foreign investments and eight local investment projects totalling around $123 million.
According to MIC figures, over the same period last year the government approved 64 foreign investment projects and 30 domestic projects, totalling around $2.8 billion in proposed investment.
This June, officials from MIC said that there was a backlog of 102 projects awaiting approval.
« The whole government machine seems to be slowing and stalling, » said a Yangon-based business advisor.
« People are waiting for the ministers to make decisions and the ministries are overloaded because they have never done this job and they don’t dare make decisions either. » HIGH-RISE HALT The government’s biggest – and most visible – business-focused announcement to date has been a sweeping review of high-rise construction projects in Yangon that were approved by the previous administration.
The review, which the government said was to check compliance with safety or zoning regulations, has suspended work on 185 construction sites across the commercial capital.
The results for first 12 project reviewed by the Yangon government were announced earlier this month.
Most will need to make significant changes to their plans, a move that has angered developers. They say that if the suspended projects were scrapped it could cost more than $5 billion in losses.
« We are disappointed, » said Thiha Zaw, the general manager of PSWN Development Company, who was told that his company’s 31-storey luxury apartment project would need to be cut to 12 storeys.
The company has already invested $9-10 million of the projected $80 million cost, according to its own estimates, and will now need to look at ways to reconfigure its plans.
The decision had started a domino effect in the industry, Thiha Zaw said, forcing construction workers to be laid off, sub-contractors to lose jobs and customers to question if purchased apartments would be completed. « If these people cannot build, everybody connected to these projects will suffer, » he said.
Sanders backers revolt on raucous opening day at U.S. Democratic convention Supporters of Bernie Sanders disrupted the first day of the Democratic convention on Monday, repeatedly chanting and booing mentions of Hillary Clinton’s name as the party’s hopes for a show of unity dissolved into frequent chaos.
Speakers in the convention’s first hours struggled to carry out business as angry Sanders supporters roared their disapproval, drawing a deafening response from Clinton delegates.
« We’re all Democrats and we need to act like it, » U.S.Representative Marcia Fudge of Ohio, the convention’s chairwoman, shouted over the uproar.
Earlier in the day, Sanders drew jeers from his own supporters when he urged his delegates to back the White House bid of his former rival, Clinton, and focus on defeating Republican Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 presidential election. « We want Bernie, » they shouted in a show of anger at both Clinton’s victory in the race for the Democratic nomination and emails leaked on Friday suggesting the party leadership had tried to sabotage Sanders’ insurgent campaign.
For months, Sanders, 74, a U.S. senator from Vermont, mounted an unexpectedly tough challenge to Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state, who this week will become the first woman nominated for president by a major U.S. political party.
The scenes of booing in Philadelphia were a setback to Democratic officials’ attempts to present the gathering as a smoothly run show of party unity in contrast to the volatile campaign of Republican nominee Trump.
Sanders tried to head off the disruptions, sending an email to delegates as the convention opened urging them to refrain from interrupting the proceedings.
« Our credibility as a movement will be damaged by booing, turning of backs, walking out or other similar displays. That’s what the corporate media wants. That’s what Donald Trump wants, » Sanders said in the email.
Trump gloated at the Democrats’ opening day disorder.
« Wow, the Republican Convention went so smoothly compared to the Dems total mess, » he wrote on Twitter.
‘SINCERE APOLOGY’ The Democratic National Committee issued « a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email » and said it would take action to ensure it never happens again.
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned effective at the end of the convention over the email flap. At a morning gathering of Florida delegates, Sanders supporters booed Wasserman Schultz, who they accuse of trying to sabotage the campaign of the democratic socialist.
Sanders, speaking later to his delegates in Philadelphia, drew jeers and catcalls when he urged supporters to help defeat Trump by backing Clinton and her vice presidential running mate, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia.
« Brothers and sisters, this is the real world that we live in, » he said, adding: « Trump is a bully and a demagogue. » Members of the crowd screamed back: « So is Hillary. » « She stole the election! » someone else shouted.
Sanders complained bitterly during the primary that the party leadership was working against him. Some of his backers are reluctant to get behind Clinton, seeing her as a member of the Washington political elite who pays lip service to their goals of reining in Wall Street and eradicating income inequality.
Speakers pleaded for unity among the competing supporters.
Diane Russell, a Sanders delegate from Maine, said the party had to come together to beat Trump.
« Whether you support Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, we’re all in this together, » she said.
U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the only senator to endorse Sanders, said supporters of the two former rivals had plenty in common.
« Whether you spent this year feeling the Bern or you spent this year ready for Hillary, all of us are ready for an America that rejects discrimination and embraces diversity, that celebrates voter empowerment not voter suppression, that creates opportunity for all of us, not just the lucky few, » he said.
While Sanders has endorsed Clinton, the former first lady faces a difficult task winning over his backers in the fight against Trump. The New York businessman pulled ahead in at least one opinion poll on Monday, after lagging Clinton in most national surveys for months.
A CNN/ORC opinion poll gave Trump a 48 percent to 45 percent lead over Clinton in a two-way presidential contest.
Trump was formally nominated for president at a chaotic Republican convention in Cleveland last week.
Sanders was among those due to speak on the first evening of the Democratic convention. Other scheduled speakers included President Barack Obama’s wife, first lady Michelle Obama.
‘DEMOCRACY IS MESSY’ Ed Mullen, 49, a delegate from Illinois, said he supported Sanders but would vote for Clinton in November. He said the protesters at the convention had a right to stay.
« Democracy is messy, people have disputes with how the DNC has managed this campaign, » Mullen said.
Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman, was the focus of anger from liberal Democrats over some 19,000 DNC emails that were leaked by the WikiLeaks website that showed the party establishment working to undermine Sanders.
The cache of leaked emails disclosed that DNC officials explored ways to undercut Sanders’ insurgent presidential campaign, including raising questions about whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was an atheist.
Sanders supporters were already dismayed last week when Clinton passed over liberal favorites like U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to select the more moderate Kaine as her running mate.
The Clinton camp questioned whether Russians may have had a hand in the hack attack on the party’s emails in an effort to help Trump, who has exchanged words of praise with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Republicans dismissed the suggestion as absurd.The FBI said on Monday it would investigate the nature and scope of the hack.
Behind Democrats’ email leak, U.S. experts see a Russian subplot If the Russian government is behind the theft and release of embarrassing emails from the Democratic Party, as U.S. officials have suggested, it may reflect less a love of Donald Trump or enmity for Hillary Clinton than a desire to discredit the U.S. political system.
A U.S. official who is taking part in the investigation said that intelligence collected on the hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails released by Wikileaks on Friday « indicates beyond a reasonable doubt that it originated in Russia. » The timing on the eve of Clinton’s formal nomination this week for the Nov. 8 presidential election has raised questions about whether Russia may have been trying to hurt her, to help Trump, her Republican rival, or to fan populist sentiment against establishment politicians as it has sought to do across Europe in recent years.
« Certainly Russia has become a master at manipulating information for their strategic goals: Witness the information bubble they have created for their threatening behavior in the Crimea, the Ukraine and elsewhere, » said former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden. « A step like this, however, would be really upping their game. » The emails showed that DNC officials explored ways to undermine U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign against Clinton and raised questions about whether Sanders, who is Jewish, was really an atheist.
The disclosures confirmed Sanders’ frequent charge that the party played favorites against him and clouded a party convention Clinton hoped would signal unity, not division.
PUTIN’S COUNTERPUNCH? Two U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hack could be part of a broader campaign by Russian President Vladimir Putin to push back against what he thinks is an effort by the European Union and NATO, a military alliance of European and North American democracies, to encircle and weaken Russia.
One of the officials called the fear « a hangover » from Putin’s service in the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency.
« Time and again, we’re seeing Russia push back at what Putin considers Russia’s mortal enemies, » said the other official.
« He’s been actively attacking the U.S.-backed rebels in Syria, buzzing ships and planes in the Black Sea and the Baltic, not to mention invading Ukraine and seizing Crimea. This fits the pattern. » Despite Clinton’s short-lived attempt as secretary of state to « reset » U.S.-Russian relations after U.S. President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the leaked emails could damage a candidate the Kremlin may consider hostile and benefit her opponent, who has been friendlier.
Putin accused Clinton of stirring up protests against his rule after a December 2011 Russian parliamentary election that was marred by allegations of fraud, saying she had encouraged « mercenary » Kremlin foes by criticizing the vote.
« She set the tone for some opposition activists, gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started active work, » Putin told supporters.
Asked about claims that Russian intelligence had hacked the DNC to obtain the emails, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told NBC News’ Richard Engel « there is no proof of that whatsoever » and said « this is a diversion » pushed by the Clinton campaign.
TRUMP’S WARMER TONE Analysts said Russia’s goal may be much broader than simply meddling in the U.S. presidential election.
« It’s a gross oversimplification to suggest that the Russian government is all-in for Donald Trump, » said Andrew Weiss, a Russia analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank.
« It’s in Russia’s interest … to portray the United States as riven with popular discontent, xenophobia and high-level political corruption, » Weiss said. « It fits nicely with the Kremlin’s standard narrative … that the White House rushes to criticize others without getting its own house in order. » The Russian leader may well have been encouraged by Trump’s comments to The New York Times last week that with him in the White House, NATO might not automatically defend the Baltic states that were once a part of the Russian-led Soviet Union.
Despite public Trump-Putin exchanges of praise, Eugene Rumer, a former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, warned against reaching any quick conclusions about Putin’s view of Trump.
« We can say with some degree of confidence that they don’t like Hillary, » Rumer said. « It’s less clear that they like Trump, although over the years the Russians have said they prefer to deal with the Republicans – (that) they are kind of hard-line but they can do deals. » A diplomat with experience working on Russia said the Kremlin also might be betting that Clinton will win and is sending a shot across her bow.
« Messing with her like this now puts her on notice that these are tough guys that she’s got to be really careful with, » said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A U.S. intelligence official who is reviewing the emails as part of the investigation into their origin said that those emails describing the privileges the Democratic National Committee showers on its wealthiest donors bolster the Russian narrative of an American political system rigged by the wealthy and riddled with corruption.
« In addition to countering the U.S. narrative that the Russian government is a corrupt oligarchy, leaking these emails fits rather conveniently with Trump’s charges about a rigged system and ‘crooked Hillary’, » said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss domestic politics.
FACTBOX-Trump-Putin mutual admiration not completely mutual U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has often praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him a « strong leader. » While Trump frequently has said that Putin called him a « genius, » the Russian president has only said that Trump is « flamboyant » and « very talented. » Oct. 15, 2007: In an interview with Larry King on CNN, Trump praised Putin. « Look at Putin. What he’s doing with Russia. I mean, you know, what’s going on over there. I mean this guy has done, whether you like him or don’t like him, he’s doing a great job, » Trump said.
Sept. 12, 2013: In an interview with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News, Trump praised an opinion piece by Putin published by The New York Times criticizing Democratic U.S. President Barack Obama.
Sept. 29, 2015: Trump praised Putin in an interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, saying, « He’s getting an A and our president is not doing so well. » Oct. 11, 2015: Trump said on CBS’s « Face The Nation » that he and Putin would « get along very well. … We were on ’60 Minutes’ together, and we had fantastic ratings. » Dec. 17, 2015: Putin, in a news conference in Moscow, described Trump as « a very flamboyant man, very talented. » He said Trump wants a « deeper level of relations » with Russia.
Dec. 17, 2015: Trump responded to Putin’s remarks, saying the United States and Russia could work together to defeat terrorism. « It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond, » Trump said of Putin’s comments.
Dec. 18, 2015: Trump, asked on MSNBC’s « Morning Joe » about Putin’s killing of journalists and political opponents, said, « Our country does plenty of killing also, Joe, so you know.
There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, a lot of killing, a lot of stupidity. » On whether he would condemn Putin’s tactics, Trump said, « Sure, absolutely. » Dec. 19, 2015: Trump told a crowd in Iowa his Republican rivals are « jealous as hell » Putin talked about him, not them.
« They’re jealous as hell because he’s not mentioning these people, » Trump said.
Dec. 20, 2015: Trump said in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd on « Meet the Press » that Putin is a « strong leader » but denied he was praising the Russian leader. « He praised me. He called me brilliant. He said very nice things about me. » Dec. 20, 2015: Trump, in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, said there is no proof of the criticism of Putin. « In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that. I don’t know that he has. Have you been able to prove that? Do you know the names of the reporters that he’s killed? » Feb. 1, 2016: At a rally in Iowa, Trump said, « Now, Putin called me a genius by the way. He said ‘Donald Trump is a genius, and he’s the absolute leader over there.' » Feb. 2, 2016: At a rally in Pendleton, South Carolina, Trump said, « You saw where Putin said these great things about Donald Trump. … He said Trump is a genius. » Feb. 17, 2016: At a town hall campaign event in Bluffton, South Carolina, Trump was asked to describe his relationship with Putin and said, « I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius. » March 10, 2016: Trump, in a Republican primary debate in Miami, said he was not « endorsing » Putin when asked about his praise of dictators. But he added, « Putin has been a very strong leader for Russia. I think he has been a lot stronger than our leader. » April 4, 2016: At a rally in Superior, Wisconsin, Trump said, « I like him because he called me a genius. » April 17, 2016: In New York City, Trump said, « You know, Vladimir Putin said Donald Trump is a genius. » May 4, 2016: Trump on CNN’s « Situation Room » said of Putin, « He said Trump is a genius, OK? » June 17, 2016: At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin said he described Trump as « flamboyant. » With a smile, Putin added, « He is, isn’t he? … I did not give any other assessment of him. »
Trump back to freewheeling style on swing with Pence Donald Trump eagerly injected himself into the Democratic Party’s email controversy on Monday, saying the revelations that the party apparatus backed Democrat Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders proved his charges that the system is rigged.
Trump, kicking off a three-day campaign swing with his vice presidential running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, returned to his freewheeling style after giving a scripted speech on Thursday accepting the Republican presidential nomination.
During an hour-long event in Roanoke, Virginia, Trump labeled Clinton « low-energy, » the same characterization he lobbed at Republican rival Jeb Bush; attacked her running mate, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia; and complained about the air conditioning in the hotel ballroom where he spoke.
« I think the ballroom and the people who own this hotel ought to be ashamed of themselves, » Trump said.
Trump took particular delight in making light of Democratic disunity as party loyalists gather in Philadelphia this week to anoint Clinton as their nominee, after a week in which Republicans struggled to unify behind Trump at their convention in Cleveland.
Trump waved away Republican disunity as essentially isolated pockets of resistance and made an apparent reference to U.S.
Senator Ted Cruz, who was booed off stage in Cleveland when he did not endorse Trump after losing to him in a bitter primary race.
« We had a couple people who probably destroyed their career, but who knows, » Trump said. « Look what’s going on in Philadelphia. … We had no riots, no nothing. It was unbelievable. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. » On Twitter, Trump added, « Wow, the Republican Convention went so smoothly compared to the Dems total mess. » Trump’s strongest words in Roanoke were for Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was forced to resign on Sunday in the fallout over leaked emails showing the committee backed Clinton over democratic socialist Sanders.
The New York businessman said it was proof the « system » is rigged against outsider candidates.
« Debbie was totally loyal to Hillary, and Hillary threw her under the bus, » Trump said, adding, « I don’t want her covering MY back. » He then launched into a riff about « Hillary Rotten Clinton, » a play on her full name, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
COLUMN-Can Roger Ailes help Trump win as he did with Nixon in 1968? (Michael W. Flamm is professor of history at Ohio Wesleyan University and author of « Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s. » His new book, « In the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime, » is due out soon. The opinions expressed here are his own.)
Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump is the self-proclaimed master of the « art of the deal. » But if he wants to increase his likelihood of winning in November, he needs to persuade Roger Ailes, the ousted chairman of Fox News, to run his campaign.
Whether the 76-year-old conservative kingmaker would accept Trump’s offer is an open question. But if he did, Ailes could return to his roots as a Republican strategist and operative, thumb his nose at former Fox employees who hastened his exit (including anchor Megyn Kelly) and perhaps achieve a last hurrah in a storied career.
For Trump, the candidate of law and order, the benefits are also obvious. No one knows better than Ailes how to energize and mobilize conservative voters. He was the mastermind behind Richard M. Nixon’s innovative 1968 television campaign, which was also based on law and order. So Ailes could help Trump fully exploit the issue and perhaps ride it into the White House.
Ailes was a television producer when he first met Nixon, who appeared as a guest on the « The Mike Douglas Show. » The two jousted over the importance of television in politics. But the one-time advertising executive later joined the former vice-president’s campaign and created a devastating series of political commercials.
The vivid and lurid ads brilliantly evoked the fear and anxiety then felt by middle-class, middle-aged white voters in Middle America, a constituency Trump views as his own path to power. They were, as Nixon memorably described them, the « silent majority, » a phrase Trump recently appropriated.
For these voters, Ailes carefully created and showcased the image of a « New Nixon » who was calm, cool and collected. Yet, he was also tough enough to confront the crisis of authority and security in America in 1968, where violent crime had jumped by 50 percent since 1964.
« Order » was the title of one of Ailes’ most effective campaign commercials. The path-breaking ad featured a photomontage of police and protesters, dissonant music, jump cuts and a voice-over from Nixon himself, who repeated a popular line from his GOP convention speech: « Let us recognize that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence. » The ad resonated across the nation because television had brought images of anti-war demonstrations and urban riots into America’s living rooms. For many in the silent majority, the country seemed on the brink of widespread chaos and anarchy.
Fear of crime was rampant, and protests on college campuses were commonplace. Riots erupted in more than 100 cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The murder of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy further damaged popular faith in peaceful progress. Violence tore through the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, inside and outside the convention hall.
Then, as now, American society was changing. During that era, the sexual revolution and the drug culture were spreading.
The women’s movement was growing. And the hippie phenomenon was emerging. For moral traditionalists, it was the perfect storm.
In that troubled climate, law and order was the perfect slogan for conservatives. Amorphous and abstract, it served as a Rorschach test for anxious voters who could project onto it whatever concern was foremost in their minds at the moment.
In 1968, law and order was the decisive factor in Nixon’s narrow victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey. The issue was far more immediate and visceral to most Americans than the distant Vietnam War. As Humphrey’s pollster privately confided, » is soft in the area of law and order, and this softness is hurting him more than anything else. » Of course, 2016 is not 1968 – at least not yet. There is little data to support a widespread and acute fear of crime, despite a series of mass shootings. Urban unrest is far from the upheavals of the 1960s. The United States is not waging a war on the scale of its effort in Vietnam.
But conditions are ripe and the « fear factor » looms large in American politics. The shootings of police officers in Dallas, Texas, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have put law enforcement on high alert. In red states, the culture wars over transgender bathrooms and gay marriage continue to rage. And after mass killings at a San Bernardino, California, office party and an Orlando, Florida, nightclub, the wild card is the real possibility that international terrorism might lead to even more domestic violence in coming months.
If that is the hand dealt to Trump, who better to help him play it than Ailes?
Solar Impulse 2 pilot Borschberg dares the impossible Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg lives by the rallying cry of « making the impossible possible », and now he and his compatriot Bertrand Piccard have done just that.
The pair completed the first round-the-world flight with a fully sun-powered plane, Solar Impulse 2, when Piccard landed in Abu Dhabi on July 26 and wrapped up a journey that started 16 months ago.
During their odyssey, the two pilots alternated at the controls of the single-seat plane, with Borschberg in the cockpit for the longest leg of the journey.
With his 8,924-kilometre (5,545-mile) flight from Japan to Hawaii last year, which lasted 118 hours, or nearly five full days, he entered aviation history with the world’s longest uninterrupted flight.
The 63-year-old smashed the previous record for the longest non-stop solo flight of 76 hours and 45 minutes set by US adventurer Steve Fossett in 2006.
It was far longer from Borschberg’s first sky-shattering flight. He previously carried out the first-ever day and night flight in a solar aircraft, flying Solar Impulse 2’s predecessor, Solar Impulse 1, for 26 hours straight in 2010.
Borschberg, also an entrepreneur with a passion for exploration, has described his Pacific crossing as « an interior journey » and an « extraordinary occasion to discover myself ».
Alone in the cockpit, Borschberg could only sit or lie down and could sleep for no more than 20 minutes at a time, wearing a vibrating armband to wake him up in case of any anomaly.
He attributes his mental strength, which has been vital when flying solo for days on end, to yoga and meditation, which he usually practises in the garden of his home in Nyon, on the shores of Lake Geneva.
But he also practised in the cockpit of Solar Impulse 2, transforming his tiny bench into a yoga mat and using specialised postures custom-tailored for him by his personal yogi, Sanjeev Bhanot.
– ‘Serendipity’ –
Born in Zurich, Borschberg says he began dreaming of flying and of pushing boundaries as a young child.
He trained as a Swiss army pilot, learning to fly a range of jets and other aircraft, and in his spare time racked up other professional fixed wing and helicopter licences and practised aerobatics.
He also earned a degree in mechanics and thermodynamics from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, followed by master’s degrees in management studies at MIT in the United States.
After working as a fighter pilot, Borschberg entered the civilian sphere in 1983, taking a job as a consultant for McKinsey out of Zurich, New York and Tokyo.
He later decided to go it alone, launching two internet start-ups and co-founding a company in the field of microprocessor memories.
Borschberg, a married father of three, says on his website that it was « serendipity » that brought him and Piccard together in 2003.
« When the request came… to help lead the seemingly impossible mission — to create the plane and help fly it — there was no saying no, » he said.
The solar plane project offered a chance « to take part in a once-in-a-lifetime adventure and contribute to a new milestone in aviation ».
The pair co-founded the Solar Impulse company, which Borschberg runs as the chief executive.
Despite his imposing stature and athletic build, he often appears overshadowed by his more famous associate, but Piccard has insisted they are both equally important to the project.
« We are friends. Andre takes more responsibility for the interior of the project, and I take the exterior, » he told Hebdo magazine in 2014, insisting that « one without the other just does not work ».
« My fame is not there to suffocate Andre, but to carry the project, » Piccard said. « Without my fame, there would be no project or funding partners, » he said, stressing that « without Andre… there would be no technical team and no project either »
China’s condom policies to prevent HIV fail to protect sex workers research Chinese police cracking down on sex workers routinely look for condoms as evidence of illegal activity, hindering efforts to prevent the spread of HIV among sex workers, one of the biggest at-risk groups in the country, experts said.
China, with a population of about 1.4 billion, has a relatively low HIV prevalence rate, with around half a million reported cases of people living with HIV or AIDS by the end of 2014, according to a government report published last year.
However, the HIV epidemic is concentrated among high risk groups, including men who have sex with men and sex workers, and the main mode of transmission is sex.
Up to 92 percent of the 104,000 cases diagnosed in 2014 resulted from sexual contact, according to research commissioned by Asia Catalyst, which promotes the right to health of marginalised groups in the region.
China provides free condoms for people living with HIV and allocates funds each year to buy condoms for distribution among at-risk populations, including sex workers, it said.
At the same time, police are authorised to crack down on sex work, which is illegal in China, and use condom seizure as its main tactic, Catalyst Asia said in a report.
« When police arrest sex workers, they will search for condoms, and that will decrease sex workers’ willingness to carry and use condoms, » said Tingting Shen, director of advocacy, policy, and research for Asia Catalyst.
« Among those who have been interrogated by police in the past year, condom usage rates are clearly lower, » Shen said in a Skype interview from Beijing.
China’s public security ministry could not be reached for comment and did not respond to faxed questions about the survey.
POLICE VIOLENCE The pro bono legal programme of the Thomson Reuters Foundation provided legal research and advice for the study, which was based on interviews with male, female and transgender sex workers, health professionals, police and managers of sex work venues.
Among sex workers who had not been questioned by police in the past year, 68 percent said they always used condoms, while 48 percent who had been interrogated said they consistently used condoms.
The research found that 76 percent of sex workers who had not been interrogated in the past year always carried condoms, compared with 48 percent of those who had been questioned.
The study said police use two methods to handle sex work cases – trying to catch sex workers in the act and inspecting sex work venues, with condoms as the main focus in operations.
Evidence of condoms was the deciding factor in whether police would take the sex worker to the police station for further action, it said, adding that 51 percent of the respondents interrogated suffered police violence.
UNAIDS said the confiscation of condoms and use of condoms as legal evidence in cases against sex workers is a widespread problem.
« Unfortunately it’s a common problem in just about every country in the world, » said Steve Kraus, UNAIDS director for the Asia Pacific.
« When you confiscate condoms, studies again and again show that condoms are less likely to be used. Commercial sex is going to take place in more risky venues, where the women selling sex are more vulnerable to violence, extortion, robbery, assault, gang rape. » Asia Catalyst urged China’s public security ministry to eliminate search and confiscation of condoms, and their use as evidence of prostitution.
It also called for China to move towards decriminalisation of sex work, and for police cooperation with the sex work community to be a central part of HIV prevention.
Contamination of water pushes up costs, makes safe water scarcer – study Contamination as people and agriculture crowd around water sources has hiked the cost of water treatment by 50 percent in some major cities, a study said on Monday, making it harder to provide safe drinking water for a growing urban population.
An expansion of agriculture in areas where cities get their water and growing numbers of people living around watersheds are largely responsible for the rising cost of water treatment, said the study by scientists at Yale University and other U.S.-based institutions.
Nearly 90 percent of the world’s urban watersheds face some level of degradation from agricultural chemicals and increased sediment, making water treatment more expensive, the study said.
The world’s urban population is expected to swell by 2.5 billion people by 2050, according to U.N. data. Providing affordable drinking water to this growing population will be a challenge for governments, especially in fast-growing cities across the developing world.
« We need to manage our water resources more carefully, » Rob McDonald, one of the study’s authors told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
« When someone upstream decides to expand agriculture or build more houses it will have a cost (on water treatment) which is not accounted for in the market place, » said McDonald, lead scientist at The Nature Conservatory, an environmental group.
One in four of the 309 cities studied has made investments to protect their watersheds such as helping farmers to reduce erosion or properly treating human waste, said McDonald.
Cities such as Tokyo, Japan’s capital, and Boston in the northeastern United States have instituted robust land-use rules for protecting their watersheds, he said.
Others such as St Louis in the central United States and Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires, which draw their water from rivers affected by agriculture, face higher water treatment costs, he said.
« City leaders can use our findings to advocate for protecting their drinking water from contamination, rather than spending billions of dollars to clean it up, » McDonald said. The study is the first to analyse the economic cost of human activities on water treatment prices in cities, he said.
Weather disasters raise conflict risk in multi-ethnic nations – study Multi-ethnic nations are vulnerable to armed conflicts after weather disasters such as heatwaves and droughts in a trend that could worsen with global warming, scientists said on Monday.
The outbreak of 23 percent of armed conflicts in ethnically diverse countries, a group that includes Afghanistan and Somalia, since 1980 coincided in the same month with such weather disasters, the study said.
By contrast, only 9 percent of all conflicts worldwide in the same period overlapped with such a calamity, it said. That suggests that nations with pre-existing faultlines of many ethnic groups are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events that may get more severe with global warming, it said.
« Our results imply that (environmental) disasters might act as a threat multiplier in several of the world’s most conflict-prone regions, » they wrote in the U.S. Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Conversely, cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming, or measure to adapt such as drought-resistant crops, could reduce risks in nations with many ethnic divisions such as in north and central Africa or central Asia, the study said.
« Our study adds evidence of a very special co-benefit of climate stabilisation: peace, » Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, one of the authors and head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, wrote in a statement.
Juergen Scheffran of the University of Hamburg, one of the reviewers of the PNAS study, welcomed it as « one step in understanding the complex relationships » between climate change and conflict.
However, many researchers are wary of linking climate change and conflict, saying it is hard to isolate warming from factors such as poverty, sectarian divides or social injustice.
Jonathan Donges, one of authors at the Potsdam Institute, told Reuters that the study found that disasters did not directly trigger armed conflict in multi-ethnic societies, but clearly raised risks. The study drew on a data of environmental disasters by insurer Munich Re.
Jan Selby, a professor of international relations at the University of Sussex, told Reuters in an e-mail: « I don’t find the paper at all persuasive. » He said it did not examine the proportion of weather disasters that were not followed by conflict.
In 2013, a panel of U.N. scientists said climate change could « indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts by amplifying well-documented drivers of these conflicts such as poverty and economic shocks ». Some U.S. Republicans, doubting that climate change is stoked by man-made greenhouse gases, denounced that conclusion as an effort to harness fears over public safety to drive an unrelated climate agenda.
100-year global study finds world’s tallest are Dutch, Latvians Dutch men and Latvian women are the planet’s tallest people but Iranian men and South Korean women have grown the fastest in the last century, according to the largest ever study of height around the world.
Americans, once among the world’s tallest people, have dropped from having men and women at 3rd and 4th in the global height rankings a 100 years earlier, to placing 37th and 42nd respectively in 2014.
The research, led by scientists at Imperial College London and published in the journal eLife, also found some nations have stopped growing over the past 30 to 40 years, despite having spurts at the start of the century studied.
The United States was one of the first wealthy countries to plateau, followed by others including Britain, Finland, and Japan. Meanwhile, people in Spain and Italy and many countries in Latin America and East Asia are still gaining height.
In contrast, some nations in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East have seen average heights decline over the past three to four decades.
Human height is strongly influenced by nutrition and environmental factors, although genetic factors can also play a role in individuals. Children and teens who are better nourished and live in better environments tend to be taller.
Research suggests a mother’s health and nutrition during pregnancy may also play a role in how tall her children grow.
Height also has lifelong consequences. Some studies have found that taller people tend to live longer, get a better education and earn more. But being tall may also increase some health risks, with studies linking height to a higher risk of developing ovarian and prostate cancers.
« This study gives us a picture of the health of nations over the past century, » said Majid Ezzati, an Imperial professor of public health. He said the findings underlined the need « to address children and adolescents’ environment and nutrition on a global scale. » The 800-strong research team, which worked with the World Health Organization, used data from various sources including military conscription figures, health and nutrition population surveys and epidemiological studies.
The scientists use these to generate height information for 18-year-olds in 1914 through to 18-year-olds in 2014.
They found that Iranian men have gained an average of 16.5 centimetres (cm) in height, and South Korean women 20.2 cm.
The height of men and women in Britain has increased by around 11 cm over the past century, while the height of U.S. men and women has risen by 6 cm and 5 cm. Chinese men and women have gained around 11 cm and 10 cm.
The study also found that: *Dutch men are the tallest, with an average height of 182.5 cm. Latvian women are the tallest, with an average height of 170 cm.
Men from East Timor were the smallest in the world in 2014, with an average height of 160 cm. Women from Guatemala were the smallest in 2014, with an average height of 149 cm.
The difference between the tallest and shortest countries in 2014 was about 23 cm for men – an increase of 4 cm on the height gap in 1914. The height difference between the tallest and shortest countries for women has remained the same across the century, at about 20 cm.
The height difference between men and women has on average remained largely unchanged over 100 years – the average height gap was about 11 cm in 1914 and 12 cm in 2014.
Australian men in 2014 were the only non-European nationality in the top 25 tallest in the world.
The nations with the tallest men in 2014 (1914 ranking in brackets): 1. Netherlands (12) 2. Belgium (33) 3. Estonia (4) 4. Latvia (13) 5. Denmark (9) 6. Bosnia and Herzegovina (19) 7. Croatia (22) 8. Serbia (30) 9. Iceland (6) 10. Czech Republic (24) The nations with the tallest women in 2014 (1914 ranking in brackets): 1. Latvia (28) 2. Netherlands (38) 3. Estonia (16) 4. Czech Republic (69) 5. Serbia (93) 6. Slovakia (26) 7. Denmark (11) 8. Lithuania (41) 9. Belarus (42) 10. Ukraine (43)
SPECIAL REPORT-Students, teachers detail cheating in program owned by test giant ACT For many Chinese high school students hoping to get into a U.S.university, the pitch is hard to resist.
Take English-language courses in China in a program recognized by admissions offices at more than 60 colleges in the United States – including state universities in New York, Michigan, Iowa and Missouri. Prepare for the ACT, America’s most popular college entrance exam. And take it in mainland China, instead of traveling elsewhere as other Chinese students must.
The program, known as the Global Assessment Certificate, also offers some students an advantage that isn’t advertised: At three different GAC centers, school officials and proctors ignored and were sometimes complicit in student cheating on the ACT, according to seven students interviewed by Reuters.
The GAC program, which can cost students $10,000 a year or more, has emerged as one of many avenues in Asia used to exploit weaknesses in the U.S. college admissions process.
But the most remarkable aspect of this program is that the ACT itself owns and oversees it.
The GAC program is operated by a foreign subsidiary of ACT Inc, the Iowa-based not-for-profit that administers the crucial college entrance exam. The subsidiary, ACT Education Solutions Ltd, is headquartered in Hong Kong.
The curriculum at GAC centers is designed to teach non-native English speakers reading, writing and other skills for college. The program has about 5,000 students in 11 countries at 197 centers. Three-quarters of the centers are in mainland China. The vast majority of GAC students take the ACT, which American colleges use to assess applicants.
Some GAC centers advertise their students’ high ACT scores and success getting into U.S. colleges. The website for one center – Zhengzhou Cornerstone High School in Zhengzhou, China – features pictures of accomplished graduates alongside their near-perfect test scores and the U.S. schools that accepted them.
The website for the GAC program promises universities « highly skilled international students, » and some schools award college credit for classes taken at GAC centers.
But interviews with some students who attended GAC centers call the program’s integrity into question. One now attending the University of California, Los Angeles, said a GAC administrator in China let him practice answering almost half the questions that would appear on the actual ACT about a week before the exam was given. Another student, now at a major university in the Midwest, said his Chinese center provided students with two articles that appeared on an ACT he later took there.
TEACHERS SPEAK OUT What’s more, eight teachers or administrators who have worked at seven different Chinese GAC centers described cheating in program courses. Some said it was widespread. They said students turned in assignments that were plagiarized. At two different centers, former teachers said, officials encouraged them to give students exam questions and sometimes even answers in advance to ensure that they passed.
Jason Thieman resigned in January after nearly five months as a teacher at the GAC center at Jimei University in the southern Chinese city of Xiamen. He said he left after students complained that he was cracking down on cheating and plagiarism.
« If every university admissions office that accepted GAC students knew about what was going on with the GAC, and especially with the ACT, I think they wouldn’t want to accept the students anymore, » Thieman said. « It’s outrageous. » A spokesman for the GAC center said the program would never condone cheating and that students simply didn’t like Thieman’s teaching style.
Thieman is now in the United States, pursuing a doctorate in physics. « The situation’s not fair to anybody, » he said of the GAC program. « It’s not fair to the universities that admit » the students, and « it’s not fair to American students who actually have the proper standards in place when they take » the ACT.
Christopher Bogen, director of studies at a GAC center in Zhuhai from 2011 to 2014, said some of his students repeatedly engaged in « intentional, flagrant cheating. » Some submitted essays that were supposed to be written in English; instead, the essays had been translated using the Google Translate web tool, he said. The GAC curriculum made cheating easier because the same tests were given « over and over again, » Bogen said. Some of those tests and other GAC assignments were available for sale online in China, Reuters found.
No one from the GAC center where Bogen taught could be reached for comment.
ACT spokesman Ed Colby said its Hong Kong subsidiary is responsible for handling cases of alleged cheating in GAC courses. He declined to make managers there available to speak for this article.
Colby said the subsidiary thoroughly vets GAC operators and monitors their work. ACT’s head of test security, Rachel Schoenig, said the organization had cancelled suspicious ACT scores of GAC students.
« From a test security perspective we have taken many, many steps to address the ACT testing activities of the GAC centers, » Schoenig said.
To guard against test leaks more broadly, she said, the organization has begun shipping the ACT in lock boxes to some overseas test centers. This month, ACT Inc announced that, to combat cheating, it planned to introduce a computerized version of the ACT for overseas test-takers in the fall of 2017.
Like other standardized testing companies, ACT Inc is battling an « emerging trend of organized fraud rings who, for a lot of money, a lot of their own personal gain, are seeking to undermine the system for honest test-takers, » Schoenig said.
The problems with the GAC program are not the work of outsiders, however. They are occurring within a system controlled and policed by the ACT organization itself.
Reuters identified six GAC centers that violate the ACT’s own conflict-of-interest policy. The six centers administered the ACT while also offering commercial test-prep classes aimed at helping students score well on the college entrance exam. ACT policy prohibits test-prep businesses from administering the exam because doing so would give them an unparalleled ability to help their clients by leaking them the test.
At those locations – five in mainland China and one in South Korea – GAC operators had access to exam booklets days or weeks before the ACT was given.
COLLEGES EXPRESS SHOCK Several U.S. colleges said they were alarmed by what Reuters discovered. They are among the 60-plus « pathway » schools that consider completion of the GAC program in their admissions decisions and sometimes award college credit for courses taken at GAC centers.
The reports of cheating are « very disconcerting, » said Timothy Tesar, assistant director of international admissions at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. The university has enrolled 132 GAC students since 2009.
The cheating allegations are « shocking to me, » said Jonnathan De La Fuente, international admissions counselor at University of Michigan-Flint. De La Fuente estimated that the university has enrolled 15 to 20 GAC students to date, almost all from South Korea. Michigan-Flint gives college credit for GAC coursework.
« If those reports are true, we have to, as a university, look into it, » he said. « I’m wondering if those grades are even legitimate. » ACT chief executive Marten Roorda was unavailable to answer questions for this article, spokesman Colby said.
Evidence of academic fraud among foreign students is mounting as American colleges enroll record numbers of applicants from abroad. Foreign students typically pay full tuition, a boon for U.S. schools. These applicants also are emerging as sources of profit for the testing companies whose exams help determine who gets into American universities.
A series of Reuters reports this year has revealed how foreign students are increasingly exploiting vulnerabilities in U.S. college entrance exams and other parts of the admissions process.
In March, Reuters reported that test-prep operations in East Asia were taking advantage of security flaws in the SAT, which – like its rival ACT – reuses exams. Those cram school operations harvest items from past exams, enabling students to practice on questions they may see on test day.
Reuters also found companies in China that fabricate entire college applications for students seeking to study in America.
Some companies even offer to do coursework for students attending U.S. colleges.
BIG IN CHINA In 2005, ACT Inc acquired a company that had developed the GAC curriculum and had an agreement to offer the ACT as part of the program. After the takeover, ACT Inc formed ACT Education Solutions to run it.
The GAC program operates like a franchise: Local operators pay the ACT subsidiary for the right to offer the curriculum at local schools or educational centers. The GAC centers are not run by ACT staff but rather by employees hired by the local operators. The program has been particularly popular in China, where 149 of the 197 centers are located.
It’s also lucrative for ACT Inc. GAC centers each pay the ACT subsidiary a licensing fee totaling thousands of dollars plus additional fees for each student enrolled. According to ACT Inc’s most recent U.S. federal tax return, the foreign entities that run the program generated $4.8 million in net revenue in the year ended August 31, 2015.
GAC operators undergo rigorous vetting, said ACT spokesman Colby. In China, people interested in operating a GAC center must complete a four-page application and demonstrate they can run the center effectively. ACT Education Solutions then inspects the site. If there are no concerns, the ACT organization enters into licensing agreements with the center.
ACT Education Solutions audits the GAC centers, but Colby declined to say how often.
As for the ACT test, the organization won’t disclose figures, but people familiar with the matter estimate the exam drew about 60,000 foreign test-takers last year. That’s up sharply from a few thousand per year about a decade ago, according to a former ACT employee. The SAT retains a big edge overseas, with about three times as many test takers.
Much of the ACT’s growth abroad has come in the past two years, though not by design. Convinced that the SAT had an insurmountable lead, ACT executives decided to invest little in marketing their exam overseas, former employees said.
They attribute the recent gains mostly to security problems with the rival SAT, owned by the College Board, a New York-based not-for-profit. Since May 2013, concerns about cheating have led the College Board to delay or cancel scores or to scrap tests for students taking the SAT in Asia. More test-takers turned to the ACT.
Cheating in Asia caused concerns inside ACT’s own test security unit, too. ACT has an internal staff of 14 people handling security for thousands of test centers in 177 countries. In 2015, the security unit repeatedly recommended shoring up security for the ACT overseas by increasing personnel and improving the vetting of international test centers, said a person familiar with the matter. Executives at ACT headquarters rejected the recommendations, this person said.
ACT spokesman Colby declined to comment.
ACT faced a major security breach of its own on the morning of June 10. Just hours before about 5,500 students in South Korea and Hong Kong were to take the ACT, officials in Iowa learned the test had leaked. They canceled the exam at the last minute. Officials won’t say how security was breached, or if they know.
The June incident wasn’t the first time the ACT has leaked in Asia, say people in the test-prep industry.
Businesses in China and South Korea regularly advertise ACT exam questions and answers just before test day. One Chinese company, Huafu Education, offered to provide test items to a Reuters reporter three days prior to an exam for $762.
« What we’re offering is exactly what you’ll see on test day, » a Huafu representative said in an online chat.
A SNEAK PEEK Former GAC students say some of the centers themselves have enabled cheating on the exam.
The GAC graduate now attending UCLA said that a week or two before he was to take the ACT in December 2014, an administrator from his GAC center in China invited him to her office. There, he said, the administrator gave him a photocopy of an ACT booklet.
« She said these questions may be on the exam, » the student said. He estimated that about 40 percent of the questions on the ACT he later took were on the photocopied test.
« It helped, » he said. « It saved me time. » He scored 33 out of 36, he said, putting him among the top 1 percent of all test-takers.
The GAC graduate now attending the Midwestern university studied at the GAC center at Zhengzhou Cornerstone High School in Henan Province. In May 2014, he said, Zhengzhou Cornerstone provided students with a practice exam booklet. It contained scans and photographs of sections of the ACT, the student said.
He said two articles in the booklet appeared on an exam he took at the center that fall. Another time he took the ACT at the center, he said, he witnessed three or four students discussing answers during a break.
In a statement to Reuters, an administrator at Zhengzhou Cornerstone called the accusations « ridiculous. » Wenyue Li graduated from Zhengzhou Cornerstone in 2015 and just completed her freshman year at McGill University in Montreal. The night before she took the ACT at the GAC center in December 2014, she said, several classmates asked if she would be willing to help them answer math questions during a test break. In exchange, she said, they offered to share some answers to the reading section. She said she refused, but another student agreed.
She also said cheating in GAC classes at her school was « even more common » than cheating on the ACT.
The administrator at Zhengzhou Cornerstone disputed Li’s account. « We firmly resist any shortcuts or cheating, » the administrator said in the statement to Reuters. « We take every opportunity and use every means to emphasize to parents and students the importance of test security. » A Chinese student now attending a university in Washington state provided a similar account about a different GAC center.
She said she witnessed cheating on the ACT when she took it in September 2014 at a GAC center at Yantai Number One High School in Yantai, Shandong Province.
« I heard people asking, ‘What does this word mean, and what kind of preposition should I use?' » she said. The students spoke in English, which she said the teacher overseeing the exam didn’t understand.
« The teacher just pretended that she didn’t see that we are doing these bad things, » she said.
The Yantai GAC center didn’t reply to requests for comment.
« OFFICIAL TEST CENTER » The GAC program is also popular in South Korea, where six centers operate.
One is run at a Seoul test-prep center – known in Korean as a hagwon – called STEPEDU. Like many cram schools, STEPEDU offers classes to prepare for the ACT. Until last month, it also offered a bonus: the opportunity to take the ACT on site.
« We are running the world’s only ACT official test center in the private sector, » STEPEDU’s president, Sam Han, said at a May 28 conference for students interested in applying to U.S.
colleges. « Many people are wondering how it is possible. » According to Bryan Maach, an ACT vice president who oversees international markets, a hagwon shouldn’t have been permitted to give the exam. He told Reuters that places « engaged in commercial test prep are not allowed to be testing sites for us.
And that’s been very consistent for many years. » Maach said he couldn’t explain how STEPEDU was able to administer the ACT.
Han said he previously operated a GAC center at a university in Seoul. In 2012, South Korea’s Education Ministry ordered universities to shut down study-abroad programs, declaring them an illegal threat to the country’s higher-education system.
The decree forced Han to move his GAC center and left him with 130 students who hadn’t completed the program. So, he said, he shifted his GAC operation to STEPEDU, the cram school where he served as president.
At the time, according to a person familiar with the matter, ACT’s test security unit recommended that the center not be allowed to administer the college entrance exam.
The advice went unheeded. STEPEDU began giving the ACT in April 2013, Han said. In English-language job postings, STEPEDU described itself as a partner of ACT Inc and « the official ACT Test provider in South Korea. » ACT later received another warning about STEPEDU. Emails reviewed by Reuters show that Cody Shultz, a senior investigator with ACT in Iowa, was contacted by an informant last year. In one of the emails, from June 2015, the tipster states that the GAC center « is a testing center and a hagwon. » Shultz assured the informant that ACT was examining the matter. « We did make some movement on the investigation, » Shultz wrote to the tipster. « We are looking at other strategies to address the larger issue of cheating in Korea. » Even so, the organization let STEPEDU continue to operate as an ACT test center. ACT Inc finally ended the arrangement just before a reporter interviewed ACT officials about the matter on June 9. Han said he had told ACT that Reuters had recently visited STEPEDU.
« The GAC Korea Center was closed as an ACT test center shortly before your visit to ACT » in Iowa, ACT spokesman Colby said in an email. « I can provide no other details on this, as the matter is still under investigation. » He declined to make Shultz available for an interview.
Some GAC centers play the same conflicted role in China as well. Reuters identified five centers in China that administer the ACT and, contrary to ACT Inc’s policy, are run by organizations that also offer ACT test-prep classes.
One of them is a GAC center at Zhejiang University in eastern China. The center declined to comment. But its website recently advertised a summer test-prep class with « real ACT questions. » The potential reward for students? « Perfect scores » on sections of the ACT.
(World news summary compiled by Maghreb news staff)