Security forces in Beirut’s capital fired water cannon and tear gas at angry protesters outside parliament Wednesday, where a new government was being formed.

The demonstrators rallied near the parliament building in the early hours to protest the new government.  They hurled stones, firecrackers and sticks at police and tried to remove the newly erected barricades placed outside parliament, where Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government had been installed just hours earlier.

Diab’s new government, which is scheduled to meet for the first time on Wednesday, ended an impasse triggered by the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri last October.

Protesters have been calling for sweeping reforms and a government made up of independent technocrats that could deal with Lebanon’s crippling economic and financial crisis, the worst the country has faced in decades.

A liquidity crunch has led banks to restrict access to cash and the Lebanese pound to slump. Jobs have been lost and inflation has soared.

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From: MeNeedIt

The United States urged China on Tuesday to join trilateral nuclear arms talks with Moscow, calling Beijing’s secrecy around growing stockpiles a “serious threat to strategic stability.”

U.S. President Donald Trump said last year he had discussed a new accord on limiting nuclear arms with Russian President Vladimir Putin and hoped to extend that to China in what would be a major deal between the globe’s top three atomic powers. But China has so far refused to take part.

“We think, given the fact that China’s nuclear stockpile is estimated to double over the next ten years, now is the time to have that trilateral discussion,” Robert Wood, U.S. disarmament ambassador, told reporters on the opening day of the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

He said that Washington had discussed the potential trilateral talks in a security meeting with Russia last week and had reached an “understanding” about pursuing them. “We cannot afford to wait,” he added.

Asked how to go about pressuring Beijing to join, Wood said that he hoped Russia, and others, would help. “Hopefully over time and through the influence of others besides the United States, they (China) will come to the table. We think it’s imperative for global security that the Chinese do that.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week that Russia would take part in potential trilateral talks but that he “won’t force China to change” its current position.

China has previously said its weapons were the “lowest level” of its national security needs and not comparable to those of Russia and the United States.

The United Nations is seeking the total elimination of nuclear arms but talks have been deadlocked for more than 20 years.

Other talks between the five declared nuclear powers that have ratified the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – China, United States, Russia, France and the United Kingdom – are ongoing and a meeting is planned in London next month.

However, Wood said this was not the right framework for nuclear arms talks with Beijing.

In his speech, China’s disarmament Ambassador Li Song did not refer to its own nuclear stockpiles but called for cooperation among nuclear powers and made a thinly-veiled swipe at the Trump administration.

Li called for a commitment to multilateralism, “with no exceptions, least of all the big power which shoulders a special responsibility for international peace and security and who is not expected to play the role of a ‘spoiler’ to our collective efforts and to withdraw from treaties.”
 

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From: MeNeedIt

On this edition of Healthy Living, we discuss alternative therapy – a set of products, practices, and theories not part of standard medical care but believed to have healing effects of medicine. First, to Zimbabwe for a look at how horses provide healing to children with disabilities and then to Nigeria where people are using creative arts to help with chronic illness. And, teenagers need more exercise according to the World Health Organization. Lastly, genetically sterilized mosquitoes could help fight Malaria. These topics and more on Healthy Living this week. S1, E24

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From: MeNeedIt

Incendiary balloons Palestinians launched from the Gaza Strip recently were a signal to Israel to accelerate unofficial “understandings” meant to ease the crippling blockade on the Hamas-ruled territory, a senior official from the Islamic militant group said Tuesday.

The resumption of flammable balloons and other explosive devices flown across the border broke a month of calm that has largely prevailed since Hamas suspended its weekly protests along the Israeli-Gaza frontier.

The quiet is meant to bolster an informal truce between Israel and Hamas being negotiated by international mediators.

Speaking to journalists, Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya accused the Israelis of moving too slowly.

He said the balloons had been launched by disgruntled individuals, not Hamas. But he said his group was “satisfied” with the launches and is ready to send more “if the occupation doesn’t pick up the message.”

Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza after Hamas, a militant group that seeks Israel’s destruction, seized control of the territory in 2007. The blockade, combined with Hamas mismanagement, has devastated the local economy.

After three wars and dozens of smaller skirmishes, the bitter enemies have been working through Qatari, Egyptian and U.N. mediators to reach a series of “understandings” that would ease the blockade in exchange for guarantees of quiet. Al-Hayya said Hamas expects Israel to allow in more medical supplies, unlimited trade between Gaza and the world, help create more jobs and extend Qatari payments for electricity and poor families.

The incendiary balloons have not caused any damage or injuries on the Israeli side. But last week, an Israeli military helicopter struck an alleged Hamas target in Gaza in response to the resumption of the launches.

The U.N.’s Mideast envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, called the renewed balloon launches “concerning and regrettable” in a briefing to the Security Council on Tuesday. “These actions are a risk to the civilian population,” he said.

For the past 20 months, Hamas organized weekly demonstrations along the fence, demanding an end to the blockade.

The protests often turned violent, including burning of tires, throwing of explosives and launching of hundreds of incendiary balloons that torched large swaths of Israeli farmland. Over 200 Palestinians, mostly unarmed, were killed by Israeli fire during the marches and hundreds of others were badly wounded. Israel, which drew international accusations of using excessive force, has said it is defending itself from attacks and attempts to breach the border.

Hovering around 50%, Gaza’s unemployment rate is one of the world’s highest and most of of its 2 million people rely on humanitarian assistance.

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From: MeNeedIt

A Mexican human rights organization on Monday urged authorities to investigate the disappearance of an environmental activist dedicated to protecting the famed monarch butterfly, suggesting the case may be linked to illegal logging in the area.

Homero Gomez, who manages a butterfly sanctuary in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, disappeared Jan. 13, according to the Human Rights State Commission of Michoacan.

The organization has asked the attorney general’s office to determine if Gomez’s disappearance is linked to his role in defending Mexico’s forests, commission official Mayte Cardona told Reuters.

“He was probably hurting the (business) interests of people illegally logging in the area,” Cardona said.

Illegal logging and trafficking is rife in Michoacan, a state plagued by organized crime.

“The investigation is ongoing,” a source with the state prosecutor said.

Environmentalists say illegal logging hurts the habitat of the monarch butterfly, which migrates thousands of kilometers from Canada across the United States to reproduce in Mexico.
 

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From: MeNeedIt

Asthma can usually be controlled with an inhaler, or, sometimes, with medication. When neither works, it might be that the patient doesn’t have asthma at all. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports that researchers have found another disease with the same symptoms as asthma actually starts in the stomach.

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From: MeNeedIt

Las Vegas, Nevada is often called ‘Sin City.’ It’s known as a place where people behave in more self-indulgent or decadent ways, famously summed up in the saying, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” But some Afghan immigrants who lead quiet religious lives have a different view of this gambling mecca. VOA’s Samir Rassoly visited a few local Afghan businesses and filed this report from Las Vegas.

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From: MeNeedIt

For the first time, most of the United States’ 2.1 million federal workers will be eligible to get twelve weeks of paid family leave following the birth or adoption of a child. The new benefit – under the annual National Defense Authorization Act – goes into effect on Oct. 1. Dozens of other countries around the world already offer paid family leave to civil workers. Now advocates are pressing for the law to extend to workers across the U.S. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo has more.

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From: MeNeedIt

The influential speaker of Iran’s parliament said on Sunday that, if European powers “for any reason” take an “unfair” approach to the dispute mechanism in the 4-year-old nuclear deal that has been in the balance since a U.S. pullout in 2018, Tehran will “seriously reconsider” its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“What the three European countries did regarding Iran’s nuclear issue…is unfortunate,” the speaker, Ali Larijani, who is also a former chief nuclear negotiator for Tehran, was quoted as saying by state TV.

Germany, Britain, and France announced last week that they had triggered the dispute mechanism in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which exchanged curbs on Iran’s nuclear program for relief from international sanctions.

“We clearly announce that if Europe, for any reason, uses Article 37 of the nuclear agreement unfairly, then Iran will make a serious decision regarding cooperation with the agency,” Larijani said, according to the AFP news agency.

The European states — signatories of the JCPOA along with China, Russia, the European Union, and, formerly, the United States — said that, while the mechanism could lead to U.N. sanctions against Iran, they were not joining Washington’s yearlong “maximum pressure” campaign designed to change Tehran’s behavior.

Since the U.S. withdrawal from the deal, Iran has breached its main limitations, exceeding the stockpiles of heavy water and uranium allowed, the number and types of centrifuges it can operate to enrich uranium, and the purity of uranium.

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From: MeNeedIt

Germany is bringing together the key players in Libya’s long-running civil war in a bid to curb foreign military meddling, solidify a cease-fire and help relaunch a political process to determine the North African nation’s future.

 Chancellor Angela Merkel invited leaders from 12 countries as well as the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union and the Arab League to Sunday’s summit at the chancellery in Berlin. Germany’s months-long diplomatic drive seeks to bolster efforts to stop the fighting in Libya by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and his envoy for Libya, Ghassan Salame.
    
Among those expected are Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Other countries invited are the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Algeria, China and the Republic of Congo.
    
Also invited are Libya’s two main rival leaders: Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj and Gen. Khalifa Hifter. Both will attend, according to German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
    
The chances of the summit producing any real progress are unclear, however. While getting the players to the table is an achievement, recent stepped-up outside support may have emboldened both sides not to compromise.
    
Since the 2011 ouster and killing of Libya’s longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, the country has sunk further into chaos and turmoil. Libya is divided into rival administrations, each with the backing of different nations: the U.N.-recognized government based in Tripoli, headed by Sarraj, and one based in the country’s east, supported by Hifter’s forces.
    
Hifter’s forces have been on the offensive since April, laying siege to Tripoli in an effort to capture the capital and battling militias aligned with the government. Hifter’s forces are backed by Egypt, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, while the Tripoli government has turned to Turkey for troops and weapons.
    
A truce brokered earlier this month by Russia and Turkey marked the first break in fighting in months.
    
Germany’s priority is to try to get the outside players that have interests in the conflict on the same page, stem the flow of weapons to Libya and ensure that the cease-fire sticks — creating space for U.N.-led efforts to re-establish a political process in Libya.
    
“At the Libya conference, we must see above all that the arms embargo is once again complied with — it has been agreed in principle at U.N. level but unfortunately not kept to,” Merkel said.
    
Germany is also keen to prevent Libyan fighting from further destabilizing the region, potentially setting off new waves of migrants seeking safety in Europe across the Mediterranean Sea.
    
Maas traveled to Libya to meet Hifter on Thursday. He said the general pledged to respect the cease-fire, even though he had left Moscow days before without signing a draft document setting out details of the truce. Sarraj did sign the document.
    
On Friday, however, powerful tribal groups loyal to Hifter seized several large oil export terminals along Libya’s eastern coast as well as southern oil fields in another challenge to the Tripoli government, which collects revenue from oil production. The National Oil Corporation said the move threatens to throttle much of the country’s oil production.
    
U.N. envoy Salame earlier this month demanded an end to all foreign interference in Libya, saying that a military solution is impossible and governments and mercenaries helping rival forces are hindering a political solution.
    
Despite the arms embargo against Libya, he said, weapons are being sold and given to Libyans, and “probably thousands” of mercenaries have been sent into the country, creating a “bleak” situation for millions of civilians.
    
German officials have been careful to keep expectations of Sunday’s summit in check.
    
“The conference is important, but it is a beginning, the start of a process,” spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said.

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From: MeNeedIt

Amid a spike in violent extremism around the world, a communications researcher is experimenting with a novel idea: whether people can be “inoculated” against hate with a little exposure to extremist propaganda, in the same manner vaccines enable human bodies to fight disease.

The idea is based on something called attitudinal inoculation, a technique that aims to build people’s resistance to negative influences by exposing them to weaker forms of those influences.  Developed in the 1960s, the method has been used to help teenagers resist peer pressure to start smoking.  

In 2018, Kurt Braddock, a communications professor at Penn State University, conducted a study to see whether attitudinal inoculation could be used against extremism.  The results, published in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence in November, look promising. 

Data showed a ‘very cool story’

The data came back showing a very, very cool story about how inoculation works in this context,” Braddock said in an interview.“

I found that if you inoculate people against extreme right-wing propaganda or extreme left-wing propaganda, they tend to argue against that propaganda more than if you don’t inoculate them,” Braddock said.  “They tend to feel more anger towards the source of the propaganda than those you don’t inoculate. And they tend to think that the extremist groups that produce the propaganda are less credible than if you didn’t inoculate them.”

Two-step method

As with other attitudinal inoculation studies, Braddock’s experiment on 357 participants — randomly selected from a survey website — entailed two steps.    

The first involved warning them that the propaganda material they were about to encounter had been very effective in changing the views of people such as the participants. “

That makes them think that maybe their beliefs and attitudes aren’t as secure as they think they are and if they encounter this propaganda it might change their minds,” Braddock said.  

Counter arguments

Then they were given counter arguments.  For example, they were told that exhortations to violence could be refuted by arguing that “protest is fine but violence doesn’t solve the issue,” Braddock said.

Once “inoculated,” the participants (except for a small control group) were invited to read propaganda material produced by two extremist groups — the now-defunct left-wing Weather Underground and the neo-Nazi group National Alliance — and asked to register their reaction.

The response exceeded Braddock’s expectations: those who had been inoculated were more likely than the control group to reject both groups. “

The differences were significant,” Braddock said.

Caveats to findings

As significant as they were, the findings came with caveats. One reviewer noted that the study used propaganda from a group that is no longer around. Another questioned the reliability of such experiments, noting that exposure to propaganda is just one risk factor for radicalization.  A more important question is whether the lab-tested method has real-world application.    

Braddock acknowledges the limitations.  To test out his idea in the real world, he said he plans to conduct follow-up studies on young people who are actively targeted by extremist propaganda.

‘Real-world testing’

That’s the next step,” he said.  “I’m really curious to see what shakes out in real world samples.”  

Jesse Morton, an-ex jihadi who runs a support organization for former extremists, said the study has some potential use. Social media companies and educational institutions could potentially use it to develop preventive tools, Morton said.”

There’s a lot of push on [social media companies]  to do something about the right-wing extremist threat in general, but I think schools and universities are those that are most set up for benefiting from it,” Morton said.

Google pilot program

Under pressure to clamp down on violent content, social media companies have rolled out a variety of anti-extremism tools in recent years.  In 2017, Google launched the “ReDirect Method,” a pilot program that prompted viewers searching for extremist videos on YouTube to watch more positive content.  

In some ways, Morton said, the Redirect Method is similar to the anti-hate vaccine Braddock is testing.  “

We can’t just think about prevention and isolation,” Morton said.  “We have to think about the realm of prevention in countering violent extremism, as if it is directly connected to every facet of the radicalization process.”

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From: MeNeedIt

Cameroon teachers are protesting what they say is growing violence against them by both students and their parents, and the teachers are urging the government to protect them and reinstate corporal punishment. The teachers say the absence of corporal punishment is encouraging abuse of teachers. This week, several attacks on teaching staffs were reported, including one in which a teenage student fatally stabbed his teacher, in the capital.

Students shout Saturday at a government-run school in Obala, a town on the outskirts of Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, protesting the principal’s decision to destroy all mobile phones and knives seized from children Friday at the school.  One of their senior discipline masters, Narcisse Ateba, says the students use mobile phones to access social media platforms that promote violence, and they also use sharp objects such as knives to attack their peers and teachers.

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Cameroon Teachers Protest Escalating Violence in Separatist Areas

As students in Cameroon began their annual exams Monday, hundreds of their teachers in English-speaking regions were on the streets protesting. The teachers are demanding better security after three teachers and a student were abducted, adding to scores captured, killed, or whose property was torched during a two-year separatist conflict.Teachers dressed in dark clothes and holding signs demanding better security walk down a street in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s northwest region.

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He says that some parents and students will want to harass or beat him up, but he has nonetheless decided to publicly destroy the 15 mobile phones found and seized by teachers from students Friday because it is illegal to use them in classrooms. He says he will not allow students to come to school with razor blades, box-cutters and knives.

The destruction of the mobile phones and the peaceful marches to administrative offices and palaces are part of protests by teachers at Obala against what they say are increasing acts of violence against them.

This week, a 16-year-old student at the public school Nkolbisson in a neighborhood in Yaounde is accused of using a knife to stab his mathematics teacher who died of excessive bleeding as he was being rushed to a hospital. The school said the student insisted on using his mobile phone in class against the teacher’s instruction. The student was arrested and detained by police, and will be answering to charges, including premeditated killing.

Another teacher this week was battered by students in Douala for questioning why they were late to school, and yet another teacher in Douala was beaten by a parent and fell into a coma. The parent was said to be angry with the teacher’s decision to use corporal punishment on his son as punishment for making noise in class. In another incident, a student used a machete to chop off another student’s finger in Obala after a fight during a soccer match.

Elvis Yisinyuy, an official with the Cameroon Teachers Trade Union in Yaounde, says attacks by students on teachers intensified in 2015 when Cameroon prohibited teachers from beating or severely punishing students.

“When a minister says that teachers are not supposed to administer corporal punishment to students, the student will now see that he [the minister] has the right to bring disorder because there is nothing the teacher can do in class,” said Yisinyuy. “The minister should revisit the text and permit teachers to administer corporal punishment with caution.”

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Cameroon Teachers Celebrate Teachers Day Amid Growing Challenges

October 5 is World Teachers Day, set aside to mobilize support and to ensure that the needs of future generations will be met by teachers. Some teachers, who work with Central African refugees in camps in eastern Cameroon or on the border with Central African Republic (C.A.R.), face especially difficult challenges.

Emmanuel Mbiydzenyuy asks students to be quiet and follow English language classes here at the government school in Dhahong in eastern Cameroon. Eighty of the 110 students in one class are…

Yusinyuy said the high wave of drug consumption by students and the inability of teachers to use corporal punishment because they have been prohibited from doing so is also responsible for the wave of attacks.

Nalova Lyonga, Cameroon minister of secondary education, says corporal punishment can not be tolerated because it is an abuse on the rights of students who are mostly children.

“What I have told the teachers is that they themselves have to make a distinction between a disciplinary case and a case which becomes a criminal case, and they should be able to report to the special police at the disposal of the schools,” said Lyonga.

Lyonga said Cameroon students are exposed to other cultures of the world because of the increasing use of mobile phones, and they gain access to social media platforms that promote violence, while neglecting the peace and unity that Cameroon traditionally preaches.

Carol Kayum, president of Reference Citizens, a non-governmental organization that promotes citizenship education, has been visiting schools in Yaounde to educate both teachers and students against violence. She says Cameroon should uphold it’s culture of non-violence to prevent the growing number of assaults on other students and teachers.

“Our cultures are rich. Parents should transmit them to children, and also there should be communication between schools and parents so that we know what our children are doing in school, and we also tell the school authorities what the children do at home,” said Kayum. “School authorities and parents should control the use of drugs.

Kayum said many people now join the teaching profession because they lack jobs, and not for the love of teaching, and as such, they are not loved by students.

The students also have complained they are harassed by some teachers whom they accuse of behaving poorly or not teaching well.

The Cameroon Ministry of Secondary Education has recorded 40 violent attacks by students on their peers, 22 attacks on teachers and 15 attacks by parents on teachers within the past  month. 

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From: MeNeedIt