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(Own report) - German military experts have initiated a debate on NATO's nuclear rearmament. The Western war alliance has "become more important" through the Ukraine crisis, wrote a high-ranking specialist of the Federal Academy for Security Policy (BAKS) in Berlin in a recently published discussion paper. In this context, "nuclear deterrence" must again become a topic of discussion. The "entire deterrence package" must put be on the agenda, not only nuclear arms in general, but also Europe-based US nuclear weapons - not least of all, those stored in Germany. Beyond the threat of nuclear war, the danger of a further barbarization of future wars is looming in the wake of the regeneration of the West. A former head of the Policy Planning Staff of the German Defense Ministry is proposing that Berlin consider procuring depleted uranium munitions for the Bundeswehr to combat Russian tanks. Depleted uranium is extremely destructive, even after their battlefield use. In Iraq for example, where NATO countries used these weapons, vast areas are contaminated still today.

New Zealanders are pretty irked by the revelation that their government used taxpayer money to air-freight nearly 1,000 sheep to Saudi Arabia.

The sheep shipment was part of a $4.4 million deal (6 million New Zealand dollars) to set up a New Zealand-sponsored “agribusiness service hub and demonstration farm” in eastern Saudi Arabia. The New Zealand government says the scheme is an important investment for its country, where sheep famously outnumber people six-to-one, and where the meat trade with Saudi Arabia is worth millions.

But many are blasting it as a move to mollify the powerful Saudi businessman who owns the farm where the sheep have been sent, and who also has invested deeply in New Zealand’s own sheep industry.

New Zealand announced a general ban on shipments of live farm animals in 2004, amid outrage from animal rights groups over livestock packed into “reeking, squalid” ships and a shipping disaster in which more than 5,000 sheep died on an Australian vessel en route to Saudi Arabia.

The ban left Saudi tycoon Hamood Al Ali al-Khalaf sheep-hungry and angry over the loss of business.

Skeptical Kiwis see the new sheep delivery as undue compensation for the well-connected al-Khalaf at a time when New Zealand is trying to cement a free trade deal in the Gulf. New Zealand jetted the sheep to Saudi Arabia late last year, but the scheme is just now making news after Prime Minister John Key’s recent visit to the Gulf to negotiate the trade deal.

Further fueling the anger is the revelation, from New Zealand television network TVNZ, that al-Khalaf also was the buyer of the animals that died in the 2004 sheep disaster.

“If this is the man who was behind the lamb deaths that led to the ban on live sheep in the first place then [Prime Minister] John Key and [Trade Minister] Tim Groser have just made fools of themselves at the taxpayer’s expense,” opposition trade spokesman David Parker told TVNZ.

New Zealand’s Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy has called the scheme “a sound investment” – and one that can eventually “help us land the free trade agreement.” The government says the 2004 shipping disaster was why the sheep traveled by plane this time around.

Halal meat orders from Muslim have long brought New Zealand, as well as Australia, lots of business. But many Kiwis’ response to the latest deal is: “Baa, humbug!”

Bethany Clarke/Getty Images for Wool Week

More than 350 American soldiers and 80 US Army vehicles will begin a 400 kilometer "cavalry march" across Romania, with cover from US Air Force, on their way to multinational exercises, the Pentagon announced on Tuesday.

C’est une des traductions concrètes des annonces présidentielles : la marine va pouvoir densifier sa
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Researchers funded by the World Bank arrived at a wildly unorthodox and unexpectedly effective strategy for preventing HIV in the African nation of Lesotho: A lottery program that offered participants an opportunity to win cash on the condition that they tested negative for sexually transmitted infections.

The lotteries led to a 21.4 percent reduction in HIV incidence among participants over a two-year period, and a reduction of more than 60 percent among participants identified as “risk-loving individuals” — those who were identified at the study’s start as people who enjoyed risky behavior.

“We are the first to find a significant reduction in HIV incidence though behavioral intervention,” Professor Martina Björkman Nyqvist of the Stockholm School of Economics, a lead researcher on the project, told Foreign Policy.

In Lesotho — a small, mountainous country of 2.1 million that is completely surrounded by South Africa — some 43 percent of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day and 23 percent of adults are infected with HIV. Among young people the infection rate is even higher, with 41 percent of people between the ages of 30 and 34 are infected with the disease.

Researchers worked with 3,029 volunteers in 29 villages across the country to see whether the opportunity to enter a lottery in exchange for a clean test result might lower these infection rates. Participants testing negative for curable sexually transmitted infections were entered automatically to win cash prizes of either $50 or $100. While the study focused on HIV, the lottery was tied to other STIs, so that HIV-positive individuals, for whom safe behavior is paramount, could also participate. All participants, including members of the control group, received in-kind rewards for participation.

The lotteries were most successful among risk seekers, identified through “the perceived value of a risky gamble.” “As risky sexual behavior, which is responsible for the vast majority of new HIV infections, also involves a risky gamble, lottery programs may better target those at higher risk of getting infected by HIV,” the authors wrote in a World Bank working paper published in March.

In a country with a low life expectancy, the consequences of sexual risk-taking can seem distant and the rewards immediate, Nyqvist said. The lotteries were designed to rebalance that psychological equation.

“Broadly, it has been popular in the past decade or so within international development to look at conditional cash transfer programs, and these have been found to have big effects when it comes to school attendance, health checkups, these kind of things,” Nyqvist said, referring to programs that offer small payments in reward for compliance with a set of criteria. The Lesotho program takes that line of thinking and adds a twist: Higher risk, higher reward.

“The perceived return from participating in a lottery may also be higher than the return from an incentive program that pays the expected return with certainty,” Nyqvist and her co-authors wrote.

But the researchers sounded a note of caution about applying these findings to other countries. “The results are really big, amazingly big,” Nyqvist said. “But the results apply to Lesotho. To conclude that this has external validity, we would need to replicate the lotteries elsewhere.” One condition she identified as specific to the region was the unusually high levels of infection.

The conventional wisdom on HIV/AIDS prevention argues that fighting the infection requires making condoms more widely available, improving accessibility to antiretroviral drug regimes, and educating the public about the virus and how it spreads. This latest findings do not necessarily dispute that thinking, but point to a new, simple, and cheap approach.

Chris Jackson/Getty Images

 

 

 

Senate Democrats stalled President Barack Obama’s trade agenda Tuesday, bucking his ambitious plans to increase U.S. exports in favor of labor unions and tougher protections for overseas workers.

In a 52-45 vote, the Senate failed to get enough votes to open debate on so-called “fast-track” legislation that sought to speed approval of the 12-nation Trade Promotion Authority without last-minute congressional meddling. Instead, Tuesday’s vote — which fell short because it lacked support among Obama’s fellow Democrats — potentially creates a new stumbling block for ongoing negotiations with Pacific Rim countries grappling with the most aggressive trade agreement in decades.

Democrats who oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership have pushed for added enforcement measures in the deal to protect against potentially unfair advantages, such as currency manipulation in Japan or poor labor laws in Vietnam.

“Free trade can be good for the United States, but only if it is done right — leveling the playing field for all workers; protecting workers’ rights, human rights, and the environment; and addressing serious imbalances including currency manipulation,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said in a statement after he voted against the motion to begin debating the bill.

Now, the White House and Republicans may have to agree to add some of those provisions in order to get the “fast track” bill out of the Senate. But that might not go over well with the rest of Washington’s negotiating partners. Adding requirements that could be seen as chiding other countries may undermine U.S. trade officials’ ability to deliver a deal.

Another major criticism from opponents is that the negotiations haven’t been subject to public view.

“The president is asking us to vote to grease the skids on a trade deal that has largely been negotiated but that is still held in secret,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in an interview with NPR news before the vote.

The trade agreement, along with another European pact, are both part of the Obama administration’s ambitious agenda to lower barriers for U.S. companies abroad and increase exports. But trade negotiations have faced stiff opposition from unions, many liberal lawmakers, and some Americans who associate trade pacts with job losses that happened across the country as globalization spurred outsourcing over the past few decades. Vocal opponents have argued that another trade pact will again leave U.S. workers worse off.

“The reason this went badly for them is that enough senators listened to the folks back home who have been telling them that they don’t want to make it easier to ship jobs overseas,” said Jason Stanford, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Fast Track.

The trade negotiations have gotten the support from Hollywood and other big industries. Music moguls and movie-makers are hoping the deal will include beefed-up copyright protection that could prove lucrative for the struggling industry. Other industrial giants, from consumer products companies to Wall Street banks, also see the TPP’s intellectual property provisions as key selling points in a regional trade pact that could bring together an estimated $27 trillion worth of economic activity.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, in particular, is seen as a key piece of the Obama administration’s rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific region. U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said last month that the trade pact is worth as much to U.S. prospects in the region as a new aircraft carrier. Analysts have recently called for Washington to promote ambitious trade deals with partners and allies in Asia, while excluding China, to strengthen America’s ability to push back against Beijing’s growing financial and military might.

Natalie Behring/Getty Images

Moszkva az orosz-amerikai kapcsolatok rendezésére számít, amelytől nagyban függ a globális biztonság - kommentálta május 11-én, hétfőn az orosz külügyminisztérium John Kerry amerikai külügyminiszter látogatását. A Kreml ugyanakkor nem erősítette meg Putyin és Kerry Szocsiban tervezett találkozóját.

A Honvéd Együttes Kerepesi úton található próbaterméhez riasztották május 12-én délután a Fővárosi Katasztrófavédelmi Igazgatóság tűzoltóit.