The United States, at Saturday’s UN meeting, abstained from voting in support of Israel, which most observers consider a break from America’s traditional support of Israel at the UN table. A vote from America would have vetoed the bill.
The bill condemned Israel for its settlements and construction projects in Palestinian territory, stating that Israel was in this in flagrant violation of international law.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the next day summoned US Ambassador Daniel Shapiro, and the meeting is scheduled for Sunday night.
Israel also summoned ambassadors from China, France, Russia, Angola, Egypt, Japan, Spain, Ukraine and Uruguay to meet.
“Over decades American administrations and Israeli governments have disagreed about settlements, but we agreed the Security Council was not the place to resolve this issue,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu also told CNN he had trustworthy information that President Barack Obama helped push the UN resolution and helped craft it.
The US government responded to this by saying that they didn’t draft it; Egypt and Palestine did.
U.S. government spokespeople are claiming that the move — considered by most observers to be a sudden break from tradition and a “parting shot” by Obama against Israel — was in line with the U.S.’s longstanding position on the matter.
Presidential Chief Legal Counsel Sec. Salvador Panelo said today that a list of “around 10,000 names” is being readied for submission to the Philippines’ National Security Council by President Rodrigo Duterte.
“There are about 5,000 to 10,000 people involved. They are government officials — captains, mayors, governors, members of the military and prosecutors,” Panelo told the Philippines’ ABS-CBN news.
“I saw the folder, and it was more than one foot … one foot high.”
Panelo admitted that the number was high, and confirmed that the list was validated.
He said that what was most important in the move to submit the list was the “implications of the fact that there are about 10,000 people, government officials, involved, and that means that the magnitude as well as the depth of the dragnet is so much, so huge, that the public safety is now in danger.”
In his war on drugs, the president is considering suspending habaes corpus in the name of public security in order to “pick up” offenders and detain them, denying them what would otherwise be their right to question in court any unlawful detention. Duterte’s policy, however, is to refrain from sending police to arrest the people on the list “unless those people [do not] voluntarily submit themselves … .”
The president may submit his list to the NSC before the end of November, Panelo said. “According to the president … he wants those people arrested.”
President-elect Donald Trump has made a statement of his assesment of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who died yesterday at age 90 in Havana.
Trump initially tweeted a short statement with a much-noted exclamation point, then followed up with a lengthier statement, which read:
“Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades.
“Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights. While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve.
“Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty. I join the many Cuban Americans who supported me so greatly in the presidential campaign, including the Brigade 2506 Veterans Association that endorsed me, with the hope of one day soon seeing a free Cuba.”
Cuban state media are reporting that 90 year old Fidel Castro has died.
The leader of the Cuban revolution passed away in his beloved Havana, the city that received him and the Sierra Maestra fighters as liberators, with flowers, flags and bells in 1959.
Fidel Castro, Born in 1926 in the south-eastern Oriente Province of Cuba, ruled the country as a one-party state for almost half a century before handing over power to his brother Raul in 2008.
During his life, Castro was praised by socialist supporters and criticized for brutal suppression of opposition to his rule and the effects of his policies on the international relations of Cuba.
3D technology comes to the rescue after the destruction of several world cultural treasures by the militant group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
According to the United Nations, ISIS has destroyed and damaged 200 world heritage sites along with hundreds of statues and artefacts since 2014.
ISIS’ plan is simple. It is about erasing all traces of previous cultures to establish their own and take advantage of the media coverage following massing destructions of historic sites to grab the world’s attention. In addition, this cultural cleaning is a way for Daesh to finance their activities by selling to dealers and private collectors.
Yet those lost treasures that some call “blood artifacts” may not be lost forever.
Through her digital fabrication and 3D printing project “Material Speculation : ISIS”, Iranian artist and activist Morehshin Allahyari chose to focus on the reconstruction of selected artifacts and statues destroyed by ISIS in Iraq in 2015.
In addition, to repair history and memory, each 3D printed object comprises a flash drive and a memory card. The data in these flash drives contain materials: maps, images, videos and pdf files on the destroyed artifacts and sites. They were gathered thanks to a collaboration with different archaeologists and historians, including and museum staff.
“Like time capsules, each object is sealed and kept for future civilizations.”
Morehshin Allahyari
Just like Murehshin Allahyari artifacts, Palmyra has suffered numerous act of vandalism. The Syrian desert city known as the Venice of the Sands lost the triumphal arch from 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel.
Devastated, many archaeologists talked restoration and reconstruction such as American lawyer/archaeologist Roger Michel. Indeed, as the founder of Oxford’s Institute for Digital Archaeology, Michel has built a 3D facsimile arch from Palmyra’s destroyed Temple of Bel.
Temple of Bel
Thanks to 3D technology, Palmyra’s rose again in London’s Trafalgar Square last April to coincide with world heritage week. It should then travel on to Times Square in New York City.
This 3D replica of the 15-meters arch that formed the temple’s entrance is a gesture of defiance against ISIS’ desire to erase cultural and historical evidence.
“My intention is to show Islamic State that anything they can blow up we can rebuild exactly as it was before, and rebuild it again and again. We will use technology to disempower ISIS.” Roger Michel
Moving for some or uncanny for others, this incredible public display of 3D reconstruction is the proof that new technology can restore entire parts of 20th-century historical sites. Although out of their original context and site, 3D monuments or artifacts might still conserve their precious sense of place and craftsmanship, thus preserving everybody’s heritage.
By Pauline Schnoebelen
Featured image (‘Temple of Bel’): ICONEM is a young Paris based start-up focused on 3D reconstruction and analysis of endangered archaeological sites, which the group considers to be part of our common heritage. To prevent destruction caused by conflict, looting or natural disasters, they send teams on the ground to train people and help them document this heritage.
The 26-year old grandmaster, who formerly represented Ukraine and now represents Russia due to the shifting borders of his native Crimea, has scored the first win of the World Chess Championship. Seven draws preceded the game.
Sergey Karjakin, playing black, beat titleholder Magnus Carlsen of Norway, and now leads 4.5-3.5.
The championship began November 11 in New York and ends on the 28th or 30th. It is a 12-game match. If the score is tied after 12 games, a rapid chess match decides the winner. If still tied, five 2-game blitz chess matches follow, and an Armageddon can finally break a tie after that.
President-elect Donald Trump announced three of his picks for his top staff today: Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser, and Mike Pompeo as CIA director,
The choices have generated applause and criticism, but regardless of opinions Trump’s team will be part of a significant change in government policy from the previous 8 years of President Barack Obama’s administration.
Jeff Sessions: 20 years in the Senate and well liked (on both sides of the isle), experienced conservative lawmaker, tough on immigration, law-and-order oriented. Sessions was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump.
ACLU, NAAC, the largest LGBT organization, and other groups have criticized the choice of Sessions as potentially inflammatory at a time when they would prefer more racial sensitivity.
Those for and against Sessions as a pick expect Sessions will focus on disability cases, religious freedoms, and less on racial discrimination and police discrimination.
Michael Flynn: Retired Lieutenant General in the Army, top U.S. intelligence officer in Afghanistan, became Defense Intelligence Agency head but fired in 2014, made strong statements against Obama’s stance on Islamic radical violence after being fired and about Clinton during the election.
Criticisms include Flynn’s controversial comments about Islam, his temperament, and what some claim is a somewhat friendly relationship with Russia.
Mike Pompeo: Kansas congressman, West Point and Harvard Law graduate, opponent of Iran nuclear deal, bold statements against Islamic radicalization.
Criticisms include that Pompeo could be too partizan for the non-partizan role.
In Donald Trump’s first meeting with a world leader since being elected, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that he was “convinced that Mr. Trump is a leader in whom I can have confidence.”
It is not unusual for a president elect to meet with foreign leaders before taking over the role of president — Barack Obama also did this. The meetings are not ones in which international deals are usually made. They are more meet-and-greets in preparation for later dealings.
In the past, Trump has made statements viewed by Japan both as beneficial and harmful to the island nation. On the one hand, Trump said he might remove some U.S. troops from Japan if Japan didn’t pay a bigger share of defense upkeep; on the other, Trump said it might be better if Japan had it’s own military, including nuclear weapons, since it had unfriendly military powers nearby, such as North Korea.
Abe said he wanted to “build trust” with Trump, and ensure the long-standing alliance between the two countries, which Abe said was of primary importance for Japan.
During the presidential race, Abe supported Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and Japan is strongly in favor of the Trans Pacific Partnership.
According to Nikkei Asia Review, iPhone assemblers in the East — responsible for producing 200 million phones per year — are in talks about moving production to the U.S.
The move would mean roughly doubling costs — some of which would likely be passed on to consumers — but may be necessary. President Elect Donald Trump has repeatedly singled out Apple as an example of what’s bad in American business. Trump threatened a 45 percent tariff on goods made in China.
Apple is on record as countering that it has created and supports 2 million domestic jobs, and Apple’s Executive Tim Cook has stated that America doesn’t have enough enough skilled workers to handle production.
Trump’s position, on the other hand, was, “How does it help us when they make it in China?”
Just one of the Chinese factories producing phones employs almost 700,000 Chinese workers. However, Apple products are not made entirely in China: components are also made in Japan and Korea.
Economists have pointed out that Apple can move to another country rather than America, and possibly find production costs below even what it now has in China. Economists also have criticized the plan as not being focused on “value creation,” and noted that the mere production of goods provides dubious value to America.
Better than Mercator could do? And at a time when these problems are finally important?
The Mercator map is known to have major flaws, such as its distortion of the sizes of Antarctica and Greenland.
Tokyo-based architect and artist Hajime Narukawa wanted to fix the problem of distorted relative land mass sizes.
Narukawa has said that these longstanding problems may not have been very important in the past, when these regions were less traveled.
But now glaciers are melting and technology is making access to cold regions easier.
Hajime Narukawa
The Good Design award organization describes the map in the following terms:
“This original mapping method can transfer a spherical surface to a rectangular surface such as a map of the world while maintaining correctly proportions in areas*. AuthaGraph faithfully represents all oceans, continents including the neglected Antarctica. These fit within a rectangular frame with no interruptions. The map can be tessellated without visible seams. Thus the AuthaGraphic world map provides an advanced precise perspective of our planet. *The map need a further step to increase a number of subdivision for improving its accuracy to be officially called an area-equal map.”
Canada’s Liberal government has announced plans to increase immigration levels to 300,000 per year, a 40,000 increase to the target level.
The number of immigrants accepted in 2016 was unusually high due to the government’s taking in of thousands of Syrian refugees. The number including the refugees turned out to be 300,000, and Refugees and Citizenship Minister John McCallum said Monday that this number will now be the permanent base target. The target for the past five years was 260,000, part of a continuing trend of increased immigration since the late 1980s.
McCallum also said that the Liberal government may eventually increase immigration levels to 450,000.
