Two Reuters reporters were jailed on Monday for seven years for violating a state secrets act during their reporting of the Rohingya crisis, a court said, in the case that has drawn outrage for its attack on media freedom.

The two journalists were being tried since 2017 for breaching Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act while investigating violence against the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine state by the army, the BBC reported.

Reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested on the night of December 12, after meeting with two police officers who, according to the defendants, handed them confidential documents, the Efe news reported.

Since then, both have been held without bail and have appeared 30 times before the court, which started a preliminary investigation on January 9 and formally filed charges on July 9.

The case has been widely seen as a test of press freedom in Myanmar.

The journalists have maintained their innocence, saying they were set up by the police.

“I have no fear,” Lone, 32, said after the verdict. “I have not done anything wrong. I believe in justice, democracy and freedom.”

The two men, who both have families with young children, have been in prison since their arrest in December 2017.

“Today is a sad day for Myanmar, Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, and press freedom anywhere,” said Reuters editor-in-chief Stephen Adler.

Judge Ye Lwin told the court in Yangon the pair had “intended to harm the interests of the state”. “And so they have been found guilty under the state secrets act,” he said.

Lone and Soe Oo, 28, had been collecting evidence about the execution of 10 men by the army in the village of Inn Din in northern Rakhine.

During their investigation, they were offered the documents by two police officers, but were arrested immediately afterwards for the possession of those documents.

Authorities later launched their own probe into the killings, confirming the massacre took place and promising to take action against those who had taken part.

The BBC said that many would see this verdict as a crushing blow to freedom of the press in Myanmar and another setback for the democracy, three years after Aung San Suu Kyi’s party triumphed in free elections.

He said Lone and Soe Oo bowed their heads as the verdict was delivered. Wa Lone – who has missed the birth of his first child while being detained — protested his innocence once again as he was led away.

“We are extremely disappointed by this verdict,” Britain and the US have said, saying the court’s decision was “deeply troubling for everybody who has struggled so hard here for media freedom”.

The UN’s resident and humanitarian co-ordinator in Myanmar Knut Ostby said the UN had “consistently called for the release” of the journalists and that “a free press is essential for peace, justice and human rights for all. We are disappointed by today’s court decision”.

“The outrageous convictions show Myanmar courts’ willingness to muzzle those reporting on military atrocities,” Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said.

“These sentences mark a new low for press freedom and further backsliding on rights under Suu Kyi’s government.”

The verdict comes a year after the crisis in Rakhine state came to a head when a Rohingya militant group attacked several police posts. The military responded with a brutal crackdown against the Rohingya minority.

The UN has said leading army figures in Myanmar should be investigated and prosecuted for genocide.

Media access to Rakhine is strictly controlled by the government so it is difficult to get reliable news from the region.

San Francisco Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers at Facebook have set a new record in improving translation from Urdu to English.

Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is the field concerned with using AI to do translations in any language.

The team from Facebook AI Research (FAIR) has seen a dramatic improvement in its results, the Forbes reported on Saturday.

“To give some idea of the level of advancement, an improvement of 1 BLEU point (a common metric for judging the accuracy of MT) is considered a remarkable achievement in this field; our methods showed an improvement of more than 10 BLEU points,” the team said in a paper that described translation from Urdu to English.

Facebook AI researchers seek to understand and develop systems with human-level intelligence by advancing the longer-term academic problems surrounding AI.

The research covers the full spectrum of topics related to AI, and to deriving knowledge from data: theory, algorithms, applications, software infrastructure and hardware infrastructure.

“Long-term objectives of understanding intelligence and building intelligent machines are bold and ambitious, and we know that making significant progress towards AI can’t be done in isolation,” said researchers from FAIR.

FAIR researchers have tested a new approach that teaches bots how to chit-chat like humans.

Facebook is making deep investments in AI technology and in May announced the next version of its open-source AI framework for developers.

Microsoft is currently leading when it comes to AI and Deep Neural Networks to improve real-time language translation.

Earlier this year, Microsoft brought machine learning to improve language translation for Hindi, Bengali and Tamil.

With Deep Neural Networks-powered language translation, the results are more accurate and the sound more natural.

[IANS]

Canberra Australia’s largest honey producer Capilano has been accused by testers of using fake honey in one of its products, media reports said on Monday.

Capilano’s Allowrie-branded Mixed Blossom Honey, which sources its products from Australia and overseas, claims to be 100 per cent honey.

However, lab tests have found a majority of its samples to be “adulterated”, meaning they contain something other than bee nectar, Xinhua news agency reported.

Trevor Weatherhead, executive director of the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council said he was not sure why anybody would want to pass fake honey off as the real thing. But cost cutting might be a reason.

So far Capilano has denied the accusations and questioned the testing method. “There is no consensus in the industry about the reliability of the Nuclear Magnetic Resolution (NMR) test that has led to the reports,” Managing Director Ben McKee said in a statement.

[IANS]

Los Angeles Reality TV star Jamie Otis says she had experienced a chemical pregnancy just days after she shared a picture of a test that she hoped was positive.

“Sorry I’ve been missing in action. This very bizarre positive pregnancy test then negative test then faint positive lines gave me hope that Gracie was going to become a big sister in 9 months, but the night before last I began having terrible contraction-like pains and spotting,” Otis began, reports people.com.

She added: “Then over the night full blown everything – if you know what I mean. I’m a nurse so I had my suspicions; but my midwife confirmed I had a chemical pregnancy. I don’t know why some people have it seemingly SO easy to get preggers and carry their babies to term and others struggle?”

A chemical pregnancy is “an early pregnancy loss that occurs shortly after implantation”, according to Healthline.

“What I do know is that I am so, so thankful for this little girl (and her daddy) right here. It’s like she knew mommy was in so much pain…. she just wanted to be held and snuggled all night long,” Otis said.

Otis and husband Doug Hehner have had a difficult road to parenthood. In July 2016, Otis and Hehner announced they had lost a baby boy they named Johnathan Edward.

Then in August 2017, Otis gave birth to daughter Henley Grace.

[IANS]

Three soldiers were killed and 14 persons injured after a suicide bomber attacked a government office here on Sunday, police said.

The blast also damaged nearby houses, blew off the roof of a mosque and caused a nearby school to collapse, BBC reported.

Police officer Abdullahi Hussein said a suicide bomber had rammed a car into the district office in Howlwadag district.

The militant group al-Shabab, which has waged an insurgency for more than 10 years, has claimed to be behind the attack.

In a similar incident on July 14, seven people were killed and several others injured in two explosions near the presidential palace in Mogadishu.

(IANS)

(171209) — BAGHDAD, Dec. 9, 2017 (Xinhua) — A screen shot taken on Dec. 9, 2017 shows Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announcing the full liberation of Iraq from the Islamic State (IS) militants in a televised speech in Baghdad, Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Saturday officially declared full liberation of Iraq from the Islamic State (IS) militants after Iraqi forces recaptured all the areas once seized by the extremist group.(Xinhua/Khalil Dawood)

Iraq’s Foreign Ministry has said it was “astonished” by a report that Iran had moved ballistic missiles to armed groups in Iraq.

The Ministry confirmed on Sunday that all Iraqi state institutions were committed to the Constitution that states that its territory should not be used as a base or passage for any operation targeting the security of any other state, Xinhua news agency reported.

The western media reported earlier that Iran had given ballistic missiles to allied Shiite militias in Iraq and was developing the capacity to build more there.

The Ministry’s statement came a day after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called up Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

According to a statement by Abadi’s office, Pompeo renewed his country’s support for a strong, stable and prosperous Iraq in accordance with the Strategic Framework Agreement which was signed (in 2008) by the two countries.

The US military has announced that it was cancelling $300 million in aid to Pakistan over what it calls Islamabad’s failure to take action against militant groups, a new blow to worsening bilateral ties between the two countries.

“Due to a lack of Pakistani decisive actions in support of the South Asia Strategy, the remaining $300 million was reprogrammed,” Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Kone Faulkner said in a statement on Saturday.

“We continue to press Pakistan to indiscriminately target all terrorist groups,” Faulkner said, adding that the $300 million aid, which had earlier been suspended, would be now aimed at spending on other “urgent priorities” due to “a lack of Pakistani decisive actions” in tackling the issue.

The move, which needs to be approved by US Congress, is part of a broader suspension announced in January when Washington had announced that it was cutting almost all security aid to the Islamabad, reports the BBC.

Saturday’s announcement comes before US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s scheduled visit to Pakistan this week and meet the country’s newly-elected Prime Minister, Imran Khan.

The US State Department has criticised Pakistan for failing to deal with terrorist networks operating on its soil, including the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban with President Donald Trump also accusing Islamabad of deceiving Washington while receiving billions of dollars.

Washington has long complained that Pakistan provides a safe haven to militant groups, including the Afghan Taliban, Haqqani Network and Al Qaeda, allowing them to carry out cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has denied these claims.

Since 2002, Pakistan has received over $33 billion in US assistance, including $14 billion in Coalition Support Funds, a US Defence Department programme to reimburse allies that have incurred costs in supporting counter-insurgency operations.

(IANS)

Buyoed by an absence of a tighter gun control policy despite increased mass shootings, more and more gun owners in the US are joining the political process, not only in voting but in donating money to candidates and contacting elected officials, researchers have revealed.

According to a study by University of Kansas political scientists, gun owners have increasingly become more politically active.

Conservatives seem to have done a better deal at realising this trend and seeking to politically mobilise gun owners in campaign ads and other actions.

“Part of the reason majority opinions on gun control legislation aren’t turning into policy is that gun owners are a very strong political group who hold a lot of weight and hold a lot of influence despite being a minority in American politics,” said Abbie Vegter, a graduate student in political science.

Vegter collaborated on the research with political science professors Don Haider-Markel and Mark Joslyn. The team presented their findings as part of the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting in Boston on Sunday.

In the study, the researchers examined the political behaviour of gun owners versus non-gun owners in presidential election years from 1972 to 2012.

“Our major conclusion establishes gun owners as a distinct social group, and we see how that social group influences their likelihood of participating in politics,” Vegter said.

The researchers are still exploring what has driven this shift in attitude among gun owners, whether it was in response to past gun control legislation at the state level or a reaction to certain candidates who were elected who had stronger views about gun control.

“There are a couple of lessons. For individuals, especially individual gun control advocates, in order to make a difference, you need to match this level of mobilisation and participation,” Vegter said.

“There is also a lesson there for politicians who I think traditionally have not seen gun owners as a political group to be addressed,” she added.

The findings could be key in determining why major gun control legislation in Congress has remained elusive, even after mass shootings such as Newtown in 2012 and others, even when a majority of people tend to support stricter gun laws.

Beijing, Chinese patients are expected to be able to buy 14 kinds of cancer drugs at a lower price from September, according to China’s state medical insurance administration.

The drugs are all crucial in dealing with haematological neoplasms and solid tumours, and have great clinical value and huge benefits for patients, the National Healthcare Security Administration said.

It asked pharmaceutical companies to adhere to the price cut in line with the lowered procurement prices of these drugs, Xinhua news agency reported.

A range of several more drugs have been selected to be included in the medical insurance reimbursement list later.

[IANS]

The Trump administration wants to give new Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan space to explore opportunities to improve relations with India, a senior Pentagon official has said.

Many new governments come to power in Islamabad and want to improve the relationship with India, but then soon face realities and all the difficulties, Randall G Schriver, US Assistant Secretary of Defence for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs said at an event organised by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here.

“We want to give the new prime minister of the new government of Pakistan space to explore where there may be opportunities to improve relations with India,” he said.

He was responding to a question from moderator Ashley Tellis from Carnegie on the triangular relationship between India, the US and Pakistan.

“But in terms of separating what was said during the campaign and what he said since the election, we want to give him space to find the opportunities to improve things with India,” Schriver said.

Responding to a question on giving space to Khan, he explained that this is in the context of India-Pakistan relationship and this does not indicate any change in the policy of the Trump administration with regard to Pakistan.

The Pentagon official insisted that this means no change in its policy towards Islamabad and its current approach of cutting financial assistance would continue. “What I said about giving him space was really in the context of the India-Pakistan relationship. We’d certainly like to give him space to make the right decisions on a variety of things,” he said.

“But our approach of cutting assistance and pressuring Pakistan on their relationship with the Taliban, persuading them to come to the table, dealing with terrorist networks, that’ll be sustained. When I say give space, it’s not changing our approach or our policy. It is the context of developing opportunities between India and Pakistan,” Schriver said. The Pentagon also cautioned Pakistan on seeking massive financial assistance from China, which risks its sovereignty.

“If you look at other examples where countries went all in, or largely in with China, the results have not been particularly good. There has been an erosion of sovereignty and an erosion of control. There are many examples of that,” he said.

“So, if our friends in Pakistan want to talk about a way out of that or want to talk about strengthening their economy and deal with that, I’m sure we’d be open to that and trying to work with Pakistan, work either bilaterally or through international institutions to try to get them on a better path, Schriver said.

The US, he said, is not interested in a failed Pakistan by any stretch of the imagination. “We want them to be successful. We want them to have sovereign control and not cede that to any outside party, including China. And the economic piece is probably going to be key to that,” he said.

(Ians)