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World
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2015
SOUTH ASIA
Maldives lifts state of emergency early, foreign minister says The Maldives on Tuesday lifted a state of emergency declared last week and greeted by international criticism, saying security had improved after the authorities detained individuals and seized illegal weapons. The emergency, intended to be for 30 days, was declared by President Abdulla Yameen on November 4 after officials discovered explosive devices near his residence, as well as stashes of weapons. -REUTERS
INDIA
Modi heads to Britain seeking investment Narendra Modi will begin his first visit to Britain as Indian prime minister on Thursday, seeking to boost investment in his booming country and win the backing of a large and influential diaspora community. Modi will have lunch with Queen Elizabeth -- an honour usually only accorded to heads of state -- and address parliament as Britain rolls out the red carpet for the leader of one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies. -AFP
CHINA
‘Not aware of plan to discuss S China Sea at APEC’ China is not aware of any plan to discuss the disputed South China Sea at an Asia Pacific leaders’ summit next week, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Tuesday, amid tensions between China and the Philippines over the waters. For its part, the Philippines said it would not raise the issue at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to be held in Manila from November 17 to 19. Chinese President Xi Jinping is to attend the meeting of APEC, which includes the US, China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Canada. -REUTERS
ASIA PACIFIC
Thai junta chief: Military not to blame for custody death Thailand’s junta chief Tuesday said the military was not to blame for the death of a famous fortune teller charged with royal defamation after he died in custody in a Bangkok army barracks. Suriyan Sucharitpolwong is the second person to have died in detention at the controversial site within weeks. Speaking to reporters in Bangkok Tuesday, junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha said the detention site was “not a military prison” but run by the justice ministry and supervised by police. -AFP
MIDDLE EAST
Latin, Arab leaders hold Saudi summit Arab leaders and top officials from South America converged on Saudi Arabia Tuesday for a summit aiming to strengthen ties between the geographically distant but economically powerful regions. United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon is expected to attend the opening of the Fourth Arab South American Summit. President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador have already arrived there. Arab presidents who arrived for the summit included Omar alBashir of Sudan, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi of Egypt and Fuad Masum of Iraq as well as Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, state media said. -AFP
Q&A
Myanmar polls: What we know so far Myanmar’s opposition looked poised Tuesday for a landslide poll win, but even if Aung San Suu Kyi’s party does form a majority, governing an impoverished nation where the military retains huge influence will be no mean feat. Here’s what we know so far about the election and what it means for the nascent democracy--
Q1. Who won? Right now it’s hard to say unequivocally, as full results aren’t in. But from the few seats declared, Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party is sweeping the board. Her party has won 78 of the 88 seats announced so far in the lower house, which has a total of 323 seats up for grabs. They have done particularly well in their Yangon stronghold, taking all the city’s declared seats, as well as making strong gains in the important Mandalay region. The NLD is also dominating many regional parliamentary seats -- 142 out of 162 declared so far -- which could give them significant influence over important local authorities. There are a total of 652 regional parliamentary seats to fill. No upper house results have been released yet.
Q2. Will the NLD form the next government? At the current rate of results, it certainly looks like it. Under Myanmar’s complicated 2008 military-crafted constitution, the NLD needs to take at least 67% of seats in both the lower and upper houses to form a government. Its rivals, the army-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), only needs to win a third. That’s because a quarter of seats in the legislature are reserved for military appointees. In a BBC inter-
Aung San Suu Kyi casts her ballot during the general elections in Yangon view Tuesday, Suu Kyi said she believed the NLD were on track to take 75% of seats.
Q3. Challenges ahead? Firstly, Suu Kyi can’t be president -- she is currently forbidden from taking the top spot under the constitution, which bans those with foreign children. Her two sons are British. Secondly, even if she forms a majority, any major constitutional reform is going to be very difficult. The army bloc within the legislature can effectively veto any changes to the charter. A third issue is that the military still holds other constitutional cards, including the top security posts at the home, defence and border affairs ministries.
REUTERS
Q4. How will the president be chosen? Myanmar’s president is directly elected by the legislature. With the existing parliament sitting for a final session from Monday, new legislators won’t take up their seats until the end of January. Once the new parliament is up and running, electing the new president can begin, some time around February or March 2016. The lower and upper houses will each put forward a candidate, as will the military bloc. The whole parliament then votes on the three -- the winner becomes president and the losers vice presidents. l
Source: AFP
Study: Data privacy in appverse challenging
US SC rejects cellphone search warrant case n Reuters, Washington, DC
n AFP, Washington, DC
The US Supreme Court rejected a test case on privacy in the digital age on Monday, declining to decide whether police need to obtain search warrants to examine cellphone location information held by wireless carriers. The nine justices turned away an appeal filed by a man named Quartavious Davis, who was convicted of participating in a string of 2010 robberies in the Miami area and was sentenced to 1,941 months in prison without parole. Davis challenged his convictions in part on the grounds that police did not seek a warrant when they asked his cellphone provider, MetroPCS Communications Inc, for location information that linked him to the seven different crime scenes between August and October 2010. Among the businesses targeted by Davis and five co-defendants were a gas station, a Walgreens drug store and a Wendy’s restaurant. Davis sought Supreme Court review after the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in May that the failure to obtain a warrant did not violate Davis’ right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. The information that law enforcement agencies can obtain from wireless carriers shows which local cellphone towers users connect to at the time they make calls. Police can use the data to determine if a suspect was in the vicinity of a crime scene. l
US smartphone users are anxious to protect their private data, but it can be challenging in a massive system of applications with various policies and technical needs. A study released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found 235 types of permissions on more than one million apps in the Google Play Store. The survey found smartphone users are keen to understand how their data is being used and shared: 60% of people using the Play Store had decided against installing an app when they discovered how much personal information is required, and 43% had uninstalled an app for the same reason. Users need to accept terms when downloading an application. But the study noted that “once that permission is granted, the apps can amass insights from the data collected by the apps on things such as the physical activities and movements of users, their browsing and media-use habits, their social media use and their personal networks, the photos and videos they shoot and share, and their core communications.” The researchers said 90% of app downloaders indicated that how their personal data will be used is “very” or “somewhat”
important to them when considering whether to download an app. App permission is not necessarily pernicious, the researchers said: a program may need to access the camera, flash or location in order to function properly. But more troublesome is how personal data is accessed and shared with marketers or other parties. “Our research on privacy suggests that Americans’ attitudes are highly contextual -- users might be happy to share a particular piece of information in one context, but much more concerned about sharing it in a different context,” said study author Kenneth Olmstead. “Some of the most popular apps require their users to grant access to a wide range of potentially sensitive personal information -- while at the same time, many apps request little to no information from their users but have been downloaded only a handful of times.” The research underscored growing privacy concerns about smartphone applications and their ability to glean data from users. The Pew study examined more than one million Android apps and interviewed 465 adults in January and February 2015. The margin of error was estimated at 5.8% points. l