Russia sending 60 humanitarian aid convoy trucks to pro-Russian region of Moldova

Russia is sending a large convoy of humanitarian aid to Transnistria, the pro-Russian region of Moldova, with the stated intention of helping the region integrate into the Euro-Asian Union. The Russian organization responsible for directing the deliveries met with the leader of the pro-Russian separatist government in Transnistria Wednesday, and stated that there would be around 60 trucks in all.

“We do not know how the situation will develop around Transnistria, so we prefer to have equipment in place immediately,” said the director of the organization of Euro-Asian Union, Alexander Argunov, who also said that he had a meeting with the leader of the separatist republic, Evgeny Shevciuk, Wednesday.

Argunov said that he had discussed with Shevciuk equipment for new medical clinics and kindergartens in Transnistria, which would be built with Russian resources. Russia would also help implement social projects and provide Transnistria with subsidies to help deal with economic problems associated with breaking from Moldova, Argunov said.

Read more: Ukraine Warns Moldova is Next Target for Russia, as “Little Green Men” Appear There–Moldova Warns They Will Not Have Adequate Strength in Event of Armed Conflict

Argun commented on the quality of the equipment, and said that it was produced by various manufacturers in Israel, Germany, Belarus and other nations. “We choose the best option in terms of price and quality, such that will suit our beneficiaries in Transnistria.”

Seven trucks arrived in Moldova in early November. Argunov said Wednesday that there would be about 60 in total, and “dozens” were currently on their way.

Argunov also commented on the complex nature of such cargo deliveries, saying that the organization shipped the most simple products first, such as furniture.

“On the example of furniture,” Argunov said, “we have seen how loads have passed through Ukraine, which was with difficulties, and what was required of the Ukrainian authorities with regards to the passage of the cargo. We assessed how things happened there [with simple products first], and then began to send more expensive medical equipment.”

The first deputy chairman of the Customs Committee of the Pridnestrovian Moldovian Republic (PMR), Svetlana Klimenkova, said that the Transnistrian side is making every effort to ensure continuity of the process and to facilitate “Eurasian integration.”

“Initially, we worked out all the possible options in terms of movement of these types of goods and provided the ability to move in such a way as to eliminate all the problems of complexity and difficulty. The process worked efficiency, “said Klimenkova.

Read more: “Let us vote!” – Moldovans shout in Moscow

By James Haleavy

 

Russia sending 60 humanitarian aid convoy trucks to pro-Russian region of Moldova

Barcelona residents are losing parts of the city to irresponsible tourism

Barcelona dwellers that regularly come in contact with guidebook-wielding tourists will be aware of a controversial video on YouTube that has been stirring an already explosive debate. “Bye Bye Barcelona” by Journalist Eduardo Chibás is a documentary about the increasing loss of key parts of the city to the tidal wave of tourism that washes up on shore with increasing numbers every year.

The documentary (with over 159,000 hits) has come at a key moment when Barcelona has found itself at a cultural cross-roads; its loss of a strong cultural identity is seemly at odds with the super-tourist destination image it portrays overseas, an identity that is quite literally taking the city hostage.

Certain parts of Barcelona that were once dedicated to the local population by bygone forward thinking architects have been lost in favor of mass tourism and the profiteering that goes along with it.

Certainly during the high-peek months the residents of Barcelona have had to relinquish the church La Sagrada Familia and the famous market; La Boquiera to the hordes. Park Güell now charges entry to non-residents, but for local residents it has become a no-go zone.

Residents protest that the park was donated to the people of Barcelona by the Güell family to be used as an open green space, not for the Barcelona town hall to profit from; charging for entry is not a way to stem or manage the tidal wave of irresponsible mass tourism.

“Masificación,” meaning “Overcrowding,” has recently become a buzz word on the lips of most residents, as cruise ships regally offload up to 30 thousand tourists into the city during the summer months on a daily basis, counting on increasing numbers from countries such as Russia and China whose populations are beginning to gain the means to travel more frequently and further afield.

Santiago Tejedor, co-director of Travel journalism at Barcelona University and who featured in the Bye Bye Barcelona documentary said of the phenomenon, “All this is due to low-cost air travel and a globalized culture that makes people seek to discover new places in their spare time. These ideas combine and have turned tourism, not into the act of travelling but of consuming those destinations”.

It is no secret that Barcelona appears high on the agenda of these new world tourists. Barcelona is now the 4th most visited city in Europe after London, Paris and Rome–all of which are significantly bigger in size and more capable of dealing with the sheer volume of visitors.

Santiago Tejedor also highlighted that “Barcelona is also the 4th destination in Europe that disappoints visitors, because there is nothing authentic to offer people.”

The idea of mass tourism fuels the image of stereotypes shuffling up La Rambla wearing fake FC Barcelona shirts and Mexican sombreros with a sandal-and-white-sock combo, viewing the city from behind a camera viewfinder.

Barcelona became the focal point of the Responsible Tourism Conference in Oct. 2013, to find way to balance the positive and negative impacts of tourism and create a balance where they can both co-exist in the same space.

Managing friction between visitors and local residents seems high on the agenda for the Barcelona town hall, set apart from obvious financial gains that the city benefits from.

It is well-known that Barcelona is heavily dependent on tourism. It counts for 11 percent of Catalonia´s GDP and provides some 400,000 jobs. Since the Olympic games of ´92 the city has undergone a series of drastic changes, sending out a clear message that it is a desirable tourist package.

With the increasing popularity of the city there also the danger that Barcelona is close to going the same way as Venice, becoming an open air museum, devoid of indigenous population. This can be seen as reflected in the fact that London has its own chain of Barcelona tapas restaurants decked out in Gaudiesque designs, showing that Barcelona´s cultural identity template is fully transferable overseas.

Opinion By Anthony Bain

Photos: Jose Téllez, Ignacio Martínez Egea, Gregg, KeithProvenArtist

 

Barcelona residents are losing parts of the city to irresponsible tourism

Thinspiration! Women don't compare themselves with magazines--they live vicariously through them, study finds

Women are not comparing themselves with the thin, attractive models in the magazines they enjoy–some, at least. Instead, women are living vicariously through the thin, attractive models–engaging in “thinspiration,” according to new research from Ohio State University. Not only that, women who enjoy these magazines are actually less likely to make an effort to look more attractive, the researchers found.

“Women get the message that they can look just like the models they see in the magazines, which is not helpful,” said researcher Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, who is professor and graduate studies director at Ohio State University ‘s School of Communication. “It makes them feel better at first, but in the long run women are buying into these thinness fantasies that just won’t come true.”

The study involved 51 female college students who participated in an online test. The women evaluated magazine articles and advertisements dominated by featured thin-ideal images accompanied by text over the course of five days.

Knobloch-Westerwick examined the data for magazine reading habits, body mass index, body satisfaction, and especially tendency to compare their own form with that of others.

The options given to the participants included statements like, “This woman is thinner than me,” and, “I would like my body to look like this woman’s body.”

Results showed that women who compared themselves to the thin models had lower satisfaction with their own body by the end of the study. They were also more likely to have reported dieting during the period of the study.

Women who reported comparing their body and feeling that they would like to look more like the models, however, had increased body satisfaction by the end of the study. This phenomena Knobloch-Westerwick dubbed “thinspiration.”

Thinspiration is a concept in which people believe that they can make themselves as attractive as the models they view.

“They felt better about their body instantly when viewing the images and related content. They weren’t thinking about what they had to do to look like these models.

“These women felt better about their own bodies because they imagined that they could look just like the models they saw in the magazines.” The women who experienced the greatest “thinspiration” from looking at magazines were the least likely to engage in weigh-loss behaviour in the real world.

The research also found that over time the women began to identify with the models more.

“They may begin to feel affiliated with the models, and start to think this person is someone like me, someone I can be friends with and emulate,” she said.

Knobloch-Westerwick’s research was unlike many other body-image studies in that it found that viewing images of more ideal beauty models lead to higher body satisfaction. Knobloch-Westerwick said she suspected that because her images were accompanied by text–unlike the simple images of beauty used in most studies–participants were influenced by positive messages about how they could look like the models.

“If they just see an image of a thin model once and have to react immediately, they may indeed have poorer body satisfaction,” she said. “But if they look at images over the course of several days, readers may begin to feel more affiliated with the models, feel more like they could be like them. That could lead them to switch from comparing themselves negatively to the models to using these models as thinspiration.”

By Cheryl Bretton

Image: Kelly Povo

Thinspiration! Women don't compare themselves with magazines--they live vicariously through them, study finds

"Our group acts from love, their group from hate" - Motive attribution asymmetry explained by NU researchers

The bias groups have to view their own actions as driven predominantly by love while viewing the actions of their rivals as driven more by hate has been explained by recent research conducted by a team from Northwestern University. The researchers found that in reality conflicts were driven by the same motivations, but the view from each side of a conflict was skewed–partially by psychological bias, partly by experience. The researchers also found that the bias could be removed by incentivizing a more considerate understanding using a time-honored cooperative tool–money.

Dr Adam Waytz

“People are surprisingly motivated by the same things in conflict–wanting to do right by their own group, and wanting to show loyalty and affiliation toward their own group,” Dr Adam Waytz, Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellog School of Management and lead author of the study, told The Speaker.

“The Palestinian and Israeli conflict provides the clearest example,” Waytz told us. “I think most cases where a country decides on a violent or aggressive strategy to address conflict with another country means that they are assuming the other country is driven by hate.”

3,000 people were involved in the NU study, which included Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East and Republicans and Democrats in the US.

The research team found that each side of a conflict felt that their group was motivated by love more than hate, but each also felt that the other group was motivated by hate more than love.

“We think people misinterpret others’ motives for two related reasons. One, they are motivated to see their own group as loving and their outgroup as barbaric,” Waytz told us, referring to a theory called motive attribution asymmetry. “Two, they simply encounter less instances of their outgroup engaged in acts of love, and therefore are blind to these motives,” said Waytz.

The researchers found evidence that each group regularly saw its own members engaging in acts of “love, care and affiliation,” but rarely saw rival group members acting from similar motives. In large part, this is because groups more often notice each other’s actions during moments of heated conflict.

Rival groups often can’t see eye to eye on possible solutions or find grounds for compromise because they can’t agree on the way they perceive each other. This creates an error or bias.

“If they believed that the other country was driven by in-group love, they would see diplomacy as a more effective tactic,.” said Waytz.

“It’s interesting to see that people can be blind to the source of behavior on the other side, that you can go from saying you are motivated by love of your own group and you can’t seem to apply that to reasoning about the other side,” Liane Young, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology at Boston College and co-author of the research article commented in a press release.

“What’s interesting to me is there’s so much work on social psychology suggesting we first think about who we are and what motivates us and we tend to apply that other people,” said Young. “What we’re seeing here is just the opposite where I say one thing for me and instead of extrapolating that it would be the same for you, I say it’s just the opposite for you, that you’re motivated by your hatred of my group. That’s pretty striking to me.

“What we also found was that these attributions tend to also track with other sorts of consequences so if you think that the people on the other side are motivated by their hatred of your group, you also are unwilling to negotiate with that group,” continued Young. “You tend to think they’re more unreasonable, suggesting that people’s misattributions of other groups may be the cause of intractable conflict.”

The NU team found that biases towards motive attribution asymmetry could be removed by incentivizing more considerate judgement.

When money was offered, study participants were able to correctly assess an opponent’s motivation. The promise of money for finding the right answer seemed to help study participants find that “right answer.”

“We just simply told people they would get a bonus for getting the answer right so they had to buy into this idea that there was a right answer,” said Young. “It seems like we can at least move around people’s judgments and that people aren’t so hopelessly lost that they can’t get it right when they are motivated to get it right.”

The report, “Motive Attribution Asymmetry For Love vs. Hate Drives Intractable Conflict,” was authored by Adam Waytz of Northwestern University, Jeremy Ginges of the New School of Social Research, and Liane Young of Boston College, was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

By Day Blakely Donaldson

 

"Our group acts from love, their group from hate" - Motive attribution asymmetry explained by NU researchers

Russia scraps Europe pipeline, talks Turkey

Russia’s proposed South Stream pipeline–which would connect Russia to southern Europe without crossing Ukraine–was scrapped Monday in the wake of EU objections to the project. Instead, Russia is naming Turkey as its preferred piped gas partner.

Russia has been for several years in the planning stage for an undersea pipeline to that would feed 63 billion cubic meters into Turkey annually. The pipeline would run under the Black Sea at a depth of up to 1.5 miles.

The Blue Stream pipeline which already connects the two nations opened officially in 2005. Even in 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin had stated that there was an opportunity to expand the pipeline to pump gas across Turkey into southern Italy, the south of Europe an Israel. Turkey also viewed Blue Stream as a step towards becoming a player in world energy markets.

Citing EU objections to South Stream, which would have brought gas into the EU via Bulgaria, Russia’s chief executive of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, told reporters in Ankara that South Stream was “closed.” “That’s it,” said the official.

Putin publicly stated that Russia would grant Turkey a six percent discount on imported gas next year. Turkey is seeking a 15 percent discount for Russian gas, however.

“As our cooperation develops and deepens, I think we will be ready for further price reductions,” Miller told reporters in Ankara. “As we develop our joint projects… the level of gas price for Turkey could reach the one Germany has today.”

Putin also accused the EU of denying Bulgaria its sovereign rights by blocking the South Stream project. Putin counselled that the EU objections were “against Europe’s economic interests” and were “causing damage”

Currently, Russia supplies around 30 percent of Europe’s gas needs via pipelines through Ukraine. Many nations–including Hungary, Austria and Bulgaria–have expressed concern that the South Stream pipeline would be risky, citing Russia’s gas disruptions and threatened disruptions via Ukraine pipelines after Russia invaded Ukraine early this year.

By James Haleavy

Russia scraps Europe pipeline, talks Turkey

NGO using peer educator program to combat diabetes in Cambodia

MoPoTyse, an NGO based in Phnom Penh, is using a peer education model that is cheaper and more effective than utilizing conventional doctors and clinics. This method is proving to reach many more diabetics and those prone to it, initially in poor areas in the capital and eventually in the outlying rural provinces. Upwards of 10 percent of Khmer currently have the disease.

The director of MoPoTyso, Maurits van Pelt, has stated that there are some significant reasons as to why the disease has become a growing problem in the country. One of these is a degree of poverty that prohibits most Cambodians from seeking proper medical assistance. “Adequate care is unavailable or prohibitively expensive as most patients live below USD 2 a day. Premium levels for community based health insurance do not allow coverage of chronic patient routine health care costs.” In fact, average global costs for insulin is $4, while in Cambodia it’s $16.

Another reason cited by van Pelt was the misconception that healthier brown rice is not as good as the cheaper white variety, which raises the blood sugar level much more quickly. This notion came about during the Pol Pot regime, when people didn’t have the time to remove the husk of the rice. As van Pelt stated, “It’s associated with poverty. It has a bad reputation as something inferior.”

Since 2005, van Pelt’s peer educator system, which started in a slum in Phnom Penh, has used existing diabetics to act as mentors and guides to others that have the disease in their local area. “[These educators] were able to find other diabetes patients in the slums using a combination of urine glucose strips for postprandial screening and a handheld blood-glucose meter for confirmation blood glucose testing,” said van Pelt. These groups then hold weekly meetings at the home of the peer educator. There, they learn how to eat healthier foods, the importance of exercise, and take their own blood sugar.

Linda Meach, a peer educator, said that the majority of the diabetic newcomers to her meetings have very little knowledge of how to handle their disease. “Before they come to us, they do not know how to take care of their health,” said Meach, speaking of the program. “We teach them how to manage their food and exercise and how to use the medication.”

A motivating factor for the participants at these meetings to do well is financially based. Those whose blood sugar has decreased, have lost weight, and have an improved understanding of diabetes receive access to discounted medication from the local pharmacies. One of the attendee’s of Ms.Linda’s meetings, Rose Nith, is hopeful for the future of the program. “Without this center our community will be in difficulty, since we rely on this center and it supports us,” said Nith. “Some people will die since they cannot afford to buy medicine without it.”

By Brett Scott

NGO using peer educator program to combat diabetes in Cambodia

World's largest selfie goes for Guinness Record

World’s largest selfie goes for Guinness Record

Selfies are increasingly common are hardly ever newsworthy. But selfies creating or breaking records definitely are. A selfie taken last week on a Windows phone in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, claims to be the world’s largest selfie ever taken–a record it may have created itself.

In a bid to capture the world’s largest selfie, Microsoft Bangladesh in association with Coca-Cola organized a campaign that saw at least 1,151 people shot in a single selfie. The organizers required the selfie enthusiasts to sign in for the sake of a head count.

The program was aimed at marketing Microsoft’s newly-introduced Windows device in Bangladesh, Nokia Lumia 730, which the Redmond-based company is touting as “made for selfies.”

In their official Facebook page, the company credited this photo as the largest selfie ever. Official recognition from Guinness has yet to come.

“The Microsoft Lumia team in Bangladesh is actively engaged with Guinness World Records to gain authentication of the selfie record,” Mr. Sandeep Gupta, a general manager of Microsoft emerging Asia told this journalist.

Apparently, there emerged a contender to Microsoft’s claim the same week.

Some 2,000 rabbis were reported to have taken part in a group selfie after attending the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries in Brooklyn, New York. Toronto-based Shalom Life reported that a “camera” mounted on a five-meter-long selfie stick was used to capture the photo.

Unlike the Bangladeshi picture, the number of emissaries captured was not confirmed by the concerned authority. In addition, the Rabbi photo appears to fall short of the definition of selfie found in Oxford’s English Dictionary, that says, “[A selfie is] a photographic self-portrait; esp. one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media.”

After Ellen DeGeneres wrangled to take a selfie of a scrum of Hollywood megastars during this year’s Academy Award that set a new record for most retweeted photo in history, analysts suggested that the selfie could be used as a subtle way of brand promotion.

Whether or not the Dhaka photo was inspired by the media buzz created by Ellen’s Oscar selfie, Microsoft appears to have undertaken an experiment a new era of marketing strategy in which the selfie is thought to be a game changer.

By Arafat Kabir

World's largest selfie goes for Guinness Record