With financing from the EU, the “Sustainable Freight and Logistics in the Greater Mekong Sub-region” project is aimed to ensure consistency of regulatory systems for the transportation of dangerous goods in every country in the region.

The project has been in place since February 2016 and will end in January 2019.

GIZ is supporting relevant government authorities, associations and SMEs in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam (CLMV) and Thailand.

Thailand was the first country in the Asean region to implement the European Agreement concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road (ADR) following a gas explosion on Phetchaburi Road in Bangkok in September 1990, when a liquid petroleum gas tanker truck crashed on the expressway exit.

GIZ spent two years on ADR translation and coordination with each ministry and this year started the training.

Wilasinee Poonuchaphai, project co-director of GIZ Thailand said that so far the organisation has trained 15 entrepreneurs in Vietnam, 40 in Thailand and 20 in Myanmar. The rest of the training will focus on Lao PDR and Cambodia, she added.

“This is the starting point and why we have helped support our neighbouring countries in applying rules and regulations in accordance with the ADR,” she said.

During GIZ’s recent training in Ho Chi Minh, Nguyen Cong Bang, Deputy Director-General of the Transport Department, Ministry of Transport, said through the training, enforcement authorities have been given the opportunity to learn from and share experiences with other countries like Thailand and Myanmar.

“In the future, we will focus on improvement of the road infrastructure (such as the expressway) to connect with China in the North, and with Myanmar, Lao PDR, Thailand and Cambodia in the west, in order to develop the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) road network and turn it into an economic corridor,” he added.

Privately, Republican lawmakers say they tend to agree with the widely held assessment that the US leader blew it in Helsinki, where critics say he betrayed his intelligence chiefs and took a submissive posture before Russia’s KGB-agent-turned-president.

But many of those same Republicans, particularly those facing re-election fights in November’s mid-terms, fear that speaking out forcefully against Trump now would amount to political suicide, according to strategists and experts who engage with them.

Even as bipartisan backlash forced Trump and the White House into a series of embarrassing reversals and clarifications, the majority in the party that controls Congress appeared unwilling to deviate publicly from their leader.

Such is Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party, and his loyal grassroots base, that many members find themselves in a political straightjacket — bound by support for a populist president regardless of his displays of weakness or foreign policy naivete.

“They just don’t want to be in his sights and at the end of his wrath,” Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist firmly in the “never Trump” camp, told AFP.

“They all understand who Trump is and they don’t like it, they wish it were different. But they’re winning on certain policy issues like tax cuts,” he said.

Trump’s propensity to tweet rage against lawmakers who defy him can swiftly end political careers, including Republican ones, as it did last month with South Carolina congressman and Trump critic Mark Sanford.

Staying in the president’s good graces can ensure the campaign money spigot keeps flowing. Ganging up on Trump would drag Republican lawmakers down across the board.

Meanwhile, no antidote to Trump’s insult politics has emerged.

“Nobody knows how to counteract this reality show act,” Tyler went on. Trump “drags you down into the mud, and that’s not a place that many politicians are used to going.”

Outrage over Trump?

Republicans not seeking re-election — including senators John McCain, Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, and congressmen Ryan Costello — felt liberated enough to offer stinging criticism of Trump this week.

But most others held their brickbats.

“I think the president clarified his statement and confirmed” that Russia meddled in the US election, number two Senate Republican John Cornyn said when asked if Republicans were speaking out enough about Trump’s performance.

Were Republicans refusing to defy Trump because they feared losing seats in November? “No, we’re not,” Cornyn insisted.

Mike Allen, a co-founder of Axios, offered a clear rationale for Republicans eagerly embracing Trump’s multiple reversals in the wake of Helsinki.

“They need a fig leaf so they can justify quickly returning to support their president, who is vastly more popular with Republican voters than any of them are,” Allen wrote.

Indeed, recent polls show Trump’s disastrous week made no dent in his popularity among Republicans.

While just one third of Americans — and eight percent of Democrats — approve of Trump’s handling of the Putin summit, 68 percent of Republicans approve, according to a CBS News poll released Thursday.

Another survey showed even stronger Republican support — 79 percent — for how Trump handled his joint press conference with Putin.

“I’ve never seen this before,” admitted Robert Shapiro, a professor of political science at Columbia University.

Shapiro, who has long studied trends in American politics and public opinion, said it was notable that it was not just Republicans facing tough re-election fights this year who were sticking with Trump.

“Those who are not up for re-election just don’t want to upset the apple cart in terms of keeping power in the House and Senate,” Shapiro said.

Non-presidential elections routinely feature low turnout, and what matters will be whether Trump can get his engaged grassroots base to the polls in significant numbers.

With the administration looking befuddled on the issue after the Helsinki summit, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein made the appeal as he released a report from a department task force on fighting digital and cyber crime.

“So what can we do to defend our values in the face of foreign efforts to influence elections, weaken the social fabric, and turn Americans against each other?,” Rosenstein said at a security forum in Aspen, Colorado as he released the report.

“Like terrorism and other national security threats, the malign foreign influence threat requires a unified, strategic approach across all government agencies,” he added.

His remarks came as the administration of President Donald Trump seems anything but unified on the issue of Russia and election meddling.

Trump suggested at the Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin that he accepted the latter’s denials of any interference in the 2016 vote.

That contradicted the conclusion of US intelligence agencies and prompted a rare public dissent from the US director of national intelligence, Dan Coats.

Rosenstein echoed remarks by Coats and other officials that Russia remains a cyber threat to America every day, and the report, while not disclosing anything new, outlines what the FBI and other agencies are doing to get ready for the congressional elections in 2018.

“The Russian effort to influence the 2016 presidential election is just one tree in a growing forest,” Rosenstein said.

“Russian intelligence officers did not stumble onto the ideas of hacking American computers and posting misleading messages because they had a free afternoon,” he added. “It is what they do every day.”

City authorities filed the suit against BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, hoping to help compensate a $20 billion plan to protect the city, economy and public services from the effects of global warming.

“It’s up to the fossil fuel companies whose greed put us in this position to shoulder the cost of making New York safer and more resilient,” left-leaning Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio had told reporters back in January.

But US District Judge John Keenan did not agree.

Such an “immense and complicated problem” as climate change is best left to the executive and legislative branches of the US government, he ruled after the oil corporations moved to dismiss the complaint.

“The serious problems caused thereby are not for the judiciary to ameliorate,” he wrote in a 23-page decision.

Keenan called for a “comprehensive solution” that “weighs the global benefits of fossil fuel use with the gravity of the impending harms.

“To litigate such an action for injuries from foreign greenhouse gas emissions in federal court would severely infringe upon the foreign-policy decisions that are squarely within the purview of the political branches of the US government.”

Keenan essentially sided with the oil corporations.

In response to the lawsuit, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell had issued public statements calling the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions a global issue that required more sweeping action than lawsuits.

Climate change leapt to the fore of New York politics after Hurricane Sandy paralyzed the US financial capital in 2012, causing major flooding across coastal New York and New Jersey, and an estimated $71 billion in damage.

One study published by researchers last year warned that rising sea levels from man-made climate change could prompt catastrophic flooding in New York as frequently as once every five years by 2030 to 2045.

The Fortify Rights report specifically identifies 22 military and police officials who it says were responsible for overseeing the crackdown.

The report claimed there were reasonable grounds for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants against the perpetrators for crimes against humanity. It also called on the United Nations Security Council to immediately refer the situation to the ICC.

It also called on Asean, of which Myanmar has been a member since 1997, to hold an emergency meeting and develop an action plan to address the Rohingya crisis as well as to ensure international justice and accountability. “Asean has a particular role to play in ending these atrocities. Governments have the ability to persuade all members of the UNSC to support an ICC referral vote or at least abstain from blocking it,” said Matthe Smith, Fortify Rights’ CEO.

“In its capacity as an Asean member, Malaysia under the new administration appears to be positive in pursuing the issue and bringing a solution,” the NGO’s Malaysia-based legal director Eric Paulsen said. “It’s going to be a huge step, but Asean must collectively do better and get Myanmar to take account of their crimes.”

The 160-page report identifies 22 military and police officials who, according to the NGO, had “command responsibility for the clearance operations in northern Rakhine state”.

Included in the list are Myanmar’s top brass: Commander-in-Chief Sr General Min Aung Hliang, Deputy Commander-in-Chief V Sr General Soe Win, and the Joint Chief of Staff of the Army, Navy, and Air Force General Mya Tun Oo.

The report entitled “They Gave them Long Swords”, describes how Myanmar authorities provided weapons and quasi-military training to non-Rohingya citizens in northern Rakhine state months before the attacks started.

They also collected sharp or blunt objects from the Rohingya to “disarm” and weaken them, block access to humanitarian aid and restricted access to journalists and human rights monitors before the attack.

The report documents how Myanmar authorities committed mass killings, rape, and arson attacks against the Rohingya in Maungdaw township in October and November 2016. They also made preparations to commit another attack that extended throughout Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung, all townships in northern Rakhine.

The report says that the Myanmar government’s action could fit within the UN’s Framework for Analysis of Atrocity Crimes as “preparatory actions” for genocide and crimes against humanity.

According to United Nations reports, in the months up to January 2018 almost 690,000 Rohingya escaped or were driven out of Rakhine and sought refuge in Bangladesh as refugees to escape continuing attacks.

The report says that at least 27 Myanmar Army battalions of up to 11,000 soldiers, along with at least three combat police battalions of some 900 police personnel, were involved in the uprooting operation.

During a press conference to launch the report yesterday at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand, a Rohingya man identifying himself as “Hajismal” affirmed that what had happened was “a 100 per cent genocide that they have done against us”.

“I didn’t know the meaning of the term ‘genocide’ at first. I asked its meaning from my Thai friend, who explained to me that it involves serious human-rights violations. I then became certain that what I had experienced was nothing else but genocide,” Hajismal said.

“My family members were also killed. Some of our people still remain in Rakhine state and are being killed day by day,” he added.

The meeting last week adopted 14 additional basic principles as the second part of a union accord for peace in Myanmar. A total 51 principles have so far been agreed covering political, economic, social and land rights.

The Panglong conference is an attempt to implement the National Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) signed in 2015 between the authority of the previous administration under Thein Sein and groups of armed ethnicities who for decades took up arms in a struggle for self-determination.

The NCA set a road map to achieve peace step by step: a political dialogue framework, the building of union peace conferences, the signing of a union accord, a constitutional amendment based on the union accord, a multi-party democratic general election and the establishment of a democratic federal union.

They are now at the steps of building the union peace conference – the 21st Century Panglong Conference as it is widely known – and the signing of a union accord, said Thammasat University’s scholar Dulyapak Preecharush.

“Unless there is an accident along the way, Myanmar would be able to establish a democratic federal union after the next general election in 2020,” he told The Nation.

Named after the 1947 Panglong agreement which national founder General Aung San signed with ethnic groups, Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2016 carried the spirit of the pact to launch the conference for the first time in this century. The conference was due to be held twice yearly but met only once last year due to differences between the ethnic groups and the government.

The more-than-700 delegates to the conference this year represented 10 NCA signatory groups and seven non-NCA group.

The non-NCA are members of a powerful ethnic alliance of armed groups called the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultation Committee, also known as the Northern Alliance and operating along the border with China.

Some groups in the alliance are still fighting the government.

Trust between the authority and the ethnic groups is the key element for success, Dulyapak said. “While the Tatmadaw [military] is playing the game of war escalation to maintain the status quo, the armed group such as Northern Alliance are using the same game for bargaining power,” he said.

Historical factors are also important, he said. The Tatmadaw, which is sitting at the core of the state building in Myanmar, has prioritised unification, rather than the spirit of a democratic federated union.

However, the academic remained optimistic that peace building in Myanmar has undergone significant advancement compared to the recent past, when it seemed that advancing beyond a ceasefire agreement would be impossible.

“Myanmar is moving from conflict management to political negotiation, and that could eventually develop into a so-called democratic federation union,” Dulyapak said.

Anak Krakatau — a small volcanic island that emerged from the ocean a half century after Krakatoa’s deadly 1883 eruption — has rumbled back to life in recent weeks, spitting flaming rocks and ash from its crater.

No one lives on Krakatau, which forms a small island in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, but the peak is a popular tourist spot.

Indonesia’s geological agency has not raised the alert level for the mountain. However, there is a one kilometre no-go zone around its summit.

    When Krakatoa erupted in the 19th century, a jet of ash, stones and smoke shot more than 20 kilometres (12 miles) into the sky, plunging the region into darkness, and sparking a huge tsunami that was felt around the world.

The disaster killed more than 36,000 people.

Indonesia is situated on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, a vast zone of geological instability where the collision of tectonic plates causes frequent quakes and major volcanic activity.

The 160-page report entitled “They gave them long swords” documented how the Myanmar authorities committed mass killings, rape and arson attacks against Muslim Rohingya in Rakhine’s Maungdaw township between October and November 2016.

“When the international community failed to effectively respond to these attacks, Myanmar authorities made preparations to commit another attack that extended through all three townships of Rakhine – Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung,” the group’s statement read.

The latest chapter in the Rohingya crisis took place in August last year, when its resistance fighters launched a series of attacks on Myanmar security outposts. This prompted a harsh response and a concerted “clearance operation”, that killed scores of civilians and displaced some 700,000 people.

The report found at least 27 Myanmar Army battalions, comprising up to 11,000 soldiers, along with three combat police battalions, comprising an estimated 900 police, were involved in the attacks in Rakhine State beginning in August last year.

The report is based on a 21-month-long investigation, including 254 interviews conducted by Fortify Rights in Myanmar and Bangladesh with Rohingya eyewitnesses and survivors, Myanmar military and police personnel, Bangladesh military and government officials, members and former members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA)—also known as al Yaqin, a militant Rohingya group—international and local humanitarian aid workers, medical physicians, and others.

The Rohingya community and the United Nations human right agency recently called for an independent investigation into the genocide but international prosecutors have yet to respond.

The new tactic being spread through the global social network was tested in Sri Lanka, which was recently rocked by inter-religious over false information posted on the world’s leading online social network.

“There are certain forms of misinformation that have contributed to physical harm, and we are making a policy change which will enable us to take that type of content down,” a Facebook spokesman said after a briefing on the policy at the company’s campus in Silicon Valley.

“We will be begin implementing the policy during the coming months.”

For example, Facebook may remove inaccurate or misleading contect, such as doctored photos, created or shared to stir up to ignite volatile situations in the real world.

The social network said it is partnering with local organizations and authorities adept at identifying when posts are false and likely to prompt violence.

Misinformation removed in Sri Lanka under the new policy included content falsely contending that Muslims were poisoning food given or sold to Buddhists, according to Facebook.

Hate speech and threats deemed credible are violations of Facebook rules, and are removed.

The new policy takes another step back, eliminating content that may not be explicitly violent but which seems likely to encourage such behavior.

Facebook has been lambasted for allowing rumors or blatantly false information to circulate that may have contributed to violence.

Many see Facebook as being used as a vehicle for spreading false information in recent years.

Facebook has implemented a series of changes aimed at fighting use of the social network to spread misinformation, from fabrications that incite violence to untruths that sway elections.

“I think in the next couple weeks we will have the first remains returned,” Pompeo said during a meeting at the White House.

Repatriating remains of US soldiers who perished during the 1950-53 conflict was part of a written agreement signed by Kim and Trump during their landmark summit in Singapore last month.

Pompeo did not confirm media reports that the first repatriations would be on July 27, and that about 50-55 sets of remains would be returned.

North Korean and US military officials met Sunday at the truce village of Panmunjom on the inter-Korean border to discuss the repatriation.

“This conversation continues,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

“There’s a lot of work left to be done at a lot of different levels.”

Dozens of transfer cases to carry the American remains have been brought to the southern side of the border in recent weeks.