The 65-year-old former KGB officer has reimposed the Kremlin’s grip over society since taking power 18 years ago after a lawless but relatively free decade following the demise of the USSR.

On the international stage, he has outlasted three US presidents to become one of the globe’s undisputed strongmen, thrusting Moscow into a new rivalry with the West by snatching Crimea from Ukraine and launching a pivotal intervention in Syria.

Named the world’s most powerful person by Forbes for the past four years running, the judo black belt has built a macho man image helped by publicity stunts that included riding topless on horseback through the Siberian wilderness and darting an endangered tiger.

Bolstered by a slavish state media, he is projected to take around 70 percent of the vote by official pollsters, despite producing no programme and refusing to take part in televised debates.

Supporters laud him as a saviour who restored pride and traditional values to a humiliated nation.

To foes, however, Putin has dragged his homeland further from democracy, has presided over a seizure of the state by a new elite of former secret police cronies and has stoked nationalism in a bid to restore Moscow’s lost empire.

​​​​​​– ‘Hit first’ –

Putin was born into a working-class family in Leningrad — now Saint Petersburg — on October 7, 1952 and cut his teeth in the city’s rough-and-tumble neighbourhoods.

“The Leningrad streets taught me one thing: if a fight is unavoidable, you have to hit first,” Putin said in 2015.

He fulfilled a childhood dream by joining the KGB intelligence service, getting posted in 1985-1990 to Dresden in what was then East Germany when Soviet power was crumbling.

His political rise began after he returned to work at Saint Petersburg city hall under his mentor, liberal mayor Anatoly Sobchak.

Two decades later, Sobchak’s daughter Ksenia is challenging Putin in the election — a move that has divided Russia’s already deeply-split liberal opposition.

By 1996, he was called to Moscow to work in the Kremlin under Russia’s first democratically-elected president Boris Yeltsin, who in 1998 made little-known Putin head of the KGB’s successor, the FSB.

Battling health and drinking problems, frail Yeltsin in August 1999 named Putin prime minister and his popularity shot up as he oversaw the launch of a second war to crush rebels in the Chechnya region.

When Yeltsin sensationally resigned on New Year’s Eve 1999, Putin suddenly took over as president of the biggest country on earth.

– A tsar is born –

Buoyed by an influx of petrodollars that saw living standards soar, the Kremlin under Putin forged its own “sovereign democracy” in which the trappings of pluralism — such as political opposition and civil society — were subverted.

He has guarded his private life jealously and once famously told journalists to keep their “snotty noses” out of his business.

After three decades of marriage, he divorced his wife Lyudmila in 2013 but rumours of new romance — including with a former Olympic gymnast — have not been confirmed.

In line with the constitution, when Putin ended his second term in 2008, he handed power to protege Dmitry Medvedev and moved to become prime minister — but few doubted who was really in charge.

In 2012, he returned as president in the face of huge street protests.

While the demonstrations petered out after a police crackdown, the spectre of unrest spurred tough new measures to eradicate dissent.

– Crimea, Ukraine, Syria –

Putin, who once decried the collapse of the USSR as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century, has ferociously defended Moscow’s sphere of influence and also challenged perceived US hegemony.

When crowds in Ukraine ousted Russian-backed leader Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, the Kremlin faced losing its dominance over a key neighbour.

Within days, Putin ordered special forces to seize the strategic Crimea peninsula and — after a hasty referendum rejected internationally — in March 2014 signed off on the region’s annexation.

The redrawing of Russia’s border sparked the worst standoff with the West since the Cold War and unleashed a wave of nationalism at home that saw Putin’s popularity soar.

Soon the Kremlin was accused of masterminding a rebellion in east Ukraine that turned into a festering conflict that has cost more than 10,000 lives.

Despite sanctions pushing his economy into recession, Putin also launched a bombing campaign in Syria to support leader Bashar al-Assad in 2015. It is widely seen as the key factor that tipped the war in Assad’s favour.

Putin was then accused of spreading his tentacles much further and Moscow’s old foe — the United States — found itself in the crosshairs.

After Donald Trump’s shock election win, US intelligence accused Putin of ordering a hacking and influence campaign to get Trump to the White House.

“Those that lose always look to blame someone else,” Putin retorted.//AFP

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled northern Rakhine state to Bangladesh since Myanmar launched a brutal crackdown on insurgents six months ago that the US and UN have called ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar rejects that accusation, saying it was responding to attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army in late August.

But critics accuse the military of using the insurgent attacks to launch disproportionate, scorched-earth “clearance operations” as a pretext to push out the loathed minority.

The new Amnesty report, “Remaking Rakhine State,” uses satellite imagery and interviews to point to a rapid increase in military infrastructure and other construction since the start of the year that researchers say amounts to a “land grab”.

“The new evidence and the rebuilding that Amnesty has documented in our latest research shows that the Myanmar authorities are building over the top of the very places the Rohingya need to return to,” Tirana Hassan, Amnesty’s crisis response director, told AFP ahead of the report’s release on Monday.

“In some instances there has been the destruction of existing homes.”

Though admitting the images only paint a partial picture, the rights group says structures for security forces, helipads and even roads have been built in and around torched Rohingya properties.

Satellite imagery of one village called Kan Kya on the outskirts of Rakhine’s Maungdaw town taken two months after the August attacks shows a settlement scarred by fire.

But by early March buildings could be seen on the revamped land. Amnesty believes they are part of a new base for security forces.

Similar building activity was also detected in Inn Din village, where Myanmar has admitted that its security forces took part in the killings of 10 Rohingya residents in September.

Rakhine state has been largely sealed off from rights groups, the media and UN investigators.

Myanmar and Bangladesh were supposed to start repatriating Rohingya refugees in late January but many are reluctant to return to a place without guarantees of basic rights and safety.

The report also highlights concerns that abandoned Rohingya land will be set aside for ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and other non-Muslim groups in the area, and that alterations to the landscape will erase evidence of alleged atrocities by the military.

Myanmar officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Myanmar has denied claims it is covering up evidence, saying it is improving the standard of living in one of the poorest states in the country.

The unprecedented move follows its own unheeded calls to Tehran to end the harassment of staff working for the British broadcaster’s Persian Service, according to BBC director general,Tony Hall.

“The BBC is taking the unprecedented step of appealing to the United Nations because our own attempts to persuade the Iranian authorities to end their harassment have been completely ignored,” Hall said in a statement.

“In fact, during the past nine years, the collective punishment of BBC Persian Service journalists and their families has worsened.”

Lawyers for the BBC World Service in October filed an urgent appeal to UN Special Rapporteurs David Kaye and Asma Jahangir on behalf of its Persian Service staff.

BBC journalists will now try to increase the pressure on member states for support by addressing a UN Human Rights Council session this week, the corporation said in a statement.

It will also hold a series of events organised in conjunction with the International Federation of Journalists to highlight the fraught situation, including holding a press conference on Monday.

“This is not just about the BBC — we are not the only media organisation to have been harassed or forced to compromise when dealing with Iran,” said Hall.

“We are now asking the community of nations at the UN to support the BBC and uphold the right to freedom of expression.”

The BBC says its Persian satellite television service journalists in London and their families in Iran have been “systematically targeted” since it launched in 2009.

The harassment escalated last year when Iranian authorities began a criminal investigation alleging their work was “a crime against Iran’s national security”, according to the BBC.

Tehran has also launched an asset-freezing injunction citing 152 named individuals, mainly current and former BBC Persian staff, which has prevented them from buying or selling property in Iran, it added.

In a report to be tabled and discussed at the Human Rights Council, UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran, Asma Jahangir, said the body was “disturbed” at the accusations.

The magnitude 9.0 quake — which struck under the Pacific Ocean on March 11, 2011 — and the resulting tsunami caused widespread damage and took the lives of thousands of people.

The killer tsunami also swamped the emergency power supply at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, sending its reactors into meltdown as cooling systems failed in what was the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

Abe, lawmakers and family members who lost their loved ones in the disaster bowed their heads in silent prayer at a ceremony in Tokyo at 2:46 pm (0546 GMT) — the exact moment the quake struck.

Japanese private broadcasters also showed residents in the affected areas offering a moment of silence.

“I offer my condolences to those who lost their beloved family members and friends,” said Abe, dressed in formal mourning attire.

Hideko Igarashi, one of the three residents from the disaster-hit region who spoke at the ceremony, said Japan should “never forget what we learned from the disaster”.

The 70-year-old woman from Fukushima was hit by tsunami waves right after she began preparing to leave the area with her husband and uncle.

“I grabbed a pine tree but I was swamped by the tsunami… My husband got away from me and he shouted ‘Hideko’ three times,” she said.

Igarashi survived and was later rescued by an emergency team.

“I wish I had told him to run away much earlier.”

Japan’s ageing Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko did not attend the ceremony this year again, but were represented by their son Prince Akishino and his wife Princess Kiko.

The total of dead or missing from the earthquake and the tsunami stood at 18,434 people, according to the National Police Agency.

In addition, more than 3,600 people — most of them from Fukushima — died from causes such as illness and suicide linked to the aftermath of the tragedy, government data shows.

More than 73,000 people still remain displaced, while no one is officially recorded as having died as a direct result of the nuclear catastrophe.

The government lifted evacuation orders of some areas in Iitate village and the towns of Namie, Kawamata and Tomioka last spring, except for no-go zones with high radiation levels.

Authorities are encouraging evacuees to return, but a government survey released earlier this month showed that about half the residents of Namie and Tomioka are not willing to return.

Around 12,000 people who fled their homes for fear of radiation have filed dozens of lawsuits against the government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the operator of the stricken nuclear plant.//AFP

    China’s rubber-stamp parliament, meeting in the imposing Great Hall of the People for an annual session, made Xi the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong on Sunday by scrapping term limits that would have forced him to step down after 2023.

The decision moves one-party China further away from adopting a democratic system that many Western thinkers and politicians had once assumed was inevitable as the country opened up to global trade.

It fits a pattern worldwide that has seen the model of liberal democracy — based on individual rights, the rule of law and the free press — lose ground as many countries turn instead to more authoritarian forms of government.

“We think it (liberal democracy) is normal and obviously it’s not, because in the whole of human history, democracy has not existed for all that long in terms of the international order,” said George Magnus, associate at the China Centre at Oxford University.

Regimes with illiberal leaders “reject the kind of democratic model we have kind of grown up with,” he added.

These include Vladimir Putin of Russia, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, who all came to power through the ballot box but have since trampled democratic norms.

Other global contemporary strongmen include Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, who took part in a coup against a democratically elected Islamist government.

“It is certain that the club of managed (or guided) democracies is growing,” said Caroline Galacteros, director of the Planeting strategic intelligence consultancy in France.

In Europe, Hungary’s Viktor Orban has become a posterboy for what he calls a form of “illiberal democracy” while US President Donald Trump also embodies a spreading strain of aggressive nationalism worldwide.

Trump’s “America First” mantra and attacks on institutions such as the FBI, the judiciary and the free press are testing the democratic checks and balances in the US constitution.

– Chinese model –

Human rights campaigners warn that authoritarians and autocrats worldwide are exploiting discontent over globalisation, industrial decline, terrorism and migration to justify their actions.

According to the Freedom House human rights watchdog, democracy “faced its most serious crisis in decades” in 2017, which was the 12th year in a row that individual freedoms were found to have declined.

Furthermore, under Trump the US has lost the moral authority to effectively condemn abuses in other countries, critics say, while Europe is struggling with its own nationalists in Hungary and Poland.

“This illiberal temptation is something we should not take lightly today and will doubtless constitute one of the battles France, but also the European Union, will have to undertake in 2018, including with some of its members,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in January.

– ‘Managed democracies’ –

In the 1990s, intellectuals such as Francis Fukuyama questioned whether humanity had reached the “end of history”, with liberal democracy and capitalism apparently victorious over communism and totalitarianism.

But by the turn of the century, analysts were warning of the emergence of semi-authoritarian states — countries that like Turkey and Russia fall somewhere between democracy and dictatorship.

China’s trajectory was always unknown, but the country has taken a decisive turn away from the idea of a more pluralistic society with greater political freedoms.

And, thanks to its fast economic growth and growing military might, it is serving as a counter-example for the democratic model — with fans in sometimes surprising places.

“The great leaders of the world come from countries that are not great democracies,” said former French president Nicolas Sarkozy at a conference in Abu Dhabi last weekend.

Sarkozy, who faces multiple investigations over corruption allegations related to his one term in office from 2007-2012, said strong leadership in China, Russia and Saudi Arabia meant there was “no populism” there.

Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, said democratic leaders have a responsibility to speak out against autocracies and despots who depend on large-scale repression to keep their grip on power.

“It is important for democratic leaders both to highlight the emptiness of the autocrats’ political programs and to stress the danger of enabling leaders who claim to speak for the majority,” he said.

“China has been providing economic support to autocrats around the world and increasingly is trying to silence criticism of its own autocratic model even within liberal democracies.”

He cited Beijing’s close financial links to repressive regimes in countries such as Venezuela and Zimbabwe.//AFP

The red-dressed winner fended off 26 competitors, from countries spanning Mongolia to Mexico, to clinch the coveted crown in the seaside town of Pattaya, where the popular contest has been running since 2004.

While the competition is fierce, contestants say the pageant also offers an opportunity for camaraderie among trans women who hail from different backgrounds but share similar stories of discrimination back home.

Ahead of the coronation late Friday, the diverse group of competitors packed into a bustling dressing room to lacquer on lipstick and primp their hair as an army of stylists buzzed around them.

“This is my first international experience of coming to pageant where it is really a big exposure to all my trans sisters all over the world,” Nitasha Biswas, from India, told AFP after making the final adjustments to a sparkling beige dress.

Thailand’s relatively open-minded attitude on LGBT issues also offers a refuge for contestants who hail from less tolerant countries, including neighbouring Myanmar.

“Myanmar is a developing country so there is still only a small amount of transgender people,” Juana Paing, a contestant from the poor and conservative nation, told AFP.

“I want to try my best for Myanmar to be more open for transgenders,” she added.

Thailand has a large and visible transgender population and is one of the world’s top destinations for sex-reassignment surgery.

Yet some segments of society remain deeply conservative.

Despite high levels of education, many transgender people struggle to secure full-time work in professions outside the entertainment and sex industries.

Same sex marriage is also still not legally recognised, and up until 2012, transgenders were considered mentally ill by the army.

Vietnam, where this year’s pageant winner hails from, has seen a growing LGBT scene in recent years while its communist government is drafting a landmark law that could allow some trans people to legally change their gender.

Joe Wong, who works with the advocacy group Asia Pacific Transgender Network (APTN), applauded contests like “Miss International Queen” as a “powerful medium to showcase the challenges, talents and hopes of trans people”.

“I’ve learnt from others that contests like these create sisterhood and bonds,” he told AFP, adding that the pageants would however benefit from a more inclusive definition of beauty.//AFP

    The machine is sending data to Safecast, an NGO born after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster that says it has now built the world’s largest radiation dataset, thanks to the efforts of citizen scientists like Seirinji’s priest Sadamaru Okano.

Like many Japanese, Okano lost faith in the government after the nuclear meltdown seven years ago.

“The government didn’t tell us the truth, they didn’t tell us the true measures,” he told AFP, seated inside the 150-year-old temple.

Okano was in a better position than most to doubt the government line, having developed an amateur interest in nuclear technology two decades earlier after learning about the Chernobyl disaster.

To the bemusement of friends and family, he started measuring local radiation levels in 2007, so when the disaster happened, he had baseline data.

“The readings were so high… 50 times higher than natural radiation,” he said of the post-disaster data.

“I was amazed… the news was telling us there was nothing, the administration was telling us there was nothing to worry about.”

That dearth of trustworthy information was the genesis of Safecast, said co-founder Pieter Franken, who was in Tokyo with his family when the disaster hit.

Franken and several friends had the idea of gathering data by attaching Geiger counters to cars and driving around.

“Like how Google does Street View, we could do something for radiation in the same way,” he said.

“The only problem was that the system to do that didn’t exist and the only way to solve that problem was to go and build it ourselves. So that’s what we did.”

– Making informed choices –

Within a week, the group had a prototype and began getting readings that suggested the 20 kilometre (12 mile) exclusion zone declared around the Fukushima plant had no basis in the data, Franken said.

“Evacuees were sent from areas with lower radiation to areas with higher radiation” in some cases, he said.

The zone was eventually redrawn, but for many local residents it was too late to restore trust in the government.

Okano evacuated his mother, wife and son while he stayed with his flock.

But a year later, based on his own readings and after decontamination efforts, he brought them back.

He learned about Safecast’s efforts and in 2013 installed one of their static counters on his temple, in part to help reassure worshippers.

“I told them: we are measuring the radiation on a daily basis… so if you access the (Safecast) website you can choose (if you think) it’s safe or not.”

Forty kilometres away, in the town of Koriyama, Norio Watanabe was supervising patiently as his giggling teenage pupils attempted to build basic versions of Safecast’s Geiger counter.

Dressed in blazers and tartan skirts, the girls pored over instructions on where to place diodes and wires.

Watanabe has been a Safecast volunteer since 2011, and has a mobile Geiger counter in his car.

In the days after the disaster evacuees flocked to Koriyama, which was outside the evacuation zone, and he assumed his town was safe.

“But after I started to do the measurements, I realised there was a high level of risk here as well,” he said.

– ‘You can’t ignore it’ –

He sent his children away, but stayed behind to look after his mother, a decision he believes may have contributed to his 2015 diagnosis with thyroid cancer.

“As a scientist, I think the chance that it was caused by the Fukushima accident might be 50-50, but in my heart, I think it was likely the cause,” he said.

His thyroid was removed and he is now healthy, but Watanabe worries about his students, who he fears “will carry risk with them for the rest of their lives.”

“If there are no people like me who continue to monitor the levels, it will be forgotten.”

Safecast now has around 3,000 devices worldwide and data from 90 countries. Its counters come as a kit that volunteers can buy through third parties and assemble at home.

Because volunteers choose where they want to measure at random and often overlap, “they validate unknowingly each other’s measurements,” said Franken, and anomalies or exceptions are checked by Safecast staff.

The NGO is now expanding into measuring air pollution, initially mostly in the US city of Los Angeles during a test phase.

Its radiation data is all open source, and has been used to study everything from the effects of fallout on wildlife to how people move around cities, said Franken.

He says Safecast’s data mostly corroborates official measurements, but provides readings that are more relevant to people’s lives.

“Our volunteers decide to measure where their schools are, where their workplaces are, where their houses are.”

And he believes Safecast has helped push Japan’s government to realise that “transparency and being open are very important to create trust.”

“The power of citizen science means that you can’t stop it and also that you can’t ignore it.”//AFP

Responding to a query raised by YB Khairunnisa binti Haji Ash’ari at the 14th Legislative Council session which entered its fourth day yesterday, the minister also said the PMO, in cooperation with the departments responsible for information and communication technology, is also planning to frame out guidelines for wise usage of social media.

Acknowledging the viral spread of unverified reports and malicious messages on social media, the minister added that a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to contain the spread of malevolent information has been put in place.

The ministry concerned has been mandated to analyse fake reports or news spread through the social media and will give a response statement to counter and correct unverified news.

If such news or report is spread through websites or social media platforms, concerned ministries will take up the issue with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry of Brunei Darussalam (AITI) for taking action, the minister said.

Meanwhile, in a bid to instil awareness on the safe use of social media among the public, the national Content Advisory Council (CAC) has introduced a social media educational package to ensure proper sharing of information and facilitate the prudent use of this vulnerable platform.

This new initiative was highlighted by YB Awang Abdul Mutalib bin Pehin Orang Kaya Seri Setia Dato Paduka Haji Mohammad Yusof, the Minister of Communications, at the Legislative Council session yesterday.

He said this in response to a motion put forward by YB Khairunnisa binti Haji Ash’ari on introducing a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to weed out fake news and prevent the spread of it.

The minister welcomed the suggestion by the member and ensured that the committee members of CAC, which comprises the Ministry of Communications, the PMO and other government bodies and security agencies, will support all efforts to promote the positive use of social media and educate users about online etiquette.

In line with the Ministry of Primary Resources and Tourism’s (MPRT) Strategic Goals and Key Areas of the Main Resources of the ministry such as Productivity Improvement for Modern Technology and Modernisation in broadening activities in all farming, fishing, and animal husbandry activities.

This was highlighted by the Minister of Primary Resources and Tourism YB Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Ali bin Haji Apong at the 14th Legislative Council session on Thursday, responding to a query by YB Iswandy bin Ahmad on integrating technology physically, digitally and biologically, and on policies to adapt such changes to stir economic growth in the near future.

In adapting these changes, the country encourages the needs for technological applications towards expanding key resource sectors and the tourism sector.

The appropriate technology adaptation approaches include the application of LED, vertical farming, green house, fertigation and hydroponics, and agricultural industries in farming.

The minister said others include closed house system and multi-level houses in broiler industry as well as multi-storey tanks for the maintenance of fish and shrimps. For financial transaction management, the adaptation of the e-payment system is an initiative already implemented under the Brunei Darussalam National Single Window (BDNSW) system and similar to other systems that facilitate the users.

The assailant struck at 10:20 am (1820 GMT) at the Veterans Home of California-Yountville in the Napa Valley, the largest veterans’ home in the United States with around 1,000 former servicemen and women.

“Shortly before 6:00 pm this evening law enforcement personnel made entry into the room where we felt the hostages were being held by the suspect and unfortunately made the discovery of three deceased females and one deceased male suspect,” Captain Chris Childs of the California Highway Patrol told a news conference.

“This is a tragic piece of news, one we were really hoping we wouldn’t have to come before the public to give.”

The Napa County Sheriff’s Office had earlier issued an advisory on social media telling people to avoid the area following reports of gunfire, as the California Highway Patrol dispatched officers, air support and a SWAT team to the site.

Childs said a sheriff’s deputy who was first on the scene exchanged fire with the suspect, adding that “we credit him with saving the lives of others in the area by eliminating the ability for the suspect to go out and find further victims.”

The three victims were described by local media as employees of The Pathway Home, an on-site counseling service for veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

It is was not immediately clear whether they had been targeted or were chosen at random.

The San Francisco Chronicle said the gunman — apparently a 36-year-old war veteran wearing “a stash of bullets” around his neck and waist — had been on the PTSD treatment program, adding that his weapon was a rifle.

– Gunman was calm –

It quoted state senator Bill Dodd identifying the program’s executive director, Christine Loeber, as being one of the dead, although the victims’ names have not been officially released.

Police did not say how they died, although local media, citing unnamed sources, reported that the assailant shot the three women before turning the gun on himself.

Dodd, whose district includes the center, said the gunman had been asked to leave several days earlier, according to the Chronicle.

“It’s a residential program so guys live in the building, staff work in the building,” Larry Kamer, whose wife Devereaux Smith was working at the center, told the local ABC7 News channel.

Smith, a development director for The Pathway Home, was one of four women released by the gunman, said Kamer.

“There was a going away party for a couple of the staff who were leaving today. They were having cake and toasting and all that and then he apparently just walked in with this rifle.”

Kamer said the gunman was calm and talked to everyone present.

The discovery came after several fruitless hours of trying to contact the man by the sheriff’s department, City of Napa Police and the FBI.

California Department of Veterans Affairs secretary Vito Imbasciani said in a statement the agency was “devastated” by the deaths.

“Our hearts are heavy for the entire Yountville Veterans Home community and the families and friends who are grieving for those who died,” he added.

“Nothing matters more than caring for our veterans and employees during this difficult time. We appreciate the tremendous law enforcement response today and unfailing support of this community.”