Ms sect b 20170101 sunday

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SUNDAY, JANUARY 1, 2017

Opinion

Adelle Chua, Editor mst.daydesk@gmail.com

I HEREBY RESOLVE...

EDITORIAL

By Justin Fox MY MAIN New Year’s resolution for 2017 is pretty much the same as always: Stop eating Christmas cookies, cut back on the drinking and get back to the gym. This resolve tends to stick for much of the year—only during the next holiday season does everything invariably fall apart again. Maybe I should consider making this a preThanksgiving resolution.

I’ve had some other resolutions on my mind this week, though, and it struck me that they might be of wider applicability for a year that so many people are approaching with a hangover—literal, metaphorical or both—and a lot of trepidation.

Also, while I don’t really believe that New Year’s resolutions are the key to ending the productivity-growth slowdown that has been weighing on the economy for the past decade-plus, they can’t hurt, right? So here goes.

Go outside. Modern professional life generally happens indoors. That’s inevitable, but for me staying in the building often means getting stuck in a rut, or even a funk. Just walking around the block shakes things up a little, but I’m lucky enough to have a job where I can count wandering around a California alfalfa field or a Chinese theme park as work. So why am I not doing that more often? And on weekends, why am I not spending more time exploring the gigantic, endlessly surprising city I live in?

Seriously, I need to get out more.

Maybe you do, too.

Talk to human beings, in person.

This is obviously key for a journalist, but it seems kind of important for all of us. Virtual interaction is efficient. It can open up new worlds.

It’s also incomplete, and often onedimensional. Interacting with data can be great, too. But it comes with its own biases and blinders.

Actual conversations take time. They complicate things. That’s why they’re so important.

B e generous. Yo u c a n’t b e generous to everybody. But it’s too easy to use that as an excuse not to be generous to anybody. I’m not just talking about panhandlers on the subway (although I am talking about panhandlers on the subway). It’s also that friend whose book manuscript is waiting to be read, that family member who could use a little encouragement and help, that good idea that might wither without some attention and promotion. I’m never going to be another Adam Grant—the tireless Wharton School professor who has made helpfulness into a personal and professional credo. But I do think Grant is right that generosity benefits the generous. (Which is, of course, a terribly ungenerous reason to be generous, but, well … ) Have a plan. Benjamin Franklin famously made a habit of asking himself every morning: “What good shall I do this day?” After that he would, “contrive [the] day’s business, and take the resolution of the day.” This is the basic rule of personal effectiveness— have some idea of what you aim to accomplish before you head out to face the day, or week, or year. As a self-help skeptic I’m a little alarmed to

PREVIEWS

W

E ALWAYS like to portray the future as a period of great uncertainty. us, finally, the kind we want and expect like the upliftment of the poor, better wealth distribution and the change in behavior of our government officials?

Will investments come, and stay, and will the ordinary wage earner be no longer afraid that he may not have his job after five months?

Will communities be better able to anticipate, prepare for and recover from disasters?

And will people eventually feel safe in their homes or on the streets, without worrying that they would be hapless victims or collateral damage in the war against illegal drugs and the inordinate zeal with which agents of the government carry it out?

The outcome may be too hazy to contemplate now. There are numerous factors we may not realize at the present time.

What we can know for certain, however, are the concrete steps we commit to take in pursuit of our objectives.

If we remain true to these well thought out programs, track progress and reject distractions, we will have a fair idea of where we would be by the end of the year, a knowledge based on reason, not divination.

What will happen in a few months or years is something that can only be predicted by the very wise or divined by those with a crystal ball.

After all, did it not come a surprise that a city mayor from Mindanao would emerge as the president of the land when we believed early frontrunners, all national figures, would dominate the elections held in May? And were we not taken aback by the extent of the prevalence of the drug menace? We had known all along it was there, all right, but we had no idea that it was so widespread and deeply rooted such that the people we believed protected the people were protecting drug dealers instead.

Today, the first day of 2017, we again express wonder at what could possibly happen this year. What challenges will our nation face, and will our people be any better for them? Will change dawn upon

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A TIME FOR EVERYTHING LONG STORY SHORT ADELLE CHUA

MANY say 2016 was a bad year in many respects. Many prominent and wellloved names passed on, there were a number of disasters, and Filipinos got a surprise they never quite bargained for.

I know some friends for whom the year carried a less-than-fair dose of surprises and tragedies. Personally, 2016 for me

The past year was not bad.

It was just sobering.

was still good, and I would prefer to call even the bad episodes sobering.

The best takeaway I had was that we should, for the sake of our sanity, make time for just a little bit of everything.

Time alone.

The cliché is that we work so hard on regular days that we should find time,

on weekends or during breaks, to spend time with the people who matter to us.

Whether it’s a movie date, dinner, coffee or drinks, what is important is the opportunity to catch up and be updated with what is going on in our loved ones’ lives. Perhaps we dish out advice, but for Turn to B2

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SUNDAY, JANUARY 1, 2017 mst.daydesk@gmail.com

A TIME...

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the most part, we offer companionship and that’s good enough as it is.

In doing all these, we forget there is one other important person to spend quality time with—ourselves. Some people, extroverts mostly, may be horrified at the idea of dining out or going to the cinema alone, or even spending one full day indoors with no human interaction whatsoever. This year I learned that time alone is premium time. It recharges you, gives you the proper perspective and puts you in your place.

Time to bring order into chaos.

When you don’t clear your desk, the paper piles up and entropy takes over until what lies in front of you is a large blob of things made up of things you need, things you don’t need, and things you think you may need at some future time. It’s a kind of laziness, really, to avoid making these little decisions so that we get rid of the baggage and accumulate less. As for me, I try to set aside 10 minutes every day for this exercise. It’s liberating.

Time to shed the image of perfection or invincibility.

Parents, especially, or those occupying positions of ascendancy, may find themselves bogged down with the pressure of always having to be perfect: Knowing all the answers, always being right. In truth, this is all an illusion. Even the brightest people are bright only in their field of expertise, and sometimes make serious errors in judgment. The compulsion to let everybody else believe they are not capable of being wrong, or stupid, may take a toll on their well-being.

So, for once, it may be good to show one’s weak side. Slip up and let others know you are capable of hurting, or crying, or admitting your frailty. After all, what is important is the journey back up, not the fall.

Time to indulge.

We sometimes confuse being smart as always playing by the rules and always doing the right thing. This is the ideal behavior, but we are not robots. I learned that it is not a crime to indulge ourselves sometimes: overloading on your favorite food (whatever the doctor says), binge watching your favorite series at the expense of your scheduled tasks, traveling without an itinerary, or even spending an insane amount of time conversing with a friend online.

We must all be adults sometimes and need to get back to what we have to do, eventually. We must not punish ourselves so if we slip up from time to time—so long as we know when it is time to whip ourselves back into shape.

Time for processes.

Everyone has had to deal with varying kinds of disappointment. The human reaction to such is not at all pretty. In fact, it could be ugly. For somebody who is always reasonable, logical and in charge, unpleasant surprises and frustrations may seem like a death knell. Imagine being lodged out of your equilibrium, not having all the answers, wondering whether you have all the truth in front of you, and feeling as though you just want to disappear from it all.

You will yearn for immediate resolutions. You wish you can get over your disappointments right away, and cross over to the part when you are already okay. You will give anything, do anything, to be in charge and logical and whole once again.

You can’t. Processes take time, and there is no way to get around them.

Otherwise, progress will be a sham.

Don’t worry—it will come, just not now. Don’t you want to stick around to experience how awesome it will be?

Time to do nothing.

We were brought up to believe that to be idle is a bad thing. Working, and working hard, is the ideal situation.

Perhaps it is knowing more about life, or growing old, or both, but more and more my idea of a perfect day is a day to do nothing. Again, it is not a crime. On the contrary, we need it so that when it is really time for is to do something, we will be rested and powered and raring to do more than we ever set out to do.

Time to disconnect.

Over the past few years, the internet has changed the way we live. We have always been available, easy to reach and easy volunteer information about ourselves, whether we realize it or not.

Being “out there” all the time can be quite exhausting. How to keep up with friends and family who are all also out there, discoverable with just a click of a finger?

To deliberately take time off might then be the single biggest favor you can do yourself. If a matter is truly urgent, people can call you on your landline or mobile. Everything else can seem to wait. It’s magical, quiet and immensely peaceful. And then after this lull, you feel you can take on and make sense of the noise of the world again.

2016 was challenging. May we all thrive in 2017. adellechua@gmail.com

WHY 2016 IS LONGER BY 1 SECOND

By Pecier Decierdo 2016, which has been dubbed by many as “the worst year ever,” has a leap second on its last day. That means the year 2016, which for many has been a tough year, is longer by 1 second. But why?

Well, it has to do with our human desire to impose a simple order into a chaotic cosmos.

Here’s the gist. An extra second will be added to Dec. 31, 2016 so that the time in our modern clocks will reflect the cycles of the seasons. We want a clock set in a way that when it reads noon, the sun is near its highest point in the sky. A leap second was also added on June 30, 2015.

Almost all clocks we use in modern life follow the system of time called the Coordinated Universal Time. The clocks on your computers and smartphones are synchronized with UTC. Your local time is derived from it. For example, Philippine Standard Time is UTC plus 8 hours.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of UTC. For one, it allows people, and computers, from different time zones to communicate with each other using a time they all agree on. It is used in global financial trans-

actions and on the internet to provide time stamps. Important events such as the arrival of shipments in a port and the landing and taking off of planes in a busy airport are all scheduled in UTC. Even the Global Positioning System many of us have become dependent on utilizes UTC. It is the clock by which modern civilization ticks, which is why it’s important that it ticks at a very regular pace.

Ever since humans tried keeping the time, we have been searching for things that happen with predictable regularity. The most obvious ones are the cycles in the sky. The sun rises and sets with some regularity, giving us day and night. However, this regularity is not perfect. Sometimes, the day is longer than the night; at other times it’s the opposite.

So people looked at other, longer cycles. For instance, there was one day in the year that was longer than any other. During this day, sunrise happens earlier than on any other day, and sunrise happens later than on any other day. This day was called the summer solstice. The time from one solstice to another was made the basis of a year.

With a year defined, all that’s left is to do is divide it into months, weeks,

days, hours, and seconds. Only there were problems.

The biggest was that the seasons drifted across the calendar. This meant that the arrival of a season, say the rainy season, is bound to move across the calendar. If not corrected, there will come a time when summer will be on December. People found that undesirable.

To prevent this drifting, extra days were added now and again. Leap years were invented. Years divisible by four are made leap years and are given 366 days instead of the usual 365. However, years divisible by 100 were not leap years, except those divisible by 400, because those are leap years.

This complicated scheme still does not solve all of the problems, but for a while it seemed good enough. Until we hit another problem—the length of the same day in the year was changing. April 1 in one year seemed to be just a little longer than April 1 of the previous year. The spin of the Earth, it seems, is slowing down.

Another way of defining how long a day is had to be invented.

Enter the atomic clock, a clock that ticked with a simpler regularity that did not care for the complexities of

the seasonal salsa and the celestial rumba. If we defined a second using this clock, we have defined a unit of time that remained constant throughout history. Add 8640 of these seconds, you get a day.

The atomic clock was the clock for the 21st century. It kept time in a way that was stable enough to form the basis of the modern world.

Except this precise clock did not reflect the cycles people lived by.

That had to change; people want to have their cake and eat it, too.

It was out of this desire to have a system of time that was both stable and synchronized with cycles of the seasons and the sun that the UTC was invented. But for it to work, extra seconds have to be added now and again.

However, the addition of the next leap second is very hard to predict. It is a hidden messiness that makes the semblance of order possible, a token of the human desire to establish a simple order in a chaotic cosmos.

I hope you enjoy your extra second of 2016.

Pecier Decierdo is resident physicist and astronomer of The Mind Museum.

SANCTIONING RUSSIA IS JUST A START

This file photo taken on Sept. 5, 2016 shows Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting with his US counterpart Barack Obama on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders Summit in Hangzhou. Russia on Dec. 30 eyed retaliatory measures against the US after President Obama kicked out dozens of suspected intelligence agents and imposed sanctions in a furious dispute over alleged election interference. The barrage of punishment against Moscow over cyberattacks dragged ties between Russia and the United States—already at their worst since the Cold War—to a fresh low less than a month ahead of President-elect Donald Trump taking charge. AFP

PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s imposition of sweeping new sanctions against Russian spies is long overdue, risky and tarnished by political calculation. It is also the right thing to do.

The White House said on Thursday it planned to toss 35 suspected spies and their families out of the country; sanction two intelligence agencies, four intelligence officers, three companies and two alleged hackers; shut two compounds used by Russian diplomats; and take “a variety of other actions,” some of which will be covert. The penalties were in response to long catalog of Russian provocations, most recently—and explosively—its interference in the US presidential election. They were accompanied by a detailed report.

In espionage, as in nuclear strategy, the name of the game is risk management. And on this score, the president’s

actions were properly calibrated.

Ejecting the spies has already spurred retaliation, though the exact nature is uncertain. But it also makes clear that the US does not tolerate the routine harassment of its diplomats in Moscow, and sends a message that any future electoral cyber-attacks will come with very high costs. That should offer reassurance (and perhaps a model) for European countries fearful that Russia has designs on their own elections.

Likewise, the sanctions placed on intelligence officials—including travel bans and asset freezes—signal that cyberattacks are no longer anonymous or beyond the reach of US law, and that the humans behind them can be identified and held liable. That won’t prevent all future attacks. But it should force perpetrators to think twice: After the US

indicted five Chinese military hackers in 2014 for corporate espionage, such attacks all but ceased.

The promise of covert action is harder to judge without more details. A demonstration of US power in cyberspace might well concentrate minds. But it could also reveal sources and methods that are valuable to American spies, escalate a conflict in which the US has much more to lose, and set a dangerous precedent: The disclosure in 2010 that the US had used malware to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program seemed to legitimize a new form of cyberattack, and gave potential hackers plenty of new ideas. Caution should be the byword.

More constructively, the US has to come to an accommodation with Russia about norms of behavior in cyberspace.

It should offer to cooperate on issues of common interest, such as terrorism. But it should also reserve the right to widen sanctions and penalties until Russia gets the message that the costs of cyberwarfare outweigh the benefits.

Which suggests a final concern.

Obama clearly waited too long to make this announcement—it would have been far more relevant before the election than after, and he should have had the confidence to let the politics adjust to his policy, instead of the other way around. That said, part of his intention now is surely to pressure his successor into taking this issue seriously. Assuming President-elect Donald Trump sees the need to defend American elections and institutions from foreign interference, Obama’s actions give him a good foundation. He’ll have to take it from there. Bloomberg

workweek without any kind of plan.

Plans aren’t necessarily for sticking to.

It’s just that without them, all you can do realize that I’m now basically writing a is react. This goes for organizations, too.

Go out on a limb. No, I haven’t self-help column. But I’m also alarmed at how often I start my workday or chosen the limb—or, more likely,

limbs—yet. I’ll look for sturdy ones! But at a time when the consensus view has been wrong again and again, departing from that consensus seems like almost a safe bet. This isn’t the same as being contrary. It means coming up with

unique, independent arguments—or, short of that, giving attention to those who have. I’m big on being reasonable, but reasonableness always risks settling into consensus-seeking caution. And what fun is that?

I HEREBY...

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World

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SUNDAY, JANUARY 1, 2017 mst.daydesk@gmail.com

BAN KI-MOON LEAVES UN UNITED NATIONS -- UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon paid an emotional farewell to the United Nations on Saturday, wistfully describing his two-term stint at the helm of the global body as something of a fairy tale.

“I feel a bit like Cinderella. Tomorrow at midnight, everything changes!” he joked to staff and colleagues as he wrapped up a decade leading the United Nations.

Beginning Sunday, former Portuguese prime minister Antonio Guterres, 67, takes over from Ban. Guterres is the first former head of government to lead the UN, succeeding Ban for a five-year term.

Ban, in a more serious vein, said it has been a “privilege” to have been at the head of an organization that endeavored to tamp down global conflict and end suffering -- and said it was an honor to have shared that mission with his co-workers.

“You should be very proud -- just as I am so very proud to call you my colleagues,” the South Korean diplomat said. AFP

WORKERS WIN ‘RIGHT TO DISCONNECT’ PARIS—French companies will be required to guarantee a “right to disconnect” to their employees from Sunday as the country seeks to tackle the modern-day scourge of compulsive out-of-hours email checking.

From January 1, a new employment law will enter into force that obliges organisations with more than 50 workers to start negotiations to define the rights of employees to ignore their smartphones.

Overuse of digital devices has been blamed for everything from burnout to sleeplessness as well as relationship problems, with many employees uncertain of when they can switch off.

The French measure is intended to tackle the so-called “always-on” work culture that has led to a surge in usually unpaid overtime -- while also giving employees flexibility to work from outside the office.

“There’s a real expectation that companies will seize on the ‘right to disconnect’ as a protective measure,” said Xavier Zunigo, a French workplace expert, as a new survey on the subject was published in October.

“At the same time, workers don’t want to lose the autonomy and flexibility that digital devices give them,” added Zunigo, who is an academic and director of research group Aristat.

AFP

RUSSIA URGES SPEEDY UN RESO ON SYRIA TRUCE IDLIB, SYRIA—Russia was hoping for a swift UN Security Council vote to bolster its fragile Syria ceasefire Saturday, though diplomats expressed doubt the resolution would pass so quickly or be unanimous.

Moscow says it wants the UN involved in the peace talks between Damascus and rebels it has scheduled to be held in Astana, Kazakhstan in January, although the UN is negotiating its own separate peace efforts slated for February.

The ceasefire, which came into effect Thursday midnight, was holding across most of Syria, though clashes near Damascus underlined the fragility of the deal brokered by rebel supporter Turkey and key regime ally Russia.

Ankara and Moscow say the Astana talks are meant to supplement UN-backed peace efforts, rather than replace them, and want to involve regional players like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan.

Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin voiced hope that the council could vote Saturday “and adopt it unanimously”.

Diplomats however, said they did not see how a quick UN weekend vote could occur as the resolution needed to be “seriously studied” and hinted Russia might be hard-pressed to muster the nine votes needed for it to pass.

AFP

MERRY MAKING. Members of Saturno Club, group which tries to preserve the traditions of Sumpango, get ready to parade in costumes along the streets of Sumpango, Sacatepequez, 45 km west of Guatemala City during their annual event on December 30, 2016. AFP

IS CHIEF ALIVE, STILL LEADING—PENTAGON

T

he Pentagon expressed concern over reports that Islamic State chief Abu Bakr alBaghdadi is indeed alive, despite repeated efforts by the US-led coalition to take out the jihadist group leader.

Baghdadi has kept a low profile, despite having declared himself the leader of a renewed Muslim caliphate, but last month released a defiant audio message urging his supporters to defend the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

It is not clear if he is in the be-

sieged city, where he declared his caliphate in 2014 after the IS group seized territory covering much of eastern Syria and northern Iraq.

“We do think Baghdadi is alive and is still leading ISIL and we are obviously doing everything we

can to track his movements,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told CNN. “If we get the opportunity, we certainly would take advantage of any opportunity to deliver him the justice he deserves,” he said.

“We’re doing everything we can.

This is something we’re spending a lot of time on.”

In mid-December, the United States more than doubled the bounty on the shadowy IS leader’s head to $25 million.

The group has only released one video of Baghdadi, showing a man with a black and grey beard wear-

ing a black robe and matching turban, dating back to 2014.

Cook suggested that Baghdadi is isolated because coalition raids have killed many IS leaders.

“He’s having a hard time finAding advisers and confidants to speak with because a lot of them are no longer with us,” the spokesman said.

According to an official Iraqi government document, Baghdadi was born in Samarra in 1971. He apparently joined the insurgency that erupted after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and spent time in an American military prison. AFP

PUTIN REFUSES TO EXPEL US DIPLOMATS, TRUMP APPLAUDS

PURIFICATION. People motion their hands to draw in smoke from incense sticks as part of rituals as they visit the Sensoji temple in Tokyo on New Year’s Eve on December 31. AFP

WASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump on Friday praised President Vladimir Putin for refraining from tit-for-tat expulsions of Americans in response to US punitive measures over alleged Russian interference in the November election.

Putin’s decision came despite the foreign ministry asking him to send home 35 US diplomats after President Barack Obama had expelled the same number of Russian staff.

Trump’s intervention -- in a tweet -- however illustrated the shifting political tide in Washington, barely three weeks before the Republican is due to succeed Obama at the White House.

“Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart!” the incoming US president wrote.

Russia’s embassy in Washington quickly retweeted the comment, which Trump pinned so it would appear at the top of his feed for several hours.

Trump’s tweet enraged his Democratic foes as well as some members of his own Republican Party. “@realDonaldTrump alternates between embracing Russian subversion & downplaying it, but his support for Putin is constant. We must know why,” wrote Evan McMullin, who ran as an independent presidential candidate after serving as policy director for the House Republican Conference.

Claire McCaskill, a Democrat who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote: “Our ENTIRE cyber intel community, best in world btw, agrees that this guy tried to mess in our election & the Russians are RT TrumpPutin love.”

The alleged hacking of the US presidential election in November outraged Obama, culminating in the expulsions and other sanctions.

But outlining why he would not retaliate, Putin cited Trump’s imminent accession.

“We will not expel anyone,” Putin said in a statement, also inviting children of US diplomats to a holiday party at the Kremlin. AFP

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SUNDAY, JANUARY 1, 2017 Cesar Barrioquinto, Editor

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World

Joyce Pangco-Pañares, Issue Editor, mst.daydesk@gmail.com

SYDNEY KICKS OFF NEW YEAR PARTY AMID GLOBAL THREAT S

YDNEY—Global terror attacks have cast a pall over New Year celebrations but Sydney was Saturday set to defy the threats and ring in 2017 with a firework extravaganza on the glittering harbour.

2016 has seen repeated bloodshed, most recently a deadly truck attack at a Berlin Christmas market, a similar incident on Bastille Day in France that killed 86, and atrocities in Turkey and the Middle East.

But New South Wales state premier Mike Baird urged “business as usual” in Australia’s biggest city where 1.5 million people are expected to watch the midnight fireworks.

“My encouragement to everyone is to enjoy New Year’s Eve ... in the knowledge that police are doing everything they can to keep us safe,” Baird said.

Some 2,000 extra officers will be deployed following the arrest of a

man for allegedly making threats against Sydney’s big show in an online blog.

There have been a number of other reported threats this holiday period, in Asia-Pacific and elsewhere.

In Melbourne, police foiled a “significant” Islamic State-inspired terror plot planned for Christmas Day targeting the city with explosives.

Indonesia also said it foiled plans by an Islamic State-linked group for a Christmas-time suicide bombing, and 52 died in the Philippines in bomb attacks blamed on Islamist militants over the holidays.

Israel on Friday issued a warn-

ing of imminent “terrorist attacks” to tourists and western targets in India, telling its citizens to avoid public places.

Security concerns have hit many New Year events with truck blockades a new tactic to try to prevent vehicles ploughing into crowds.

Sydney is using garbage trucks as safety barriers.

The German capital has beefed up security after the December 19 carnage, deploying hundreds more police, some armed with machine-guns.

“This year, what’s new is that we will place concrete blocks and position heavy armoured vehicles at the entrances” to the zone around Brandenburg Gate, a police spokesman said.

In Cologne, after a wave of sexual attacks last year, 1,800 police will be deployed -- compared to just 140 in 2015.

In neighbouring Austria police will hand out 6,000 free pocket alarms -- which emit a shrill noise when activated -- to help stop as-

saults on women.

In Paris, there will be a firework display again this year, after muted 2015 celebrations in the aftermath of the November 13 massacre of 130 people.

Nearly 100,000 police, gendarmes and soldiers will be deployed across France against the jihadist threat.

With more than a million people expected to turn out to watch the ball drop in Times Square, New York is deploying 165 “blocker” trucks and some 7,000 men.

Rome has deployed armoured vehicles and greater numbers of security forces around the Coliseum and at St Peter’s Square where the Pope will give midnight mass.

Moscow police will deploy more than 5,000 officers backed by 8,000 members of the new national guard and 2,000 volunteer militia to maintain order.

Thousands traditionally gather in Red Square, but for the second year in a row, the area will be open solely to 6,000 invitees. AFP

LIFE GOES ON. A woman selling “Happy New Year 2017” headwear on a busy shopping street in Sydney. Global terror attacks have cast a pall over New Year celebrations but Sydney was on December 31, 2016 set to defy the threats and ring in 2017 with a firework extravaganza on the glittering harbor. AFP

TAIPEI REFUSES TO CAVE IN TO BEIJING THREAT

MORE SELFIE. People visit Times Square as New York City prepares to welcome nearly two million people to the New Year’s Eve celebrations. AFP

TAIWAN will not bend to pressure despite China returning to its “old ways” of intimidation, President Tsai Ing-wen said Saturday, following protests from Beijing over her call to US President-elect Donald Trump.

China has stepped up military drills near Taiwan since the call earlier in December, in a move seen as putting on a show of strength as its ties with the self-ruled island and the United States deteriorate.

The call with Trump upended decades of diplomatic precedent in which Washington has effectively ignored Taipei in favour of Beijing, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province to be brought back within its fold.

In her end-of-year address, Tsai urged calm from Beijing and warned that recent actions by China were affecting cross-strait stability.

“Beijing authorities are returning to their old ways of isolating and suppressing Taiwan, and even of threats and intimidation,” Tsai said.

“We hope this is not a policy decision by Beijing,” she said. “We won’t bend to pressure yet we also won’t return to the old path of confrontation.”

The Taiwanese leader called on Beijing to resume dialogue to find a “reasonable” solution.

China cut off official communications with Tsai’s government after it refused to accept Beijing’s interpretation of the “One China” concept.

The two sides split in 1949 after a civil war but Beijing still claims the self-ruling island as part of its territory and has not ruled out using force to bring about unification.

The Taiwan Strait that separates them has been heavily fortified for decades.

“Whether cross-strait relations can be turned around next year depends on our patience and belief,” Tsai told reporters.

Tsai is scheduled to transit through the United States when she travels to Central America in January, stopping in Houston and San Francisco. AFP

MAGNITUDE 5.5 QUAKE STRIKES JAPAN TOKYO—A 5.5-magnitude earthquake hit near Japan’s east coast on Saturday, the US Geological Survey said.

The moderate quake hit at a shallow depth of 11 kilometres (6.8 miles), 244 kilometres northeast of Tokyo, just after 5:00 am (2000 GMT).

Japan sits at the junction of four tectonic plates and experiences a number of relatively violent quakes every year. But rigid building codes and strict enforcement mean even strong tremors often do little damage.

On Wednesday a 6.3-magnitude quake hit 18 kilometres north-northeast of the town of Daigo, but there were no reports of injuries or damage. AFP

SOKOR ALLOWS ‘COMFORT WOMEN’ STATUE SEOUL—The southern South Korean port of Busan said Friday it would allow activists to place a statue symbolizing victims of Japanese wartime sex slavery outside the city’s Japanese consulate.

The municipal authorities had previously removed the “comfort woman” statue, but changed track after Japan’s hawkish defense minister offered prayers at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo.

Tomomi Inada’s visit on Thursday to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors millions of mostly Japanese war dead -but also senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes -- swiftly drew flack from China and South Korea.

Activists had first placed their statue outside the consulate on Wednesday -- marking their opposition to a South Korea-Japan agreement reached a year ago to finally resolve the comfort women issue.

Under the accord, which both countries described as “final and irreversible,” Japan offered an apology and a one-billion yen ($8.3 million) payment to surviving Korean comfort women. AFP

11 DEAD IN MINE COLLAPSE NEW DELHI—The toll from a deadly mine collapse in eastern India’s Jharkhand state rose to 11 on Saturday with rescue workers searching for more dead bodies under the rubble.

A massive mound of earth caved in late Thursday at the Lalmatia open cast mine, around 240 miles (390 kilometres) from the state capital Ranchi.

“The search operation at the site hasn’t stopped. We can confirm 11 dead and fear that one or two more dead bodies may still be under the rubble,” Jharkhand police spokesman RK Mallick told AFP after rescuers recovered another body, raising the toll from 10.

“15 or 16 miners had managed to escape the collapsed mine soon after the incident on Thursday with only minor injuries. The tough terrain of the region (remote forest) and dense fog has been a challenge to the rescue work,” he added.

The rescue workers hope to complete their search operation by late Saturday.

There was no immediate explanation for the collapse, but the government has launched an investigation into the incident. AFP