Russia could soon be carrying out military drills alongside North Korea and Cuba according to Valery Gerasimov, the chief of staff of the Russian armed forces.

Speaking at a meeting on Saturday which was also attended by Russia’s defence minister Sergey Shoygu, along with the heads of all armed forces branches, Gerasimov announced: “We are planning an expansion of the communication lines of our military central command. We are entering preliminary negotiations with the armed forces of Brazil, Vietnam, Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

“We are going to conduct a series of joint naval and air force exercises, as well as joint drills of our ground troops and air assault troops,” the military official added.

According to the former U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine Steven Pifer, Russia is developing these potential military partnerships as a response to its current international isolation. Due to its involvement in the Ukrainian conflict, the U.S. and EU have both imposed sanctions on the country and certain Russian individuals, and the country was suspended from the G8 last March.

“The Russian military may be reaching out to other countries as part of Moscow’s effort to show that it is not isolated, despite the very negative international reaction to Russian aggression against Ukraine,” Pifer says.

However Pifer, who also served as special assistant to president Bill Clinton on Russia and Eurasia, does not believe Russia’s attempts to embark on new military partnerships will develop further: “I’d be astonished to see Russian and North Korean troops training together,” Pifer says.

“As for Cuba, Moscow has a long history there. My guess is that part of the Russian interest is tit-for-tat: they are unhappy with U.S/ military cooperation with the Baltic states and other countries, such as Georgia, that are close to them, so they hope to tweak the United States by upping their engagement in Cuba.”

However, according to Pifer a Russian partnership with Cuba may also be unlikely due to the recent thawing of relations between Havana and the U.S..

Last week Russian president Vladimir Putin told military officials in Moscow that he would like to expand Russia’s role in the arms trade across the Far East and Latin America.

The Internet loves cats. Games with explosions, too. And most everyone loves a good card game.

So what happens when you combine the three? Crowdfunding mania.

Exploding Kittens, a card game designed by Elan Lee and Shane Small and illustrated by Matthew Inman--the mind behind the popular comics site The Oatmeal--has blown up on Kickstarter.

Since its campaign launched on January 19, Exploding Kittens has attracted more than 120,000 backers, a record for the fundraising platform (beating projects to fund Reading Rainbow libraries and a Veronica Mars movie), who have contributed more than $5 million for a game that they have never seen.

Exploding Kittens passed its initial funding goal of $10,000 in the first eight minutes of the campaign. It was 1,000% funded in the first hour.

“We're in totally crazy territory here,” says Small.

Despite the fact that Lee and Small are long-time game designers and Inman has a cult following of fans who adore the Oatmeal comics, the trio seem taken aback by the success of their humble card game. In fact, the three have never been in a room together and are only now contemplating their first in-person meeting.

Lee and Small live in Los Angeles and have known each other for more than a decade. Their first project together was an interactive clothing line called edoc laundry, launched in 2005, which embedded clues to a murder mystery in each article of clothing. CSI: New Yorkbased an episode on the premise. The two designers had subsequent stints at Microsoft, developing interactive movies and shows for the X-Box game console.  After the company shut down the division where they worked, Small approached Lee about an idea he had for a game, originally called Bombsquad.

The game is essentially a “highly strategic kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette” where players try to avoid drawing a card in which a cat innocently sets off an explosion by walking across a keyboard and launching a nuclear bomb, or chewing a grenade.Matthew InmanThe game required enough skill and strategy to get people excited, but they both agreed it lacked something. It was during a vacation with a mutual friend in Hawaii that Lee was coerced into testing out the game with fellow vacationers, which included Inman. It didn’t take long for the illustrator, who has made a name for himself with his cutting, sardonic takes on everything from the word "moist" to the correct usage of the semicolon, to offer exploding kittens as an alternative to bombs.

“That's the hook,” Small recalls thinking at the time. “People love kittens and people like explosions. Putting them together just in itself was funny.”

Before they could seek funding, the team found itself wrestling with how the kittens would die. Initially, the fatal feline was a suicide bomber who killed with malicious intent. Eventually, the cats evolved into animals that killed just by being, well, cats.

“I've been designing video games professionally for a decade now and never in my life did I ever think I would mutter the words, 'Guys, what's the kitten's motivation?'" says Lee. “That was the kind of conversation we had about this thing day in and day out until we finally cracked it.”

The game is essentially a “highly strategic kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette” where players try to avoid drawing a card in which a cat innocently sets off an explosion by walking across a keyboard and launching a nuclear bomb, or chewing a grenade.

The cats can be defused with catnip sandwiches, a laser pointer or belly rubs, or diverted with “action cards” that involve the powers of back-hair, goat wizards, magical enchiladas and other “non-sequiturs” that Inman says he’s been keeping on the back burner for years. The illustrator says he had been wanting to work on a game before he met the two designers.

Despite the team members working “so hard to make sure that people didn’t think we were actually exploding kittens,” says Lee, they still get at least two letters a day from animal advocacy groups double-checking that they are not promoting kitten bashing, or bombing.

“Unless there’s an animated PETA that is very sensitive to destroying cartoon cats, I think we’re OK,” says Small.

But why cats and not dogs--or panda bears, or any other animal for that matter? Inman, whose riffs on animals have included How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting To Kill You and My Dog: The Paradox, says a cat has the “same demeanor and attitude and habits of a full-grown big cat,” like a lion or a tiger, but is small enough to own, which makes for an interesting dynamic with humans.

Small, who moved to the U.S. from South Africa over a decade ago, knows too well the emotional pain that cats can inflict. He was frequently spurned by his rescue cat, Jet Packerson, who instead sought attention from Small’s dad, a complete “dog guy.”

“When you save an animal from certain death and then it just almost spits in your face and ignores you and goes to the very person that hates cats, that kind of thing can scar you,” says Small. He insists, though, that the game is not his way of getting back at the capriciousness of cats.

Exploding Kittens follows a trail blazed by Cards Against Humanity, another card game that got its start on Kickstarter in early 2010 and has had phenomenal success.

Before they launched their Kickstarter page, Lee reached out to CAH co-founder Max Temkin to ask for feedback. The company proved more than forthcoming, offering advice, resources and logistical support. “At this point I talk to them at least twice a day,” Lee says.

The Chicago-based company is a big advocate of self-publishing and a distribution model buoyed by the support of a community before a product even hits its hands. Its approach subverts the traditional game-development steps--find a publisher that will oversee a game’s evolution and sales but that will take a percentage of the profits in the process.

Temkin says the success of Exploding Kittens offers further proof that this model can work.“Not only do they have this enormous success and publicity and this clear connection with their fans without any publisher or distributor being involved or helping promote it or whatever, but they have all the money,” Temkin says. “They can execute on that game really well and make a living off of it for a long time, because they have a one-to-one relationship with their fans. That's a great business to be in.”

Since its campaign launched on January 19, Exploding Kittens has attracted more than 120,000 backers, a record for the fundraising platform.Matthew Inman

Small says the idea for Exploding Kittens originated as a digital game that he worked with Lee to improve by using physical cards--a quicker, and more fun, method of brainstorming the game than using a computer. It was through this process that they realized the game made for a “great physical card game rather than a digital app,” Small says.

He believes the success of physical games like CAH and Exploding Kittens points to people’s desires to get away from computer screens and interact with each other. “To be able to still get physical with something in your hands and place it down and interact with another person on another side of the table, there will always be a need for that,” Small says.

Plus, games like this offer the opportunity for “benevolent betrayal,” as Inman puts it: “I know that sounds terrible, but it's the most fun for me in a card game. You [get to] to ruin your friend's life in a small way while having fun with them at the same time.”

After a gaming console, the team has raised the most money of any project in the game category, according to Kickstarter, which has seen more than $305 million pledged to games projects since it launched in 2009.

The Exploding Kittens team initially requested a quote for a print run of 1,000 packs of cards. Now it has over 120,000 backers who will receive at least one deck in exchange for their support. “I run around cowering under my desk and hoping that we can somehow turn off the spigot,” jokes Lee.

He says the project is doing well enough that he’s just returned a few million dollars' worth of investment capital he received to start what he thought would be his next big venture, a TV studio. Instead, he’s going to focus on Exploding Kittens and the opportunities presented by its success. “This is now a thing that, if we don't pay attention to it, I know I will spend the rest of my life regretting,” Lee says.

“I think we'll have our excitement hangover in two to three weeks when we have however many orders to fulfill,” Inman says.

Being supported by a campaign’s community has also meant they’ve been able to identify “a million little details that would not have been possible any other way,” like translations into other languages and putting markings on the cards that make it easier for left-handers to play, says Lee.

Temkin says community support, more so than funding, is what’s important to the success of independent projects like CAH and Exploding Kittens. “Money is sort of a false problem if you have a good idea,” he says. “Getting people to get excited about what you're doing, to love and understand it and advocate for it, all the money in the world can't buy that.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman claimed on Sunday that it was “inevitable” that Israel would have to fight future wars with Shi’ite militant group, Hezbollah, and Palestinian militant group, Hamas.

In an interview with Israeli outlet Ynet News, the official website of the Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonoth, Lieberman accused Hamas of feigning desperation in order to rebuild their capabilities and carry out attacks against Israel.

“A fourth operation in the Gaza Strip is inevitable, just as a third Lebanon war is inevitable," he said.

"Don't let them tell us stories about how Hamas is begging and they're on their knees. We saw 10 rockets being fired at the sea last week. We see every week how they're rebuilding [their arsenal]."

Israel’s top diplomat moved on to argue that Hezbollah is becoming bolder and “more determined” in its actions against Israel.

“There's no doubt the rules of the game have been changed, what Hezbollah forced upon us. We don't respond, but rather decide to contain this incident. I think that's completely unreasonable,” Lieberman said. “Hezbollah is bolder, more determined, more provocative.”

Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman gives a statement to the media at his Jerusalem office December 2, 2014.Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

He also asserted that Israel’s response to last week’s Hezbollah missile attack, which killed two Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers and wounded seven others, was insufficient as it only sought to “contain this incident” instead of responding with strength.

“Containing the event and the lack of an Israeli response means that Israel is agreeing to terms set by Hezbollah,” Lieberman wrote on Facebook in comments made before his Ynet interview. “It’s a serious blow to Israel’s deterrence capabilities.”

However, Hezbollah argue that the attack on the Israeli military vehicle was in response to an Israeli air strike conducted in southern Syria on January 18, killing a number of Hezbollah members and an Iranian general.

On the credence of Lieberman’s comments about the future conflicts, President of the Tel Aviv-based geopolitical risk consultancy the Levantine Group, Daniel Nisman, said that the “current conditions now make a war in both areas more likely than less likely”.

At the end of the 50-day summer conflict with Israel, which saw over 2,100 Palestinians and 68 Israelis killed, Hamas failed to achieve most of its demands and the failure of promised international aid into the enclave is fostering conditions for another war, says Nisman.

“Hamas is struggling to survive so it uses conflict with Israel as a function to achieve political and economic goals which it otherwise would not be able to achieve. That’s what we saw in the last conflict. The same conditions are in place for another conflict, it’s just about when Hamas feels that it is ready.”

On the subject of Hezbollah, Lieberman’s claim that the group are becoming bolder in their actions against Israel also rings true, according to Nisman.

“Yes they are. One of the ways I would say they are definitely growing bolder is their willingness to attack Israel from Lebanese territory in the way that they did, which is unprecedented since 2006 [the last Israeli-Lebanese War],” he said.

Despite the likelihood of these conflicts, vice-president of the Levantine Group, Ron Gilran, believes that Lieberman is making such statements “because of the [Israeli] election” which is scheduled for next month.

“The timing is related to elections as he took a centrist turn [from the right]. Every campaign he chooses to bring forward something else,” says Gilran.

“This time he chose to put his more pragmatic views up front because of the view that his leeway with the right-wing is almost exhausted entirely.”

“Why? Because Bibi [Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu] and Naftali Bennett [leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party] are there.”

Lieberman, a Moldovan-born Israeli, has seen his right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party’s poll numbers slide ahead of the Israeli election on March 17 after a corruption scandal implicated high-ranking members of the party.

Polls show the party on course to obtain between four and six seats in the Knesset down from the 13 seats it holds today.

It may be a tough time for the eurozone, with the European Central Bank pursuing a last ditch policy of quantitative easing, but now the producers of the board game Monopoly have decided to make a cash injection of their own into the French economy.

Hasbro, the company that makes Monopoly, has hidden thousands of genuine euros inside French copies of the game released today to celebrate its 80th anniversary, meaning your next trip to Free Parking could actually make you a lot richer - up to €20, 580 in fact.

Out of 30,000 board games being released for the occasion, 80 will have real euros inside. The reason? "We wanted to do something unique,” Florence Gaillard, head of the Monopoly brand told the Local.

Leading up to the anniversary, the company conducted a survey to find out what players would most like to find inside their Monopoly box, and the answer was clear. 50.5% of respondents indicated that they wanted to find real money inside, whereas 26.4% wanted free hotel accommodation.

Apart from the jackpot, in which every note is genuine, that exceeds €20,000, 10 boxes contain €300 and 69 boxes contain €150. The classic, junior, electronic and vintage empire editions are all included.

Like any top-secret operation, the mystery boxes were prepared in a remote location in Crutzwald, north-eastern France in mid-January, where they were stored before being distributed to shops around the country today.

However, the secret may be harder to keep than Hasbro intended. Although there is no weight difference to any of the boxes, the ones with real banknotes inside have expanded slightly due to the larger notes. In comments that may see a spike in purchases of precision scales, Patrick Wimmer, the man in charge of counting the euros to go into the special edition boxes said: "The difference is marginal, unless you turn up at the shop with precision scales.”

Versions of Monopoly date back to 1903, but it took until 1935 for the version familiar to today’s players to be produced. 80 years on, the game is sold in 47 languages in 114 countries and over 250 million copies have been sold. 

ISIS is claiming responsibility for the deaths of two Iraqis, a police officer and a soldier, Agence France-Press reports. Photographs of the executions were circulated on social media by accounts linked to the terrorist organization, according to the wire service. The group also claimed that it killed another Iraqi soldier but did not post photographs of his death.

In the past, ISIS has released videos of its executions, which apparently were performed by “Jihadi John,” a militant who is believed to be originally from the London area. Most recently, videos were released showing the deaths of two Japanese hostages.

The photographs of the Iraqi executions were considerably different from the videos of the Japanese hostages. The images show one execution carried out by gunmen and another using a machete.

Though the photographs have not been independently authenticated, the images have led social media accounts sympathetic to the jihadists to boast of ISIS’s influence in the Middle East. Recently, ISIS was forced out of Kobani, a Syrian stronghold it had controlled for almost four months. 

When was the last time you were truly bored? Bored with no end in sight, bored in the way you imagine prisoners in solitary confinement are bored. So bored your mind churns through every chore you have to complete, every aspiration you have yet to accomplish, every fear and every dread, every flaw in your character. A boredom that so surpasses the old cliche of DMV-visit boredom, of Southern California freeway traffic jam boredom, of calculus class boredom, a boredom so far beyond transatlantic-flight-in-1993-with-only-Single-White-Female-to-watch-on-the-television-suspended-from-the-ceiling boredom that it becomes a physical force, a thrumming white heat that hollows out your insides. That kind of boredom.

Here’s the thing: If you have an iPhone, you never have to feel that sort of boredom ever again. In fact, if you are a millennial, it is possible you have never truly known this dreaded psychic force, which is equal parts soul-crushing and soul-emptying. You have never felt the despair, maybe, of your mind facing the smooth wall of nothingness: What will I think of next? If you do find yourself mired at the notorious DMV, you can play Angry Birds or, if you’re of a more sober constitution, blast through the myriad #longreads on your Instapaper account. On an interminable flight, you can binge on whatever entertainment you’ve uploaded to your iPad. You do not have to occupy yourself with your own thoughts.

Maybe that’s a bad thing, argues “Bored and Brilliant,” a deeply intelligent and perfectly germane feature from WNYC program New Tech City. Maybe boredom is cleansing, a mental colonic that allows for creativity and reflection. Maybe boredom is not a lack of purpose, but the absence of distraction.

“If you’re like me,” writes New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi on the show’s website, “you’ve traded in daydreaming and mind-wandering for swiping, texting and connecting small pieces of candy.” In a broadcast titled “The Case for Boredom,” which foreshadowed the week of boredom-inducing challenges that began on February 2 (but which, thanks to the iPhone, can be undertaken whenever you like), she summoned personal anecdotes and social research findings to argue that we suffer from a collective digital obsession that deprives us of the mundane, the un-pixelated, unmediated real. Rarely has a conversation about boredom been less boring. I found it more thrilling than Serial because, frankly, it was of more universal import. More recent episodes of New Tech City have continued to make the same case, with just the right doses of levity and insight.

The Moment app allows users to track how often they use their phones. Apple Inc.

While New Tech City has been diving into boredom’s depths for much of January, “Bored And Brilliant” began in earnest on February 2, with a week of challenges conducted by listeners with the apps Moment (for iOs) and BreakFree (Android), which track daily smartphone usage. The purpose is unabashedly activist: to make listeners aware of how deeply they have come to rely on their smartphones and how superficial that reliance is. To attenuate that usage by asking people to become more aware of it. I mean, who really needs to check her Twitter feed 52 times a day? Of course, many of us (myself included) have been listening to “Bored and Brilliant” via the WNYC app, while texts and emails disrupt with their rings and dings.

The first challenge, which appeared in my email inbox on Monday morning, was simple enough: “As you move from place to place, keep your phone in your pocket. Or better yet, in your bag…while you're boarding the train, walking down the street, or sitting in the passenger seat of a car, we're asking you to look at your phone only when you have reached your destination.”

“You can do it,” the email encourages, in the voice of a therapist or a life coach. You can go 10 minutes without a feline listicle. Maybe even 20 minutes.

Zomorodi has made it clear she is not interested in the cheap mindfulness peddled by the likes of Arianna Huffington, an above-the-fray attitude that only the wealthy can afford. Nor is she a Luddite who thinks we should all go back to using rotary phones and reading printed books. “I don’t think swearing off our devices is the solution,” she recently wrote on Quartz. “My smartphone is the reason I can work full-time and see my kids.” But it is also the reason many of us find ourselves so harried on a daily basis. Harried, mind you, by trivialities: slideshows of ’90s celebrities and fleeting hashtag outrages. These, we can do without. Maybe we can even learn to leave our phones at home once in a while. We won’t get lost without them. Or maybe we will get lost—and love it.

Several months ago, a Kickstarter campaign began for a device called the NoPhone, “a technology-free alternative to constant hand-to-phone contact that allows you to stay connected with the real world.” In other words, a slab of plastic that resembles an iPhone in shape and feel, but has no actual function whatsoever. Some speculated that the NoPhone was a joke, others that it was an earnest response to our digital addiction. Whatever the case, donors responded. The makers of the NoPhone had asked for $5,000. They got $18,000 instead.  

YENAKIEVE, Ukraine (Reuters) - Separatist rockets streaked across hills in eastern Ukraine on Monday as rebels pounded the positions of Ukrainian government troops holding a strategic rail town, while both sides prepared to mobilise more forces for combat.

U.S. officials said Washington was taking a "fresh look" at providing Ukraine with lethal aid after a surge of violence following the collapse of a new peace effort on Saturday, although they emphasised that no decision had yet been made.

Kiev's military said five more Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in clashes, while municipal authorities in the rebel-controlled city of Donetsk said 15 civilians had been killed by shelling at the weekend.

Talks between Ukraine, Russia and rebel officials in Minsk, Belarus, had raised hopes of a new ceasefire to stem the violence in a conflict that has claimed more than 5,000 lives. But they broke up without progress with Ukraine and the separatists accusing each other of sabotaging the meeting.

Donetsk reverberated to the thud of artillery and mortar fire through the night and several homes were destroyed with at least one civilian death on Monday.

Separatists kept up attacks on Debaltseve, a strategic rail hub to the northeast of Donetsk, in an attempt to dislodge government forces there.

The outskirts of Yenakieve and Vuhlegirsk, both on the main highway to Debaltseve, were under heavy artillery fire as rebel multiple rocket launchers and artillery pummelled the positions of Ukrainian troops in the area.

At one point, a salvo of around three dozen rockets fired from rebel positions screamed across surrounding hills towards Debaltseve. It was followed 15 minutes later by incoming fire from government forces.

"The toughest situation is around Debaltseve where the illegal armed formations are continuing to storm the positions of Ukrainian military," military spokesman Andriy Lutsenko told a briefing. But he said Ukraine's forces in the town were enough to hold it and he denied that government forces were encircled.

According to Kiev officials, January was one of the bloodiest months in eastern Ukraine since the conflict erupted. Regional police spokesman Vyacheslav Abroskin said 112 civilians had been killed by separatist shelling and attacks.

The rebels, in a statement quoted by Russia's RIA Novosti news agency, said 242 civilians had been killed in the month as well as 92 of their number.

GENERAL MOBILISATION

The separatists, who the West says are armed by Russia and supported by several thousand Russian troops, defiantly announced a general mobilisation plan which they said would boost their fighting forces to 100,000 men.

Kiev itself is also pressing ahead with a fourth wave of military call-up aimed at raising an extra 50,000 men.

The Western powers support Kiev's view that a peace deal sealed last September, which included a ceasefire and a commitment for foreign fighters and military equipment to be withdrawn from Ukraine, is the only viable roadmap to ending the conflict.

But the separatists, who have declared their own 'people's republics' and have notched up several military successes since then including taking Donetsk airport from government troops, now appear to want to negotiate a new blueprint.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed for a ceasefire to be urgently restored in Ukraine, under the terms of the Minsk peace plan, and said Germany would not support Kiev's military forces through deliveries of weapons.

The New York Times reported on Sunday Washington was taking a new look at providing Ukrainian forces with defensive weapons and equipment in the face of the rebel offensive.

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the issue was getting a "fresh look", adding that it was unlikely any decision would be taken until after Secretary of State John Kerry visits Kiev on Thursday.

The separatist rebellion erupted last April after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea in response to the ousting of a Moscow-backed president by street protests in Kiev which ushered in a government committed to integration with Europe.

Moscow denies it has any regular troops in Ukraine despite what the West and Kiev say is incontrovertible proof.

In a street on Yenakieve outskirts, a shell landed directly onto a third floor apartment of a nine-storey building, instantly killing a woman and wounding her husband.

"We had to climb across the balcony to evacuate the man and we left her lying in the rubble. She was picked up later by a sanitary team," said Anatoly Pomazanov, 42, who owns a grocery shop in the building.

"It is like this every day. The shelling is incessant. We keep children in cellars. We let them out only during lulls in shelling, for about 30 minutes at most. I want to ask President (Petro) Poroshenko: are we also Ukrainians or simply targets?"

Several residents were seen loading bags in cars and hastily lea‎ving the neighbourhood.

Natalya, 68, who with her daughter lives in an apartment a floor below the one destroyed, was weeping. "Tell me what do I do now? This is all I had, the soldiers are two kilometres away, there are no targets here."

Dmytro Boichuk, 78, a retired miner, said people were already immune to the shelling. "We are numb. We go about our businesses. Someone gets killed, someone gets wounded, but we carry on."

An Uber driver in Delhi, India, currently stands trial for the rape of a female passenger. Unfortunately, such attacks are not uncommon in India; a gang rape of a Delhi student on a bus two years ago garnered media attention in India and across the world.

India’s rate of violence against women, particularly intimate partner violence, is one of the world’s highest. In a recent survey conducted by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), more than 50 percent of women reported experiencing violence during their lifetimes, and 60 percent of men reported perpetrating intimate partner violence against their wives.

ICRW and UNFPA also noted that prejudice and violence against women in India can start even before birth, as a preference for sons encourages some women to undergo sex selective abortions. Indeed, the current birth rate in India is 1.12 boys for every girl, a clear deviation from the normal biological rate of 1.04 to 1.06.

The report by ICRW and UNFPA found that intimate partner violence (IPV) and son preference are connected to the cultural belief—held by some Indian men and women—that men must act as financial providers for their families. This definition of gender roles influences parents’ preference for sons over daughters, reinforcing the cultural view that only sons are able to provide income for their families and encouraging parents to devalue their daughters, in some cases undergoing abortion rather than taking on the burden of a girl child.

Furthermore, this rigid understanding of masculinity can place stress on men who may feel they are unable to provide, with dire consequences for their wives. Indeed, the report notes that instances of IPV were significantly higher when men had experienced economic stress.

Forty percent of men surveyed who had faced economic stress reported perpetrating violence in the preceding year, as opposed to 27 percent of men who had not faced economic stress. Furthermore, rates of IPV were inversely related to wealth and age, meaning that poorer, younger men—who are also more likely to feel the burden of establishing themselves financially—are more likely to perpetrate violence against their wives.

The concept that men and only men can be economic providers for their families and the manifestations of this belief—intimate partner violence and son preference—may be combated through education. For example, son preference is statistically related to education: in the report’s sample, 46 percent of men with no education expressed a high preference for sons, compared with 38 percent of men with some secondary education and 27 percent of men who had graduated or received higher education.

Education has the power to target the problem at its root: the notion that men are the sole providers for families. India can work to change this understanding of masculinity through gender equality programing that targets both boys and girls. By developing a curriculum that breaks down traditional gender roles, with potential help from the United States, India can tackle the ideas underlying much of the violence against women.

Despite increased attention to violence against women since the December 2012 bus attack, change has been slow in India. Ending violence against women and altering the preference for sons, as well as empowering Indian women in the economic and social spheres, requires an evolution of cultural notions of masculinity in India. Such a shift in norms can only be accomplished by educating both boys and girls.

Hannah Chartoff is a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations. This article first appeared on the Council on Foreign Relations website.

Last week, amid updates on pothole repairs and road closures, Washington state’s Department of Transportation posted two important alerts on its website. The first involved the demolition of the building that once housed the Museum of History and Industry.

The second read: “Demolition of New England football team to start Sunday.” Below the post was a photo of construction workers draping a banner of Seahawk Blue over the side of an overpass. The banner bore the number 12.

On Super Bowl Sunday, that number was everywhere you looked in Seattle: flapping on a flag atop the Space Needle; wrapped, Christo-like, around a two-floor wine rack in a downtown restaurant; stenciled onto orange road cones; hung like drying laundry from a wall of the state’s tallest building, the Columbia Tower; spray-painted in neon-blue graffiti on the facade of Neumos, a Capitol Hill music venue. Though some Seattleites wore Richard Sherman, Marshawn Lynch and Russell Wilson jerseys, most sported 12s.

“We are 12,” of course, is the famous tag line of Seahawk fans, the so-called 12th Man, whose raucous cheering is felt to add up to the equivalent of an additional, 12th player on the field for the team. Seattle's 12th is something like Beethoven's Fifth, only louder. In fact, loud enough to spark seismic activity. Is it any wonder the Seahawks have gone 22-2 at home over the last three seasons?

Disappointed Seahawks' fans sulk in defeat for the camera at The Comet bar in Seattle. Jackie Buttice

Unfortunately, this year's Super Bowl was played in Glendale, Arizona, which may explain why the Transportation Department’s promised demolition of the Patriots never came off. New England won the game, 28-24.

While ’Hawks fans on Sunday tried to channel their inner 12s in the hope that their boys would win back-to-back titles, I spent the day in the Emerald City's drinking holes.

I kicked off my morning at the epicenter of Seattle tourism: the very first Starbucks. Opened in 1971, the Pike Place coffee shop has barrels of roasted beans on display and looks nothing like the rest of the seven billion franchises. Except for Sunday, when every Starbucks in Washington and Oregon had a 12 chalked onto its blackboard and the employees wore “LEGION OF BREW” shirts and promoted a special, 455-calorie “We Are 12” Seahawk Frappuccino. The blue-and-green coffee concoction is a “Vanilla Bean Crème handcrafted beverage blended with blueberries and topped with green tea matcha-infused whip cream.”

Seahawks' fans watch the Super Bowl at The Comet on Pike Street in Seattle.Jackie Buttice

On the sidewalk was a pile of crushed Skittles, Lynch’s candy of choice. I wondered: Could this be an omen?

I moseyed over to the Central Saloon, the oldest bar in Seattle. It was established in 1892 by a family that struck gold in Alaska. Contemporary prospectors--some who may have been regulars since the saloon’s Grand Opening--had been gathering and getting rowdier since 9 a.m.

I asked owner Guy Curtis what he’d do if the Seahawks lost. “We won’t lose,” he assured me.

A patchwork quilt featuring a "12" in a shop window on Occidental Street.Jackie Buttice

I strolled up Pike Street to The Comet, an old dive with younger fans. This was the popular hangout of ’90s Grunge Seattle. On this particular afternoon, the Comet was filled with punky sports fans: guys with long hair, girls with blue hair and so many black-rimmed glasses and beanies that it would’ve been impossible to find Waldo.

The Comet is the belly of the BeastMode. The patrons are so metal about the ’Hawks that many wear Slayer-style T-shirts emblazoned with the team logo. Fans at one table burned “Saint Richard Sherman” candles. The bar serves “12th man pale ales” at $4 a pop. Outside, homeless runaways had spray-painted 12s on small dogs. They were asking $3 for the privilege of taking the poochs’ pictures. Inside, customers performed parka-ed parkour around the crowded tables. Peanut shells littered the floor.

When the game started and Patriots coach Bill Belichick was shown on a drop-down screen, the crowd chorused “YOU’RE A PHONY” and tossed peanuts in the air. Perhaps Holden Caulfield was in the house.

A "12" flag covered in tinsel in the doorway of gay bar CC Addle's on Boylston Street.Gogo Lidz

By the time the Patriots’ Tom Brady hit Brandon LaFell with an 11-yard TD pass to open the scoring in the second quarter, the air outside was thick with marijuana smoke. (Weed is legal in Washington.) I pushed on through the haze and down Pine Street to The Pine Box, a mortuary-turned-ale-house that was projecting the game in the same alley where, 42 years ago, Bruce Lee's flower-covered coffin was loaded into a hearse. The place was packed, but the crowd was, well…dead.

Up Pine Street at a gay bar called R Place the patrons at least had a heartbeat. At halftime, with the score tied at 14, R Place was positively pulsing. A nearly naked dude in a brightly colored Seahawk Speedo dispensed blue and green vodka Skittles Jell-O shots on a silver tray. A drag queen had painted his face like a Dia de los Muertos skull. Four gents in identical No. 12 jerseys struck identical he-man poses. One pointed at the guy next to him and shouted, “He’s not really a 12: he’s more like a six-and-a-half.”

During the third quarter, with Seattle holding a seemingly safe 10-point lead, I returned to The Comet. The 12th Man din grew louder and louder until, just before the two-minute warning, the Patriots pulled ahead. Then came the Seahawks’ astonishing downfield march to New England’s one-yard line. With the 12th Man in full voice, Wilson’s pass to Ricardo Lockette was picked off in the endzone. The interception was of course deflating, which seems oddly appropriate given the Patriots' recent history.

A beer-sipping 12th Man--this one female--was weeping into her mug. Loudly. In a voice just above a whisper, the 12 on the next stool asked the barkeep for “a cup of tears.”

A building with "12" lights, as seen at night from the ferry pier in downtown Seattle.Justin Kapitula

After a huge fire at Russia’s Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences in Moscow was finally extinguished on Saturday, a long process began: salvaging books and collections damaged by flames, smoke and the water used by firefighters.

Though experts in the U.S. said they were not yet familiar with the specifics of the blaze at the Soviet-era building, they spoke with Newsweek about the precautions that such libraries and archives can take in case of disaster and what happens afterward when conservators are trying to rescue damaged materials.

The current standard procedure for salvaging books and collections damaged by water calls for the materials to be frozen as soon as possible. That’s right: Stick them in a freezer.

“The material needs to be packed into cartons and frozen to stop the deterioration,” says Duncan Rioch, a project administrator at Document Reprocessors, a company that specializes in salvaging water- and smoke-damaged books, documents and other archival material.

Previously, the company has been charged with restoration efforts for the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. Most famously, it helped salvage and preserve the documentation that came up from the Titanic. While Rioch explained the process to Newsweek on Monday, one of the company’s staffers was en route to Brooklyn, where a fire that broke out Saturday morning ravaged a warehouse full of New York City agency records.

Frances Harrell, a ‎preservation specialist at Northeast Document Conservation Center, says libraries and archives should install automated fire-suppression systems, like sprinklers, because water-damaged records “are recoverable. We like them wet better than we like them burned up.” But the mold that can result from the wet paper can be extremely harmful, she adds.

Paper and other porous materials grow when wet and can therefore break bindings on books. Once the materials are frozen, though, they can be kept indefinitely until the institution is ready to continue the restoration process. A vacuum freeze dryer can then evaporate the ice out of the material without allowing it to go through a liquid state. In other words, the technique uses sublimation, which means the ice changes from a solid state directly to a gaseous state. The vacuum helps speed up the process.

Document Reprocessors also has an alternative cryogenic drying method that takes three or four weeks, rather than the seven to 14 days for vacuum freeze drying, but allows the company to dry leather and ancient documents without having them crack. Since the process is proprietary, Rioch said he couldn’t reveal the details.

Once the documents are dry, they need to be assessed for damage caused by the water, or the smoke or fire that came before the water, Rioch explains. For example, water damage can cause the glue from book bindings to migrate onto the pages, so they need to be carefully separated.

When fire is involved, there can be an accumulation of soot on the material, and the water can carry it into the material. Because soot can contain creosote, a carcinogen, the book or document “needs to be surface-cleaned and encapsulated to preserve the historical document in a manner that it is still safe for people to handle,” Rioch says. Sometimes in these situations, an organization will prefer to scan and index the contents for reference and encapsulate the full item in plastic, rather than encapsulating each individual page (with lamination, for example).

Harrell cited the 1973 fire at the National Archives’ National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis and a devastating 2009 fire at the Historical Archive of Cologne in Germany, which led to that building’s collapse, as other examples comparable to last week’s events in Moscow. But fire is not as common as flooding and water damage, says Rioch, who adds that his company is working with many municipalities that are still recovering documents damaged during Hurricane Sandy. In any case, both fires and floods lead to water damage.

Vladimir Fortov, president of Russia’s Academy of Sciences, compared the Moscow institution that caught fire Friday with the Library of Congress (LOC). So what would the Library of Congress do if its collections were damaged?

Elmer Eusman, chief of the conservation division, says the LOC has three main lines of defense in case of such an emergency. First is a so-called “beeper team”—which now uses iPhones—of about a dozen members, who are on a standby rotation to alert higher powers in case of a water breach or another situation. Second, the library has a designated space with equipment and supplies ready to salvage its collections.

When there’s an emergency, there’s “always a sense of panic,” says Eusman. “You don’t want to be thinking about what you need, you want it all already handy.” The supplies and equipment include pads that soak up large quantities of water, boards to keep covers straight while drying, personal protective gear, freezer storage and a vacuum freeze dryer that can handle small quantities of materials.

Finally, the LOC has a contract agreement in place with a company that, like Document Reprocessors, can contribute manpower, supplies and equipment in larger emergencies.

The response part of a disaster, like putting materials in the freezer, “can happen very quickly and is relatively cheap,” says Eusman. But that’s just the first step. The recovery that follows is often slow and very costly.

Based on photographs he’s seen in the news of the fire in Moscow, “it’ll be a significant amount of damage,” he says. “There’s going to be irreparable loss, undoubtedly, but I’m sure some will be recoverable.”

MONTREAL (Reuters) - Russia and Ukraine are holding indirect talks to reopen a key international air corridor over the Black Sea to commercial flights in a plan that could give Ukraine much-needed overflight fees and ease congestion on other crowded air routes, according to five sources familiar with the matter.

The discussions, being brokered on the sidelines of an International Civil Aviation Organization safety meeting this week in Montreal, come amid renewed fighting between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian rebels after failed peace talks.

Aviation leaders are seeking to secure a mandate to implement new safety standards after a string of high-profile accidents around the world made 2014 the deadliest year for commercial airlines in almost a decade. The talks are focused on efforts to adopt new standards for global plane tracking and co-operation on the risks of flying over conflict zones.

Officials are working to reach a deal that would allow flights to resume in the international airspace managed by Ukraine off the coast of the Crimean Peninsula, which was forcibly annexed by Russia last year, the sources said.

One of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the talks, said the ICAO forum provided a neutral forum for the two neighboring countries to resolve the issue.

The airspace, which is located above the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, became a no-fly zone for international air traffic last April.

Aviation agencies, including the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, had warned that pilots in the area might get conflicting instructions from Ukrainian and Russian air traffic controllers.

The airspace, part of a well-traveled route for commercial airlines' long-haul flights to the Middle East and Asia, does not go over Crimea or eastern Ukraine where a Malaysian airliner was shot down last July.

REOPENING OF AIRSPACE EYED

Ukraine, which is delegated by ICAO to control that section of airspace despite Russia's control of Crimea, made a request to ICAO last autumn to reopen the corridor, which is over international waters.

Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine's new deputy minister of foreign affairs, said a reopening of the airspace would help ease congestion on other routes, as international carriers diverted their planes away from Ukraine after the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 last year, killing all 298 people on board.

"We want them to reopen the route to traffic as soon as possible,” Prystaiko, Ukraine's former ambassador to Canada and representative to ICAO, told Reuters in Montreal. "It (would mean) resuming business which everybody is so thirsty for, including Ukrainians and the air companies which are going through very busy routes."

The reopening would also enable Ukraine to take in air traffic fees that have fallen off steeply in the past year due to the ongoing conflict as airlines avoid the country's airspace, he added.

ICAO could not be reached for comment. Russia's ICAO delegation also could not be reached for comment.

Airline officials, however, were mixed on what reopening would mean for their operations.

A spokesman for Lufthansa said any decision to reopen flight paths at or near Simferopol - a key Crimean airport in Russian hands - would not cause.

"Even if a route is open, we make our own assessments and may decide not to fly over it," he said. Condor has not flown over Ukraine for about a year.

A spokesman for Norwegian Air Shuttle said the airline will not change its routing until the airspace is deemed safe by Eurocontrol, the European air traffic control agency.

Eurocontrol was not immediately available for comment.

Ukraine's Prystaiko said that despite the Simferopol airport being in Russian hands and pro-Russian separatists making new territorial gains against Ukraine's armed forces, his country's air traffic controllers could safely guide commercial flights above the Black Sea from their airport inOdessa.

"Our position is very simple - technically we are in control and (we can provide for) the safety of the passengers on the flights. We will be working with the airlines directly, but the role of ICAO is important and their recommendations are important," he said.

The number of measles cases in the United States is climbing, sparking fears the disease may be making a resurgence only 15 years after health officials announced it had been largely eradicated. The latest outbreak, which has infected dozens, is believed to have started in a Disney theme park in Anaheim, California, and has by now spread to six other states and Mexico. “Measles is so contagious—you can run, but you cannot hide,” says Dr. Sharon Humiston, a professor of pediatrics at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, and associate director for research for the Immunization Action Coalition.

Much of the blame for the recent outbreak has been placed on relatively low vaccination rates among schoolchildren in Southern California. Many parents in that part of the country forgo vaccines they believe to be toxic or a catalyst for illnesses like autism, despite robust research debunking those claims. In 2014, 3 percent of parents in the state submitted personal belief exemptions (PBEs)—which state an opposition to vaccines for “nonmedical reasons”—to get their children out of vaccination requirements. In California’s private schools, the average PBE rate is even higher. The U.S. national average in 2014, by comparison, was 1.8 percent.

Population-wide vaccination is essential to widespread immunity. What is often lost in the chatter surrounding the vaccination issue is the fact that measles is a serious health threat. Complications range from middle ear infection and diarrhea to pneumonia and brain swelling, which can be fatal. Pregnant women who catch measles are at risk for complications like spontaneous abortion, says Dr. Greg Wallace, head of the domestic measles, mumps, rubella and polio team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The good news is that most residents of the U.S. are relatively healthy and that the country has a robust health care system, which means there is only a small chance the worst complications will be experienced by more than a few. But in parts of the world where malnutrition rates are high and the health care system is less equipped to manage outbreaks, measles is a real public health burden and a leading killer of children. The Philippines, for example, had 21,403 confirmed cases of measles last year. A measles vaccination campaign that began in health centers and churches across the Philippines in September is targeting 11 million children and conducting door-to-door checks to ensure no children have been missed.  

U.S. health officials are starting to express concern. “If you look at our 10 largest outbreaks since elimination was declared in 2000, the vast majority of them have been in the last few years,” said Wallace. Last year, 644 people were infected with measles in the U.S., the most since the disease was largely eliminated in 2000 and a 244 percent increase from the 187 cases seen in 2013. The 102 Americans infected in this year’s outbreak are already far more than the total number of people infected with measles in the U.S. in 2012, which was 55.

Before the measles vaccination program started in 1963, the disease was endemic in the U.S., according to the CDC. Three million to 4 million Americans a year caught measles, just under 50,000 were hospitalized, 4,000 developed brain swelling, and between 400 and 500 died.

If the current outbreak continues to grow, the U.S. will need more resources and a greater public health response, as well as better ways to limit exposure and make sure people are up to date on their vaccinations, Wallace said. One positive outcome from the mild hysteria surrounding the Disney outbreak is that the public is more attuned to the dangers measles poses. “I think there is increased awareness, and I think most people are taking that to heart,” he said.

Concentrations of the heavy metal mercury have been increasing in the surface waters of the northern Pacific Ocean for decades; one recent study showed that these levels jumped by about a third between 1986 and 2006.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, concentrations of mercury have also increased in yellowfin tuna, by nearly four percent annually, according to a paper published Monday in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. Yellowfin is also marketed as Ahi tuna; the Natural Resources Defense Council already lists this as a high-mercury fish that should be eaten sparingly or avoided altogether.

Mercury bioaccumulates, or travels up the food chain, so it is present in higher concentrations and quantities in larger, older creatures, especially carnivores that eat other animals, says David Krabbenhoft, a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Middleton, Wisconsin. For that reason, it's preferable to eat small fish such as sardines or species that mainly eat plankton, like sockeye salmon.

This new research includes a re-analysis of three previous papers looking at concentrations of the metal in fish. One controversial 2003 study suggested that mercury levels were not rising, but this re-analysis shows that paper didn’t account for the declining size of fish being caught, due to overfishing, says Krabbenhoft, who wasn’t involved in either study.

In humans, mercury has been shown to have an impact on the development and function of the brain and nervous system, and has been blamed for developmental problems and reduced IQs in highly exposed children. It is primarily released into the environment through the combustion of coal and small-scale gold mining, where mercury is used to bind to the mined gold, before being burnt off.

Much of the mercury in the Pacific arrives there from industrial activities in Asia, particularly in China, according to research at the University of Michigan, with which the lead author of this study, Paul Drevnick, is affiliated. The metal is converted into its most toxic form, methylmercury, by microbes in wetlands and deep in the ocean, research shows.

The latest research complements other work showing rising levels of mercury in various animals, says Dr. Philippe Grandjean, an environmental health researcher and physician at Harvard University who was involved in the study. “Recent studies using peregrine feathers, teeth from Beluga whales and hair from polar bears show that current mercury concentrations are about 10-fold above the pre-industrial levels,” he says.

Mercury is eventually removed from the food chain when it sinks into the deep ocean or is bound up in soil, Krabbenhoft says, but that takes centuries. So we are stuck with the mercury we have recently emitted for some time; one study found that 83 percent of the surface ocean's mercury ended up there from human activities.

But there is some good news. Most of the world’s major economic powerhouses, including China, have signed the Minamata Convention, an international treaty that will limit the use of many mercury-containing products by 2020, and includes other provisions to reduce emissions of the heavy metal.

A series of rules known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that are meant to reduce mercury pollution from coal plants and other sources will go into effect in the United States this spring, Krabbenhoft says. But the legality of MATS, as it's known, has already been challenged by industry groups, and the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case, with a decision expected sometime this summer.  

It’s still important to stress that fish are a very healthy food, and an important source of nutrition. However, people should limit the amount of fish they consume that contains high levels of mercury, Krabbenhoft adds. These guidelines are particularly important for pregnant women, since a fetus’s developing brain is much more vulnerable to mercury exposure than that of an adult or even a child, Grandjean says.

Britain's opposition Labour party will lose as many as 30 Scottish seats to nationalists in the May 7 election, a poll showed on Tuesday, reducing Labour leader Ed Miliband's chances of unseating Prime Minister David Cameron.

Scots voted to stay part of the United Kingdom in a Sept. 18 referendum, but support for the Scottish National Party has since soared on the perception that London will not deliver the extra powers it promised to swing the poll result.

The Times/YouGov poll shows the Scottish National Party has a 21-point lead in Scotland and would take 48 percent of the vote to Labour's 27 percent, the Times newspaper reported. The Liberal Democrats were on 4 percent and Conservatives on 15 percent in Scotland, the poll showed.

The Times said that when plugged into a model, the results would give the SNP 48 out of 59 seats in Scotland, up from the 6 it won in 2010, leaving Labour just 11 seats, down from the 41 it won in 2010.

The nationalists aim to usurp Labour in Scotland and win the balance of power in an election that will decide who rules the world's sixth-largest economy and whether voters will get a referendum by 2017 on membership of the European Union.

In making a blaze of largesse and the dismissal of relatively liberal clerics two of his first acts as monarch, Saudi Arabia's King Salman has signaled his approach to big future challenges may differ from that of his liberalizing late brother.

On the face of it, those moves suggest a partiality for religious conservatism and the buying of political support - both traits that seem to contradict the modernizing reforms the kingdom says it wants.

While the truth is likely to be more complex than that, the moves hint at how Salman might tackle Saudi Arabia's looming demographic challenge, which threatens to undermine the ruling family's legitimacy at a moment of unprecedented regional chaos.

"Traditionalists and modernists grew apart during King Abdullah's time. But Salman had excellent relations with both sides and each thinks the new king is behind him," said Khalil al-Khalil, an academic and writer at Imam Saud University, the country's most influential seminary.

"I expect we'll see conservatives start to test the boundaries and see what they can get away with under the new regime," said a diplomat in the Gulf.

However, it is far from clear if Salman really will slow, or even reverse, Abdullah's liberalizing reforms, which are popular with many young Saudis.

Saudi Arabia's unspoken social contract – that its people owe the king obedience in return for public services, comfortable living standards and a government that rules in accordance with Islamic tenets – is at risk.

Fast population growth means spending on citizens must be constrained, while increasing access to the outside world means liberals and conservatives alike now challenge the idea of dynastic rule.

For Salman, those risks are more urgent than ever because of the rise of Islamic State, whose jihadist fighters boast they will inspire an uprising in Saudi Arabia to unseat the Al Saud.

The late King Abdullah attempted to preserve his family's rule with reforms aimed at creating private sector jobs and by gradually liberalizing society by loosening Islamic restrictions. He also clamped down hard on political dissent.

It is too early to say what Salman's vision is, but a series of decrees last week gave some indications, including the sacking of Justice Minister Mohammed al-Issa and Religious Police chief Abdulatif Al al-Sheikh, sworn foes of Saudi conservatives.

Those decrees also splurged around $20 billion in bonus payments to citizens and streamlined an unruly bunch of ministerial committees into just two, one to handle security issues and the other economic issues.

Testing the Boundaries 

In times of trouble, the Al Saud have always been more worried about the risk of a conservative Muslim uprising than about Western criticism or anger among liberal Saudis.

Abdullah approached that challenge by confronting the religious elite, upon whom the Al Saud depend for some of their legitimacy, and pushing them to accept reforms to the Sharia judiciary, education and women's rights.

Issa, the justice minister, was decried by conservatives in petitions to the monarch for promoting "the Westernizing stench of reform", while Al al-Sheikh's departure was applauded by members of the morality police, who publicly celebrated on Friday.

Conservatives may see Salman's move to dismiss the pair as a step back from the late king's liberalizing tendency. They will also be pleased by his decision to reappoint as an adviser to the court Saad al-Shethri, an ultra conservative sacked by Abdullah in 2009 for opposing a co-educational university.

Yet the changes in support of conservatives may not be as deep as the initial headlines suggest.

The new justice minister, Walid al-Samaani, "is from the same school as Issa. They both came from the Board of Grievances and served on the same committees. Sheikh Issah himself supervised Samaani's PhD," said Majed Garoub, a lawyer with close ties to the former justice minister.

Economic Reform

Any move to placate conservatives by backpeddling on women's rights would retard economic development too, because of the need for a big increase in Saudis of both sexes working for the private sector instead of depending on government salaries.

King Salman has not yet fleshed out his plans for reducing Riyadh's dependency on oil revenues over the long term or for moving Saudis into some of the 8 million jobs held by foreigners.

His award of two months bonus salaries and pensions last week appeared to take a page straight from the old, fiscally irresponsible playbook of decades ago.

But economists pointed out that unlike Abdullah's move upon becoming king in 2005 of raising public sector salaries, Salman's decree will only dent the budget this year and not impact future spending.

Meanwhile, his decision to keep in place the active Labour Minister Adel al-Faqieh suggests he will continue a big drive to get more Saudis into work, and merging two education ministries might mean a revival of reform efforts in that direction.

Another possible wave of reforms might be aimed not at resolving those long term issues, however, but at making the state provide better services and reduce corruption, say people who know the new king.

Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed has already shown how improving services might be possible in the Interior Ministry, where he pushed through e-government programs that made many procedures slicker.

Salman may hope that similar efforts in other parts of the state will make life more comfortable for his subjects and therefore secure Saudi Arabia's leadership against challengers without causing more tension between liberals and conservatives.

Greece's new government dropped calls for a write-off of its foreign debt and proposed ending a standoff with its official creditors by swapping the debt for growth-linked bonds on Monday, a week after its election on an anti-austerity platform.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, in London to reassure private investors that he was not seeking a showdown with Brussels over a new debt agreement, said the new left-wing government would spare privately held bonds from losses, a source told Reuters.

The reported proposals, which included a pledge to reform the Greek economy, contrast sharply with the government's strident vows in Athens last week to ditch the tough austerity conditions imposed under its existing bailout.

Late on Monday, Varoufakis issued a statement saying that comments of his to financial investors had been misinterpreted. He gave no details but he was widely reported in Greek media to be backing down from the government's aim of reducing the debt.

"The government and the finance minister will not back down, irrespective of how grieved some people are by our determination," he said in the statement.

It was not clear whether the proposals would be accepted by European heavyweight Germany, which opposes softening the terms.

Varoufakis had not discussed the swap with officials from its European Union or European Central Bank creditors, said the source, who had direct knowledge of the plans but would not be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

The finance minister also said he had not put a value on the swap, the source said, calling it a "work in progress".

"These bonds held by the ECB right now can be restructured. It's possible to turn it into perpetual bonds to be serviced, or growth-linked debt," said the source. "It's the same with a proportion of the other bilateral bonds held by the official sector."

Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told Reuters in an interview earlier on Monday that Berlin would not accept any unilateral changes to Greece's debt program.

"We want Greece to continue going down this successful path in the interests of Greece and the Greeks but we will not accept one-sided changes to the program," he said at the Reuters Euro Zone Summit.

Varoufakis called his plan a "menu of debt swaps" that meant Athens would no longer call for a write-off of Greece’s 315 billion euros ($360 billion) of foreign debt, the Financial Times reported.

"What I’ll say to our partners is that we are putting together a combination of a primary budget surplus and a reform agenda," Varoufakis told the newspaper.

"I’ll say, 'Help us to reform our country and give us some fiscal space to do this, otherwise we shall continue to suffocate and become a deformed rather than a reformed Greece'."

Athens planned to target wealthy tax-evaders and post primary budget surpluses of 1 to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product, he told the paper, even if it meant his party, Syriza, could not fulfill all the spending promises on which it was elected.

The finance minister and Greece's new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras are touring European capitals in a diplomatic offensive to replace Greece's bailout accord with the European Union, ECB and International Monetary Fund, known as the "troika".

On Tuesday, Tsipras will meet Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, a young center-left leader thought to be among those most sympathetic to calls for leniency.

Varoufakis said he was confident he could reach a negotiated settlement soon, telling Britain's Channel 4 news it was time to stop Greece being a "festering wound" on Europe and dismissing a suggestion the ECB could block a new deal.

He met international investors on Monday evening. Michael Hintze, founder and CEO of hedge fund CQS, asked afterwards if the minister had proposed a debt swap, said "It's more balanced and broader than that," without elaborating.

The source told Reuters losses would not be forced on private investors, saying: "They have had enough hair cuts."

In a statement released by the Greek Finance Ministry early on Tuesday in Athens, Varoufakis said the government's aim was to pull the country out of "debt serfdom".

Milder Message

After a tumultuous first week in which the firebrand government indicated it intended to keep campaign promises to ditch the tough austerity conditions imposed under its existing bailout, the emphasis this week appears to be on maintaining that a new deal is still possible.

"We are in substantial negotiations with our partners in Europe and those that have lent to us. We have obligations towards them," Tsipras said at a news conference in Cyprus during his first foreign visit as prime minister.

When asked whether Greece would seek aid from Russia, which is a worsening standoff with Europe and the United States over Ukraine, he said: "Right now, there are no other thoughts on the table." Germany said Russia would not be a viable substitute.

Greece, unable to borrow on the markets and facing pressure to extend the current support agreement when it expires on Feb. 28, is looking for a bridging deal to provide breathing space to propose a new debt arrangement.

Exactly how much time Athens has to reach a deal with its creditors remains to be seen. In theory, there are only weeks left: once the bailout expires at the end of February, the ECB could be obliged to pull the plug on funding for Greek banks. In practice, however, an alternative interim funding mechanism for the banks may be found.

After that, Greece has large debt payments due in March, although officials say it could have enough cash on hand to meet them, avoiding a crunch until later in the spring.

"Nein"

Tsipras repeated calls already made by Varoufakis for a mechanism of inspections by experts from the "troika" overseeing Greek finances to be dismantled and replaced by direct negotiations between Athens, the EU and IMF.

"I believe that this would be a mature and necessary development for Europe," he said.

But Germany said "Nein".

"The German government sees no reason to scrap this mechanism of evaluation by the troika,"Finance Ministry spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz said in Berlin.

Varoufakis, an outspoken economist who has likened EU austerity policies to "waterboarding", began his European tour over the weekend in Paris, where the center-left government is thought to be more sympathetic than others to the case for relaxing lending conditions.

He then moved to London to meet investors whose confidence is crucial, saying he was not in "a kind of Wild West showdown" with the EU, but aimed to strike a mutually beneficial deal to minimize the cost of the crisis for the average European.

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said after meeting Varoufakis that Athens could not expect a straight debt write-off, but left the door open to other options that include giving Athens more time for repayment.

Varoufakis met about 100 banks and financial institutions in London. An organizer said one of the meetings had to be moved from a upmarket London members' club, because Varoufakis wouldn't wear a tie.

Varoufakis also met British officials, seeking more European allies, although Britain is not a euro zone member.

After meeting him, Britain's finance minister, George Osborne, called the stand-off between Greece and the euro zone "the greatest risk to the global economy".

"I urge the Greek finance minister to act responsibly but it's also important that the euro zone has a better plan for jobs and growth," Osborne said.

I am a millennial, which means that along with my deft technology skills and love for social media, I am also a member of the first generation to have never lived in an HIV-free world since the illness was first diagnosed in humans. The fact that 1.5 million people die from AIDS-related illnesses every year has been a part of my reality since birth.

One could even say millennials and AIDS have grown up together: As doctors first pulled us from our mothers’ wombs, they were also identifying the human immunodeficiency virus as the newest viral threat to the human race. When we learned to walk, scientists learned they could beat back the virus’s devastation on the human body with the discontinued cancer drug azidothymidine, better known as AZT. Later, as we were perfecting our ABCs and learning to count, pharmaceutical companies succeeded in perfecting the ideal AIDS “drug cocktail.” It was no cure, but it extended and greatly improved the lives of patients suffering from the acquired human immunodeficiency syndrome.

The illness was transformed from a near-certain death sentence in the 1980s to a completely treatable condition by the 2000s. By 2010, great efforts had been made to remove much of the stigma that surrounds the virus and those it infects. Still, despite these advances, the cure for the virus remains elusive. But that might be because scientists have been looking for it in the wrong places.

The Berlin Patient

When HIV enters the body, it targets T lymphocyte cells (T cells) in the immune system. As these vital immune system cells are destroyed, the body is left with depleting defenses. If the virus progresses far enough, the patient will develop AIDS and become more susceptible to an array of pathogens—bacteria, fungi, parasites and other viruses—that a healthy adult body would fight off easily. AIDS patients are also more likely to develop cancer, and live with systemic symptoms of infection (regular fevers, weakness and weight loss, for example). But for every 100 people infected with HIV, one will show nearly no symptoms. These rare individuals are called “elite controllers” and are born this way due to a unique genetic mutation.

Except, in 2007, science managed to create one. That year, Timothy Brown, better known as “the Berlin Patient,” become the first person to be cured of HIV by being turned into an elite controller.

In 1995, Brown’s life forever changed when he learned he had tested positive for HIV. With the help of his doctors, he was able to control the virus using the relatively new treatment options, until 2006, when his health took another unexpected turn. Doctors informed Brown he had acute myelogenous leukemia, a form of bone cancer. His newest diagnosis was completely unrelated to his HIV status, but if nothing was done, the cancer would surely and swiftly kill him. Brown needed a bone marrow transplant, and in an ingenious move, his hematologist, Dr. Gero Hütter, decided that, rather than using marrow from a donor who simply matched Brown, he would take it one step further and use matching marrow from a known elite controller.

On February 7, 2007, Brown underwent the first of its kind procedure, and HIV history was forever changed. By 2009, tests revealed he was not only cured of cancer but also nearly HIV-free. His body contained only small traces of the virus, not enough for it to replicate or spread in any meaningful way

Doctors are still not entirely sure why Brown was able to develop immunity. Although the same procedure has been repeated on other patients, it failed to produce the same results. Seven years on, Brown remains the only patient to have ever become virtually HIV-free and stay that way.

Virus-Creating Factory

In the past, scientist sought out a cure by killing either the virus or the virus-infected cells. Both of these strategies have failed repeatedly, and will most likely continue to do so: Although antivirals can keep viral numbers down to undetectable levels, there seems to be no way to completely eradicate a virus from the human body.

But after Brown’s miracle story spread, one team of scientists—including Nobel laureate David Baltimore and Hütter, the Berlin Patient’s doctor—formed a company, Calimmune, to investigate a new approach. Rather than working to completely rid patients’ bodies of HIV, they would try to replicate the experience of the elite controllers—and the Berlin Patient—who continue to have small amounts of the virus in their bodies but experience none of the health consequences, and don’t need any of the medications used by other patients trying to control their HIV infection. If they succeeded, they’d have the first true “functional cure” for HIV.

“It’s not the virus but how the host controls it that we need to be able to mimic,” says Dr. Magdalena Sobieszczyk, a researcher with the HIV/AIDS Research Program at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

It’s all about the T cell. In order to enter a T lymphocyte cell, HIV must pass through a gene receptor referred to as CCR5. Think of CCR5 as the “doorway” to the cell. Once inside the T cell, the virus takes over and turns it into a virus-creating factory. A patient is considered to be stricken with AIDS when the viral “load” reaches a certain threshold.

In the case of elite controllers, the CCR5 gene receptor is mutated in such a way that the virus is unable to latch onto and enter the T cells. This means the virus is unable to replicate—and its numbers will remain so low that they are nearly undetectable by doctors.

Calimmune’s researchers have used stem cell technology to create T cells lacking the CCR5 gene receptor, thus making them resistant to HIV. These manually mutated cells are then reintroduced into the patient’s body via an outpatient transplant procedure that is more effective and safer than a standard bone marrow transplant. The latter, says Dr. Scott Hammer, a scientist at the HIV/AIDS research program at New York’s Columbia University Medical Center, is too “toxic” of a procedure to be considered as a general treatment for HIV.

The transplant “gives them a population of cells that are not infected,” says Baltimore. These uninfected cells could then either control the virus numbers in HIV-positive individuals or prevent infection in those without it. In other words, the transplant has the potential to be both cure and vaccine. Calimmune has announced it is about to move on to the second half of its Phase 1 human trial, and will soon implant four new patients with its genetically modified stem cells.

Scientists from Harvard have recently succeeded in artificially creating this same CCR5 gene mutation using the relatively new CRISPR gene-editing technology. CRISPR—short for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”—is a mechanism that allows scientists to precisely target and then edit any genes.

Chad Cowan, a researcher involved in the project, says that using CRISPR to edit the HIV patient’s own cells in a petri dish and then reintroducing them back into the patient “would provide lifelong immunity or a cure for HIV.” This procedure, he says, would “in essence replicate what is happening in elite controllers,” and may also be able to reduce the patient’s risk of transferring the virus.

To date, the Harvard gene-editing process has been conducted only in petri dishes; animal trials are the next step. Once the procedure has been shown to work in mice, the team would apply to the Food and Drug Administration to launch a Phase 1 human trial to test it for safety.

If it works, there’s a chance that anyone diagnosed with HIV will be able to join the rarified 1 percent. Nathaniel Smith, who was diagnosed in 1989, hopes the treatment is perfected before it’s too late for him. “I lived in a time when there was no hope, there was no treatment,” he says. “People were told to get their affairs together because they have two years left to live.”

Smith says that millennials diagnosed with HIV today have much more reason for optimism than any previous generation. But he’s got a positive attitude about his future, too. “With all the advancements, I’m hopeful. Anything is possible.” 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomed Barack Obama to India on January 25 as part of a historic visit in which he served as chief guest at the Republic Day parade, the first U.S. president to be accorded such an honor.

The visit not only highlighted a growing defense and strategic partnership between the two leaders but also presented an opportunity to emphasize their common commitment to democratic ideals, including religious freedom and pluralism.

In the "Declaration of Friendship," Obama and Modi declared their respect for "equal opportunity for all people through democracy, effective governance and fundamental freedoms." This commitment takes on greater significance when considering the current debate within India surrounding religious conversions.

In December 2014, the Indian parliament was sidetracked for several days following news of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader's plan to host a mass conversion of Muslims and Christians to Hinduism on Christmas Day. The planned ceremony sparked an enormous backlash among Indian opposition politicians, who demanded Modi make a statement on the issue. Eventually, the group organizing the event agreed to cancel it.

Hardline Hindu nationalists claim that non-Hindus (especially within tribal communities in northeast India) have been "tricked" or induced to convert from Hinduism and thus need to be brought back into the fold. The number of conversion ceremonies, referred to as Ghar Vapsi, or homecomings, have reportedly increased substantially since the BJP took power in June 2014.

Amidst the controversy, some BJP leaders, such as Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu, have proposed passing a national anti-conversion law; the legislation is purportedly aimed at preventing forced conversions. A handful of Indian states have already adopted anti-conversion laws, which are reportedly used mainly to harass or intimidate India's religious minorities. Seventy-three percent of Indians are Hindu, while around 14 percent are Muslim, 5 percent are Christian, and another 8 percent are Sikh, Buddhist, ethno-religionist or non-religionist.

Forced or manipulated religious conversions are problematic. However, adopting a national anti-conversion law is not the answer to the problem. Allowing law enforcement or judicial authorities to determine whether a conversion has been forced or manipulated allows the state to intervene too heavily in religious matters that involve personal and ethical choices.

Modi himself has been relatively quiet on the issue of religious conversions and has signaled that he is more interested in focusing on his economic agenda rather than pursuing Hindutva (the shaping of Indian identity and culture along Hindu lines).

But even Modi's top-level officials have made controversial statements pressing Hindutva policies, which have raised alarm among India's religious minorities. In December 2014, Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj provoked widespread criticism for her call to make the Bhagavad Gita (the Hindu holy book) the national scripture.

Religious minorities want Modi to do more to stand up for religious freedom and to rein in the Hindutva tendencies within his own party and associated groups, including the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. A group of Christian leaders met with Modi on Christmas Day to convey their concerns about mass conversions, reporting that they have instilled a sense of fear and insecurity within the Christian community.

In mid-December, church leaders released a statement calling for equal respect for all faiths and stating that "there is no place for a state religion." The statement detailed several cases of physical assaults on Christians and the desecrations of churches, including a Catholic church in New Delhi in early December.

Modi stayed away from divisive rhetoric and communal politics during the election campaign last year. In his first speech to the Indian parliament six months ago, he extended an olive branch to Muslims by acknowledging that the Indian Muslim community's lag in socioeconomic terms behind the rest of the nation was unacceptable.

But he needs to reaffirm his commitment to religious freedom and demonstrate he is not beholden to hardline groups pushing a Hindutva agenda, beginning with discouraging mass conversion rallies.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council), an organization associated with the BJP that focuses on preserving and consolidating Hindu culture, is planning another Ghar Vapsi to convert over 3,000 Muslims to Hinduism in the town of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh in early February.

Holding the ceremony at Ayodhya is particularly provocative. This is where the Babri mosque was destroyed in 1992 by Hindu militants, which led to massive Hindu-Muslim clashes that killed nearly 2,000 people. Hindus believe the Babri mosque was located at the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram, where a prominent Hindu temple (the Ram Temple) once existed.

During the early years of the previous BJP-led government, under former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, violent attacks against religious minorities increased. But Vajpayee made an effort to rein in the hardline elements of his party and was able to tame the situation.

The question now is, How far will Modi go to rein in Hindutva supporters? Unless he makes clear that he will not tolerate activities like Ghar Vapsi, which call into question India's commitment to religious freedom and pluralism, he risks tarnishing his government's international reputation.

Failing to affirm his support for religious freedom as an integral aspect of Indian pluralistic democracy would also dampen Indo-U.S. ties. This would be highly unfortunate, given that those ties just received a major fillip with Obama's historic Republic Day visit.

Lisa Curtis is senior research fellow in the Asian Studies Centre at The Heritage Foundation. This article first appeared on religionandgeopolitics.org.

Slavik’s voice was laced with panic. “No one is coming for us. We are surrounded by the enemy,” he had told me over a crackling telephone line. There were, he said, many losses, many soldiers lying on the floor around him – “some dead, some injured. Commanders need to send in reinforcements, or start negotiating a way out.” I would get the message out, wouldn’t I?

Over the course of that Saturday 17 January, I spoke to him on two further occasions. It was clear the 22-year-old Slavik had grown more and more terrified as he became trapped in Donetsk airport. “We’ve been looking around for people’s arms so we might stitch them on again,” he had said. By our third call of the evening, Slavik reported that a comrade missing his arm had bled to death. “If they don’t come for us by day break, we are done for. Done for.” That was the last contact I had with him, the last contact anyone had with him.

Slavik was a gifted boy. Growing up in western Ukraine, he never studied properly, but always seemed to do well. He was “an intellectual”, according to his father, with interests from the saxophone to theatre. He studied at the Kharkiv arts academy, but within a year had abandoned college. “He said he didn’t like the way they taught, and it was typical of him – always seeking out injustice to the point of stubbornness”.

Given his circumstances, joining the elite 80th paratrooper brigade in Lviv wasn’t the worst of outcomes, and his father recalls his pride at seeing his son in uniform. But Slavik’s tongue soon got him into trouble. He fell out with superiors after an argument over an armoured personel carrier he claimed wasn’t fit for service. He ripped up his military contract and went home.

That was in November 2013. By summer 2014, Slavik was receiving terrifying updates from the frontline, where former colleagues were defending Lugansk airport, and had found themselves fenced in by Russian-backed forces. He lost four of his closest friends in the battle, and felt he had to do something. By September, against the advice of his father, he went back to the Lviv training range. “I didn’t want him there – I told him it was a politicians’ war,” his father recalls.

Just before Christmas, Slavik travelled east, eventually ending up in Donetsk airport. Built during the height of the Cold War, Donetsk airport was the epitome of modern design. It covered a huge territory, and provided any number of hiding places within its serpentine grid of tunnels, bunkers and underground communications systems. There were entries into nearby mines, and into Donetsk itself, though much of the network had not been accessed for decades. For the Russian-backed rebels, the airport was an Achilles heel that prevented them from taking full control of the city. “The defence of Donetsk is impossible without the airport,” says Shiba, a deputy rebel battalion commander, using an alias. For the Ukrainian side, meanwhile, the airport had turned into a symbolic Stalingrad, with much war propaganda invested into the image of the indestructible, Terminator-style “cyborgs” who defended it.

Birds fly near the traffic control tower of the Sergey Prokofiev International Airport damaged by shelling during fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces in Donetsk, October 9, 2014.Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters

With the old terminal falling into rebel hands during the December “ceasefire”, the main focus of the January battle was the new terminal. During the week before it fell, the Ukrainians inside were steadily beaten down to the second and third floors of the building; and then, by Saturday, to just a part of the second floor. “They were crawling all over the place like rats – above, below, and on either side,” says Sasha [not his real name], an injured paratrooper, speaking from his hospital bed. “You could hear them baiting us from behind the walls. They were saying things like ‘time to surrender, Ukies, we’re coming to cut your throats’.”

Throughout that Saturday, there were several attempts to remove injured Ukrainian soldiers from the new terminal, but all were unsuccessful. At about 4am on Sunday morning, however, Ukrainian forces staged a major counter-offensive along the south side of the airport, which allowed a convoy of light army vehicles to retrieve the most seriously wounded. The operation was considered a success, though many Ukrainian soldiers remained trapped in the new terminal. Slavik was one of them. During the battles, military spokesmen claimed government forces were in full control of the airport. Then, some time around midday on Monday, the airport reverberated to the sound of an explosion. According to rebel commander Shiba, the blast was caused by the Ukrainian side “for reasons known only to themselves”.

Evgeny, a soldier serving in the 93rd brigade, sees things differently. “The explosion came from the centre of the hall, perhaps 40m from where we were, and was caused by explosives thrown in through a hole from the third floor, which we simply didn’t control.” All the internal walls were blown away by the blast, he says. Although few died, most soldiers received concussion injuries. An even bigger explosion followed at 3.30pm the following day. All of the supporting walls in the floors above gave way, crushing soldiers among the falling concrete. “We were running out of munitions,” says Evgeny, “but the worst thing was this sense of phantoms flying around you. You had so many people writhing in agony, moaning, crying for help.” Some of the injured were still shooting from horizontal positions, according to Evgeny: “They realised it was a fight to the end.”

Evgeny himself escaped on foot on Tuesday evening, scampering to safer positions the other side of the landing strip. He was the only one of his original group to make it home. He estimates that of soldiers in the new terminal, at least one third died, and a further third were seriously injured. As of 7.30am on Wednesday, Slavik was still in the new terminal, trapped under the rubble. His father battled his own fears in order to keep his son’s spirits up during a series of short telephone calls. “At the start we had hope. Slavik told me how he’d spoken to a British journalist, and how some deputy defence minister had followed up and assured him that help was on his its way.”

By Wednesday, however, it was clear that Slavik was on his own. “I said to my wife I was going to get the little one,” Slavik’s father says. “I got everything together in quick time – passport, money, papers – and I set off in the car. But I was an absolute wreck and I lost my way four times in the first hour.” He abandoned plans to drive there, and boarded the next train going east.

Some time after 7.30am on Wednesday 21 January, Slavik was captured by rebel forces. The following day he was paraded as part of a column of Ukrainian POWs in front of angry locals in Donetsk. Slavik’s father has been working ever since to secure the release of his son, and has even made an personal appeal to rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko for mercy. These efforts have been independent and largely obstructed by Ukraine’s security services. “They tell me I’m doing my country no favours, but I’m only doing what a father needs to do,” he says.

Sasha, the paratrooper in hospital, recognises Slavik from the tale, and agrees with the father’s position. “Every one of those soldiers who fought in the airport is a hero. Sure, Slavik might have been scared, but we were all scared. There was not one second when you weren’t completely petrified. What’s important is that Slavik didn’t leave his comrades behind.” Sasha shakes his head and pauses for a while. When he continues, he tells me the airport is an experience he’d wish on no one, but that it wouldn’t stop him going back: “Too much blood has been lost. Even now, I see the faces. Those faces . . .”

A young woman, a nurse, appears from behind the soldier’s hospital bed. “Your temperature is above 38C. The interview stops now,” she says.

A new statistic is circulating in the anti-vaccination corner of the Internet. Two numbers, side by side: zero, the number of deaths caused by measles in the past decade, and 108, the number of deaths caused by measles vaccines in the past decade. The writing’s on the wall: Vaccines kill, measles doesn’t.

The first number, which comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is correct. Due to advances in modern medicine, the mortality rate for measles in the United States is exceptionally low—on average, around 0.3 percent from 1987 to 2000, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Not so for other countries, especially in the developing world: In 2000, measles was responsible for 22 percent of deaths of children under 5 in Ethiopia. So although measles remains a lethal disease elsewhere in the world, it is true that it hasn’t killed any Americans in the past decade.

But then there’s the second number: more than a hundred deaths as a direct result of having received a measles vaccine since 2004. This is the one that should strike you as off. And that’s because that figure comes not from the CDC but from the National Vaccine Information Center, a 501(c)3 nonprofit founded in 1982 for parents whose children suffered brain injury or death—they said—as a result of having received vaccines The group campaigns against mandatory vaccination laws, including those that require children to get the measles vaccines to attend public school, for example.

The CDC also maintains a database of adverse events, which it shares with the Food and Drug Administration. It is legally mandated to do so. According to that database, there have been 69 deaths following receipt of measles vaccines since 2004. But neither of these numbers—108 or 69—tells the true story. This is because the protocol for reporting adverse reactions to vaccines, called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, does not draw causal relationships between vaccines and adverse effects but merely correlations.

In layman’s terms, either 108 or 69 people (depending on whom you ask) died sometime after having been vaccinated against measles since 2004, but not necessarily because they were vaccinated against measles. In some cases, their deaths were totally unrelated, or the patient had some undiagnosed congenital illness that meant he or she should never have been vaccinated in the first place. This data is all publicly available in the CDC’s VAERS database.

There’s one more way in which the anti-vaxxers misconstrue this statistic. While it’s true some people may have died as a result of the measles vaccine, many more would have died without them. According to the WHO, the measles vaccine prevented about 15.6 million deaths from 2000 to 2013. Childhood measles remains a leading cause of blindness in developing countries. In places like Haiti, Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa, the measles vaccine led to an overall mortality reduction of between 30 and 86 percent from 1970 onward, according to a paper published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases by Drs. Robert Perry and Neal Halsey.

Those promoting this 108 number appear to be uninterested in widely accepted facts, and most don’t seem to understand the difference between correlation and causation. Or they just don’t care. Their primary interest, it seems, is in waging a PR war against the likes of the CDC. And if they win that battle, it could be a public health disaster for all of us.