Russia warns of retaliatory action as NATO defies Moscow and expands east

Russia warned of retaliatory measures Wednesday after NATO invited the tiny Balkan state of Montenegro to join the military alliance in its bloc’s first expansion since 2009. The move defies previous warnings from Moscow that enlargement of the U.S.-led alliance further into the region would be seen as a provocation.

In a scripted session at NATO's headquarters in Brussels, Montenegro's Foreign Minister Igor Luksic strode into the imposing conference hall to loud applause from his peers as NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg declared: “This is the beginning of a very beautiful alliance.”

Stoltenberg said inviting Montenegro had nothing to do with Russia. But NATO diplomats have said the decision sends a message to Moscow that it does not have a veto on NATO's eastwards expansion, even if Georgia's membership bid has been complicated by its 2008 war with Russia.

Moscow opposes any NATO extension to former communist areas of eastern and southeastern Europe, part of an east-west struggle for influence over former Soviet satellites that is at the center of the crisis in Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last September that any expansion of NATO was “a mistake, even a provocation.” In comments to Russian media then, he described NATO's so-called open door policy as “irresponsible.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that NATO’s encroachment eastwards would lead to retaliatory measures.

RIA news agency cited a Russian senator as saying Wednesday that Russia would end joint projects with Montenegro if the ex-Communist country joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Adriatic state of 650,000 people is expected to become a member formally next year.

Viktor Ozerov, head of the Russian Federation Council's defense and safety committee, said the projects which could be axed included those in military areas, RIA reported.

NATO foreign ministers broke off formal contact with Russia in April last year after Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and sparked the conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 8,000 people.

Still, NATO allies are divided over what message to send to Georgia over its long-delayed membership bid, with some European capitals arguing the alliance would be unable to defend the ex-Soviet state in the event of a conflict with Russia.

Those difficulties were underlined by a foreign ministers' joint statement that provided little momentum in Georgia's membership talks.

While Stoltenberg said the door remains open for Tiblisi, ministers reiterated their long-held position that Tiblisi must continue to prepare for membership one day, calling for Russia's military to withdraw from Georgia's separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Russia's presence there and the agreements signed between Russia and the two regions “blatantly contradict the principles of international law,” ministers said.

NATO's founding treaty deems an attack against one ally an attack against all, giving any member a guarantee of protection.

But Russia's build-up of surface-to-air missile batteries and anti-ship missiles in Crimea and the Black Sea make Georgia more difficult to defend from the Mediterranean or NATO-member Turkey, meaning any action might have to involve a deployment of ground troops from Western Europe.

NATO membership is also dependent on a country settling any outstanding territorial disputes, a big hurdle for Georgia.

After Albania and Croatia joined NATO in 2009, only Serbia, Russia's closest ally in the Balkans, is not actively pursuing membership of the alliance. Foreign ministers signaled support for Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but neither are expected to join soon.

Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad

In 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates announced that they would commit 95 percent of their wealth to charitable work. Together with Warren Buffett, they also created the Giving Pledge, which asks the richest people in the world to devote half or more of their fortunes to philanthropy.

One of the earliest people to sign the pledge? Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. So it was not a complete surprise when Zuckerberg and Chan announced on Tuesday their plan to set aside 99 percent of their Facebook shares — “about $45 billion” — for charity.

The news is this: Taking a page from the Gates family, they will use the money to pump up their non-profit, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The private foundation is an especially American style of charitable giving. Non-profits in the United States play a disproportionately large role in public life, in part because American tax laws make it attractive for the rich to donate. Much of their wealth could otherwise be captured by capital gains and estate taxes.

Private spending on social welfare in the United States is four times the average in advanced economies, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The wealthiest countries, like France and Germany, are far more likely to use government resources to promote social good, and far less likely to use private resources.

This gap in national philosophies helps explain why the Giving Pledge has been popular with American billionaires, yet not quite as popular abroad. German shipping magnate Peter Krämer is one of the most vocal detractors of the pledge, and the American tradition of government-sponsored charity. Here's an excerpt from a 2010 interview with the German paper Der Spiegel, which asked him for his reaction to the plan.

Krämer: I find the US initiative highly problematic. You can write donations off in your taxes to a large degree in the USA. So the rich make a choice: Would I rather donate or pay taxes? The donors are taking the place of the state. That's unacceptable. SPIEGEL: But doesn't the money that is donated serve the common good? Krämer: It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it's not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That's a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow? SPIEGEL: It is their money at the end of the day. Krämer: In this case, 40 superwealthy people want to decide what their money will be used for. That runs counter to the democratically legitimate state. In the end the billionaires are indulging in hobbies that might be in the common good, but are very personal.

Compared to the richest nations, the U.S. ranks near the bottom in terms of public spending on social support, according to the OECD. But that’s because a large chunk of the work is carried out by non-profits, or otherwise subsidized by the government through tax breaks.

On average in well-off countries, private social spending accounts for 2.6 percent of the gross domestic product. In the United States, private social spending is 11 percent.

Americans are some of the most charitable people in the world in part because there is a centuries-old tradition of private non-profits helping people in lieu of the government.

Even Alexis de Tocqueville observed the trend in the 1830s, writing: “In every case, at the head of any new undertaking where in France you would find the government, or in England some great lord, in the United States you are sure to find an association."

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the American system of tax-subsidized charity, of course. As de Tocqueville argued, promoting charity has the benefit of improving social cohesion. He wrote that when the government taxes and gives to the poor, people feel slighted. When people voluntarily give to the poor, they feel better about themselves.

The critique is that this system affords too much power to the rich, whose decisions may not align with what’s best for society. This is not to say that the government is a paragon of efficacy either, but it risks a lot to depend on a handful of mega-billionaires to be prudent, effective philanthropists.

The U.S. tax code "ends up subsidizing the gifts of high-income taxpayers the most, lower-income renters the least, and middle-class homeowners in the middle,” Duke University's Charles T. Clotfelter has written. "One of the most significant consequences of this tax treatment of charitable giving is to give to the wealthiest taxpayers a disproportionate role in allocating public resources and influencing the direction that institutions will take."

In his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, economist Thomas Piketty proposed a wealth tax as one way to address rising inequality — and transfer wealth from individuals to the state. In the United States, estate and gift taxes achieve some of that function by prodding people to donate their wealth instead of bequeathing it to their children. (Economists like Piketty tend to regard those measures as too modest.)

The debate is whether the money is better of in the hands of the government, or in service to private non-profits. There's no denying the good intentions of the billionaire philanthropists, but it can be hard to know if the decisions they make about how to use their money ultimately serve society in the best ways.

Gates has already given away more than $30 billion, while Buffet has parted with $22 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock. In 2010, before the lion's share of those gifts, the Guardian described the impact of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on public health:

Precise effects of big charity projects can be hard to measure, especially over a relatively short period. But already two bodies that the foundation funds heavily, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) and the Global Fund to Fight HIV/Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, have, according to the foundation, delivered vaccines to more than 250 million children in poor countries and prevented more than an estimated five million deaths. "The foundation has brought a new vigour," says Michael Edwards, a veteran charity commentator and usually a critic of billionaire philanthropists. "The charity sector can almost disempower itself; be too gloomy about things . . . Gates offers more of a positive story. He is a role model for other philanthropists, and he is the biggest."

What genre of philanthropy will Chan and Zuckerberg invest in? Possibly anything. Their letter on Tuesday set two missions, both ambitiously vague: “advancing human potential” and “promoting equality." They mention curing diseases, improving clean energy, promoting entrepreneurship, fighting poverty and hunger, empowering women and minorities, and so on.

The pair do not have a sterling track record when it comes to effective charity. One of their previous efforts, a high-profile $100 million donation to fix the schools in Newark, N.J., has been widely criticized as a failure.

Chan and Zuckerberg write in their announcement that they have learned from their past experiences with philanthropy. For now, they will start with their own community in San Francisco, focusing on education, health, and “connecting people.”

IS Or Daesh? It's A Pointless Name Game

If ever there was an example of the sometimes pointless hot air generator that the House of Commons can sometimes disintegrate into, this must have been it. The PM said that he had complained to the BBC that the broadcaster has referred to "the Islamic State" and that this was worse even than "so-called Islamic State" (the term Sky News uses). We should rather refer to the so-called Islamic State as Da’esh, the PM said.

The terror group doesn't like the term, apparently. Which is odd because it's the Arabic acronym of "ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah fī 'l-ʿIrāq wa-sh-Shām" (which should therefore be Da’ish?)

It means the Islamic State in Iraq and Shams (greater Syria). In other letters, ISIS or ISIL if you translate Shams as "the Levant".

Aside from the Prime Minister’s temerity in telling the BBC how it should speak English, this is a terrific 'so what?' amid the wider debate about how to destroy the death cult - a term that while pejorative seems to have gained currency since Sky News started using it more than a year ago.

Da’ish/IS/ISIL/ISIS - an organisation dedicated to an apocalyptic vision of the future in which the planet is burned to ash in a final end-time war ahead of a messianic redemption - manipulated "young men half in love with death" to go the whole way, and uses spectacular slaughter to political ends.

It is therefore a death cult. Muslims often say it is not Islamic and it’s not, as it claims 'The Caliphate'. So we tend to dance around those labels to avoid giving the cult any legitimacy.

But this is a debate only slightly as hollow as the marathon expositions over bombing in Syria in the Commons.

What is being debated is a tactical shift to expand the area of operations of the RAF from Iraq into Syria - in line with our key allies France and the USA.

It makes no military sense to have had limited operations in the first place, as experts have been saying for 14 months.

There is the issue of whether there are ground troops available to take the cult on. The PM has now explained, just about, that the 70,000 he said were available from the ranks of rebels would be freed up to exploit the coalition airstrikes after a ceasefire between those very rebels and the regime of Bashar al Assad.

He said that a deal could be reached in six months and that he hoped for a full transition of power in Damascus in 18 months.

That may be wishful thinking but diplomats close to the talks have been giving out consistently optimistic vibrations.

This development is new, and exciting - perhaps more important that what was going on in the Commons.

He didn’t admit that the 70,000 would not be available until a ceasefire. But argued that in the meantime airstrikes by the RAF, added to those of his allies, would not do any harm but would help to put the cult on its back hooves.

This is self-evidently true - the cult has been held back from overrunning Baghdad and been driven out of Kurdish areas by a combination of air and ground operations.

Air operations can also target the cult's command and control structures, its industrial base in oil, and logistics generally.

The UK is already at the top of the country list for attack by the cult's fellow travellers so it will not make much difference whether or not RAF operations are expanded into Syria.

So why the 150 members who wanted to speak in the Commons in a debate of no tactical importance, but little strategic significance of great note?

"Sometimes in this House we get carried away with the theatricals of this place," Jeremy Corbyn said.

New cases of diabetes are down, but here’s why the U.S. is still in trouble

New data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show a bright spot in America's battle against diabetes: After more than a decade of skyrocketing new cases, the number appears to be on the decline.

CDC epidemiologists have noticed this trend for several years, but given the statistical margin for error for this kind of data, they weren't 100 percent confident it was a real drop until now.

"Whereas a couple of year ago when there was clearly no increase we called it a plateau and were perhaps nervous that things had not turned the corner. With the new data we feel quite comfortable that indeed there has been a decrease," Edward Gregg, an epidemiologist for the CDC who specializes in diabetes, said in a phone interview.

From 1980 to 2014, the number of U.S. adults ages 18-79 who were being newly diagnosed with diabetes tripled from 493,000 in 1980 to more than 1.4 million. The trend accelerated from 1991 to 2009, but appeared to decline from 2009 to 2014.

Gregg said he credits a "gradual change" in risk behaviors that include changes in diet and physical activity. He noted that the greatest reductions in cases was seen in men. For those with less than a high school education, women and minority groups, the decline wasn't statistically significant, but he said he is encouraged because the "trends are in the same direction."

Science into diabetes prevention hit an important point several decades ago when researchers theorized that if you can identify high-risk people and can educate them about the risk, you can reduce the number of people who get it. "Sometimes it takes a number of years for this to happen, for the chronic disease epidemic to change the tide," he explained.

Gregg cautioned that while there is good news in the new numbers, we are still in a crisis. In fact, about 1 out of 10 Americans has diabetes even with the decline in new cases.

"In terms of incidence, our rates are still 60 percent higher than in the '90s and prevalence is still two times as high," he said. "It is still a huge problem — we shouldn’t take this data as excuse to become complacent and not continue to try to change risk. This is still one of the largest public health problems we are facing."

Gregg also said he remains concerned that the data are so broad that some of what's happening in high-risk subgroups may be hidden. "Our greatest concern is in communities with high poverty and low education, and we don't have all the data to know whether some of the highest-risk parts of America are seeing this improvement as well," he said.

Meanwhile, diabetes continues to take a huge economic toll, with an annual cost of $245 billion — similar to the revenues of a number of countries, such as Mexico and Sweden.

Prince Harry Moved By Slaughtered Rhino And Calf

Prince Harry paid tribute to anti-poaching rangers. Pic: Kensington Palace

The Prince visited the scene where the environmental rangers were gathering evidence in the hope of eventually catching the killers.

During the summer, Harry spent time with the team there as part of a private visit to learn about the work being done to protect endangered animals.

Talking to them next to the dead animal, he said: "This belongs to South Africa and it's been stolen by other people. But these people will be caught."

His trip to the national park and visit to the Southern Africa Wildlife school was to highlight the bravery of the rangers taking on poachers on a daily basis.

In a speech, he said: "In recent years Kruger has also become a major killing field.

"The numbers of rhinos poached in South Africa has grown by nearly 500% in just five years, with most of these occurring in Kruger.

"Already this year 1,500 rhinos have been killed in this country.

"That is four every day.

"If current poaching rates continue there will be no wild African elephants or rhinos left by the time children born this year - like my niece, Charlotte - turn 25."

To reinforce his message he also released his own private photos and videos to raise awareness of the plight of at risk species.

Posted on the Kensington Palace Instagram account, they were taken on Prince Harry's phone either by him or by people he was working with.

In one he is holding oxygen tubes going into a rhino as it is de-horned, while another shows him assisting in a facial reconstruction of a rhino that has been attacked and left for dead.

In one poignant photo, the Prince is lying with his arms extended and his head down over a sedated elephant.

Writing about the photo he said, "After a very long day in Kruger National Park, with five rhinos sent to new homes and three elephants freed from their collars - like this sedated female - I decided to take a moment.

"I know how lucky I am to have these experiences, but hearing stories from people on the ground about how bad the situation really is, upset and frustrated me."

"How can it be that 30,000 elephants were slaughtered last year alone?

"None of them had names, so do we not care? And for what? Their tusks?

"Seeing huge carcasses of rhinos and elephants scattered across Africa, with their horns and tusks missing is a pointless waste of beauty."

The number of incidents in South Africa has dramatically increased in the past five years.

Apple Music streaming is coming to Sonos speakers on December 15th

Sonos users rejoice: Apple Music support now has a date, December 15th. Sonos support for Apple Music fulfills a promise made by Apple in June to bring the subscription service to the connected speakers by the end of the year. Opening the Apple Music catalog for subscribers and free trial members makes brings a massive collection of content to Sonos speakers. If you’re looking to jump into the Sonos ecosystem, 9to5Toys recently highlighted an excellent Play:1 Starter Set deal for $349, which includes two Sonos Play:1 units (reg. $199 each). Sonos also offers a medium-packaged Play:3 ($299) and a larger, all-new Play:5($499, previewed here).

The Sonos speakers already supported a huge library of streaming music services including Beats Music and Spotify as well as DRM-free local music on iPhones and Macs, but Apple Music has been unsupported. Trying to stream or playback a song from the subscription music service serves up a DRM error message, requiring line-in connections to work which eliminates wireless and multi-room playback. Starting with a public beta in a couple weeks, Sonos users will be able to stream anything from the Apple Music collection to single or multiple connected speakers simultaneously.

Sonos support is also notable because of brings Apple Music closer to feature parity with Beats Music, which it is based on and replaces. Apple already delivered on its promise to bring Apple Music to Android,albeit in beta, as a fall release.

Both moves show Apple is dedicated to bring Apple Music to as many users as possible, although it has no plans to support Windows Phone like Beats Music did (for marketshare reasons). Apple Music is also available on the fourth-gen Apple TV with Siri support in the works on the new set-top box and subscribers can download tracks locally to Apple Watch for wireless playback without iPhones.

Sonos recently released Trueplay, a feature for fine-tuning Sonos wireless speakers for their surroundings to offer the best sound for the room. Trueplay works with both PLAY:5 speakers as well as all PLAY:1 and PLAY:3 speakers.

Sonos customers interested in trying Apple Music on December 15th ahead of its general launch in 2016 can sign up here to participate. The release is timely as Beats Music shuts down today. Because Sonos provides a Controller app to manage streaming media sources from the cloud to its sources, the update will not require an iOS update like 9.2 as it will work through the Sonos app and not Apple’s Music app.

Islamic State Targeting Africa: Top Africom Commander Tells VOA

The militant group has grown to about 2,000 strong in and around the city of Sirte, Libya, according to the U.S. Africa Command's Deputy for Military Operations, Vice Admiral Michael Franken. Back in February, there were a mere 200 Islamic State fighters in the city.

"If Raqqa [Syria] is the nucleus, the nearest thing to the divided nucleus is probably Sirte,“ said Franken, speaking in an interview at Africom headquarters in Stuttgart. “From there they look to export their terror into Europe and elsewhere.”

It is beginning to appear that any counter-Islamic State strategy needs "serious elements" not only in regard to Syria and Iraq, but also Libya and Yemen, according to Brookings defense policy expert Michael O'Hanlon.

"Access from Libya to Europe is disturbingly easy," O'Hanlon told VOA. "Sirte looks like a real stronghold — and one with little prospect of being taken away from ISIL anytime soon."

Libya has become an importer of terrorists and the most important nexus for the Islamic State group in Africa, according to Franken. Libyan government officials have reported hundreds of foreign fighters in Libya, with many pouring in from neighboring Tunisia and Yemen.

A Somali policeman runs through the wreckage outside the Sahafi Hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, Nov. 1, 2015.

Somalia shift

The terror group has now expanded its reach to war-torn Somalia, where about two dozen al-Shabab militants switched their allegiance from al-Qaida to Islamic State in late October.

Franken called the presence of 20-some Islamic State fighters in Somalia “insignificant.” The allegiance switch has proved “unhealthy,” he explained, as al-Shabab has managed to keep the shift “to a minimum” by attacking members who pledge loyalty to Islamic State.

VOA reported last week that al-Shabab fighters killed veteran group official Sheikh Hussein Abdi Gedi and four others after Gedi reportedly tried to convince members to make the switch to Islamic State.

Last month, nine al-Shabab members, including the allegedly pro-IS commander Sheikh Bashir Abu Numan, died in a factional clash near the town of Saakow.

A policeman walks past dozens of people, who have been displaced from their communities after attacks by the Islamist group Boko Haram, at a camp for internally displaced people in Maiduguri, August 3, 2015.

Boko Haram

The latest developments in East Africa come months after West African terror group Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

“We know there have been some Boko Haram fighters that went north and joined [Islamic State]. Fortunately, not many of them came back,” said Franken.

While the allegiance so far has failed to lead to “substantive cooperation,” Franken told VOA, the U.S. does expect that Islamic State has shared some tactics and techniques with the group. One example of this is the increased use of suicide bombers, which has raised Boko Haram’s lethality.

The tie between Boko Haram and other terror groups is why defense expert O'Hanlon also would like to see elements added in Mali and Nigeria to any counter-Islamic State or counter-al-Qaida plan.

The Islamic State group has thrived in volatile nations scarred by corruption, a problem that will take time to fix.

The U.S. has managed to create time and space for governments with its military operations across the continent, according to the admiral, but has “lagged” in making sure the tenets of good governance and society follow the operations.

Franken said more State Department workers and development officials are needed — more so than U.S. troops conducting counterterrorism and training operations — to right the African continent’s course.