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US

Myanmar cuts Facebook access as military tightens grip following coup

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Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto leader, along with President Win Myint and dozens of other senior figures in their National League for Democracy (NLD) were detained in pre-dawn raids Monday. Hours later, the military declared that power had been handed to commander in chief Min Aung Hlaing, in response to unfounded allegations of election fraud. A state of emergency was declared for one year.

While the dramatic overthrow of Suu Kyi’s government attracted international attention, continued disruptions to internet access and communications mean that many in Myanmar may still be unclear about what is taking place.

Facebook, by far the largest online platform in the country, confirmed to CNN that its services were “currently disrupted for some people” as of Thursday morning, as independent monitors recorded widespread filtering of Facebook, WhatsApp and other platforms, even as basic internet access was returning in some areas.

Limited access to news and internet could affect the ability of people to get information or organize any response via social media. At one point on Monday, the only operational TV channel was the Myanmar military-owned television network Myawaddy TV. By Wednesday, some channels, such as DVB TV, were still off the air.

Speaking Wednesday, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington was “disturbed” by reports of an arrest warrant being issued for Suu Kyi.

“We call on the military to immediately release … all detained civilian and political leaders, journalists, and detained human rights activists and to restore the democratically elected government to power,” Price said, adding that President Joe Biden viewed the military’s actions as a “direct assault on the country’s transition to democracy and the rule of law.”

Military in control

For more than 50 years, Myanmar — also known as Burma — was run by successive isolationist military regimes that plunged the country into poverty and brutally stifled any dissent. Thousands of critics, activists, journalists, academics and artists were routinely jailed and tortured during that time.

Suu Kyi shot to international prominence during her decades-long struggle against military rule. When her party, the NLD, won a landslide in elections in 2015 and formed the first civilian government, many pro-democracy supporters hoped it would mark a break from the military rule of the past and offer hope that Myanmar would continue to reform.

The NLD was widely reported to have won another decisive victory in a November 2020 general election, giving it another five years in power and dashing hopes for some military figures that an opposition party they had backed might take power democratically.

The sudden seizure of power came as the new parliament was due to open and after months of increasing friction between the civilian government and the powerful military, known as the Tatmadaw, over alleged election irregularities. The country’s election commission has repeatedly denied mass voter fraud took place.

Hundreds of NLD lawmakers were detained in the capital Naypyitaw Monday, where they had traveled to take up their seats. The junta has since removed 24 ministers and deputies from government and named 11 of its own allies as replacements who will assume their roles in a new administration.

Analysts have suggested the coup was more likely to do with the military attempting to reassert its power and the personal ambition of army chief Min Aung Hlaing, who was set to step down this year, rather than serious claims of voter fraud.

“Facing mandatory retirement in a few months, with no route to a civilian leadership role, and amid global calls for him to face criminal charges in The Hague, he was cornered,” Jared Genser, an international human rights lawyer who previously served as pro bono counsel to Suu Kyi, wrote for CNN this week.

Protests and strikes

So far, resistance to the coup has been relatively limited, both in part due to communications difficulties, and long memories of previous brutal crackdowns by the military, while ruled the country with an iron-grip for so long.

Doctors have pledged to go on strike, despite the coronavirus pandemic which is still dogging Myanmar, and there have been scattered calls for protests and work stoppages issued online, some in the name of the NLD.

Assistant Doctors at Yangon General Hospital released a statement pledging their participation in the “civil disobedience movement,” saying they will not work under a military led government and called for Suu Kyi’s release.

Video showed medical workers in Yangon outside the hospital Wednesday dressed in their scrubs and protective gear, while wearing red ribbons.

Myanmar’s Ministry of Information warned the media and public Tuesday not to spread rumors on social media or incite unrest, urging people to cooperate with the government following Monday’s coup.

“Some media and public are spreading rumors on social media conducting gatherings to incite rowdiness and issuing statements which can cause unrest,” the statement read. “We would like to urge the public not to carry out these acts and would like to notify the public to cooperate with the government in accordance with the existing laws.”

Fear of the military could be a powerful preventative against concerted action.

“When the military was last in charge, political prisoners like me were rounded up, sent to prison for decades, (put in) solitary confinement and tortured. We are concerned that if this state of emergency is not reversed, similar things will happen again,” said Bo Kyi, co-founder of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, and a former detainee himself.

“There is a fear that the military could continue persecuting officials, activists and crack down on ordinary people. But we have hope that Burma can return on its democratic path.”

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Health

Oregon blocks public access to vaccine equity group’s meeting

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Oregon’s coronavirus vaccine equity group is to meet in secret Tuesday to evaluate the group’s work over the last month after the state shut down public access following weeks’ of open meetings.

Oregon’s Vaccine Advisory Committee was charged with recommending who should be vaccinated after the governor’s priority groups, with an emphasis on tackling health disparities that stem from “structural racism.” But the group’s final recommendations last week appeared rushed and some committee members expressed frustration with the process.

A spokesman for the health authority defended the decision to prohibit media or members of the public from viewing Tuesday’s 5:30 p.m. meeting, saying the group accomplished its original function at its Thursday session.

The committee “has completed its official duties and fulfilled its purpose of making recommendations” about vaccination order to the Oregon Health Authority, spokesman Rudy Owens said in an email Tuesday. “OHA is now working on planning for implementation of the committee’s recommendations. OHA will conduct an evaluation with VAC members of the committee process.”

The committee has met publicly eight times, including a meet-and-greet Jan. 5 that was open to the public and recorded for public viewing.

The advisory group recommended Jan. 28 that people with underlying conditions, front-line workers, people in custody and people living in low-income and group senior housing should get vaccinated next.

At about 1.2 million, or 28% of the Oregon population, the committee’s final list encompasses far more people than current vaccine supplies can accommodate in the near future.

State and local officials will likely have the final say in who among the group’s priority populations will get vaccinated when, state public health director Rachael Banks indicated during the last meeting.

The Oregon Health Authority last week said staff would review the operation and legal dimensions of the recommendations before referring them to Gov. Kate Brown.

“The committee has an optional meeting on Feb. 2 to discuss implementation issues,” the health authority announced in a news release Friday.

But state official now say that’s not the intended subject of Tuesday’s meeting. An agenda for the 5:30 p.m. session lists only “debrief and evaluation.” The state will release a summary of the Tuesday discussion, a health authority spokesman said.

The group had previously suggested that Black, Indigenous and other people be vaccinated after the governor’s priority groups. But last week, health officials said the agency couldn’t allocate resources based solely on race or ethnicity, so the committee removed those groups from the priority ranking.

The recommendations did include a statement of intention “acknowledging structural racism and pressure from systems that are not ready to center this truth about the ways structural racism impacts the health of Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities.”

— Fedor Zarkhin; fzarkhin@oregonian.com; 503-294-7674

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Business

How to access the full Play Store on the Chromecast with Google TV

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Google TV, the new software layer on top of Android TV, introduced a whole new way of browsing your content on Google’s latest Chromecast. The homescreen is now focused on recommended shows and movies for you, and your apps and Play Store are just integrated in the launcher as a secondary tab. For many users, this is a simple way to access their installed apps and games as well as try out new ones, but some of us will miss having access to the proper Play Store.

While this tutorial is focused on the Play Store, you can also apply the same steps for two other apps that are pre-installed on the Chromecast with Google TV but not readily accessible: Google Play Games and Google Play Movies & TV.

Why accessing the full Play Store matters

The Apps tab on Google TV is enough for launching the apps and games you’ve installed as well as checking out new ones to try. You can even use voice search to look for specific apps. But that’s where the interface stops. If you want to manage your existing apps, manually check for updates and install them, and change settings, you need to access the full Play Store.

The Play Store app has tabs for browsing apps and games, but also a proper settings menu where you can manage and update the ones you’ve installed, switch accounts to grab apps that your partner or roommate bought, and change a few settings regarding automatic updates, payment methods, parental controls, and more.

While all of this may be trivial to most Chromecast users, many of us still like having access and control over these features, and that’s where opening the Play Store app is important.

Method 1: Google Assistant

The easiest way to access the Play Store on the Chromecast with Google TV is to just tap the Assistant button on the remote and say, “Play Store.”

The Assistant will open the Play Store for you. It’s really as easy as that.

Method 2: App settings

The second method is a bit more involved, but will be handy if you don’t want to speak aloud or if you’d rather never use Assistant. Open the side panel on your Chromecast, then head to Settings > Apps > See all apps > Show system apps > Google Play Store > Open. The steps are outlined in the screenshots below.

Method 3: Button mapping

This third method will require a bit of setup, but once it’s done, you’ll have one-button access to the Play Store whenever you want. First, you’ll need to download Button Mapper and follow the steps in our previous tutorial to install it and give it the permissions it needs.

When that’s done, open Button Mapper and choose the remote button you’d like to use to launch the Play Store. In the screenshots below, I chose the home button, but only when it’s double tapped. To set it up, select Home Button > Double tap, and in the pop-up, switch to Applications from the drop-down and look for the Play Store. The steps are outlined below.

Out of all these methods, button mapping suits me best. I just do the button combo whenever I need to go to the full Play Store app and it launches, no talking to Assistant or delving six-levels-deep into sub-menus.

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Science

The Full Moon Changes How People Sleep Without Us Ever Realising, Says Study

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In modern times, a great deal of research has focused on the way that artificial light sources mess up our sleep and health, due to the unnatural effects of illumination after the Sun goes down.

 

But just how unnatural is night-time light anyway? After all, humans have always been exposed to variable levels of light at night, due to reflections of sunlight from the waxing and waning Moon – and this shifting radiance stimulates us in ways we aren’t fully aware of, new research suggests.

“Moonlight is so bright to the human eye that it is entirely reasonable to imagine that, in the absence of other sources of light, this source of nocturnal light could have had a role in modulating human nocturnal activity and sleep,” a team of researchers, led by senior author and neurobiologist Horacio de la Iglesia from the University of Washington, explain in a new study.

“However, whether the Moon cycle can modulate human nocturnal activity and sleep remains a matter of controversy.”

To investigate the mystery, the researchers fitted over 500 participants with wrist-based activity monitors, to track their sleep patterns, and conducted the experiment in vastly different locales.

Firstly, they involved 98 participants from the Toba-Qom people, an indigenous community living in the Formosa province of Argentina. Some of these rural participants in the experiment had no access to electricity, others had limited access in their homes, while a final contingent lived in an urban setting with full access to electricity.

 

In a separate experiment, the researchers tracked the sleep of 464 college students living in the Seattle area – a major, modernised city with all the electrified trappings of post-industrial society.

Tracking the participants’ sleep activity over the lunar month cycle, the researchers found the same kind of pattern could be seen in their sleep and waking, regardless of where the volunteers lived.

“We see a clear lunar modulation of sleep, with sleep decreasing and a later onset of sleep in the days preceding a full Moon,” de la Iglesia says.

“Although the effect is more robust in communities without access to electricity, the effect is present in communities with electricity, including undergraduates at the University of Washington.”

While there was some variance between the results, in general, the data showed that sleep tends to start later and overall lasts a shorter amount of time on the nights leading up to a full Moon, when moonlight provided by the waxing Moon is brighter in the hours following dusk.

While the sample size studied here is not especially large – and there’s certainly more research that could be done here to expand upon these results – that the same pattern was observed in two distinct populations living in separate countries, and with such varying levels of access to electricity between all the volunteers, does tell us some important things, the team says.

 

“Together, these results strongly suggest that human sleep is synchronised with lunar phases regardless of ethnic and sociocultural background, and of the level of urbanisation,” the researchers write in their paper.

As for what gives rise to these effects, the researchers contend that extended nocturnal activity stimulated by moonlight could be an evolutionary adaptation carried over from the time of pre-industrial human societies – with the ability to stay up and do more under a brilliant full Moon benefitting all kinds of traditional customs still enjoyed by peoples without electricity today.

“At certain times of the month, the Moon is a significant source of light in the evenings, and that would have been clearly evident to our ancestors thousands of years ago,” says first author and sleep biologist Leandro Casiraghi.

According to interviews with Toba/Qom individuals, moonlit nights are still known for high hunting and fishing activity, increased social events, and heightened sexual relations between men and women.

“Although the true adaptive value of human activity during moonlit nights remains to be determined, our data seem to show that humans – in a variety of environments – are more active and sleep less when moonlight is available during the early hours of the night,” the researchers explain.

“This finding, in turn, suggests that the effect of electric light on modern humans may have tapped into an ancestral regulatory role of moonlight on sleep.”

The findings are reported in Science Advances.

 

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