text:
Follow author Pierre de Vos
Trump's electoral fiction floats free of verifiable reality. It is defended not so much by facts as by claims that someone else has made some claims. The sensibility is that something must be wrong because I feel it to be wrong, and I know others feel the same way. When political leaders such as Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan spoke like this, what they meant was: You believe my lies, which compels me to repeat them. Social media provides an infinity of apparent evidence for any conviction, especially one seemingly held by a president.
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On Covid-19 beach restrictions: bad policy is not necessarily unconstitutional
As the number of confirmed daily cases of Covid-19 soared to more than 10000 earlier this week, many South Africans angrily argued about the decision to close some, but not other, beaches across the country. As a result, various groups (including Afriforum and the Democratic Alliance) are threatening to challenge the constitutional validity of the beach-ban regulations. But while one can argue about the wisdom or effectiveness of these regulations, it is far from clear that a court will declare these regulations invalid.
As the second wave of Covid-19 infections sweeps across South Africa and the death toll rises, we should all really be discussing how we can modify our own behaviour to help limit the spread of Covid-19: Wear a mask over your nose in public places; avoid crowded spaces (especially indoors); drastically limit the number of people you socialise with; wash your hands regularly. We should also be focusing on what our government is doing (or not doing) to speed up the roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccine in South Africa; what it is doing to bring down prices of the vaccine globally; and what it is doing in partnership with other nations to fight global unequal access to the vaccine.
But as I am a constitutional lawyer and not a public health expert, and as I am assuming that most people can focus on more than one thing at a time, I am finding myself writing yet another column on the lawfulness of regulations issued in terms of the Disaster Management Act. My argument is this: while you are, of course, free to be angry about the inconvenience caused by the closure of a particular beach on a particular day, and about the economic consequences of such a closure, from a constitutional law or human rights perspective this is not a particularly important or pressing concern. A legal challenge to the ban is therefore likely to face an uphill battle in court.
Below I evaluate some of the legal arguments that might be raised to challenge the lawfulness of the new regulations on beach closure, and explain why it would be surprising if such court action succeeds. (As no court papers are available, it is possible that litigants will advance arguments others than those discussed below.)
1. Limitation on freedom of movement and its justification
In a media release announcing that it is lodging an urgent application to have the beach regulations invalidated, Afriforum argues that the regulations limit freedom of movement guaranteed in section 21 of the Constitution. It further – correctly – notes that such a limitation can only be justified if it is imposed by a law of general application, but then makes the startling claim that the beach closure regulations is not a law of general application.
As the Constitutional Court pointed out in Prinsloo v van der Linde, it would be impossible to govern a country without treating different people in different places differently. Legislation often differentiates between people, regions, locations, or on other grounds but nevertheless remain law of general application. That is why legislation that imposes different speed limits on different types of roads, or distinguishes between urban and rural areas remain law of general application.
In President of the Republic of South Africa v Hugo the Constitutional Court further noted that a rule or order that "is non-recurrent and specific, intended to benefit particular persons or classes of persons, to do so once only, and is given effect by an executive order directed to specific state officials" would not constitute a law of general application. The beach closure regulations has little resemblance to such a rule.
But this is not the end of the matter as the restrictions on beach access do seem to impose a moderate limitation on the right to freedom of movement. If the court finds that the regulations do impose a limit on the right to freedom of movement, it will still have to decide whether the limitation is justifiable in terms of section 36 of the Constitution.
This would require the court to balance the competing interests, the interests of those individuals whose rights are being limited on the one hand, and the interests of the state and society on the other. On the one hand, a court would have to consider how severe the limitation is that is being imposed on the right to freedom of movement. The more severe the limitation on the right, the less likely that the limitation would be justifiable. On the other hand, the court would have to consider the importance of the purpose of the limitation. The more important the purpose, the more likely that the limitation would be justifiable.
Unlike the countrywide nightly curfew currently in force, the restrictions on beach access will have a limited impact on the enjoyment of the right to freedom of movement. Here it is important to understand that this question cannot be answered by asking how severe the impact of the limitation will be on other interests such as the economic well-being of business owners. While concerns about the economic impact of these measures are important from a policy perspective, they are not relevant for purposes of limitation analysis. On the other hand, the purpose of the limitation – to reduce the spread of Covid-19 to save lives – is of pressing importance. In short, the court must decide whether the need to save lives should trump the right of individuals to go to the beach?
While it is not always easy to predict how courts will balance the various interests in limitation analysis, most judges tend to be hesitant to second-guess policy makers in life or death cases like this. I would therefore be surprised if a court finds that the restrictions on beach access constitute an unjustifiable limitation on the right to freedom of movement.
2. The different treatment constitutes a form of discrimination in terms of section 9(3)
Afriforum also argues that the beach-closure regulations constitute a form of "unconstitutional discrimination" as some beaches remain open, some are closed for the big public holidays, and others are closed for the entire festive season. Presumably, this claim is based on the prohibition against unfair discrimination contained in section 9(3) of the Constitution. A similar argument was advanced by some who object to the fact that some beaches in the Western Cape and the Northern Cape remain open.
The problem here is that – constitutionally – "discrimination" only occurs when a specific rule impacts differently on different groups of people, based on their race, sex, gender, or other specifically identified characteristics. A regulation that has a disproportionate impact on a specific town, region, or on specific business owners would therefore not amount to "discrimination". Yes, the beach ban may have serious negative economic consequences for the affected regions, but this does not amount to "discrimination" on individuals based on their race, sex, gender or other identified characteristic.
If the regulations had only targeted beaches overwhelmingly frequented by one race group, an argument of racial discrimination might have been plausible. Instead, the regulations target a wide variety of beaches, frequented by a cross section of South Africa's population, which means Afriforum's claim that the regulations constitute "unconstitutionally discrimination" is a legal nonsense.
3. The regulations infringe on the equality guarantee in section 9(1)
While Afriforum did not raise this possibility in their press statement, a more plausible equality argument would be that the regulations irrationally differentiate between people in conflict with section 9(1) of the Constitution. Section 9(1) applies to situations where the differentiation is not based on one of the specified characteristics such as race, sex gender and the like. In other words, it would apply to a situation like this where the regulations differentiates between different provinces, regions and towns.
The problem is that the test imposed by section 9(1) is not easy to meet. What one would have to show is that the different treatment of different areas is irrational. It would be rational if there is a legitimate government purpose for the differentiation and if it is rational. The state is not permitted to differentiate between people in an arbitrary manner or to manifest "naked preference", but it is permitted to differentiate between people regardless of whether it could have achieved its purpose without differentiating.
In Jooste v Score Supermarket, the Constitutional Court warned that the question is not whether the method chosen by the state "could be improved in one respect or another". The court will also not second-guess even "highly debatable, controversial and complex matters of policy" when applying section 9(1). It would therefore not be helpful for an applicant to argue that the regulations are unwise or ineffective, or that they are likely to cause economic harm. As the Court warned in Jooste, when applying section 9(1) the Court will not make policy choices under the guise of applying the rationality standard.
It cannot be gainsaid that the aim of slowing down the spread of Covid-19 and protecting lives is legitimate. The state will also be able to point to the constitutional obligation of co-operative government, the need to consider local circumstances, and the different levels of economic activity in different areas to demonstrate that the differentiation is rational. It matters not whether the decision to differentiate between different regions was a good policy decision, as the court is not allowed to nullify the regulations merely because it believes the government adopted an unwise policy. For these reasons, it is highly unlikely that an argument based on section 9(1) will succeed.
In conclusion, one should be careful not to conflate valid criticism about the wisdom of a particular government policy with the question of whether that policy is constitutionally compliant or not. While it is not impossible that the organisations who intend to approach the courts to challenge the validity of these restrictions will advance legal (and not policy) arguments before the court, it is important to evaluate these arguments based on the applicable legal principles and not based on one's own policy preferences.
2015 Constitutionally Speaking | website created by Idea in a Forest


text:
Mandres è un comune francese di 360 abitanti situato nel dipartimento dell'Eure nella regione della Normandia.

Società

Evoluzione demografica

Note

Altri progetti

Mandres

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
£27 million Berry Court housing development handed over
Bournemouth West MP Conor Burns joined in the celebrations on Friday 10 August 2018, when the 113 high-quality new apartments and multi-storey car parking including 155 public spaces at Berry Court, Bournemouth, were officially handed over.
Together with the Leader of Bournemouth Borough Council, Councillor John Beesley, the MP was visiting the £27million Berry Court following a two-year build programme.
Conor Burns said: "This is just what Bournemouth needs, high quality accommodation which is ideal for young professionals and families. I've had the opportunity to take a look at some of the apartments before residents move in next week and I'm very impressed and the view of Bournemouth is spectacular."
The £27m development on St. Peters Road is close to the town centre and less than a 10 minute walk to the beachfront. It was built for housing provider Radian by Bournemouth Development Company, a public-private partnership between Bournemouth Borough Council and Morgan Sindall Investments Ltd. Construction was by Morgan Sindall Construction & Infrastructure.
Guests were given an exclusive tour of the apartments, before Radian's Executive Director of Operations Peter Evans officially received the keys.
Mr Evans said: "We're delighted to be able to take ownership. Berry Court is Radian's flagship private rented sector development and is part of our commitment to provide homes of all tenures for all ages, giving people the choice and flexibility they need. It's been a pleasure working with Bournemouth Development Company and I hope we have the opportunity again. The apartments have proved very popular and we've only a few remaining."
Councillor Beesley said: "It is great to see high-quality new homes being delivered at Berry Court. The Council is committed to delivering much needed private rented new homes in Bournemouth which will make an important contribution to regeneration and securing long-term economic growth."
Duncan Johnston, Development Director of Bournemouth Development Company, added: "We are very proud of what we have delivered at Berry Court. This has been a prime example of true team work from the early inception of the design team through to building the partnership with Radian and, finally, delivery through the contractor."
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A Yammayap of Dorset website design

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Moroka is een dorp in het district North-East in Botswana. De plaats telt 1692 inwoners (2011).

Plaats in Botswana


We are excited to begin offering teas again to our community of tea lovers around the world. Using this opportunity to reevaluate our values and incorporate your feedback, we've made some major updates to the tea club.
Having seen firsthand the destruction of beautiful mountains in Taiwan and China from unsustainable farming, and heard about the challenges of going organic from pioneering families, we will focus on supporting small farms and cooperatives that are growing quality organic and natural teas.
Each month, members will receive .5 oz of finely-crafted, single-origin tea from progressive growers focused on protecting our earth. Our packaging has been redesigned to minimize waste, and almost all components are biodegradable or recyclable. Our new pricing reflects these changes, but we've included a discount code for existing members - please check your email!
We hope you enjoy these new teas, crafted with attention and care for the environment.


This entry was posted in hinduism, religion and tagged african american hindu, black hindu, blog. Bookmark the permalink.
Thank you for the addition.
Welcome, Anna, to the family.
Thank you, Tandava, for keeping us informed. Anna is in my neck of the woods.


text:
\section{Introduction\label{sec:intro}}
\vspace{-1pt}
Blind source separation (BSS)~\cite{sawada2019review} is a technique to separate sound sources from observed mixtures without any prior information about the sources or mixing system.
For a determined or overdetermined situation,
when the sources are point sources and the reverberation is sufficiently short (referred to as  the \textit{rank-1 spatial model}),
frequency-domain independent component analysis~\cite{smaragdis1998blind,saruwatari2006blind}, independent vector analysis (IVA)~\cite{hiroe2006solution,kim2006independent,kim2006blind}, and independent low-rank matrix analysis (ILRMA)~\cite{kitamura2016determined,kitamura2018determined}
have been proposed.
However, the rank-1 spatial model does not hold in the case of spatially spread sources or strong reverberation.

Multichannel nonnegative matrix factorization (MNMF)~\cite{ozerov2010multichannel,sawada2013multichannel}
is an extension of nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF)~\cite{lee1999learning} to multichannel cases, which estimates the spatial covariance matrices of each source.
MNMF employs full-rank spatial covariance matrices~\cite{duong2010under}, and this model can
simulate situations where, e.g., the reverberation is longer than the length of time-frequency analysis.
However, it has been reported that MNMF has a huge computational cost
and its performance strongly depends on the initial values of parameters~\cite{kitamura2016determined}.

In the original MNMF,
the observed signal is assumed to follow a time-variant multivariate complex Gaussian distribution.
Recently, the generative model extension of MNMF to multivariate complex Student's \textit{t} distribution (\textit{t}-MNMF~\cite{kitamura2016student}) has been proposed.
However, the original Gaussian MNMF and \textit{t}-MNMF cannot assume that the generative model follows a multivariate sub-Gaussian distribution,
whereas we reported that the separation accuracy is improved by expanding the source signal model
to the univariate sub-Gaussian distribution in ILRMA (hereafter referred to as sub-Gaussian ILRMA)~\cite{mogami2019independent}.
Thus, we can expect that the introduction of sub-Gaussianity in MNMF leads to the improvement of separation accuracy.

In this paper, we provide three contributions, namely,
a generalization of the generative model,
its parameter optimization algorithm with a joint-diagonalizability constraint,
and experimental evaluation of the proposed MNMF.
First,
we extend the generative model of MNMF to a time-variant multivariate complex sub-Gaussian distribution;
this is hereafter referred to as \textit{sub-Gaussian MNMF}.
We employ a multivariate complex generalized Gaussian distribution (GGD) as a sub-Gaussian distribution
by restricting its shape parameter.
It is reported that some musical instrument signals obey sub-Gaussian distributions~\cite{naik2012audio}.
Next,
we derive parameter update rules of sub-Gaussian MNMF.
The cost function of sub-Gaussian MNMF is difficult to minimize, and the auxiliary function for the majorization-minimiazation algorithm~\cite{hunter2000quantile} has not been discovered so far.
To design the valid auxiliary function, we introduce a joint-diagonalizability constraint in spatial covariance matrices.
This constraint has been introduced for the first time in FastMNMF~\cite{ito2019fastmnmf} to reduce the computational complexity of MNMF.
On the other hand, in this paper, we employ this joint-diagonalizability constraint
not to reduce the computational complexity
but to transform the cost function to the form to which we can apply the auxiliary function technique.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the world's first update algorithm of parameters
that guarantees a monotonic nonincrease in the cost function
of MNMF with a multivariate complex sub-Gaussian model.
Finally,
we conduct BSS experiments under reverberant conditions,
showing that the proposed sub-Gaussian MNMF outperforms conventional methods in source-separation accuracy.

\section{Conventional Methods}
\subsection{MNMF~\cite{ozerov2010multichannel,sawada2013multichannel}\label{sub:MNMF}}
The short-time Fourier transform (STFT) of the observed multichannel signal is defined as
\begin{align}
    \label{form:gauss_dist}
    \bm{x}_{ij} = (x_{ij,1},\dots,x_{ij,M})^\mathsf{T} \in \mathbb{C}^M,
  \end{align}
where $i=1,\dots,I,\,j=1,\dots,J,$ and $m=1,\dots,M$ are the indices
of the frequency bins, time frames, and channels, respectively, and $\cdot^\mathsf{T}$ denotes the transpose.
The MNMF model estimates
a time-variant parameter $\sigma_{ijn}$, which represents
a character of the source, and
a time-invariant parameter $\bm{G}_{in}$, which represents
spatial characteristics of the source, where $n=1,\dots,N$ is the index of the sources.
$\sigma_{ijn}$ corresponds to a power spectrogram and
$\bm{G}_{in}$ is called a spatial covariance matrix.
In MNMF, as the generative model of the observed signal $\bm{x}_{ij}$,
the following multivariate complex Gaussian distribution is assumed:
\begin{align}
  \label{form:generativemodel}
  \bm{x}_{ij} \sim \mathcal{N}\Bigl(\mathbf{0}_{M},\sum_n\sigma_{ijn}\bm{G}_{in}\Bigr),
\end{align}
where $\mathbf{0}_M\in\mathbb{C}^M$ is an $M$-dimensional zero vector and
$\mathcal{N}(\bm{\mu},\bm{\Sigma})$ is the multivariate complex Gaussian distribution
whose mean is $\bm{\mu}$ and the covariance matrix is $\bm{\Sigma}$.
The source model $\sigma_{ijn}$ is a spectrogram of the $n$th source
at the $i$th frequency and $j$th time frame,
having a low-rank spectral structure represented by NMF, as
\begin{align}
\label{form:powerspec}
  \sigma_{ijn}=\sum_kt_{ik}v_{kj}z_{kn},
\end{align}
where $k=1,\dots,K$ is the index of the NMF basis, and
$t_{ik}\in\mathbb{R}_{\geq 0}$ and $v_{kj}\in\mathbb{R}_{\geq 0}$ represent
the $i$th frequency component of the $k$th basis
and the $j$th time-frame activation component of the $k$th basis, respectively.
In addition, $z_{kn}\in\mathbb{R}_{\geq 0}$ is a latent variable that indicates
whether the $k$th basis belongs to the $n$th source.
From \eqref{form:generativemodel},
the negative log-likelihood of the observed signal,
which is a cost function to be minimized, is given by
\begin{align}
  \label{cost:MNMF}
  \mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{MNMF}} &\overset{c}{=} \sum_{i,j}\Bigl(\bm{x}_{ij}^\mathsf{H}\hat{\bm{X}}_{ij}^{-1}\bm{x}_{ij}+\log\det\hat{\bm{X}}_{ij}\Bigr),
\end{align}
where $\hat{\bm{X}}_{ij}=\sum_n\sigma_{ijn}\bm{G}_{in}=\sum_{k,n}t_{ik}v_{kj}z_{kn}\bm{G}_{in}$ and
$\overset{c}{=}$ denotes equality up to a constant.
We can estimate $t_{ik},v_{kj},z_{kn},$ and $\bm{G}_{in}$ by minimizing \eqref{cost:MNMF}.
$\bm{G}_{in}$ can be optimized by solving the Riccati equation and
the remaining parameters are updated by using the auxiliary function technique
(details of these update rules are described in \cite{sawada2013multichannel}).
After the update, we can estimate the separated signal $\hat{\bm{s}}_{ijn}$ using the multichannel Wiener filter:
\begin{align}
\label{formula:multichannelwienr}
    \hat{\bm{s}}_{ijn} = \biggl(\sum_kt_{ik}v_{kj}z_{kn}\bm{G}_{in}\biggr)\hat{\bm{X}}_{ij}^{-1}\bm{x}_{ij}.
\end{align}
MNMF assumes that $\bm{G}_{in}$ is a full-rank matrix~\cite{duong2010under}, and this increases versatility for
various types of spatial condition. However, this full-rank nature requires a large
amount of computation.

\subsection{FastMNMF~\cite{ito2019fastmnmf,sekiguchi2019fast}}
To reduce the computational complexity of the update algorithm, FastMNMF additionally assumes that the spatial covariance matrices
$\boldsymbol{G}_{i1},\dots,\boldsymbol{G}_{iN}$ are jointly diagonalizable
by $\bm{Q}_{i}=(\boldsymbol{q}_{i1},\dots,$ $\boldsymbol{q}_{iM})^\mathsf{H}$, which does not depend on the source index $n$, as
\begin{align}
  \label{formula:jointdiag}
  \bm{Q}_{i}\bm{G}_{in}\bm{Q}_{i}^\mathsf{H} = \bm{\mathcal{G}}_{in} \hspace{5mm} (n=1,\dots,N),
\end{align}
where $\bm{\mathcal{G}}_{in}$ is a diagonal matrix.
From (\ref{cost:MNMF}) and (\ref{formula:jointdiag}),
the negative log-likelihood of the observed signal is given by
\begin{align}
\label{cost:FastMNMF}
    \mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{F}} &\overset{c}{=} \sum_{i,j,m}\biggl[\frac{|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^2}{\sum_{n,k}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}} + \log\sum_{n,k}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}\biggr] \nonumber\\
                &\quad -2J\sum_i\log|\det\bm{Q}_{i}|,
\end{align}
where $g_{inm}$ is the $m$th diagonal element of $\bm{\mathcal{G}}_{in}$.
The joint-diagonalization matrix $\bm{Q}_{i}$ in (\ref{cost:FastMNMF}) can be optimized by iterative projection (IP)~\cite{ono2011stable}, and the remaining parameters
are updated by using the auxiliary function technique~\cite{sekiguchi2019fast}.
Note that the algorithm of the update of spatial covariance matrices in FastMNMF is different from that in MNMF, which uses the Riccati equation.
This algorithmic improvement provides a different separation performance; FastMNMF is almost the same as or slightly better than MNMF~\cite{sekiguchi2019fast, kubo2019efficient}.
After the update, we can estimate the separated signal using the multichannel Wiener filter similarly to \eqref{formula:multichannelwienr}.

\section{Proposed Method\label{sec:proposed}}
\subsection{Motivation and Strategy\label{subsec:motivation}}
In this paper,
we propose a model extension of MNMF to the multivariate complex sub-Gaussian distribution.
Sub-Gaussian MNMF can appropriately model the observed signal that follows the sub-Gaussian distribution, which cannot be
represented  by the conventional methods.
The multivariate GGD is used as the sub-Gaussian distribution.
The probability density function of the zero-mean multivariate GGD is given by
\begin{align}
  \label{form:GGD}
  p(\bm{x}; \bm{0}_{M},\bm{\Sigma},\beta) = \frac{C(\beta)}{\det\bm{\Sigma}}\exp\Bigl(-(\bm{x}^\mathsf{H}\bm{\Sigma}^{-1}\bm{x})^{\beta/2}\Bigr),
\end{align}
where $\beta>0$ is the shape parameter and
$C(\beta)$ is the normalizing constant of the multivariate GGD.
In the case of $0<\beta<2$, the GGD becomes super-Gaussian.
In the case of $\beta>2$, the GGD becomes sub-Gaussian.
For $\beta= 2$, the GGD corresponds to the Gaussian distribution.
The negative log-likelihood of MNMF based on the multivariate GGD model is represented as
\begin{align}
  \label{cost:GGD-MNMF}
  \mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{GGD}} \overset{c}{=} \sum_{i,j}\Bigl((\bm{x}_{ij}^\mathsf{H}\hat{\bm{X}}_{ij}^{-1}\bm{x}_{ij})^{\beta/2}+\log\det\hat{\bm{X}}_{ij}\Bigr),
\end{align}
where we substitute the model parameter $\hat{\bm{X}}_{ij}$ for $\Sigma$ in \eqref{form:GGD}.

In the case of $\beta>2$, this cost function \eqref{cost:GGD-MNMF} is difficult to minimize, especially in the parameter $\bm{G}_{in}$
because it is impossible to design a majorization function to which we can apply the Riccati equation solver
(no quadratic function can majorize the first term of the right-hand side of \eqref{cost:GGD-MNMF}).
Thus, we cannot derive the update rules of the sub-Gaussian MNMF that guarantees a monotonic nonincrease in the cost function
without any constraint.
Hence, we additionally introduce the joint-diagonalizability constraint.
If we apply the joint-diagonalizability constraint and an appropriate auxiliary function to \eqref{cost:GGD-MNMF},
we can find that the optimization problem here is identical to a demixing-matrix-optimization problem in sub-Gaussian ILRMA,
which can be solved by the authors' previous work, \textit{generalized IP}~\cite{mogami2019independent}.
In the next subsections, details of the proposed parameter update algorithm is described.

\subsection{Proposed Sub-Gaussian MNMF\label{subsec:proposed}}
By substituting \eqref{formula:jointdiag} into \eqref{cost:GGD-MNMF},
we obtain the cost function of MNMF with the multivariate GGD model as
\begin{align}
  \nonumber
  \label{cost:GGD-FastMNMF}
  \mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{GGD}} &\overset{c}{=} -2J\sum_i\log|\det\bm{Q}_{i}| + \sum_{i,j,m}\log\sum_{n,k}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm} \\
                             &\phantom{=} +\sum_{i,j}\biggl(\sum_m\frac{|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^2}{\sum_{n,k}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}}\biggr)^{\frac{\beta}{2}}.
\end{align}
First, we derive update rules of parameters $t_{ik},v_{kj},z_{kn},$ and $g_{inm}$.
For $\beta>2$, $f_1(y)=y^{\beta/2}$ is a convex function.
Hence, by applying Jensen's inequality to \eqref{cost:GGD-FastMNMF}, we have
\begin{align}
  \nonumber
  \mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{GGD}}  &\overset{c}{=} \sum_{i,j}\biggl(\sum_m\frac{|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^2}{\sum_{n,k}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}}\biggr)^{\frac{\beta}{2}} \\
  \nonumber
                              &\phantom{=}+\sum_{i,j,m}\log\sum_{n,k}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm} \\
                              \nonumber
                              \label{cost:auxiliary1}
                              &\overset{c}{\leq} \sum_{i,j}\sum_m\tilde{\xi}_{ijm}\biggl(\frac{|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^2}{\tilde{\xi}_{ijm}\sum_{n,k}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}}\biggr)^{\frac{\beta}{2}} \\
                              &\phantom{=}+\sum_{i,j,m}\log\sum_{n,k}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm},
\end{align}
where $\tilde{\xi}_{ijm}\geq0$ is an auxiliary variable that satisfies $\sum_m\tilde{\xi}_{ijm}=1$, and
$\overset{c}{\leq}$ denotes that the left-hand side is less than or equal to the right-hand side up to a constant.
Moreover, we can design an auxiliary function of $f_2(y)=(1/y)^{\beta/2}$ by applying Jensen's inequality because it is also a convex function.
We can also design one of $f_3(y)=\log y$ by applying the tangent inequality because it is a concave function.
Then, we can obtain the final auxiliary function $\mathcal{L}^+_{\mathrm{Sub}}$ as
\begin{align}
  \nonumber
  \label{cost:auxiliary_tvzg}
  \mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{GGD}} &\overset{c}{\leq} \sum_{i,j,m}(\tilde{\xi}_{ijm})^{1-\frac{\beta}{2}}\sum_{n,k}\tilde{\eta}_{ijkmn}\biggl(\frac{\tilde{\eta}_{ijkmn}|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^2}{t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}}\biggr)^{\frac{\beta}{2}} \\
                             &\phantom{=}+\sum_{i,j,m}\frac{1}{\tilde{\zeta}_{ijm}}\sum_{n,k}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm} \\
                             &:=\mathcal{L}^+_{\mathrm{Sub}},
\end{align}
where $\tilde{\eta}_{ijkmn}\geq0, \tilde{\zeta}_{ijm}\geq0$ are auxiliary variables, and $\tilde{\zeta}_{ijm}$ satisfies $\sum_m\tilde{\zeta}_{ijm}=1$.
The equalities of \eqref{cost:auxiliary1} and \eqref{cost:auxiliary_tvzg} hold if and only if the auxiliary variables are set as follows:
\begin{align}
  \label{eq:xiijm}
  \tilde{\xi}_{ijm} &= \left. \frac{|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^2}{\sum_{k,n}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}} \middle/ \sum_{m'}\frac{|\bm{q}_{im'}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^2}{\sum_{k,n}t_{ik}v_{kj}z_{kn} g_{inm'}} \right., \\
  \tilde{\eta}_{ijkmn} &= \frac{t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}}{\sum_{k,n}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}},\\
  \label{eq:zetaijkmn}
  \tilde{\zeta}_{ijm} &= \sum_{k,n}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}.
\end{align}
The update rules for \eqref{cost:auxiliary_tvzg} w.r.t. $t_{ik},v_{kj},z_{kn},$ and $g_{inm}$ are derived by setting the gradient to zero.
From
$\partial\mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{Sub}}^+/\partialt_{ik}=0$,
$\partial\mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{Sub}}^+/\partialv_{kj}=0$,
$\partial\mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{Sub}}^+/\partialz_{kn}=0$,
and $\partial\mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{Sub}}^+/\partialg_{inm}=0$,
we obtain
\begin{align}
  \label{chiijm}
  \chi_{ijm} &= \sum_{k,n}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}, \\
  \phi_{ijm} &= |\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^2\biggl(\sum_{m'}\frac{|\bm{q}_{im'}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^2}{\chi_{ijm'}}\biggr)^\frac{\beta-2}{2}, \\
  \label{formula:update_GGD_t}
  t_{ik} &\leftarrow t_{ik} \Biggl(\frac{\beta\sum_{j,n,m}\frac{\phi_{ijm}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}}{\chi_{ijm}^2}}{2\sum_{j,n,m}\frac{v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}}{\chi_{ijm}}}\Biggr)^{\frac{2}{\beta+2}}, \\
  v_{kj} &\leftarrow v_{kj} \Biggl(\frac{\beta\sum_{i,n,m}\frac{\phi_{ijm}t_{ik}\zkng_{inm}}{\chi_{ijm}^2}}{2\sum_{i,n,m}\frac{t_{ik}\zkng_{inm}}{\chi_{ijm}}}\Biggr)^{\frac{2}{\beta+2}}, \\
  z_{kn} &\leftarrow z_{kn} \Biggl(\frac{\beta\sum_{i,j,m}\frac{\phi_{ijm}t_{ik}\vkjg_{inm}}{\chi_{ijm}^2}}{2\sum_{i,j,m}\frac{t_{ik}\vkjg_{inm}}{\chi_{ijm}}}\Biggr)^{\frac{2}{\beta+2}}, \\
  \label{formula:update_GGD_g}
  g_{inm} &\leftarrow g_{inm}\Biggl(\frac{\beta\sum_{j,k}  \frac{\phi_{ijm}t_{ik}v_{kj}z_{kn} }{\chi_{ijm}^2}}{2\sum_{j,k}  \frac{t_{ik}v_{kj}z_{kn} }{\chi_{ijm}}}\Biggr)^{\frac{2}{\beta+2}}.
\end{align}
Note that these update rules have already been substituted under the equality conditions \eqref{eq:xiijm}--\eqref{eq:zetaijkmn} and rearranged.

Next,
we derive the update rule of the joint-diagonalization matrix $\bm{Q}_{i}$.
We can design the auxiliary function of the cost function \eqref{cost:GGD-FastMNMF} w.r.t. $\bm{Q}_{i}$
similarly to the derivation of \eqref{cost:auxiliary1} as
\begin{align}
  \nonumber
  \mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{GGD}} &\overset{c}{\leq} \sum_{i,j,m}\tilde{\xi}_{ijm}\biggl(\frac{|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^2}{\tilde{\xi}_{ijm}\sum_{n,k}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}}\biggr)^{\frac{\beta}{2}} \\
  \nonumber
                             &\phantom{=} - 2J\sum_i\log|\det\bm{Q}_{i}| \\
                             \label{cost:auxiliary2}
                             &= \sum_{i,j,m}\frac{|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^\beta}{r_{ijm}^\beta} - 2J\sum_i\log|\det\bm{Q}_{i}|,
\end{align}
where
\begin{align}
  r_{ijm} = \tilde{\xi}_{ijm}^{\frac{1}{2}-\frac{1}{\beta}}\biggl(\sum_{k,n}t_{ik}v_{kj}\zkng_{inm}\biggr)^{\frac{1}{2}}.
\end{align}
The auxiliary function \eqref{cost:auxiliary2}
is the same form as that for the optimization of a demixing matrix in sub-Gaussian ILRMA~\cite{mogami2019independent}.
Hence, we derive the update rule in the same manner as sub-Gaussian ILRMA.
Similarly to \cite{mogami2019independent}, in the case of $2<\beta\leq4$,
we can bound the term $|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^\beta$ using the inequality of weighted arithmetic and geometric means as follows:
\begin{align}
  \label{formula:WAGmean}
  |\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^\beta \leq \frac{\beta}{4}\frac{|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^4}{\tilde{\alpha}_{ijm}^{4-\beta}}+\Bigl(1-\frac{\beta}{4}\Bigr)\tilde{\alpha}_{ijm}^\beta,
\end{align}
where $\tilde{\alpha}_{ijm}$ is an auxiliary variable and the equality of \eqref{formula:WAGmean} holds if and only if $\tilde{\alpha}_{ijm}=|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|$.
We can apply \eqref{formula:WAGmean} to \eqref{cost:auxiliary2} and obtain
\begin{align}
  \label{cost:auxiliary3}
  \mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{GGD}} \overset{c}{\leq} \frac{\beta}{4}\sum_{i,j,m}\frac{|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^4}{\tilde{\alpha}_{ijm}^{4-\beta}r_{ijm}^\beta} - 2J\sum_i\log|\det\bm{Q}_{i}|.
\end{align}
Moreover,
we can design a further auxiliary function of \eqref{cost:auxiliary3} as
\begin{align}
  \label{cost:auxiliary4}
  \mathcal{L}_{\mathrm{GGD}} \leq J\sum_{i,n}(\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{B}_{im}\bm{q}_{im})^2 - 2J\sum_i\log|\det\bm{Q}_{i}|,
\end{align}
where $\bm{B}_{im}$ is an auxiliary variable that satisfies
\begin{align}
  l_{ijm}       &= \sqrt[4]{|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^{4-\beta}r_{ijm}^\beta}, \\
  \bm{H}_{im}        &= \biggl[\frac{1}{l_{i1m}}\bm{x}_{i1}\cdots\frac{1}{l_{iJm}}\bm{x}_{iJ}\biggr], \\
  \bm{a}_{im} &= \biggl[ a_{i1m} \cdots a_{iJm} \biggr]^\mathsf{T} = \bm{H}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\tilde{\bm{q}}_{im}, \\
  \bm{A}_{im} &= \matnn{||\bm{a}_{im}||^2}{-a_{i1m}\overline{a_{i2m}}}{-a_{i1m}\overline{a_{iJm}}}{-a_{i2m}\overline{a_{i1m}}}{||\bm{a}_{im}||^2}{-a_{i2m}\overline{a_{iJm}}}{-a_{iJm}\overline{a_{i1m}}}{-a_{iJm}\overline{a_{i2m}}}{||\bm{a}_{im}||^2},\\
  \bm{B}_{im}  &= \frac{\sqrt{\beta}}{2\sqrt{J\sum_j|a_{ijm}|^4}}\bm{H}_{im}\bm{A}_{im}\bm{H}_{im}^\mathsf{H}.
 \end{align}
Here, $\overline{\cdot}$ denotes the complex conjugate
and $\tilde{\bm{q}}_{im}$ is an auxiliary variable and the equality of \eqref{cost:auxiliary4} holds if and only if $\tilde{\bm{q}}_{im}=\bm{q}_{im}$.
The joint-diagonalization matrix $\bm{Q}_{i}$ of the cost function \eqref{cost:auxiliary4} can be updated by generalized IP~\cite{mogami2019independent}.
The update rule of $\bm{Q}_{i}$ can be derived as
\begin{align}
  \label{formula:update_GGD_l}
  r_{ijm} &\leftarrow |\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^{1-\frac{2}{\beta}}\chi_{ijm}^{\frac{1}{\beta}} (\sum_{m'}\frac{|\bm{q}_{im'}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^2}{\chi_{ijm'}})^{\frac{1}{\beta}-\frac{1}{2}}\\
  \bm{U}_{im}  &= \sum_j\frac{\bm{x}_{ij}\xij^\mathsf{H}}{\sqrt{|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^{4-\beta}r_{ijm}^\beta}},
\end{align}
\begin{align}
  \nonumber
  \bm{B}_{im}'  &= \bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{U}_{im}\bm{q}_{im}\bm{U}_{im} +\sum_j\frac{|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^{\beta-2}}{r_{ijm}^\beta}\bm{x}_{ij}\xij^\mathsf{H}\\
         &\phantom{=} -\Bigl(\bm{U}_{im}\bm{q}_{im}\Bigr)\Bigl(\bm{U}_{im}\bm{q}_{im}\Bigr)^\mathsf{H}, \\
  \bm{q}_{im} &\leftarrow (\bm{Q}_{i}\bm{B}_{im}')^{-1}\bm{e}_m, \\
  \label{formula:update_GGD_q_scale}
  \bm{q}_{im}  &\leftarrow \bm{q}_{im} \biggl(\frac{2J}{\beta\sum_j(|\bm{q}_{im}^\mathsf{H}\bm{x}_{ij}|^\beta/r_{ijm}^\beta)}\biggr)^{\frac{1}{\beta}},
\end{align}
where $\chi_{ijm}$ is defined in \eqref{chiijm}, and $\bm{B}_{im}'$ is equal to $\bm{B}_{im}$ up to scale.
From \eqref{formula:update_GGD_t}--\eqref{formula:update_GGD_g} and \eqref{formula:update_GGD_l}--\eqref{formula:update_GGD_q_scale},
all of the parameters $t_{ik},v_{kj},z_{kn},g_{inm}$, and $\bm{Q}_{i}$ can be iteratively updated in the proposed sub-Gaussian MNMF.

\section{Experiments\label{sec:experiments}}
\subsection{Experimental Conditions\label{subsec:conditions}}
We confirmed the efficacy of the proposed method by conducting
music source separation experiments.
We compared six methods:
IVA~\cite{ono2011stable},
ILRMA~\cite{kitamura2016determined},
sub-Gaussian ILRMA~\cite{mogami2019independent},
MNMF~\cite{sawada2013multichannel},
FastMNMF~\cite{ito2019fastmnmf}, and
the proposed sub-Gaussian MNMF.
We used monaural dry music sources
of four melody parts~\cite{kitamura2015multichannel, kitamura2018open}.
Eight combinations of instruments with different melody parts were selected as shown in Table~\ref{table:music_dry_sources}.
\begin{table}[t]
  \caption{Dry sources used in experiment\label{table:music_dry_sources}}
  \centering
  \begin{tabular}{c|c|c}
  \noalign{\hrule height 0.4mm}
          & Part name & Source (1/2) \\ \hline
  Music 1 & Midrange/Melody 2 & Flute/Piano \\
  Music 2 & Melody 1/Melody 2 & Flute/Oboe \\
  Music 3 & Melody 2/Midrange & Harpsichord/Violin \\
  Music 4 & Melody 2/Bass     & Cello/Violin \\
  Music 5 & Melody 1/Bass     & Cello/Oboe \\
  Music 6 & Melody 2/Melody 1 & Trumpet/Violin \\
  Music 7 & Bass/Melody 2     & Flute/Bassoon \\
  Music 8 & Bass/Melody 1     & Trumpet/Bassoon \\
  \noalign{\hrule height 0.4mm}
  \end{tabular}
\end{table}
To simulate reverberant mixing, two-channel mixed signals were produced by convoluting the impulse response E2A ($T_{60}=$ 300~ms) in the RWCP database~\cite{nakamura2000acoustical}.
Fig.~\ref{mic} shows the recording conditions of E2A used in our experiments.
In these mixtures, the input signal-to-noise ratio was 0~dB.
\begin{figure}[tb]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=8.5cm]{./mic_place2.pdf}

    \caption{Spatial arrangements of sources and microphones.\label{mic}}
\end{figure}
The sampling frequency was 16~kHz and an STFT was performed using a 64~ms Hamming window with a 16~ms shift ($T_{60}$ was longer than the window length, i.e., the spatial covariance
matrices were full rank).
The total number of bases in the low-rank source model was $K=20, 30, 40, 50,$ and $ 60$.
The initializations of the source model parameters ($t_{ik},v_{kj},z_{kn}$) and the spatial covariance matrix $\bm{G}_{in}$
were random values and the identity matrix, respectively.
The initialization of $\bm{Q}_{i}$ was the identity matrix.
The shape parameter $\beta$ in sub-Gaussian ILRMA and the proposed sub-Gaussian MNMF was set to 4.
The number of iterations in all methods was 6000.
We used the source-to-distortion ratio (SDR) improvement~\cite{vincent2006performance} to evaluate the
total separation performance.

\subsection{Experimental Results\label{subsec:results}}
\begin{figure}[tb]
  \centering
  \includegraphics[width=8.5cm]{./20200228_exp10_bar_mus_con1.pdf}
  \vspace{-2mm}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[tb]
  \centering
  \includegraphics[width=8.5cm]{./20200223_exp10_bar_mus_con2.pdf}
  \vspace{-2mm}
  \caption{Resultant SDR improvement for each method. (a) Results of recording condition (a) in Fig. \ref{mic}. (b) Results
  of recording condition (b) in Fig. \ref{mic}.\label{results}}
\end{figure}
Fig.~\ref{results} shows the average SDR improvements over the source pairs and 10-trial initialization.
Compared with IVA, ILRMA, and sub-Gaussian ILRMA, both conventional MNMF and FastMNMF as well as the proposed sub-Gaussian
MNMF provide better SDR improvements.
This is because the rank-1 spatial model (IVA, ILRMA, and sub-Gaussian ILRMA) does not hold in the case of strong reverberation.
The conventional full-rank spatial models (MNMF and FastMNMF) achieve almost the same SDR improvements.
On the other hand, the proposed sub-Gaussian MNMF markedly outperforms the conventional full-rank spatial model methods, regardless of the spatial arrangement.
This suggests that the sub-Gaussian model is more appropriate than the conventional Gaussian model for simulating music signals,
showing the effectiveness of the proposed sub-Gaussian MNMF.

\section{conclusion}
In this paper, we proposed the model extension of MNMF to the multivariate complex sub-Gaussian distribution.
We introduced the joint-diagonalizability constraint in spatial covariance matrices
to derive update rules that guarantees a monotonic nonincrease in the cost function.
From the source-separation experiments,
we showed that the proposed method outperformed the conventional methods in terms of SDR improvement.

\bibliographystyle{IEEEbib}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


Current: When and where to see the Sakura Cherry Blossoms in Niseko!
When and where to see the Sakura Cherry Blossoms in Niseko!
Sakura cherry blossom is of high regards in Japan. Friends and families often gather for Hanami during the season.
The Japan Meteorological Corporation released its annual sakura forecast schedule and as usual, Japan's northernmost island will see the cherry blossoms a month later than elsewhere in the country. Flowering date in Sapporo is forecasted to be on 3th May, 2019.
Cherry blossom starts in the reverse order as red leaves season. It starts from the south and gradually moves up to the northern part of Hokkaido. Sakura will get into full blossom around end April in Hakodate and around the first week of May in Sapporo. Sakura blossom is treated with high regards for Japanese. Friends and families usually gather for the HANAMI (flowers viewing in Japanese), coupled with picnic and beers under the trees. You can even try Yakiniku (Japanese BBQ) while watching the beautiful sakura. Read on to find out more about some good sakura viewing spots in Hokkaido. If you follow our suggestions below, you can do a one-week road trip seeing sakura at different places in Hokkaido.
Situated in the southern part of Hokkaido, Hakodate is always the first place to see sakura on this northern island. The famous Goryokaku fort will sure be one of the hanami spots not to be missed on your sakura trip to Hokkaido. Fort Goryokaku is a gargantuan star-shaped fortress built in 1864 to defend against the western powers. Unfortunately, the fort turned into a battleground in the Battle of Hakodate during 1868 - 1869 and it was severely destroyed. In 1914, Fort Goryokaku was rebuilt as a park using the remaining star-shaped setting. Over 1,500 cherry trees are planted along the canal, making it one of the best places for cherry blossom sightseeing in Hokkaido.
The Park will be filled with locals and tourists alike congregated together for hanami.
Even Cony enjoys her time with sakura.
Situated at the foot of Mount Hakodate, Hakodate Park is one of the first western-style parks in Japan. The size of the park is smaller compared to Fort Goryokaku but features a more relaxed atmosphere. The Park has several hundreds of cherry trees and usually, a Sakura Matsuri (Sakura Festival) is hosted in early May. Children can enjoy the theme park alongside with numerous small food stalls selling various different snacks and food.
Hakodate Park offers a more relaxing atmosphere compared to the bigger Fort Goryokaku. You can enjoy the sakura viewing at your own pace.
Sakura Matsuri is usually hosted in early May at Hakodate Park. This is a good opportunity to see how locals celebrate Sakura Blossom.
There is a small theme park inside Hakodate Koen to keep the little ones entertained.
You can even see the Sea of Japan at Hakodate Park.
Niseko is famous for powder snow, but probably not many people will think of us for Sakura Hanami. However, here we have some very nice spots for you to take nice sakura shots. About 45 minutes away from Niseko is Makkari Shrine, which is one of the well-kept secret for locals to enjoy the hanami.
Built in 1920 at the foot of Mount Yotei, there are about 60 cherry trees planted by local residents along the path heading to the Shrine. Mount Yotei is still covered in white snow in early May and here you can find all essential elements to make a great photo: sunlight, blue sky, snow-capped mountain and sakura!
There are numerous awesome sakura viewing spots around Niseko. Photo above was taken at Makkari Shrine, with Mount Yotei as a backdrop. It is best to spend two nights in Niseko to enjoy Sakura Hanami on the first day and enjoy spring skiing on the next day. Skiers and boarders can enjoy the entire mountain with minimal fuss during spring time.
Whether close up or panorama shots, you can slowly take your time to compose your picture at Makkari Shrine.
Opened in 2005, Moere Numa Park is a municipal multi-purpose facility intended to combine the green spaces of Sapporo City within a loop. Moere means flat and peaceful as water in Ainu language. Moere Numa Park was converted from a waste treatment plant, sculptor Isamu Noguchi designed the Park based on the concept of ''the whole being a single sculpture''. Situated in the middle of the park is the eye-catching Glass Pyramid, while you will find the fountain, play facilities, and hills arranged in an artistic manner. Moere Numa Park can be enjoyed as a blend of nature and arts at one place. More than 2000 cherry trees are planted inside the park and picnic with hanami is possible too.
Moere Numa Park is designed based on the concept of ''the whole being a single sculpture''. The park itself is already a piece of art!
There are more than 2,000 cherry trees planted inside Moere Numa Park. You can spend an afternoon picnic here with friends while enjoying the beautiful flowers.
In late April meters of winter snow begin to melt, creeks spring to life, rivers swell. Spring unfolds in an extravagance of budding trees, new life, and sakura splendor. It is a good time to visit Niseko as part of your road trip around Hokkaido in spring. Different elements such as white water rafting and spring skiing can be included to make your trip a memorable one. Don't hesitate to contact Vacation Niseko if you need any assistance in your trip planning.


This t-shirt offers an elegant family look in casual fashion. It features a crew neckline, short sleeves, a patch accent, and stripe patterns. This tee is ideal to wear with shorts and sneakers on a weekend out.


text:
We support clients by enhancing SAP for tax. That means implementing new tax audit methods such as SAF-T and e-invoicing, but also it optimizes SAP's VAT determination logic to ensure that manual intervention is limited or avoided. Below an overview of new legal changes and introductions, that KG will support.
Italy rollout of pre-completed VAT return starting 1 July 2020
Italy proposes to offer resident VAT registered business a pre-completed VAT return starting from 1 July 2020. The authorities introduced this measure via a new law decree.
The Italian tax authorities, Agenzia delle Entrate, will create itself VAT ledgers and draft quarterly VAT returns of these residents. The data used will be the data received from the SdI e-invoicing system, etcetera. Taxpayers can review and amend the by Agenzia delle Entrate proposed VAT return. Such a change would, however, trigger tax audit questions as it no longer would match with the data received by the authorities.
Non-resident Italian VAT-registered businesses will still be obliged to complete and submit their VAT returns without data received from the authorities.
Hungary RTIR version 2.0 in force starting April 2020
Starting April 2020, vendors should use and submit version 2.0 of the XML of the electronic invoices to the Hungarian online report. On 15 October, a test environment will be available. Companies are allowed to report their invoices with version 2.0 around February 2020 voluntarily.
The exact date is still unknown. As of April 2020 and onwards, National Tax and Customs Administration of Hungary (NAV) will only accept version 2.0.
What will change in 2020?
The new version 2.0 includes changes to invoice details and submission requirements. To be added are invoice issuance and numbering, credit and debit note numbering formats, a delivery date of goods, and a calculation of VAT liabilities and VAT rates. Besides that, it will contain a new way of submissions, such as an updated API and API encryption signature and changes to the invoicing software.
Today a vendor reports its sales invoices to NAV, and only this vendor gets access to information. The new legal change allows customers to check the published vendor information via a web portal.
Hungary abandons the threshold starting July 2020
Hungary has proposed to withdraw the RTIR HUF100,000 (€310) invoice threshold starting 1 July 2020. The draft legislation also offers that non-residents will enjoy the limit for an extra year, and thus ending on 1 July 2021.
Greece introduces either April or July 2020 digital VAT books
Greece delayed the introduction of digital VAT books and e-invoices that was scheduled for 1 January 2020 to combat VAT fraud.
The Ministry of Finance and the tax office (IAPR) did public consultation late 2019 based on a Greek myDATA proposal that contained an e-invoice pre-clearance model similar to that one currently operational to in Italian. Because the needed EU Commission was lacking, this proposal has been abandoned.
Instead, a scheme to require taxpayers to submit digital invoice listings is now considered. IAPR would be able to create digital books. The proposed program might be launched in April or July 2020. KG will develop an add-on immediately when the legislation and specifications are published.
Poland replaces VAT return with SAF-T starting April 2020
The replacement of VAT returns with SAF-T was scheduled in Poland for July 2019 but has been postponed to 1 April 2020.
Taxpayers are at that date no longer required to submit both the SAF-T (JPK_VAT) file and the VAT return separately. A new SAF-T file has to be sent. That file should contain both the data from the VAT register and the data from the current VAT return.
For large businesses, the new schema comes in force starting 1 April 2020. That are businesses who, in at least in one of two last consecutive years: That are businesses who, in at least in one of two last consecutive years:
Employ on average at least 250 employees or
Record annual net turnover from the sale of goods, products, and services and financial operations exceeding the equivalent of €50 million in PLN and annual balance sheet total is exceeding the equivalent of €43 million in PLN.
Employment, turnover, asset value thresholds are determined globally and not locally. Many legal entities – even if only VAT registered in Poland – are therefore obliged to follow the above rules.
If an entity does not meet those conditions, the obligation will be valid in July 2020. These entities can, however, opt voluntarily to follow the new rules by filling the SAF-T in the updated scheme together with VAT returns.
Norway introduces 1 January 2020 SAF-T on request
Standard Audit File for Tax Purposes for Norway first version was ready in March 2016. It was limited to account specification (general ledger), and supplier and customer specification (subsidiary ledger). Required fixed data was also included.
The new version of the SAF-T Financial will consist of source documents such as detailed invoice data and movements of goods and asset transactions. Furthermore, other data elements will be added to support SAF-T Financial as a format for migration of data between different accounting software. The requirement will apply to any enterprise with bookkeeping obligations who use electronic accounting systems and mandatory and in force per 1 January 2020.
'SAF-T on request' means that tax files have to be submitted only when a tax audit is announced. The assessment period can be a month, quarter, year, or even longer, and solution should be able to submit large data sets.
Digitalization of tax a global trend
Specific European governments in Europe have digitalized tax to perform efficient and effective tax audits. That means companies that run SAP have to be able to submit tax reporting almost real-time or on a periodical basis.
The methods used implemented by European countries substantially differentiate, so every country rollout has to be developed from scratch, taking into consideration first the local tax requirements. Portugal, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and the UK have implemented these new tax reporting requirements. The other European countries will follow — for example, Norway and Greece in 2020.
This tax trend is a global one. The tax law is dynamic, and that means methods might change as new tax laws are introduced and others revoked. That means our development and research continues for countries that have this tax reporting in force. By 2025, companies in VAT economies are expected to exchange more than 75 percent of all invoices electronically with tax administrations in real-time or very shortly after the invoice-exchange process.


AHRN (Automated Housing Referral Network) helps the military community find housing near their assigned base. They were looking to modernize their website and improve the user experience. I redesigned their homepage, search functionality, and listing pages, significantly simplifying the process of finding a home or posting a listing.
The site is currently in the development stage and will be launching soon.


What Do You Know About Tongue Thrust?
Tongue thrust or immature swallow is basically a condition that involves a problem with the behavioral pattern of human, with the tongue protruding through the anterior incisors while the sufferer eats, swallows or speaks. It happens even when the tongue isn't being used for anything. Almost every child exhibits a swallowing pattern characterized by tongue protrusion, but this pattern eventually normalizes as the child turn around six years old. People with the problem of immature swallow do it naturally without being aware of their own behavior.
So, how does it affect your oral health?
The condition typically has some effects on the health of the teeth and mouth of the sufferer. On average, an individual tends to swallow from 1,200 to 2,000 times throughout a day, having around four pounds of pressure every time. In case of an individual suffering from tongue thrusting, the continuous pressure can result in the misalignment of teeth. This is perhaps the reason why most people suffering from immature swallow face the issue of open bites. In fact, tongue thrust can even reverse a patient's orthodontic work.
As far as speech is concerned, it is typically not affected by this abnormal swallowing pattern. However, the sufferer may develop a lisp, which is something that cannot be directly related to a tongue thrust.


Credit Risk Update: ACCOUNTS DUE FLAG: UNITY PM LIMITED, 47 Gloucester Crescent, Staines-Upon-Thames, Middlesex, TW18 1PN. The legal status is a Private Limited Company and the current status at the registry of companies is Dissolved. The company was incorporated on 22 October 2014.


text:
Share this Story: Photos: The best of Mosaic Stadium (Day 10)
Photos: The best of Mosaic Stadium (Day 10)
Construction on a Taylor Field expansion in 1978. Photo courtesy Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame. -
Team Rochon's James Ferguson works on the Rider Logo in the north endzone. Photo by Bryan Schlosser /Regina Leader-Post
Mike Kerrigan of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats throws a pass against the Saskatchewan Roughriders on July 28, 1989 at Taylor Field. Photo by Bryan Schlosser /-
Saskatchewan Roughriders quarterback Darian Durant (#4) hoists the Grey Cup in victory at the end of the 101st Grey Cup game held at Mosaic Stadium in Regina, Sask. on Sunday Nov. 24, 2013. Photo by Troy Fleece /Regina Leader-Post
The Saskatchewan Roughriders take the field in a gamd against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at the Labour Day Classic held at Mosaic Stadium in Regina, Sask. on Sunday Sept. 4, 2016. Photo by Michael Bell /Regina Leader-Post
Saskatchewan Roughriders head coach Jack Gotta celebrates a Ray Elgaard touchdown catch in the 1986 Labour Day Classic against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Photo by Robert Watson /Regina Leader-Post
Saskatchewan quarterback Kerry Joseph celebrates with the fans after the west semi final match up between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Calgary Stampeders at Mosaic Stadium in Regina Sunday, The Riders won 26-24. Photo by Bryan Schlosser /Regina Leader-Post
The Saskatchewan Roughriders practiced in the fog at Mosaic Stadium on Wednesday. Photo by Bryan Schlosser /Regina Leader-Post
Flooding in front of Mosaic Stadium before the game between the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Saskatchewan Roughriders during week one of the 2014 CFL season at Mosaic Stadium on June 29, 2014 in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Photo by Brent Just /Getty Images
With the final Saskatchewan Roughriders game on Taylor Field at Mosaic Stadium less than two weeks away, we're taking a look back at our photographers' favourite pictures taken over the years at the soon-to-be-retired facility.


text:
Q: Mac OSX Launchd launches process 3 hours early I have setup launchd to launch at 7:30am but the event fires at 4:30am.  I am EST, I am assuming it thinks PST (since Apple is in PST).  I have rebooted, checked the date/time config, time zone, etc.  No luck in my searches in these forums or elsewhere.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>com.myname.ip_mailer</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
          <string>/Users/myname/Bin/ip_mailer.py</string>
        </array>
        <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
        <dict>
                <key>Hour</key>
                <integer>10</integer>
                <key>Minute</key>
                <integer>30</integer>
        </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

A: It turns out it was hotmail showing the time of the email incorrectly. I added a time stamp to the email subject and it was being processed at the correct time. Good old Microsoft...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Trump promised to bring back Pennsylvania's coal, steel and energy jobs. But can he?
Updated: Nov. 17, 2016, 1:15 p.m. |
Published: Nov. 17, 2016, 12:15 p.m.
Colin Deppen | cdeppen@pennlive.com
PITTSBURGH -- In campaign stop after Pennsylvania campaign stop, president-elect Donald Trump said he would rebuild once-thriving industries across the commonwealth. He would lift onerous regulations on oil and gas drilling. He would bring back steel jobs lost decades ago.
Now that he's been elected, he'll have a chance to prove it. With that in mind, PennLive decided to take a look at what it might actually take.
We talked to experts and economists about the president-elect, and what, if anything, he can do to strengthen these stalwart industries.
What would it take, we wondered, to "make Pennsylvania great again," as he's promised to do?
"America is sitting on a treasure trove of untapped energy on federal lands and hundreds of years of coal energy reserves. I'm going to lift restrictions on American energy and allow this wealth to pour into our communities, including right here in the state of Pennsylvania, which we love." - Donald Trump in Pittsburgh in September of 2016
At this point, it's impossible to say which of Trump's campaign promises will stick, and which will be altered or abandoned altogether.
In Pennsylvania, oil and gas drillers are optimistic, though, after his repeated vows to lift regulations and essentially set the industry free. This after 8 years under a Democratic administration often viewed as more adversary than energy ally.
"We're excited to work with new and returning elected officials at the local, state and federal level on commonsense policies that encourage greater production and use of our abundant natural gas resources," Marcellus Shale Coalition spokeswoman Erica Wright said following Trump's Election Day win.
Renewable energy investments, meanwhile, tumbled in the wake of his victory, unnerved by a perceived new lack of presidential support.
But even if Trump is able to lift restrictions around oil and gas production, it's unclear what impact that might have if fossil fuel prices remain low. Much of the industry's recent downturn owes to these sluggish prices, coupled with a supply glut and a host of global factors typically beyond a president's control.
"He cannot deliver on those promises," Dennis Witmer, an energy analyst and Pennsylvania native, said.
"And there's no way he can manipulate the oil and gas market in a way that will make a difference for the U.S."
Witmer said the demand for U.S. gas simply isn't there currently, although that could change.
As of August, jobs in the oil and gas industry had fallen 26 percent since peaking 2 years ago, according to an analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
But while a Trump administration won't necessarily mean a return to the peak days of 2014, it could mean fewer obstacles to the completion of oil and gas pipeline projects in the U.S., the same the industry says it needs to move an existing gas supply to market and create new jobs.
With 'blind loyalty' decreasing, Donald Trump's message is resonating more across southwest Pa.
When the GOP candidate for president talks of economic decline, "stolen jobs," and the siphoning effect of foreign markets, he is talking to folks here, in Pennsylvania's increasingly up-for-grabs southwest region.
Witmer did say that Trump could provide a more direct boost to the industry through his Supreme Court picks.
Witmer said a pro-industry Supreme Court could sway eminent domain decisions or challenges as they pertain to natural gas pipeline projects, for example. Witmer said Trump could also stack the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with officials more sympathetic to the industry's needs.
Meanwhile, Trump's vows to tear up the Iran nuclear deal could also keep Iranian oil and natural gas from flooding the market and competing with that of U.S. producers, he explained. The deal promised to lift economic sanctions on Iran -- allowing the Islamic Republic to rejoin the world economic stage and begin exporting goods like oil -- in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
"Coal -- clean coal, clean coal. We're bringing it back." - Trump in Pittsburgh in April of 2016
Trump's promises to rebuild coal were celebrated by the battered industry, one that has been decimated in recent years due to rising production costs, environmental regulations and, undoubtedly, heavy competition from cheaper natural gas.
Word of his victory even saw an immediate bump in coal stocks.
This after years of coal company bankruptcies and layoffs. In 2015, the average number of employees at U.S. coal mines decreased 12 percent to 65,971 employees, the lowest number on record since the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) first began collecting data in 1978. There were 6,633 mine workers in Pennsylvania that year, down from 7,938 in 2014.
But according to David Spence, a professor of law, politics and regulation at the University of Texas at Austin, even if Trump succeeds in repealing the EPA's clean air regulations and ditching the Paris climate accord, coal won't necessarily reclaim the electricity generation throne.
Spence, in a piece for Fortune magazine, said reasons include the fact that "states must approve the construction of new electricity generation units and strong majorities in many states remain opposed to coal-fired power." He also said "many states actively favor renewables in electricity generation, and even in places that don't, the word has gotten out that coal combustion is far deadlier to humans than any other electric generation source -- including natural gas."
But the industry itself remains hopeful.
"President-elect Trump knows the strategic importance of energy in America," a statement from the American Coal Council reads. "He understands the urgent need to rein in the Washington bureaucracy and sweeping, excessive regulations in order to protect jobs, retain and grow our nation's industrial and manufacturing base, and reduce the costly burden of rules that lack commensurate benefits."
But experts are again skeptical, saying coal's decline may prove difficult for any president to reverse. They point to other factors, including a move away from coal in power production, as likely reasons.
In an op-ed for the New York Times, Michael E. Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, blames coal's struggles on cheap and plentiful natural gas, cheap renewables and air-quality regulations launched under the George W. Bush administration, as well as weaker-than-expected demand for coal in Asia.
Does Donald Trump secretly believe in global warming?
Donald Trump's business interests conflict with his statements on the campaign trail.
"For Mr. Trump to improve coal's fate would require enormous market intervention like direct mandates to consume coal or significant tax breaks to coal's benefit," Webber writes. "These are the exact types of interventions that conflict with decades of Republican orthodoxy supporting competitive markets. Another approach, which appears to be gaining popularity, is to open up more federal lands and waters to oil, gas and coal production. ... Doing so would only exacerbate coal's challenges, as it would add to the oversupply of energy, lowering the price of coal, which makes it even harder for coal companies to stay profitable."
"We are going to put American-produced steel back into the backbone of our country. This alone will create massive numbers of jobs." - Trump in Monessen in June of 2016
In rally after rally across southwestern Pennsylvania, Trump lamented the loss of the region's steel industry and promised to resurrect it.
But a resurgence in Pennsylvania steel production is one thing. Professor Jim Craft of the University of Pittsburgh said whether it would create new jobs is another.
Craft, a professor of business administration at Pitt's Joseph M. Katz Graduate School, called a total restoration of steel production and steel jobs "highly unlikely."
Craft said while U.S. steel prices are currently rebounding after a disastrous 2015 -- he credits government tariffs placed on foreign imports this spring for that -- it's not clear that a stronger U.S. steel market will actually translate to more jobs. The reasons include a growing reliance on automation and machine power over manpower.
"I think what you're going to find is that U.S. steel will improve its position economically, but how much that's going to increase with Trump's promise of new jobs, I don't know," Craft said.
"I don't see a lot of new jobs. I see a recovery of the steel industry to some extent as long as the enforcement of the tariffs and restrictions on imported steel are there. But I don't see it creating all kinds of new jobs and making Pittsburgh the Steel City it once was."
In an email sent to PennLive, United States Steel Corporation of Pittsburgh said it "looked forward to working with President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect Mike Pence and newly elected officials at all levels of federal, state and local government to ensure a level playing field for the steel industry."
At Arcelor Mittal, which has a plant in Steelton, company representatives said, "Throughout his campaign, President-elect Trump expressed his support for the domestic steel industry and American manufacturing, outlining important policies on infrastructure spending and trade. ... ArcelorMittal supports this agenda and looks forward to working with the new administration on comprehensive solutions to revitalize manufacturing in the U.S. and further protect the industry from unfair trade practices."
But while Trump has promised to hammer foreign competitors in China and tear up unfavorable trade deals, Sevin Yeltekin, an associate professor of economics at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon, said that won't necessarily mean more jobs here.
Trump reveals energy plan: more drilling, more coal, less regulations
Donald Trump's energy plan calls for more oil and gas drilling, bringing back coal jobs and less regulations.
"In a nutshell, no, those jobs are not coming back. But it's not because of only China or NAFTA or any of that stuff. It's because a lot of the low-skill to medium-skill jobs have been replaced by machinery."
"It's not just outsourcing. They're much more likely to have lost those jobs due to technological advancements."
'The answer'
But there is hope, Yeltekin added.
As demand for those low-skill to medium-skill workers in the steel and coal industries fell, demand grew for workers with more specialized skills in a host of other industries.
As president, she said, Trump could focus instead on training American workers to fill jobs in the thriving service, health care and tech industries, for example. All 3 have seen significant growth in recent years and in Pittsburgh's case helped breathe new life into a city that struggled mightily following the collapse of steel.
"If he really wants to bring some relief or employment to displaced workers, he needs to focus on retraining programs," she said.
"We're not going to get steel or coal back, but what we can do is retrain those displaced workers to move to another industry where demand is greater."
She continued: "You don't get your hair cut by a robot. You don't get your plumbing done by a robot. Those are the kinds of things we need to train people to do." She also mentioned customer service and entry-level IT jobs as other possibilities.
"You can give businesses tax incentives for hiring people. You can build up vocational training programs. ... The answer is to use public dollars to train and relocate people and to give them a chance to train themselves and shift occupations while still being able to feed their families."
Casey condemns top Trump appointee with 'ties to white nationalism'
"President-elect Trump has pledged to be a President for all Americans; placing this individual in a position of such significant power undermines that claim," Casey said.


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text:
Fairbanks Morse Defense adds high-speed engine
Will be available over the next two years
Fairbanks Morse Defense is expanding its naval defense capabilities by offering the nForcer FM 175D engine, the defense contractor's first engine designed for high-speed applications.
With more power density than competing high-speed engines in the maritime defense marketplace, the nForcer FM 175D is best suited to support the substantial power and propulsion needs of the Navy's unmanned programs.
Fairbanks Morse Defense is expanding its naval defense capabilities by offering the nForcer FM 175D engine, the defense contractor's first engine designed for high-speed applications. With more power density than competing high-speed engines in the maritime defense marketplace. (Image: Fairbanks Morse Defense)
"The Navy's future fleet will be electric, and the power requirements for each vessel to support advanced weapons and detection systems alongside standard operations will be greater than anything else we've seen over the past 20-30 years," said George Whittier, company CEO. "Fairbanks Morse Defense has provided the Navy with some of the most trusted power and propulsion systems on the planet for nearly 100 years, making us uniquely qualified to support the Navy's future efforts to protect the freedom of the seas with this high-speed engine."
The nForcer FM 175D engine will be available with 12, 16, or 20 cylinders and includes a 175 mm bore for mechanical or electric propulsion for onboard power generation. It operates at 1800 to 2000 RPMs and has a power output rating of 1740 – 4400 kW, making it one of the most power-dense high-speed engines available for maritime use, the company said in a news release.
FMD anticipates the nForcer FM 175D engine will be ready to integrate with naval fleets within the next two years.
Fairbanks Morse Defense said the nForcer FM 175D engine is among a growing number of solutions for FMD. As of recently, the company created the Technology Center of Excellence, consolidating into one platform FMD's emerging technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital Defenses, SMART Engineering Solutions, Uncrewed Mission Management and FM OnBoard. While previously known primarily as an engine manufacturer, FMD has spent the last two years acquiring companies and expanding its capabilities to provide products and services for the entire ship.
Locations Type Global Industry News Sectors Engines, Hydraulics & Powertrains Power Technology Marine
Fairbanks Morse to launch training center
Defense contractor invests $13 million to create a campus that expands service and hands-on training opportunities for technicians and customers


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Home/ Africa Confidential/EU: Prioritize Rights at India Summit
On: May 3, 2021 Posted in Africa Confidential Comments: 0 Views: 0
EU: Prioritize Rights at India Summit
(Brussels) – European leaders at the May 8, 2021 summit with their Indian counterparts should prioritize the deteriorating human rights situation in India, including the right to health, eight organizations said today.
With a devastating Covid-19 crisis affecting the country, Europe should focus on providing support to help India deal with the acute shortage of medical supplies and access to vaccines. At the same time, European leaders should press the Indian government to reverse its abusive and discriminatory policies and immediately release all human rights defenders and other critics who have been jailed for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.
The organizations are Amnesty International, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), Front Line Defenders (FLD), Human Rights Watch, International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT).
India has the fastest-growing number of Covid-19 cases in the world and is facing severe healthcare shortages – of testing capacity, medicines, ambulance services, hospital beds, oxygen support, and vaccines. The European Union and its member states should reconsider and reverse their opposition to India and South Africa's proposal before the World Trade Organization (WTO) to temporarily waive certain intellectual property rules under the TRIPS Agreement to facilitate increased manufacturing and production of vaccines and related products globally until widespread vaccination is in place the world over.
The Covid-19 crisis has also highlighted growing human rights concerns in India. Faced with widespread criticism of its handling of the pandemic, the Indian government has tried to censor free speech, including by ordering social media content taken down and criminalizing calls for help. The government has also ignored calls from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for countries to release "every person detained without sufficient legal basis, including political prisoners, and those detained for critical, dissenting views" to prevent the growing rates of infection everywhere, including in closed facilities such as prisons and detention centers.
Instead, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government has increasingly harassed, intimidated, and arbitrarily arrested human rights defenders, journalists, peaceful protesters, and other critics, under draconian sedition and counterterrorism laws.
The authorities have jailed a number of human rights defenders, student activists, academics, opposition leaders, and critics, blaming them for the communal violence in February 2020 in Delhi as well as caste-based violence in Bhima Koregaon in Maharashtra state in January 2018. In both cases, BJP supporters were implicated in the violence. Police investigations in these cases were biased and aimed at silencing dissent and deterring future protests against government policies, the groups said.
The government uses foreign funding laws and other regulations to crack down on civil society. Recent amendments to the Foreign Contributions Regulations Act (FCRA) added onerous governmental oversight, additional regulations and certification processes, and operational requirements, which adversely affect civil society groups, and effectively restrict access to foreign funding for small nongovernmental organizations. In September 2020, Amnesty International India was forced to halt its work in the country after the Indian government froze its bank accounts in reprisal for the organization's human rights work, and many other local rights groups struggle to continue doing their work.
The Indian authorities have also enacted discriminatory laws and policies against minorities. Muslim and Dalit communities face growing attacks, while authorities fail to take action against BJP leaders who vilify minority communities and BJP supporters who engage in violence. The Indian government has imposed harsh and discriminatory restrictions on Muslim-majority areas in Jammu and Kashmir since revoking the state's constitutional status in August 2019 and splitting it into two federally governed territories.
The authorities carried out counterterrorism raids in October on multiple nongovernmental organizations in Kashmir and Delhi, and a newspaper office in Srinagar to silence them, causing a chilling effect on human rights defenders who fear for their safety.
Yet, despite the considerable deterioration in the country's human rights record under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Indian government has effectively shielded itself from the international scrutiny and reactions that the seriousness of the situation should have warranted. Focusing on strengthening trade and economic ties with India, the European Union and its member states have been reluctant to formulate public expressions of concern on human rights in India, with the exception of occasional statements focused solely on the death penalty.
In January 2020, amid intense external pressure, the European Parliament indefinitely postponed the adoption of a resolution condemning India's discriminatory citizenship law and other abuses. The text was introduced, but not voted upon. However, in April 2021, the parliament adopted a recommendation on EU-India relations raising serious concerns over human rights violations in India, and urging European leaders to use the upcoming summit as a platform to relay those messages at the highest level.
The EU's long silence on these issues stands in stark contrast with its much more vocal and robust reactions to serious human rights violations by certain other governments, including some of India's neighbors, and is incompatible with the EU's recently renewed pledge to speak up and take action whenever and wherever human rights abuses occur.
The EU recently resumed its local human rights dialogue with India, which had been suspended for seven years. While the EU insisted on holding the dialogue as a prerequisite for the leaders' meeting, where stronger trade ties and cooperation in other areas will be discussed, nongovernmental organizations cautioned against holding the dialogue as a box-ticking exercise, only aimed at getting rights off the summit's agenda. The weak joint press release published as the outcome did not assuage these fears.
European leaders should find their voice and raise concerns at the summit meeting, the organizations said. Instead of being content with securing empty references to allegedly "shared values of human rights and democracy" in joint statements, the EU and its member states should show their own commitment to upholding those values and hold the Indian government to account for its human rights violations.
European leaders should press the Indian government to immediately release all arbitrarily detained human rights defenders, journalists, and other critics; repeal or amend repressive laws used to silence dissent, discriminate against minorities, or unfairly target nongovernmental organizations; protect freedom of expression and assembly; and ensure accountability for human rights violations, including in Jammu and Kashmir.
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