EU ISIS PRISONERS IN IRAQ: EU adopts wait-and-see stance as European IS followers face execution

Dreams of living in an Islamic caliphate or dying as martyrs dashed, many former jihadi fighters from Europe now face the death penalty. Will the EU campaign to save citizens who reject its values?


"Kill lists" didn't eradicate them on the battlefield and local judicial systems won't resolve the dilemma created for the European Union by citizens who joined Islamic State and now are detained by the Iraqi government or Syrian militia groups. Most EU governments, some of which openly admit targeting their nationals with airstrikes, have no intention of bringing home almost anyone over the age of 10.

Having helped the Iraqi government push IS out of its territory, many EU leaders are relieved to hand over responsibility for holding and prosecuting the jihadis and their followers to the Iraqi judicial system. But Iraq says the death penalty is a likely sentence for those found to have been active fighters or even in key support roles. Vocal against capital punishment everywhere else in the world — even when former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein was sentenced to die — the EU has been virtually silent on its own citizens' fates.

Pieter van Ostaeyen, a Belgian expert on jihad movements, elaborated on the EU's dilemma regarding the detainees. "Are we outsourcing their executions to Iraq? That's a moral issue," he told DW. "But then of course we have to face the fact that these guys who have been captured and would return do have to fit in again in our society and what are we going to do with them?"

Read more: EU adopts wait-and-see stance as European IS followers face execution | Europe| News and current affairs from around the continent | DW | 26.03.2018

Health Care USA: The “Dis-location” of U.S. Medicine — The Implications of Medical Outsourcing — by Robert M. Wachter, M.D.

When a patient in Altoona, Pa., needs an emergency brain scan in the middle of the night, a doctor in Bangalore, India, is asked to interpret the results.

Spurred by a shortage of U.S. radiologists and an exploding demand for more sophisticated scans to diagnose scores of ailments, doctors at Altoona Hospital and dozens of other American hospitals are finding that offshore outsourcing works even in medicine. .

Most of the doctors are U.S.-trained and licensed — although there is at least one experiment using radiologists without U.S. training.

Until recently, the need to take a patient's history and perform a physical examination, apply complex techniques or procedures, and share information quickly has made medicine a local affair.

Competition, too, has played out between crosstown medical practices and hospitals. Although there have always been patients who chose to travel for care — making pilgrimages to academic meccas for sophisticated surgery, for example — they were exceptions.

This localization was largely a product of medicine's physicality. To examine the heart, the cardiologist could be no farther from the patient than his or her stethoscope allowed, and data gathering required face-to-face discussions with patients and sifting through paper files.But as health care becomes digitized, many activities, ranging from diagnostic imaging to the manipulation of laparoscopic instruments, are rendered borderless. The offshore interpretation of radiologic studies is proof that technology and the political climate will now permit the outsourcing of medical care, a trend with profound implications for health care policy and practice.

Skyrocketing health care costs are increasingly seen as unsustainable drains on public coffers, corporate profits, and household savings. Concern about these costs has led to wide-ranging cost-cutting efforts, often accompanied by attempts to improve quality and safety.

In other areas of the economy, a similar search for cost savings and value has created a powerful impetus for outsourcing. Although corporate globalization has been controversial, when the forces of protectionism have butted up against the demand of consumers for decent products atlow prices and the desire of shareholders to maximize returns, outsourcing has usually triumphed.

Although outsourcing is often motivated by the desire for cost reduction, health care's version may offer substantial advantages for patients.

For example, many hospitals now purchase interpretation services from outside companies, whose interpreters often speak a range of languages that individual hospitals cannot match. Outsourcing could also provide patients with access to specialized care that would otherwise be unavailable. A group of mammography experts, for example, could read remotely transmitted mammograms obtained at community hospitals, replacing less specialized radiologists. Herzlinger praised the “focused factory” in the predigital era, using examples (such as the “hernia hospital”) that required the physical presence of patients. 

In a “dis-located” world, patients may benefit from some of the quality advantages of focused factories without the burdensome travel.

Outsourcing is often initially endorsed by local providers, since the off-site professionals begin by doing work the locals are happy to forgo, such as nighttime reading of radiographs. (Most of today's overseas teleradiology is designed to capitalize on time differences — Indian radiologists read films while U.S. radiologists are sleeping.) If the arrangement meets its goals (whether these are saving money, getting a late-night dictation into the chart by morning, or allowing a radiologist a full night's sleep), its scope is bound to grow, as administrators consider other candidates for outsourcing — analysis of pathology specimens or reading of echocardiograms and even colonoscopies. By severing the connection between the “assay” and its interpretation, digitization allows the assay to be performed by a lower-wage technician at the patient's bedside and the more cognitively complex interpretation to be performed by a physician who no longermneeds to be in the building — or the country.

For the completereport go to : The “Dis-location” of U.S. Medicine — The Implications of Medical Outsourcing — NEJM

US Miklitary Outsourcing: Instead of Boots on the Ground, US Seeks Iraq Contractors

Wary of putting combat troops in Iraq, the U.S. government is gauging contractors' interest in advising the Iraqi Defense Ministry and Counter Terrorism Service in a range of capacities, including force development, logistics and planning and operations.

The U.S. Army Contracting Command posted a notice last month seeking contractors willing to work on an initial 12-month contract, who should be "cognizant of the goals of reducing tensions between Arabs and Kurds, and Sunni and Shias."

They would focus on administration, force development, procurement and acquisition, contracting, training management, public affairs, logistics, personnel management, professional development, communications, planning and operations, infrastructure management, intelligence and executive development, the notice stated.

Those services "fall within the existing mission" of the Office of Security Assistance-Iraq, "which is to help build institutional capacity of Iraq's security ministries," Defense Department spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said in an email.

Read Morre: Instead of Boots on the Ground, US Seeks Iraq Contractors | Military.com

ITPro: Europe key target for Indian offshore growth - by Maggie Holand

For the complete report in ITPro click on this link

Europe key target for Indian offshore growth - by Maggie Holland

Businesses in continental Europe have now woken up to the benefits of global outsourcing deals and are starting to follow the leads set by the UK and US in their fondness for offshore outsourcing.

Indian service providers in particular have recognised this new interest and have set their sights on these geographies as key areas for growth, according to Gartner which is discussing the pros and cons of the global delivery of IT at its Outsourcing and IT Services Summit in London this week.