President-elect Donald Trump called his meeting with Justin Trudeau productive and says the prime minister made a commitment to work with the United States to end the drug crisis amid the threat of stiff tariffs. Trudeau flew to Florida Friday evening to attend a dinner at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump’s transition team is based. The in-person meeting came at the end of a rocky week in which Trump threatened to impose stiff tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico, unless the two countries stop illegal border crossings and prevent illicit drugs from entering the U.S. In a post on Truth Social, Trump says he and Trudeau discussed the drug crisis, particularly fentanyl, illegal immigration, as well as trade, energy and the Arctic. Trump’s post did not directly mention tariffs. Trudeau told reporters in West Palm Beach Saturday morning that he had an excellent conversation with Trump’s transition team. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 30, 2024.None
Tejashwi Yadav, a key leader in the Rashtriya Janata Dal and former deputy chief minister of Bihar, announced on Sunday that the INDI alliance will assess its devastating setback in the Maharashtra assembly elections. In the 288-member state assembly, the opposition parties Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT), and Sharad Pawar's NCP (SP) managed to win a mere 16, 20, and 10 seats, respectively. In contrast, the BJP sizably secured 132 seats, with an additional 57 seats won by Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena and 41 by NCP. Tejashwi Yadav, accompanied by his father Lalu Prasad Yadav, visited Peetambara Peeth, a renowned Shakti Peeth, for spiritual intervention. Expressing optimism, Yadav affirmed, "We have won in Jharkhand and will evaluate the causes behind our defeat in Maharashtra. Nevertheless, we are certain of our victory in the 2025 Bihar elections." The duo also paid their respects at the Van Khandeshwar temple of Lord Shiva. (With inputs from agencies.)
State elects 68 new MLAs, 186 re-elected to assemblyHeartbroken MasterChef star tells of ‘lost dream’ after shutting award-winning restaurant and warns ‘it’s bleak’None
Mr Elon Musk will lead the Department of Government Efficiency along with Mr Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, under the Trump administration. WASHINGTON – These are frenzied times for the nascent Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). In Silicon Valley, tech leaders are eagerly seeking positions or introductions to the department, even though for now it is not an actual part of government, but a loose grouping that Mr Elon Musk named after an internet meme. On his social media platform, X, Mr Musk posted a “Godfather”-style photo of himself as the “Dogefather”, asking government employees, “What did you get done this week?” And in Washington, a House sub-committee has been announced to help push through President-elect Donald Trump’s vision, announced Nov 12, for a department that would slash the US$6.7 trillion (S$8.98 trillion) federal budget. Members of Congress – even Democratic ones – have been offering ideas for where to cut what Mr Musk said could be US$2 trillion from the budget. “It’s going to be very easy,” Mr Elon Musk’s mother, Mrs Maye Musk, told Fox News on Nov 26, after she sat in on some of her son’s meetings. Mr Musk will lead the department along with Mr Vivek Ramaswamy , a former Republican presidential candidate. The coming months will show whether her prediction proves correct. When Trump takes office, Mr Musk’s group will face a daunting reality. An entire apparatus has developed over the centuries that allows the government to keep marching on in the face of economic shocks, wartime hardships, or – as in this case – political vows to diminish its size and spending. Any effort to slash the federal government and its 2.3 million civilian workers will likely face resistance in Congress, lawsuits from activist groups and delays mandated by federal rules. Unlike in his businesses, Mr Musk will not be the sole decider, but will have to build consensus among legislators, executive-branch staffers, his co-leader and Trump himself. And federal rules ostensibly prevent Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy from making decisions in private, unlike how many matters are handled in the business world. Meetings would have to be open and minutes made public, said Dr Brian D. Feinstein, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies administrative law. “All of this would have to happen in the sunlight,” Prof Feinstein said. A 1972 law says federal open-records laws apply to advisory committees. If a committee does not follow those rules, it could be sued – and a judge could order the committee to stop meeting, or order the government to disregard its advice. A spokesperson for Trump’s presidential transition team, Mr Brian Hughes, declined to answer detailed questions about the effort. He sent a written statement, saying that Mr Ramaswamy and Mr Musk “will work together slashing excess regulations, cutting wasteful expenditures, and restructuring federal agencies”. Compensation is zero Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy laid out plans for their department in an guest editorial in The Wall Street Journal last week. The two men said their effort would include “a lean team of small-government crusaders” working inside Trump’s administration. Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy would remain outside government, offering advice as volunteers. “Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs,” the pair wrote in the editorial. A spokesperson for Mr Musk’s effort – which he calls Doge for short – declined to say whether Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy would make their meetings open. She also declined to say if the department would be set up as a separate legal entity, or how many people were already working for it. The Doge effort remains fairly informal for now. Mr Musk has been openly tapping his network of Silicon Valley friends and business associates to begin assembling a team of advisers, and the group has been recruiting and interviewing candidates for full-time positions. Mr Musk has solicited employees on X, saying the job would involve more than 80 hours of work per week. “This will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero,” he wrote. The spokesperson for the effort did not answer questions about how many staff members the group has now, and who – if anyone – is paying them. In their op-ed, Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy also said that in slashing regulations, they would rely on a pair of recent Supreme Court decisions that limited federal agencies’ power to issue rules. The men plan to compile a list of regulations that they believed stemmed from agencies having exceeded their legal authority. “Doge will present this list of regulations to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission,” the men wrote. Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy said that cutting rules would allow them to cut staff, allowing “mass head-count reductions” across the government. Yet many of those employees have civil-service protections, meaning they generally cannot be fired without cause, or for their political beliefs. In his first term, Trump tried to shift thousands of employees into a different category, where they could be fired at will. President Joe Biden rescinded that order, called Schedule F, when he took office. Ripe for legal challenges Mr Jonathan H. Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said that many of the ideas mentioned by Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy would be ripe for legal challenges and noted that many of Trump’s previous efforts to use executive powers expansively had been struck down by courts. Trump’s advisers have suggested that the Supreme Court’s ruling in a landmark case involving Chevron earlier this year will make it easier for the executive branch to nullify rules and regulations that appear to go beyond the legislative intent of laws. However, Prof Adler noted that the ruling actually means that agencies should not be able to make such determinations, suggesting that it would require litigation and court rulings to quash the regulations. Ignoring or eliminating rules without following the proper procedures is also likely to trigger lawsuits from those who benefit from the status quo. “There’s litigation risk that they’re not adequately accounting for,” Prof Adler said, adding that the Trump administration would have to be extremely strategic if it tries to take legally creative steps to rescind regulations or shrink agencies. Law firms have already been bracing clients for legal fights. In a briefing this week, lawyers from Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman said companies need to start warning members of Congress and the Trump administration about the potential fallout if government contracts are cut and if certain payments or benefits stop flowing as part of an efficiency effort. “While the Republican-controlled Congress will very likely work in lockstep with the Trump White House, it is equally likely that Republican members of Congress will be uncomfortable with delayed payments and spending cuts to programs favored by constituents,” they wrote. “In particular, government contractors are likely to push back against proposals from Doge leaders to temporarily suspend payments to contractors while large-scale audits are conducted.” Mr Robert J. Kovacev, a lawyer at Miller & Chevalier who specialises in tax disputes with the federal government, said the Trump administration’s ambitions were reminiscent of efforts by the Reagan administration to roll back regulations in the 1980s. At that time, President Ronald Reagan issued an executive order to freeze regulations that were in process and established a task force to review regulatory burdens more broadly, but it fell short of its ambitious goals. But Mr Musk’s team has advantages that Mr Reagan’s allies did not - a Republican-controlled Congress, and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. “I think what Doge will bring to the table is a focus on identifying regulations that pushed the envelope and expanded regulatory power too far,” said Mr Kovacev. Still, Mr Kovacev said, the process of rescission – formally removing a rule from the books – can take years, because it requires the government to solicit and respond to public comment. If it does hit legal obstacles, Mr Musk’s group could borrow from another approach Trump used during his first term - disruption. For example, after the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service unit published research that showed some tax cuts proposed by Trump would flow mainly to rich farmers, the Trump administration relocated that team from Washington to Kansas City. Because many of the staff members did not want to move halfway across the country, the move caused the unit to shrink in size – and become less productive, according to a 2022 Government Accountability Office report. Protected status The success of gutting the budget might also be determined by whether Congress, and even the president, has enough resolve, especially when it comes to certain programs and departments. Some of the largest parts of the budget have gone to causes Trump has vowed to protect, such as medicare, social security and the military. Those sectors also likely have strong support in Congress. Capitol Hill has always been the place where ambitious efforts to slash the budget – from one started by Mr Theodore Roosevelt to the commission under Mr Reagan run by industrialist J. Peter Grace – have run aground. Members of Congress have been reluctant to cut even small programs they think help their constituents, and the law says presidents must spend all the money that Congress allocates. Still, in recent weeks, some members of Congress have shown enthusiasm for Mr Musk’s and Mr Ramaswamy’s ideas. Republican senator Joni Ernst from Iowa, took to social media this week to outline what she called “easy” steps to cut US$2 trillion in spending. But even those steps showed the complexity of the task awaiting Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy. Some of Ms Ernst’s recommendations would be relatively manageable but for negligible savings – at least in proportion to the immense size of the federal budget. She said, for example, that the government could save US$16.6 million by no longer providing campaign help to long-shot presidential candidates. And one of her ideas directly clashes with one of Mr Musk’s and Mr Ramaswamy’s. The billionaires’ idea is to force federal workers to work five days a week in the office, with the idea that they will become more efficient or quit. But Ms Ernst wants to take the opposite tack - allow federal employees to work from home and sell off the office space they no longer visit. In the House, Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia will head a House Oversight subcommittee to “support the Doge mission”. So far, she has been vague about her plans but has said in a statement that she intends to hold hearings that will help Doge “gut useless government agencies” and “expose people who need to be FIRED”. Ms Greene also plans to push forward legislation like the REINS Act, which would require congressional approval for all regulations issued by federal agencies for them to go into effect. For now, activist groups like Public Citizen, a left-leaning advocacy group, said that there was nothing about Trump’s victory, or Mr Musk’s role at his side, that allowed them to ignore the slow legal process set up to make – or unmake – rules. “We will use those structures to complain – and sue, if we need to,” said Ms Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen’s co-president. “We’ll see where they start, and we’ll use every tool in our tool set to push back.” NYTIMES Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you. Read 3 articles and stand to win rewards Spin the wheel now
by Shanthilal Nanayakkara Retired Principal Engineer, Digital Transition Division, Australian Communications and Media Authority A Japanese delegation recently announced the resumption of the previously stalled digital television project in Sri Lanka following a meeting with the newly-elected President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The commencement of the digitisation project is now imminent. Once terrestrial television transmissions are digitised in Sri Lanka, it will replace the old analogue terrestrial television forever. Therefore, it is critically important that the final outcome is better than the current analogue television, if not far superior. Setting such a goal prior to the implementation of the project is crucial for its fruitful completion. To achieve this outcome, deficiencies in the current parameters in the Japanese Digital Plans need to be revisited and appropriately addressed for the benefit of all stakeholders. Otherwise, as it stands today, there is a high potential for rural and regional viewers in Sri Lanka to miss out on the digital coverage. (This is further illustrated below). Such an unwarranted outcome could become a highly ‘politically sensitive’ issue for the new government . Why Digital In analogue transmissions, radio waves encounter several problems. When radio waves are subjected to multipath, ghosting images appear on television screen. They are also subjected to cancellation of their own signals and interference. Digital technology overcomes these analogue transmission weaknesses and, as a huge value addition, is able to carry more information than its analogue counterpart. As this capacity enhancement feature helps carry multiple programmes on one frequency or channel, digital television transmission technology is considered to be highly spectrum productive. Once analogue is switched off, the vacant spectrum that can be harnessed, commonly known as Digital Dividend (DD), becomes an income earner for the Government, as spare spectrum can be sold to Telcos for broadband internet use. Thus, this digitisation project is effectively a self-financing venture for the government and a win-win for all stakeholders. Stakeholder benefits of digital Many countries in the world have now moved or are in the process of moving to the digital domain. Irrespective of the digital television transmission standard adopted in Sri Lanka, benefits of a conversion from analogue to digital television are many for the majority of stakeholders. These are listed below against the various stakeholders: * Government – a significant income from selling the vacant spare spectrum to Telcos, following full conversion to digital, provided appropriate modifications are made to the JICA plan; * Broadcasters – increased television channels and scope for increase of advertising revenue; * Viewers – increased number of television channels to facilitate a wider selection of content, with True High Definition (True HD) quality and potential 5.1 Surround Sound; * Content providers – opportunity to produce a wide range of programmes that are in demand; * Production houses – larger revenue from vastly increased niche productions; * Creators of social media and other internet-based content – opportunities to develop novel visual and aural media content; * Electronic Manufacturing/Testing – opportunities to manufacture digital television receivers and set up a receiver harmonisation/compatibility centre; * Broadcast Towers (similar to Lotus Tower) – Opportunities to establish and operate consolidated broadcast towers in the country; * Telcos- opportunity to purchase superior vacant spectrum for future fixed and mobile broadband applications. Funding arrangements or self-financing The current funding arrangement for digitisation of television in Sri Lanka is a ‘soft loan’ from the Japanese government, and it is tied up in ‘one bundle’ with loans for other projects. This loan is also based on the premise that the deployment of the Japanese digital television standard, Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (ISDB-T) is mandatory. As the vacant spectrum can be sold after Analogue Switch Off (ASO), the venture could also be a self-financing project, albeit with bridging finance. Purpose of this essay The main purpose of this article is to suggest ways of optimising the benefits of the digitisation project while retaining the support of the Japanese government. If the bulk of problems for viewers and broadcasters can be removed by making appropriate adjustments to the current plans at a minimal cost, with broadcasters becoming willing participants, the digitisation of television in Sri Lanka would no doubt be a success for all stakeholders, including the new government. Otherwise, there is an urgent need to review the bi-lateral agreement that was signed previously. The broadcasting fraternity in Sri Lanka is fully aware that the Japanese system is not as efficient as the second generation European standard, Digital Video Broadcast-Terrestrial 2 (DVB-T2). Understanding Digital Simply put, digitisation of analogue vision and sound enables radio waves to carry more information within the same channel or bandwidth than in the analogue era. This allows producers of visual and aural content to be more creative than before. The technology also facilitates easy communication in both fixed and mobile environments and facilitates two-way communication more than in the analogue era. However, there are two main pitfalls that one needs to address in order to make the venture a success. They are as follows: Cliff effect (sudden loss of signal): – * to avoid the ‘cliff effect’ a robust signal (with higher reliability and availability at a receive location than in analogue era) is needed at the receiver to prevent momentary picture pixelation and/or sudden loss of signal; and * it is also necessary to ensure that all television digital services reaching viewer locations are of the same signal strength to ensure equity of services and therefore must originate from ONE location such as the Lotus Tower. * Absence of ‘graceful degradation’ and its effect on signal level – even with a degraded signal with ‘snowy pictures’, analogue signal is still watchable. It is not so with digital due to ‘cliff effect’. Therefore, there is a need to ensure that the digital coverage is the same or better than the existing watchable analogue coverage that is defined by a signal level of 43 dBuV/m in VHF Band III. This limit was adopted for digitisation in Australia. Deficiencies of the Japanese standard/plan In planning to deploy the ISDB-T system in our country, everyone should aim for a cost-beneficial outcome as it is of paramount importance to all stakeholders. There are several issues in the Japanese documentation of 2014/2018, which should be addressed to suit the needs of the public/consumers, broadcasters and government. They range from policy issues at the outset, technical areas during planning and management issues during the proposed phases of ASO and Digital Switch On (DSO). Spectrum for Digital: VHF/UHF issue In particular, the proposal to use only a part of the available broadcast spectrum has an impact on the eventual DD income for the Government. The Japanese have deployed both VHF and UHF spectrum in Brazil, strangely not offered to Sri Lanka. In that context, it is not clear why the Japanese team has not proposed a VHF and UHF combined solution as deployed in Brazil. This was pointed out by the writer when a Japanese team, including a senior Embassy official Sato Takefumi, met him in 2017 in Colombo to discuss Lotus Tower issues (after his disclosure in an article in The Island about the Lotus tower) and digitisation in general. Their response was ‘no one asked for it’. As it stands today in Sri Lanka, analogue television transmissions are based on frequencies using both VHF and UHF Bands, but the proposed Japanese digital conversion is not utilising the VHF Band. In particular, VHF Band III exhibits superior propagation characteristics, while contributing to lower the consumption of electricity by the transmitters. More importantly, VHF radio waves carry longer distances than UHF due to lower propagation losses, are able to travel around obstacles comparatively and therefore VHF is more suitable for wide coverage transmissions. Currently, the VHF spectrum is occupied by three television broadcasting networks i.e. Rupavahini, ITN and TNL. These networks will lose their inherent wide coverage VHF Band advantage. They also have the additional burden of occupying a digital channel in the UHF spectrum, especially when the earmarked UHF channels for digital are almost at the bottom of the UHF Band V, where propagation losses are higher than in UHF Band IV. ISDB-T New Coder H.265 It is a known fact that the Japanese ISDB-T standard, in payload capacity terms, is second to the second generation European Standard DVB-T2 that provides 45 Mb/s capacity. However, the Japanese standard can only carry about 1/2 of the European standard per channel at 23 Mb/s. But as the Japanese are now offering to change the content source coder to H.265, they will be able to provide HD at 1080P at a rate of 2-4 Mb/s. This change would now allow all HD TV ready broadcasters to provide True HD content at 1920 x 1080P and possibly can accommodate all television channels in Colombo. But the downside is that the receivers are going to be more complex with the new coder. This may then lead to more expensive ISDB-T receivers or STBs in Sri Lanka. Vacant VHF Band III The unused VHF Band III is likely to reduce the DD for the government though the Japanese strategy is to achieve some productivity by the use of single frequency networks in the UHF Band (SFNs-a technique to use the same frequency multiple times to improve spectrum productivity). However, in practice receiving of SFNs is not simplistic as the reception of SFN signals are subject to receiver complexities. The Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) may be exclusively reserving the VHF band for future digital radio, but the same band could be co-shared with digital television without any problems. For example, Australia is co-sharing VHF Band III for both digital television and radio without any issues. Once all analogue transmissions are switched off with the deployment of UHF band per se for digital, the unused VHF Band III spectrum, where 7 MHz bandwidth, 8 VHF Frequency channels exists, will become vacant. This is clearly a waste of unused spectrum. Additionally, as Restacking [restack is the re-arrangement of frequencies ideally in the two bands of VHF and UHF, to maximise the spectrum productivity] is in the Japanese Plan, additional expenditure on broadcasting infrastructure is also on the cards. Where are the funds coming from? There is no mention of new funding arrangements for Restacking of the spectrum, and it also raises questions about the STB/Receiver specifications as frequencies may need to change after Restacking. If some broadcasters are not keen to use ISDB-T, they may canvass for the opportunity to use the vacant VHF Band for the potential deployment of DVB-T2 standard. This MUST be avoided at all costs! If this happens, there will be two digital systems in Sri Lanka. This issue, in particular, could become another potential headache for the government as it is likely to be under heavy pressure from commercial broadcasters to release the vacant VHF Band III for the more efficient DVB-T2. This issue, too, was pointed out by the writer when another Japanese team consisting of a Senior Engineer from Yacheo Engineering along with Sato Takefumi of the Japanese Embassy met him in 2017/2018. Unless there are plans to use the vacant VHF Band III by Restacking the spectrum, this spectrum specifically allocated for broadcasting would go to waste. Digital Signal Reliability & Availability Unlike in the analogue domain, television signal reliability and its availability becomes crucial in digital reception. In the analogue era, television broadcasting service field strength was planned for 50% of the locations and 50% of the time at a receiving height of 10 m. But in digital this becomes 80%-95% of the locations and 90% of the time to ensure reliability and availability of the digital signal. Hence the planned field strength would need to be adjusted to ensure the required reliability and availability at a higher field strength. In Australia, field strength used was 50 dBuV/m for Band IV and 54 dBuV/m for Band V frequencies in a rural environment However, it is not clear from the published documents of the Japanese plans 2014/2018 whether this issue had been addressed or otherwise. The signal level at 51 dBuV/m identified in the 2018 Japanese documentation is certainly not adequate for a rural grade of service in the UHF Band! It ought to be in the region of 54-74 dBuV/m in the UHF Band V. For example, the Australian Broadcasting Planning Handbook for Digital Television Broadcasting has clearly identified these requirements and provided information on how they were derived. Duplication Parameter The potential impact of the proposals for duplication of coverage is illustrated in the diagram. (See Figure 01) The signal threshold of a planned analogue coverage is 50 dBuV/m for VHF Band III. However, some regional and rural viewers in Sri Lanka are currently receiving watchable analogue signals well below this value. If, as planned by the Japanese studies in 2014, the analogue coverage is converted at the planned cut-off level of 55 dBuV/m, then the majority of regional and rural viewers, who are currently watching the analogue television with no issues, will not be able to receive digital television coverage. This could potentially become a political nightmare for the new government. Therefore, the cut-off signal level, as illustrated above, should be lowered to 43 dBuV/m. Though Single Frequency Networks (SFNs) are a solution to mitigate this difference in coverage, it is not easy to implement them at the receiver-end due to the variation in receiver profiles of Set-Top-Boxes (STBs) and complexities in receiver SFN signal detection. The Japanese designers, while being aware of this issue, may have been heavily constrained due to the requirement for spectrum productivity. Most probably, given the limits of the available UHF spectrum for digital and the lower data efficacy of the Japanese ISDB-T standard, this higher limit of duplication may have been proposed by the designers in order to preserve some spectrum productivity. One Network Operator for Digital The advent of digital terrestrial television also signifies the end of individual transmission facilities for broadcasters, as several content feeds are carried on one frequency or the channel and the requirement to consolidate all transmissions at one site. A combined digital transmission service provider may, in the future, be an independent entity and the facilities may be offered to the broadcasters on a fee-levying basis, based on a pragmatic business plan. In a future digital broadcasting landscape, the broadcasters will essentially be ‘content’ providers. Perhaps, there ought to be some sort of protection provided to the existing broadcasters in the event new content providers also express a desire to use digital transmissions. Cost to viewers and broadcasters All consumer television sets require digital receivers to extract video and audio content from digital transmissions. Therefore, either in-built ISDB-T receivers or compatible STBs are required. For example, there are flat TVs that do not have in-built ISDB-T receivers. The cost of an STB for ISDB-T with H.265 decoders, is likely to be around US $ 50-100, depending on their complexity and economies of scale. If in the event, there is likely to be a Restack of frequencies including the VHF Band, two band STBs or receivers may be needed; one during the first phase and another after the Restack of channels with the ability to tune into the VHF Band. Additionally, at some household locations, there may also be a requirement for new receiver antenna installation to receive VHF/UHF channels. If so, this is also an additional cost to the viewer. There is also a significant cost to the commercial television broadcasters to provide HD ready studios, Outside Broadcast (OB)/Electronic News Gathering (ENG) equipment, and content feeding arrangements. However, once the commercial television broadcasters elect to use consolidated broadcast towers, analogue era transmission costs would also disappear as their independent transmission networks are no longer needed, in a digital environment. It is noteworthy to highlight that the Japanese financial proposal for digitisation of television is primarily for Rupavahini, and limited to funding the analogue to digital transfer of Rupavahini facilities, including the provision of a True HD studio, OB unit, Transmission equipment and a Central Command centre for the proposed Digital Broadcast Network Operations (DBNO) at the Lotus Tower. At this stage, there are no signs of any discussions with the broadcasters to develop a ‘road map’ to facilitate the smooth transition from analogue to digital of commercial channels. If Restack is to take place, there is likely to be additional costs but there is no mention of further Japanese funding for Restack of channels either. As additional costs to the commercial television broadcasters are likely, strategic government policy initiatives to compensate for the additional capital expenditure in a highly competitive market are in order. Way forward It is heartening to note that the Japanese plan has now incorporated the more efficient coder in H.265 with an intention to maximise the use of limited payload capacity of an ISDB-T channel, which then will result in providing True HD transmission (1920 x 1080P) for ALL licensed television channels in Colombo. If Japanese consultants can pay attention to the issues of using VHF Band III, changing receiving the field strength requirements to that of the ITU signal level requirements for UHF and address the duplication parameter issue, then ALL stakeholders including the government and broadcasters will no doubt look forward to the venture of digitisation of television in Sri Lanka.
Various factors, including genetics, nutrition, healthcare, and socio-economic conditions, influence human height. Across the globe, average heights vary significantly, with some populations being notably shorter due to genetic predispositions and environmental factors. This article explores countries with the shortest people’s population . Timor-Leste, a Southeast Asian nation, is known to have the shortest population in the world, with a height averaging just 156.42 centimeters. Factors contributing to this include limited access to diverse nutrition and a history of economic challenges. Guatemala, located in Central America, has the second shortest people’s population worldwide, averaging 157.64 cm. Due to structural inequalities and climate crises, Guatemala is the sixth most chronically malnourished country in the world, affecting the health and well-being of men and women as well as contributing to stunted growth in some children. Laos, a Southeast Asian country, is the third country with the shortest people in the world, with an average height of 157.94 centimeters. Socioeconomic factors, including health and diet influenced by heredity, play significant roles in the height of this population. Nepal, a South Asian country, has an average height of 158.38 centimeters, making it the fourth country with the shortest population in the world. Social problems such as food insecurity, geographical challenges, and a lack of adequate healthcare access have resulted in large numbers of malnutrition in the country. Bangladesh, a South Asian country with an average height of 158.73 centimeters, is the fifth country with the shortest population in the world. Food insecurity is a prominent concern in Bangladesh, resulting in stunted growth. While the average height in these countries may be lower than the global average, height is just one aspect of human diversity. Get real-time news updates from Tribune Online! Follow us on WhatsApp for breaking news, exclusive stories and interviews, and much more. Join our WhatsApp Channel now
