Sri Lanka’s infrastructure development is to assign state-run China Merchant’s Group to build a US$ 1 billion Northern Expressway.
Xinhua has reported that the northern expressway is considered to be the largest highway project embarked upon by the Sri Lankan government to date, aimed at linking the former war torn north through the tourist hot spot of Kandy to capital Colombo. When completed, the highway is expected to be about 300 km in length.
Construction of the first phase of about 48 km is expected to begin in August and will be done under the Build Own Transfer (BOT) system, Highways Ministry Secretary Ranjith Premasiri has told Xinhua.
“The feasibility study has been completed and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed with the company. We are discussing details of tax holidays and land allocation presently,” he has added.
It was earlier reported that the construction of the first 100 km of the Northern Expressway was awarded to two China Merchant group companies, China Merchant Holdings International (CMHI) and China Merchant Huajin.
The venture was earlier reported to be funded by China Development Bank. The first phase stretch will have five interchanges, 50 overpasses and 30 underpasses.
CMHI are also in charge of a 500-million-U.S. dollar expansion of the Colombo harbor, which is also under the BOT system.
The first phase is estimated to cost 1 billion U.S. dollars and will take a minimum of 18 months to complete, he added.
The Tissamarahama Grama Seva Niladhari was arrested by the Bribery Commission along with a Police Sergeant attached to the Peradeniya Police after soliciting bribes.
The Tissamaraha, Keliyapura, No 91 Grama Seva Niladhari was arrested while attempting to take a bribe of Rs.25,000 in return for approving an electricity connection for a resident. He had requested a bribe of Rs.50,000 and was arrested while taking Rs.25,000 from the resident yesterday (March 6).
The Police Sergeant was arrested after taking a Rs.2000 bribe for not implementing the law against an unregistered lorry. The Policeman had demanded a Rs.4000 bribe and was arrested while taking a portion of the bribe.
Economic muscle taking multiple forms is needed for favourable decisions. More in war and yet more in peacetime relationships and negotiations. It is not farfetched to say that US’s financial resilience and industrial capacity for aircraft manufacture – combat and support – had a decisive impact on World War ll. She accounted for 303,000 of 790,000 produced for the war. Of her production, 39,000 supplemented UK’s 131,000. Whatever be the high tech nature for future wars, economic stature will be the tilting factor. For this reason US and India will be getting closer with UK and Japan not being outside this company. The US India Nuclear Deals of this century signal this collaborative platform.
China’s Ascent
Political consolidation and military stability under Mao, have lent themselves to the programme of economic resurgence that Deng was able to launch. The very dynamic of her economic growth and social expectations have compelled the pursuit of her strategies internationally. Among many have been, prospecting for sources of raw materials, consolidating them for the long term and securing the supply routes for sustained delivery.
As China’s economy grew exponentially, so did her insatiable appetite for materials from resource rich nations of the world. For security of supplies she has a beautifully crafted ‘String of Pearls’, which when stretched reaches Australia in the South East and extends to Venezuela and Chile in the Far West. For her needs of oil and gas, iron and coal, metals and minerals there is hardly a country that is left out in any of the continents.
Indians who have been facing terrorist attacks for decades will condemn the dastardly attack at Kunming railway station in the early hours on March 2 that took 29 innocent lives. Over 100 people were reported injured in the attack. The masked terrorists wielding fruit knives struck wildly at the people crowding the station. Xinhua reported that a gang of eight “appeared to be expert at hacking people” took part in the attack.
The same agency also reported that the Kunming Public Security Bureau’s four-man SWAT team patrolling the city responding to the alert reached the station in ten minutes and in the midst of all the chaos managed to shoot and kill four of the five terrorists including a masked woman. The fifth member was wounded. It said the terrorists dressed in black when challenged stood their ground and the SWAT team leader managed to shoot a woman attacker who threw a knife at him.
China’s security forces including PLA, Special Forces, Border troops, Public Security forces, and the police have been honing their counter terrorist operational skills during the last few years. Counter terrorism has been the focus their joint training programmes with the forces of other countries including Russia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The public security forces response to Kunming attack has shown their training has paid off. Their operational readiness – to react and respond in real time – and the professional competency demonstrated in Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan Province, far away from Xinjiang which had been the focus of militant attacks is really commendable.
The Kunming attack brings back the unpleasant memories of Mumbai police’s clumsy response and utter lack of preparedness despite prior intelligence during the 26/11 terrorist attacks carried out on 12 targets by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiyaba (LeT) terrorists who infiltrated into the city and held it to ransom for four days from November 26, 2008. They killed in all 164 people and injured 308 others. Two LeT terrorists who reached the Chhatrapati Sivaji Terminus (the Victoria Terminus) station opened AK-47 fire on passengers waiting there, killing 58 of them and wounding 104. The policemen on duty at the station opened fire with their obsolete rifles and managed to kill one terrorist. The efforts of the Union Home Ministry to streamline and coordinate the state’s readiness to respond to terrorist attacks that started immediately thereafter are yet to be completed! Read More
The Ranatunga family and the Rajapaksa family have agreed to bring about several changes to the administration of the game of cricket, reports say.
Accordingly, Sri Lanka Cricket is to be dissolved and an interim committee headed by former captain and MP Arjuna Ranatunga is to be appointed.
The posting of Arjuna’s brother Nishantha, presently the SLC secretary, as chairman of Mihin Lanka Airline is thought to be the first step towards those changes in cricket administration.
This step has been taken due to the legal blockades that prevent two brothers being appointed to the same institution and also that Nishantha is the main respondent in irregularities committed at SLC.
As per the amendments introduced to the Sports Act recently, only a general meeting and not an election, should be conducted for the cricket’s governing body.
These decisions have been taken following talks between the Ranatunga and Rajapaksa families due to suspicion that Arjuna was going to accept the UNP’s Kalutara district organizer position before the polls for the western and southern provincial councils are held.
After Arjuna declared that he would not support the UNP, his brother Prasanna was named the chief ministerial candidate.
Another member of the Ranatunga family, Ruwan, too is a UPFA MP.
Arjuna had reportedly prevented another brother Sanjeewa, presently employed in the Sirasa Media Network, from contesting for Gampaha on the UNP ticket at the WPC polls.
In a show of gratitude, Sanjeewa is to be appointed to a top position at Mobitel soon, reports add.
Pakistan won their match against India by one wicket on Sunday
6 March 2014
The Indian authorities in Uttar Pradesh have dropped sedition charges against a group of Kashmiri students for apparently cheering the country's arch rival Pakistan in a cricket match.
But state officials said they would continue to investigate allegations of disrupting communal harmony.
More than 60 students were suspended at the weekend after the Asia Cup match in which Pakistan defeated India.
The students said they only clapped when Pakistan won.
The district magistrate of Meerut city, Pankaj Yadav, confirmed to BBC Hindi that after investigating the complaint they found no evidence to support the sedition charge.
But he said officials would continue to investigate allegations of other offences, including disrupting communal harmony and causing damage to public property.
The sedition charge carries a three-year prison term in India.
Earlier, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah promised to speak to the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and intervene on the students' behalf, describing the charge as "unacceptably harsh"
The incident took place in a private university in Uttar Pradesh
The incident happened at the Swami Vivekanand Subharti University in Meerut city on Sunday where a group of students allegedly "celebrated Pakistan's win", leading to arguments with other college mates, reports say.
The university administration then ordered an inquiry and decided to suspend the students as a "precautionary measure".
Some of the Kashmiri students denied any wrongdoing in their statements to the media.
Cricket matches between India and Pakistan are tense, dramatic affairs and are passionately followed in both countries.
Claimed by both countries in its entirety, Kashmir has been a flashpoint for more than 60 years.
The South Asian rivals have also fought two wars and a limited conflict.
On Saturday, March 1, more than 10 assailants slashed scores of people with knives at the Kunming train station in Yunnan province in southern China in what state media said Sunday was a terrorist assault by ethnic Uyghur (also spelled as Uighur) separatists from the far west. Twenty-nine slash victims and four attackers were killed and 143 people wounded.
Most attacks blamed on Uyghur (a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people) separatists take place in China’s oil-rich and ethnically sensitive far-western Chinese province of Xinjiang (formerly known as East Turkestan), where clashes between ethnic Uighurs and members of China’s ethnic Han majority are frequent. But Saturday’s assault happened more than 1,000 kilometers to the southeast in Yunnan, which has not had a history of such unrest.
In July 2009, Xinjiang experienced violence between Uyghurs and Han Chinese (China’s ethno-national majority). Media reported that more than 100 people were killed and 800 injured from the disturbance which broke out in the provincial capital, Urumqi. The disturbances occurred after a year of rising tensions between the dominant Han Chinese authorities and the Uyghur ethnic minority – the historical ethnic majority in Xinjiang – who say they have been socially and economically marginalized by Beijing’s policies that introduce ‘domestication’ – or more properly Hanification (Sinicization) – of the region.
On August 4, 2008, four days before the start of the Beijing Olympics, two ethnic Uyghurs drove a stolen dump truck into a group of some 70 Chinese border police – accused of brutally repressing the indigenous people – in the town of Kashi in Xinjiang, killing at least 16 of the officers. The attackers carried knives and home-made explosive devices.[1]
– Nigeria just like the United Kingdom of Great Britain is a country of loose union of various ethnic peoples with diverse and evidently irreconcilable and mutually antagonistic cultures and religions. The Nigerian union was put together by a foreign power (the Great Britain during the colonial days) without any reference to the opinions of and due consultation with the indigenous ethnic peoples as to whether they would like to associate with one another as citizens of the same country. By this action the independence and sovereignty of the various ethnic peoples were forcefully taken away from them. Therefore, the Nigerian state or country is not a union of voluntarily consenting partners as is supposed to be the case in all modern states including the UK. As against the modern definition of the state as a contractual arrangement where willing adults enter into agreements with specific conditions on which to relate with one another, execute projects and resolve resulting disputes, Nigeria is an entity where most of the members do not even know why they are there in the first place.
FRIDAY07 MARCH 2014 Shocking CCTV footage shows paramilitaries and Russian Cossacks attack journalists after taking cameras and equipment from another news team.
CCTV footage has been released showing the moment a masked paramilitary holds a gun to the head of a Bulgarian journalist.
The shocking scenes played out on the streets of Simferopol, near the parliament building, after a camera crew was told to stop filming by a group of masked an armed men.
According to eyewitness account, the crew were beaten at gunpoint and had their equipment loaded into a white van. The paramilitaries then turned their attention to two photographers on the opposite side of the street.
In an interview posted to the crimea.ua news site one of the journalists attacked stated; "We were sitting in a restaurant when masked gunmen entered the building opposite and began to take out the equipment.
"This was clearly television studio equipment. I quickly took a few photos on my phone, as they carried the equipment. One of the masked men approached me, put me on the ground, put a gun to his head to me and just took my phone and my friend's camera.
"Then they returned to the van, the vehicle had no licence plate, and they left."
He added; "Here now, the military situation there is no law. People who do this, clearly are not subject to any laws."
Journalists from the German newspaper Bild were also reportedly attacked this week in the same region.
Franz-Michael Mellbin criticises prosecution of 'moral crimes' and says Hamid Karzai's government has failed Afghan women
Franz-Michael Mellbin said the Afghan government had failed to prioritise women's rights. Photograph: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
President Hamid Karzai's government has let down Afghan women, according to the new EU ambassador to Kabul, who singled out the failure to end prosecution of rape victims and other abused women for "moral crimes" as a particular "disgrace".
Franz-Michael Mellbin said that despite huge practical improvements in areas from maternal mortality to the number of girls in schools,Afghanistan was still one of the worst places to be a woman and a frontline in the global battle for women's rights.
Mellbin, who previously served in Afghanistan as the Danish envoy, declined to criticise Karzai directly but said the government overall had failed in its responsibilities to be a voice for women's rights, as conservatives opposed to women having any role outside the home gathered strength.
"We cannot be satisfied with what has been done. Right now what I feel is unfortunately very much lacking is that the government is not showing a sense of priority and urgency that we'd like to see," he told the Guardian in an interview to mark International Women's Day.
"What we are lacking is a strong official voice to counter those reactionary voices … this makes it very difficult to fight for progress. We look in vain for strong government policy."
Karzai has always described himself as a supporter of women's rights, but recently there has been heavy pressure on the fragile gains made after the Taliban's fall from power.
Last year a landmark law to prevent violence against women was pushed out of parliament, the quota of seats for women on provincial councils was cut, and a proposal to reintroduce stoning as a punishment for adultery – used more against women than men – put forward by the justice ministry.
Many women believe this is happening because political interest in Afghanistan is fading in the west as troops head home. They fear that with the complete departure of foreign forces this year, conservatives will chip away faster at their rights or simply use them as a bargaining chip in peace talks with the Taliban.
"I understand why Afghan women are very worried about the future, and they are, they constantly raise this issue with me," Mellbin said, adding that he was inspired by Afghan women's determination to seize every opportunity made available to them.
"All over Afghanistan women today are 'first movers'. Some will be the first woman in their family to go to school, others to open a business or take public office. There is a tremendous awareness among Afghan women that they are trail-blazing for the next generation, for their daughters."
He plans to make women's rights a priority during his time in Kabul, as part of the EU's "value-driven foreign policy", at least until he sees a government more focused on protecting and expanding gains so far.
"I do not subscribe to the view that silence is an option," Mellbin said. "We need to be more ambitious. Our agenda has to be continued progress, continued advancement."
The ambassador said the campaign for the presidential election on 5 April was encouraging, with all the leading candidates to replace Karzai, who cannot stand again, pitching themselves as modernising nationalists.
"We're trying to prepare a list of issues that we would like to raise with the new government with regard to women's rights as soon as it comes into power," he said.
He plans to push for an end to the trial of women for "moral crimes", which are mostly violations of social norms, such as running away from a forced or abusive marriage. Rape victims have also been jailed for having sex outside marriage.
"[The prosecution of] moral crimes is something that is a scourge for women in Afghanistan, it means that girls and women who are victims … are further victimised by the state," he said. "Its a disgrace for any country to have such an institution."
Activists are likely to welcome Mellbin's stance, after strong criticism of western nations that fund the Afghan government but have often seemed unwilling to speak out on women's rights.
"Over the past year, through an escalating series of serious attacks on women's rights, the response from donors has largely been a deafening silence," said Heather Barr, Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch.
"No government as dependent on foreign aid as this one has the luxury of not caring what donors think. Donors need to speak out quickly and forcefully every time there is an attack on women's rights. When they fail to do so it just makes it look like they don't care."
Russia and the US are stuck in a stalemate over Ukraine - but relations between the two countries should not be sacrificed, President Vladimir Putin says after speaking to Barack Obama by phone.
Living in Beijing’s ‘airpocalypse’, expectant mother Xiaoxia Liu swears by her respirator – and is keeping her windows shut
A Chinese woman wears a mask as she walks past the capital city skylines shrouded by pollution haze in Beijing in March 2014 Photograph: Andy Wong/AP
“It’s like taking a deep breath depth in the mountains,” says Xiaoxia Liu in her 15th floor apartment on the north side of the Beijing, “I was surprised to discover air could feel so clean in this city!”
Could she really be referring to the Beijing air, infamous for its off-the-chart pollution levels? Yes, but only when filtered through a respirator, the type you see builders wearing on a construction sites to keep out the asbestos.
Xiaoxia, a 27-year-old investment banker with a Masters degree from the UK, who lived in London for over a year, is nudging to me to throw away my disposable facemask in favour for her heavy-duty respirator. She’s right, given recent reports revealing that light masks such as mine –despite selling in booming numbers and being touted as effective against the dangerous microparticle PM 2.5 – are in fact rather useless at filtering harmful pollutants.
She demonstrates how effective her breathing gear is, showing me before and after pictures of the filters – blanche white and then mousy grey respectively – after a mere month of usage outside.
As someone who grew up in Beijing in the 1990s myself, the deterioration in air quality there is startling – blue skies were once the norm. Not being able to see beyond a certain building in the distance is now today’s reality, though, with readings based on the Air Quality Index (AQI) skyrocketing beyond 500 on the worst-hit days, over 20 times the level set by the WHO. But the difference in how it potentially affects us is stark – Xiaoxia is eight months pregnant.
The obvious pre-birth glow on her face rarely gets a public showing. “When the air is polluted and the AQI is high, I put on my respirator before leaving home in the morning, wearing it on the underground or in the cab to work,” she says. While she used to get lazy with the mask, it’s now obligatory on more than half the days each month. “I have to be responsible for the baby,” she says.
A LED screen shows the blue sky in Tiananmen Square during dangerous levels of air pollution in Beijing in February 2014 Photograph: Feng Li/Getty Images
The risks of high pollution levels for pregnant women are potentially significant. A number of international studies have indicated risks to children whose mothers are exposed to high levels of pollutants at pregnancy, include low birth weight and long-term impacts onintelligence.
Xiaoxia says that she really only became aware of the dangers of Beijing air after levels in January 2013 reached unprecedented highs and were reported on both home and abroad. Since then, the health implications have become widely disseminated in China through the media and among friends on social networks.
As a banker working in the upscale Guomao or “World Trade” district of the city – the equivalent of Canary Wharf in London – Xiaoxia counts firmly as one of China’s urban “middle-class”. At work she can breathe easy, being one of the very few in China to have filtered air supplied to her office via a central air-purifying system. At home however, Xiaoxia relies on her air purifier, which she says goes with her to whichever room she’s in.
“I am quite extreme in how seriously I take air pollution,” she says, referring to the fact that despite the dangers posed, the majority of people in Beijing don’t take measures. As a student who studied in the UK for three years, Xiaoxia says Beijing’s “uninhabitable environment” initially required a significant period of adjustment, including getting over the “Beijing cough”, common to many who re-enter.
Chinese citizens wear masks on their faces on a hazy day in Beijing, January 2014. Photograph: ROLEX DELA PENA/EPA
As a fellow Beijing resident myself, I sometimes count the frequency of mask wearers in the city on heavy smog days, and it’s always less than one in ten. Many mothers will also take their babies for a stroll during one of the city’s “airpocalypses”, of which Xiaoxia has already experienced three bouts since the beginning of her pregnancy.
“The week of severe pollution that just passed was particularly hard, since we couldn’t open the windows for so long; I was considering buying an oxygen generator as it must be so unhealthy to have CO2 circulating the apartment,” she says.
For Xiaoxia’s husband, the windows and doors have become a niggling predicament – “I wake up dithering about whether it’s safe to let the outside air in,” he says. He bases his decision on the view out of the window each morning.
“Sometimes I feel like a lab-rat in this environment,” says Xiaoxia. She thinks her rigorous response to pollution is influenced by her time in London, which was “a comparison for just how clean the air could be”. Asked if she has intentions to leave Beijing, she says that the couple’s jobs are important considerations, but that the main ties to the city were her parents, who by traditional standards should remain close; but she wouldn’t rule out leaving, should conditions here remain unchanged.
A woman wearing a protective mask rides on a scooter along a overpass with near heavy traffic flow during a polluted day in Beijing in October 2013 Photograph: AP
How does the family propose to keep the baby healthy? Xiaoxia is frank: “I don’t intend to take the baby out when it’s polluted; there are always clear days to take the baby out for sunshine”. She says she wouldn’t agree with sport lessons in school during polluted days, calling such activities “inhumane”.
The thought of such life-changing limits for a child are alarming for someone like me who spent copious amounts of time playing outside. Such restrictions would have completely changed my childhood in Beijing.
“If the pollution was bad outside, I would ask my child to wear a mask, to school at least – I don’t know how he’d feel about that as it looks strange,” Xiaoxia says, laughing at the thought.
Until the skies clear up in Beijing, Xiaoxia is sticking firmly to her respirator, which she says has been met with ridicule and strange looks, but she doesn’t care. She has also noticed attitudes changing in the past year: whereas most people wore disposable masks, increasingly more are going for the serious or more “functional” types as she calls it. “And it’s much more comfortable than the lightweight versions – you’ll feel the difference when you take it off.”
For the foreseeable future, it’s status quo for Xiaoxia and her family where air is concerned, but she hopes things will change. “I’m doing the most I can to make sure I breathe clean air, but if you want to stay in this city, you have to endure the environment – there is no way out”.
Months of anticipation for Human rights campaigners, the Tamil Diaspora Communities and the country's Main Tamil Party ended in an anti-Climax When eases International pledges and dire warnings, the U.S. draft resolution at the Human Rights Council released Monday failed to Call for an International inquiry into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka.
Representatives of the Tamil National Alliance, now on a mission to Australia, have urged the Australian Government to consider co-sponsor the resolution at the UN Human Rights Council and back an international inquiry into the final phase of the war in Sri Lanka.
Sumanthiran
TNA National List Legislator MA Sumanthiran is Currently in Australia, where he has Baptist Foreign Minister Met with Julie Bishop and parliamentarians to lobby support for the Tamil Party claims the resolution which seeks to alleviate the Problems faced by Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil All Insurances.
"There is wide consensus that Sri Lanka hasn't delivered and hasn't made headway in accountability," Mr Sumanthiran told Australia Network after his meetings at Parliament House.
"The United Nations Human Rights Council Calls On Now has a resolution that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate atrocities said to have taken Place in the Last days of the Civil War.
"We have called consistently for a international commission of inquiry. This present draft that we have seen doesn't call for an independent inquiry to be set up through the resolution.
"We are a bit disappointed, yet we recognise we are making progress with the resolution. We are hopeful that US, Britain and a few other countries will take it forward, acquire the necessary vote then it will be passed and implemented."
Australia's Abbot administration has cosied up the Rajapaksa Government in Colombo and has shown willingness to Overlook in the Island Major Human rights issues in Sri Lanka's support for Exchange for stopping illegal immigrants arriving On Shores Baptist.
Australia is a major stumbling block in ongoing efforts to lobby UN member states to support the US sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka, diplomatic sources say, with Canberra attempting to curry favour with Colombo with attempts to soften the tone of the resolution. Australia has co-sponsored US resolutions on Sri Lanka in previous years, but is unlikely to do so in 2014, due to the overwhelmingly close relationship between Prime Minister Tony Abbot and the Rajapaksa ruling dynasty in Colombo.
China in a bid to deepen its involvement in
Sri Lanka’s infrastructure development is to assign state-run China Merchant’s Group to build a US$ 1 billion Northern Expressway.
March 7, 2014
The Ranatunga family and the Rajapaksa family have agreed to bring about several changes to the administration of the game of cricket, reports say.
