Offering a yielding handto politicians
Politicians love to show better economic performance pictures to their voters. The statistics-producing bodies of governments love to please politicians by generating exactly the reports which the latter would welcome.
This joint manoeuvring should be checked by private sector institutions which have to act as a counter force. But in many countries, trade chambers love to endorse such massaged-up reports possibly they are more interested in winning favours from politicians than having credible economic numbers.
Thus, the game ploy continues without interruption until things become totally unmanageable. At that stage, the systems do not answer to ordinary policies. If they are to be remedied, extraordinarily painful harsh policies have to be adopted.
President to meet Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko as Nato reports significant pullback of Russian forces since September ceasefire
Reuters in Moscow-Sunday 12 October 2014Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting of his security council in Sochi on Saturday. He has ordered troops to withdraw after military exercises. Photograph: Ria Novosti/Reuters
Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian troops to withdraw to their permanent bases after military exercises in Rostov region near the border with Ukraine, Russian news agencies have reported.
The news came before an expected meeting this week in Milan between the Russian president and his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Putin had met his defence minister, Sergei Shoigu.
“The minister had reported to the supreme commander about the completion of summer period of training on shooting ranges of the southern military district,” Peskov said, according to RIA Novosti news agency.
“After the report, Putin ordered to launch the return of the troops to their permanent bases … in total these are 17,600 military servicemen who were trained on the shooting ranges of Rostov region in summer,” Peskov said.
Relations between Moscow and the Nato alliance are at a post-cold war low over Russia’s actions in Ukraine, where it annexed the Crimean peninsula in March and has been supporting pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.
A month ago, Nato said Russia had several thousand combat troops and hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles in eastern Ukraine supporting pro-Russia separatists fighting the Ukrainian army.
Russia denies the charges but says it has a right to defend the interests of the region’s Russian-speaking majority.
The alliance said at the end of last month it had observed a significant pullback of Russian conventional forces from inside Ukraine since an uneasy ceasefire began on 5 September,
The Kremlin has said Putin and Poroshenko may hold talks on the sidelines of a summit of Asian and European leaders in Milan on 16-17 October.
(Reuters) - Indian firing across a disputed border with Pakistan has killed 12 civilians and injured 52 in Pakistan so far this month, according to a Sunday press release from the Foreign Ministry.
Sartaj Aziz, the adviser to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on national security and foreign affairs, said that officials from UNMOGIP, a U.N. observation team, were going to the disputed border to observe the ceasefire violations.
He also appealed to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday for assistance in solving the long-running dispute with India over the status of Kashmir, according to the Sunday press release.
Since becoming independent from Britain in 1947, the two nuclear rivals have fought three wars, two over Kashmir.
Pakistan revived its demand for Kashmiris to be allowed to hold a plebiscite to decide the region's future, as called for by a U.N. resolution adopted in 1948. India has long opposed a plebiscite.
"For decades, Pakistan has been reminding the United Nations and the international community to fulfill that promise, in the interest of durable peace and security in the region," Aziz said in his letter to Ban Ki-moon.
Former president and military ruler Pervez Musharraf had said in 2003 that he was prepared to set aside that demand in an effort to reach a settlement over Kashmir.
The disputed border running through Kashmir is heavily militarised on both sides. India frequently accuses Pakistan of backing militants who slip across the border and mount attacks in India.
Since the beginning of October, Pakistan and India have been firing mortars and machine-guns across the border, leading to the highest death toll in a decade among civilians on both sides.
It is unclear what started the intense firing, although officers who have served on the disputed Line of Control say that small incidents can rapidly escalate as each side responds with ever-increasing force.
India controls more than half of the disputed Himalayan region, and Pakistan controls around a third, while China holds 10 percent of the territory.
At around 8pm on Friday the crowd in Admiralty had already swelled to thousands of people. And it keeps growing larger. To grasp the trend, you just need to look at the subway entrance and check where people go: many stroll toward the streets, only few away from them. At the end of the evening, thousands of people will have attended the rally promoted by Occupy Central, the Hong Kong Students Federation and Scholarism. The presence of police forces is small. Tiny units patrol the area. But even they soon disappear: it will not be a night of pepper spray, after all.
On one of the bridges – they are occupied, too – activists fabricate small yellow umbrellas and spread them on the ground in long lines. “We do it to support democracy,” says a middle-aged woman as she holds up one of her creation.
Down one staircase, protesters have covered the walls with multicolored stickers showing support for the movement, satirizing officials or just expressing patriotic feelings for the city: a sight sure to galvanize any protester and to anger any pro-government official. But not many officials are out tonight, and the stickers elicit a great deal of attention.
At the base of the staircase we meet Jason Lam, a young media artist who is one of the movement’s graphic minds. Together with a friend, Mr. Lam gathers messages of support from the internet and uses a projector to show them above the crowd. They location often. Tonight they are pointing their equipment against a bare concrete wall at the feet of one of Hong Kong’s skyscrapers, right behind the statue of a man holding an umbrella which has become an icon of Occupy Central.
“There was a protest on July 1 and 500 people were arrested for just sitting down in public. At the time, I was watching them and I felt very angry because the police was violent,” he says. “Afterwards, my friend and I discussed what to do.” That is how the website emerged. The site receives messages of support from around the world – over 35,000 in just two weeks, contends Mr. Lam – and the best ones are chosen to be shown during rallies. The page was hacked last week, but it is now running again. Mr. Lam says he has no idea who did it.
In the center of the occupied area, student leaders – if they can be called so, since what has become known as the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ makes a point of being leaderless – are holding speeches. “Hong Kong is not dead,” says one speaker, his words amplified by loudspeakers. The crowd cheers. “Hong Kong is rising,” he goes on. Hands clap, then a moment of silence. “Hong Kong is not dead!” he insists, the pitch rising, his tone growing harsher. The crowd responds with a booming applause.
Protesters say they are mostly satisfied with the way Friday’s rally turned out. After the local government refused to hold talks, some thought the movement was doomed. “It’s a success, the largest number of people in many days,” says a man who identified himself as Terence. “I thought it would die down, but it’s amazing, they all came back.” A student points out that “tonight was not bad”. “We are satisfied by the amount of people,” he says.
Some are more cautious, stressing that despite the large number of people out tonight, real success will come only if the government accepts to dialogue with the people.
While there is no certainty about the future of the protests or the chances that the government will back down, the response of the people on Friday night demonstrates that Chief Executive C.Y. Leung’s plan to thwart the protest has failed.
The government had accepted talks with the students last week, after an attempt to tear-gas them away from the streets backfired. Chief Secretary Carrie Lam, however, called off talks on Thursday – the day before he was supposed to meet with the protesters – on the grounds that the students had gone too far and violated the terms of the agreement with the government. Everyone seems to believe that the opposite is true: with the number of people on the streets dwindling last week, the administration felt confident they could afford to ignore the movement without consequences. Not so. Many Hong Kongers are dissatisfied with the current rules and have come out again to demand universal suffrage.
The government’s plan, for now, has crumbled, and the image that more than anything else embodies the current situation is that of a young man dressed in a black t-shirt sitting on a fence, holding a sign with the word ‘full’ written on it. So many people flocked to Admiralty that the organizers had to close the central section of the occupied street.
Huge destructive force unleashed on port city of Visakhapatnam with thousands of homes damaged as cyclone makes landfall
Power cables are seen snapped as cyclone Hudhud swept through India's southern city of Visakhapatnam. Photograph: Xinhua/Landov/Barcroft Media
Reuters in Visakhapatnam
Sunday 12 October 2014
Cyclone Hudhud blasted India’s east coast on Sunday with gusts of more than 120mph, uprooting trees, damaging buildings and killing at least five people despite a major evacuation effort.
The port city of Visakhapatnam, home to two million people, was hammered as the cyclone made landfall, unleashing the huge destructive force it had sucked up from the warm waters of the Bay of Bengal.
Wreckage was strewn across Visakhapatnam, known to locals as Vizag. Most people heeded warnings to take refuge, but five were killed by falling trees and masonry, and thousands of homes were damaged, officials said.
The chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, the state that bore the brunt of Hudhud, said the extent of the damage would only become known after the storm abated.
“We are unable to ascertain the situation. Seventy percent of communication has totally collapsed,” N Chandrababa Naidu told Headlines Today television.
“We are asking people not to come out of their houses,” Naidu said, adding that damage assessment would start on Monday. “We are mobilising men and material immediately.”
The prime minister, Narendra Modi, called Naidu and promised “all possible assistance in relief and rescue operations”, the government said.
The low death toll reported so far followed an operation to evacuate more than 150,000 people to minimise the risk to life from Hudhud – similar in size and power to cyclone Phailin, which struck the area exactly a year ago.
After a lull as the eye of the storm passed over the city, winds regained their potency. Forecasters warned that Hudhud would blow strongly for several more hours, before wind speeds halve in the evening.
“Reverse windflow will be experienced by the city, which will again have a very great damage potential,” LS Rathore, the director general of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), said.
The IMD forecast a storm surge of one to two metres above high tide that could result in flooding of low-lying coastal areas around Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam.
A Reuters reporter in Visakhapatnam said the storm had smashed his hotel’s windows and flooded the ground floor. It was difficult even to open the door of his room, he said, as wind rushing through the corridors drove it shut again.
“I never imagined that a cyclone could be so dangerous and devastating,” said one businessman who was staying in the hotel. “The noise it is making would terrify anyone.”
An operations centre in the state capital, Hyderabad, was inundated with calls from people seeking help, including 350 students stranded in their hostel without food or water, said K Hymavathi, a top disaster management official.
Visakhapatnam port suspended operations on Saturday night, with its head saying that 17 ships which had been in the harbour were moving offshore where they would be less at risk from high seas. The city airport was closed and rail services suspended.
The IMD rated Hudhud as a very severe cyclonic storm that could pack gusts of 195kph and dump more than 24.5cm (10 inches) of rain.
The cyclone was strong enough to have a “high humanitarian impact” on nearly 11 million people, the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS), run by the UN and the European commission, said.
The evacuation effort was comparable to one preceding Phailin which was credited with minimising fatalities to 53. When a huge storm hit the same area 15 years ago, 10,000 people died.
Hudhud was likely to batter a 200-300km stretch of coastline before losing force as it moves inland, forecasters said.
According to the IMD, peak wind speeds will drop to 60kph by Monday afternoon. Hudhud is expected to continue to dump heavy rains in northern and north-eastern India and, eventually, snow when it reaches the Himalayas.
A burial team carries a body out of a village in Monrovia, Liberia.
By Associated Press-October 11, 2014
MONROVIA, Liberia — Liberia’s United Nations peacekeeping mission has placed 41 staff members, including 20 military personnel, under “close medical observation” after an international member of its medical team was diagnosed with Ebola this week – the second mission member to test positive for the deadly disease.
“This measure is precautionary and meant to ensure no possible further transmission of the disease,” the mission said in a statement Friday. “None of the personnel who are contacts have shown any symptoms but will be observed for the full 21-day possible incubation period.”
The World Health Organization says 21 days is the maximum incubation period for Ebola, which is spread via the bodily fluids of infected people. The 41 staffers were identified as having possibly come into contact with the member of the medical team, whose name and nationality have not been disclosed.
The patient tested positive Monday and arrived in Germany Thursday for treatment – the third Ebola patient to be flown there. The St. Georg Hospital in Leipzig said this week the patient would be placed in a special isolation unit.
The first U.N. staffer in Liberia to come down with Ebola died Sept. 26.
The mission is implementing additional measures to avoid more cases, including daily temperature checks and screening at a military facility where 209 people work, Friday’s statement said.
Liberia has recorded 2,316 confirmed, suspected and probable Ebola deaths – far more than any other country touched by the current outbreak, according to the latest World Health Organization figures released Friday.
The outbreak has now killed more than 4,000 people in total, the WHO said.
More than 400 health care workers have contracted Ebola, and 233 of those have died, according to the WHO. Liberia and Sierra Leone have both recorded 95 health worker deaths.
Critics call the government's response to Ebola "shambolic" as a national exercise to test Britain's readiness for an outbreak takes place. But what danger does the killer virus pose to Britain?
Oct 11, 2014 — "On top of that, Sri Lankan authorities must now answer for escalating attacks against religious minorities,” said David Griffiths, Amnesty International’s Deputy Asia-Pacific Director.
Sri Lanka must stop making empty promises to the international community and the Sri Lankan people on improving the country's still desperate human rights situation, Amnesty International said ahead of a UN review of the country's rights record.
PREVIOUS
Daily Mail UK reports the visit of Hard Liner Ashin Wirathu
[ சனிக்கிழமை, 11 ஒக்ரோபர் 2014, 09:07.48 AM GMT ]
ஜனாதிபதியை வரவேற்க நீங்கள் அனைவரும் வருகை தந்தால் மட்டுமே உங்களுக்கு ஆசிரியர் சேவை தரம்-3-ஐஐ வழங்கப்படும் எனக் கூறி வன்னி ஆசிரிய உதவியாளர்களை மிரட்டும் அமைச்சர் டக்ளஸ். வடமாகாண முதலமைச்சரை முட்டாள் என்றும் கூறினார்.
கோப்பாய் ஆசிரியர் பயிற்சிக் கலாசாலையில் பயிலுநர்களாகவுள்ள வன்னிப் பகுதி ஆசிரிய உதவியாளர்களை ஆசிரியர் சேவை தரம்-3-ஐஐ ஐ யாழ்ப்பாணம் வரும் ஜனாதிபதி மகிந்த ராஜபக்ச மூலம் தான் பெற்றுத் தருவதாகக் கூறி ஆசிரிய உதவியாளர்கள் அனைவரையும் 13 ம் திகதி அன்று யாழ்.ரயில் நிலையத்திற்கு வருகை தந்து பலத்த கோசங்களை எழுப்பி ஜனாதிபதியை மகிழ்வித்து வரவேற்குமாறு அமைச்சர் டக்ளஸ் தேவானந்தா வன்னி ஆசிரிய உதவியாளர்களுக்கு தனது சிறீதர் தியேட்டர் அலுவலகத்தில் வைத்து நேற்று 10.10.2014 ம் திகதி கூறியுள்ளார்.
13.10.2014 ம் திகதி ஜனாதிபதியை வரவேற்க நீங்கள் வருகைதரத் தவறுவீர்களானால் இப்படியேதான் குறைந்த சம்பளத்தில் இருந்து உங்களது வாழ்க்கையை அழித்துக் கொள்ளுவீர்கள் என்று மிரட்டியுள்ளதாக வன்னி ஆசிரிய உதவியாளர்களால் கூறிக் கவலை தெரிவிக்கப்படுகின்றது.
கையாலாகாத வடக்கு மாகாண சபையை நீங்கள் நம்பாதீர்கள், அவர்களால் ஒன்றுமே செய்ய முடியாது. அவர்கள் வடமாகாண ஆசிரிய உதவியாளர்களை ஆசிரியர் சேவை தரம்-3-ஐஐ ல் உள்ளீர்ப்பதாகக் கூறி நிறைவேற்றிய பிரேரணைகளை அவர்களால் நடைமுறைப்படுத்த முடியாது.
இதெல்லாம் என்னால்தான் முடியும் நான்தான் இணக்க அரசியல் நடத்தி அரசாங்கத்திடம் எல்லாவற்றையும் மக்களுக்கு பெற்றுத் தருபவன் என்றும் கூறியதுடன், வடமாகாண முதலமைச்சர் க.வி. விக்னேஸ்வரனை, மு விக்னேஸவரன் என்று கூறி மு என்றால் என்னென்று தெரியுமோ முட்டாள் விக்னேஸ்வரன் என்றும் ஆசிரியர்கள் மத்தியில் கீழ்த்தரமாகக் கதைத்தார்.
Female teachers in Jaffna are being forced to pay for and wear blue sarees, to represent the colours of the President’s political party, during Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Jaffna visit.
The teachers are having the cost deducted from their salaries, without any prior consultation.
Uthayan reports teachers as saying that at 2500 Rupees, the sarees cost far more than what they would usually pay for their work clothes and that the cost was too steep for something worn for one day.
I believe that in the present series of articles I have established, beyond reasonable dispute, that the two issues that supposedly constitute existential threats to the Sinhalese, namely Muslim extremism and Muslim population growth, are really non-problems. The other issues that have been bedeviling Sinhalese-Muslims relations, sometimes for decades, can be settled quite easily or at least without much difficulty, provided that the Government has the will to take appropriate regulatory and punitive measures. I have in mind the supposed economically privileged position of the Muslims, cattle slaughter, the use of loudspeakers for the call to prayer, the proliferation of mosques, and so on.
To complete the title of this column, let me add “is it also the land where suspension of disbelief is absolute?”
The journalists, in the English media at least, have been uttering platitudes that would justify their inclusion in one of the “Forums” of self-righteousness that seem to be so accepted in middle-class Colombo, Sri Lanka where the word “hypocrisy” appears to have disappeared from the Oxford English dictionary.
What has provoked my outburst? All the discussion and debate, if I might debase those two words in applying them to what has transpired recently in Sri Lanka: the Nonis/Vass Gunawardena brawl and His Excellency, Mahinda Rajapaksa’s, most recent audience with the Pope. The former event leading up to the latter and to be followed by the arrival of Pope Francis.
The behaviour of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church in giving its blessings to the most corrupt and violent government in Sri Lanka’s history is viewed as something of an aberration and deserving of investigation to arrive at the “real truth.”
“Stuff and nonsense” would be the appropriate response that any right-thinking person with even a smattering of historical knowledge would bring to this arrant rubbish.
The Cabinet of Ministers approved a Memorandum, presented by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, for the establishment of a Special Bureau to expedite the full implementation of the recommendations made by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). However, Government spokesman and Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella told the weekly Cabinet news conference yesterday that the government could not set a deadline for the full implementation. He was responding to a question from a journalist as to when the final implementation of the recommendations would be completed. The Special Bureau would be functioning under the Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga, who is already Head of a Presidential Task Force to implement the National Plan of Action, he said. He explained that 45 of the recommendations, out a total of 144, which work out to around one third of the total, have been implemented and the government was fully committed to implementing the rest as well. He said that ten were now in the pipeline of being implemented. Responding to a question whether the functions of the Special Bureau would be anything different to the existing mandate of the Presidential Task Force, headed by Weeratunga and who would represent it, Rambukwella said that he did not know and that he would keep journalists informed at next week's briefing on the details. He also said that the government has made giant strides and headway in the peace issues since the cessation of hostilities, adding that the government has resettled 300,000 northern residents while removing all the landmines. "There are a large number of countries which have finished wars, but they have not removed any landmines at all, such as in Israel which they have not done in 60 years. The Minister also explained that the delay in the implementation of some of the recommendations of the LLRC was the need for new constitutional amendments and the recalcitrance of the Tamil National Alliance in arriving at the Parliamentary Select Committee which has been set out for the settling of the ethnic question and also for the very purpose of the LLRC implementation. "They are blowing hot and cold at various times," he said. Responding to a question in the Ceylon Today, Page One Lead story, on the Northern Provincial Council passing a resolution that the military should evacuate from Jaffna by the end of this year, Rambukwella said that it had to be decided whether that resolution is in consonance with the Constitution of Sri Lanka. When asked whether the Constitution specifies issues regarding private lands as well, He said the government had the discretion of deciding which was applicable in the interests of national security.
The Indian Income Tax Department has issued notice to Bodh Gaya’s Mahabodhi temple, Buddhism’s holiest shrine, for not filing annual return of its income of over Rs.100 crore through donations, an official said Saturday, the Big News Network reported.
Deputy Commissioner of IT department Saurav Roy said notice was issued to the Bodh Gaya Temple Management Committee (BMTC) for not filing returns.
The BMTC member secretary N. Dorjee said the notice had been received, adding: “It is true that the temple committee has not filed its annual return.”
He cited the delay on the part of IT department to issue a PAN card to the temple committee. “In the absence of the PAN card, how can the temple committee will file its return,” Dorjee asked.
An IT official in Patna told IANS on the condition of anonymity that temple committee has never filed return of its income and expenditure till date.
“Every one, including religious and non religious institutions, which have sources of income are required to file the IT returns annually as per the law,” he said.
Dorjee said the temple committee would start filing returns soon after it gets the PAN number.
Last year too, the IT department served notice to the temple committee for not filing of returns.
The 1,500-year-old Mahabodhi temple is a World Heritage Site, where the Buddha, who was born at Lumbini in neighbouring Nepal, attained enlightenment around 2,500 years ago.
The Bodh Gaya temple is visited by millions of pilgrims annually from all over the world, especially from Sri Lanka, China, Japan and the southeast Asian region.
October 13, 2014 
Offering a yielding handto politicians
