Cost of Dying Soars as Sri Lanka Cemetery Hikes Burial Fees

 November 06, 2014 

Representational Image (Thinkstock)

  COLOMBO:  Sri Lanka’s main cemetery is set to introduce a 10-fold hike in the price of burial plots to ease congestion in the capital’s most prestigious graveyard dating from British colonial rule, officials said on Thursday.

The Colombo Municipal Council, which administers the carefully tended Colombo General Cemetery, said demand for burial plots has surged while the cost has remained unchanged for a quarter-century.

"We have a serious space problem at the cemetery and demand is rising," Colombo Mayor A.J.M. Muzamil told AFP.

"The rates are not reflective of market value and we want to correct that," Muzamil added.

Only Colombo’s 550,000 residents are entitled to make the green, tree-lined cemetery their final resting place.

"But outsiders are also ‘dying’ to be buried there," the council’s chief medical officer Ruwan Wijayamuni told AFP.

"Some buy plots in the name of residents and the burial plot is actually used by someone from outside," Wijayamuni said.

"For the very wealthy, it is matter of prestige to own a plot at the Colombo General," Wijayamuni said.

The authorities plan to increase the price of a four-square-foot (0.37-square-metre) plot from $132 to $1,300.

"If we don’t take some immediate action, we will soon run out of space," Wijayamuni said.

Officials hope the increase would deter people from reserving burial plots for outsiders, Wijayamuni said.

But a burial plot in Colombo’s best resting place still costs far less than in much of the developed world where the price can be many thousands of dollars, Wijayamuni noted.

The cemetery contains the remains of British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, one of Sri Lanka’s best-known foreign residents who died in 2008 at the age of 90.

Many of the other graves date from the period of British colonial rule of the palm-fringed tropical island.

The cemetery was commissioned in 1866.

A section of the cemetery is reserved for Commonwealth War Graves, maintained by Britain.

The cemetery is a tourist attraction in Colombo because of its huge trees, manicured lawns and carefully maintained flower beds. The area is also an oasis for birds.

The authorities are also about to add a new crematorium to ease congestion at the 44-acre (20-hectare) graveyard which is located in a posh part of the capital over looking the exclusive Royal Colombo Golf Club.

While Buddhists, who form the majority of Sri Lanka’s more than 20-million population, opt for both cremations as well as burials, most Christians choose burials.

Story First Published: November 06, 2014 21:45 IST

Communist Party Puts ‘Aththa’ On Hold: Read The Censored “Aththa” In Colombo Telegraph

November 7, 2014

This week’s issue of the ‘Aththa’ newspaper published by the Communist Party of Sri Lanka has been held from being released to the markets upon instructions issued by an official holding a top position in the party.

Aththa Editor- Dr. Michael Fernando

Colombo Telegraph learns that this week’s issue (dated 09/11/2014) which was scheduled to be released today has been withheld without being released to the markets despite going into print and its e-copy being uploaded to the newspaper’s website. But the e-paper too has been taken off the site presently.

Colombo Telegraph reliably learns that the party authorities have confiscated all the copies of the printed paper from the press and have locked them within the confines of the Editor’s office that remains sealed presently.

The cause behind these arbitrary actions seems to be stemming from several articles that had been carried in the paper criticizing LSSP leader and senior Minister Dr. Tissa Vitarana. In fact, even this week’s issue that has been withheld had carried an article by LSSP Central Committee member Chameera Perera that referred to a statement that was made by Dr. Vitarana during a Central Committee meeting during which the party came to a decision to support President Rajapaksa at the upcoming election by a vote of 25 against 13.

The Editor of the newspaper Dr. Michael Fernando says he has not been informed so far by the publisher or the Communist Party Secretary official on the reasons that resulted in this course of action that prevented the paper from being released into the markets today as planned.

Read the censored newspaper here

Two groups of fishermen clash in Negombo 



November 7, 2014

Two hundred police and STF personnel were deployed in Kuttiduwa beach and in Negombo Town yesterday, to maintain law and order after a clash broke out between two fisher communities.

Police Media Spokesman, SSP Ajith Rohana, told Ceylon Today, two fishermen were injured in the brawl.
According to sources, the fight had ensued when one group of fisher folk raised objections to another group bringing fish from the South to make dry-fish in Negombo.

Body found under Borupana Bridge

November 7, 2014 

Police today said that the body of a 35-year-old man has been found under the Borupana Bridge in Boralesgamuwa.

A vehicle belonging to the deceased person has also been found parked nearby, the police spokesman’s office said.

The death is believed to have occurred at around 10.30am today while police suspect the man had committed suicide. 

CID arrests 5 policemen over  

disappearance of suspect

by Madura Ranwala-November 6, 2014

Police investigating the alleged disappearance of a person, Sarath Jayatilleke, in Baddegama in September last year have arrested five officers attached to Araliya police post.

The police identified the missing person as Sarath Jayatilleke.

"Officers of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) are grilling five police officers, a Sub Inspector, one sergeant, two constables and one police assistant after having obtained a detention order from the Colombo Chief Magistrate," Police Spokesman, SSP Ajith Rohana said.

The official said that the suspects would be produced before the Beddegama Magistrate after the lapse of 24-hour detention order.

Sources said that the officers at the Araliya police post had arrested Jayatilleke following a spate of complaints that he had been harassing people in the area. The suspect officers have claimed that Jayatilleke was released.

The CID launched an inquiry following a complaint received by Police Relief desk.

Police Media Unit said that the CID had taken the record books at the Araliya police post into custody.

Dragon Dance In India’s Ocean

The suicide bombing coincided with the arrival of a new ISI chief at the helm, appointed with scant disregard to the India-leaning Sharif, who attempted to run with the Indian hare as well as the Chinese hound

| by Neena Gopal

( November 7, 2014, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Barely six weeks after a Chinese submarine docked in Colombo port in mid-September this year, the Mahinda Rajapaksa government is clearly cocking a snook at Delhi, in allowing a second Chinese submarine to dock in Sri Lankan waters this week.

It may not be a nuclear attack submarine, but it is part of the Chinese Navy’s growing fleet, many armed with long range missiles, one of which surfaced in these waters earlier this year while on its way to the Gulf.

Dragon Dance in India’s Ocean by Thavam

The Ebola Virus And The Islamic State

By Jude Fernando -November 7, 2014

The moral bankruptcy of the global human rights defenders is clearly evident in its apparent urgency, resourcefulness, and political will to act against the Islamic State (IS), but NOT to prevent the rapidly spreading Ebola epidemic. These defenders take human and material risks, make compromises with enemy states, and bypasses established United Nations protocols pertaining to the use of force, for the war against an estimated 30,000 IS fighters. These efforts far exceed the assistance provided for the more than 4,000 victims of Ebola, including 340 healthcare workers, and the potential for 1.5 million people, the majority in poorer countries, to be infected by the Ebola virus, with infection rates doubling every week.  A fraction of the cost of airstrikes against IS, without any loss of human life, would suffice to airdrop the necessary resources to check the spread of Ebola and protect healthcare workers.

This appalling predicament of global human rights can be best illuminated by exploring the interconnections between Ebola and IS in a border context.  The Ebola virus originated in bats and the ideology of IS originated in the minds of a few ideologues. The surge of human suffering associated with Ebola and IS, however, are inextricably linked with, though not reducible to, imperial ambitions of the rapidly corporatizing, racializing and militarizing global political economy.  Many accounts of Ebola and IS based on resource scarcities, bad governance, terrorism, race, and religious explanations are misleading and counter-productive. They distract public attention away from ideologies and institutions that forge these links and necessity of replacing them with them with new ones.

Manufactured Scarcity

The scarcity of resources for managing the Ebola crisis is a not a natural problem, but a systemic and manufactured one, upon which rests profits of the bio-medical industrial complex. The same is true of IS as its surge didn’t come about “naturally,” but it is closely tied with the military industrial complex and geopolitical interests.  Disease and conflict, that often feeds on each other, are a result of manufactured scarcities by these two of the most profitable industrial complexes in the imperial economy.  Scarcity allows them to increase the value of resources and make them available to those can pay the highest market price, and is an important means to political ends.   This process of resources management is essentially highly dynamic and crisis ridden political project as it necessitates the complete control over people, ideas, identities, and institutions globally.

Read More

For Israel, Two-State Is No Solution

The Oslo plan for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is finished. We need a new model.

BY NAFTALI BENNETT

JERUSALEM — Recent events in the Middle East are a reminder of how the old models of peace between Israel and the Palestinians are no longer relevant. The time has come to rethink the two-state solution.

This past summer, Hamas and its allies fired over 4,500 rockets and mortars at Israel, demonstrating once again what happens when we evacuate territory to the so-called 1967 lines and hand it over to our adversaries. Peace is not obtained. Rather, we are met by war and bloodshed.

The rise of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and other extreme elements in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, make the risks just as clear. Israel cannot afford to gamble with its security. There are no second chances in the volatile Middle East.         Full Story>>>>

U.S. airstrikes target al-Qaeda faction in Syria

A damaged vehicle parks beside collapsed buildings after what activists said was a U.S.-led air strike on Kafar Joum village in West Aleppo. (Stringer/Reuters)

By Karen DeYoung, Liz Sly and Missy Ryan November 6 at 10:09 PM

U.S. warplanes launched airstrikes in northwestern Syria near the Turkish border early Thursday, targeting a group other than the Islamic State for only the second time since the air campaign in the country began and threatening to draw Washington deeper into Syria’s multilayered conflicts.
U.S. Airstrikes Target Al-Qaeda Faction in Syria by Thavam

Ukraine says Russian military column has entered east of country

Tanks, howitzer artillery systems and trucks carrying ammunition and fighters in column, says military

A rebel tank being repaired in Starobeshevo in Donetsk. Ukraine says Russian tanks and trucks have entered the country. Photograph: Petr Shelomovskiy/Demotix/Corbis

Agencies in Kiev and Donetsk- Friday 7 November 2014

A column of 32 tanks, 16 howitzer artillery systems and trucks carrying ammunition and fighters has crossed into eastern Ukraine from Russia, the Kiev military said on Friday.

“The deployment continues of military equipment and Russian mercenaries to the frontlines,” spokesman Andriy Lysenko said in a televised briefing referring to Thursday’s cross-border incursion.

The report of a new Russian movement of armour across the border follows a charge on Thursday by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine that Kiev government forces had launched a new offensive - which Kiev immediately denied.

Sporadic violence has continued since a 5 September truce in a conflict that has cost more than 4,000 lives.

But the ceasefire has looked particularly fragile this week, with separatists and the central government accusing each other of violations after separatist leaders held elections in self-proclaimed “people’s republics” last Sunday.

“Supplies of military equipment and enemy fighters from the Russian Federation are continuing,” Lysenko said. He added that five Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and 16 wounded in the past 24 hours despite the ceasefire.

Fifteen civilians were wounded by shrapnel in Donetsk, the mayor’s office said, in a night of shelling in two neighbourhoods near the ruins of the airport, where government troops are holding out.

Some 150 mourners later attended an emotional memorial service in the city for two teenage boys killed when a shell hit a school playing field on Wednesday. Kiev and the insurgents blamed each other for the incident.

Claims of fresh troop movements are reinforcing fears of a return to all-out fighting.

The Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, said this week that the rushed elections in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which the Kiev government and EU had declared illegal, had violated the September peace accord. He said the votes - which the rebel leaders claimed gave them a mandate to negotiate directly with Kiev - had “torpedoed” an offer of autonomy for the east and ordered troops to reinforce frontline cities.

A Kremlin adviser said on Friday that Russia was committed to the two-month-old agreement and wanted further talks held to build on peace moves involving government forces and separatists.

Foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov also said Russia respected the will of voters after the separatist elections, but following western criticism of Moscow’s stance on Sunday’s vote, he said he had deliberately chosen the word “respect” rather than “recognise”.

The financial isolation over the Ukraine crisis - along with falling oil prices - has hammered Russia’s flagging economy, with the rouble plunging early on Friday to a new record low against the euro.

Hungary Is Helping Putin Keep His 

Chokehold on Europe’s Energy

A key NATO ally is cozying up to the Russian dictator and trying to help him build a $70 billion pipeline to extend his reach into the heart of the EU.

• BY KEITH JOHNSON-NOVEMBER 6, 2014

Europe and the United States are trying to build a common front to push back against Russian aggression, and especially to pry the energy weapon out of Russian president Vladimir Putin's hand. But one member of the team seems to be switching jerseys.
Hungary is Helping Putin Keep His Chokehold on Europe’s Energy by Thavam

China, Japan set aside isle row, paving way for leaders to meet
A group of disputed islands, Uotsuri island (top), Minamikojima (bottom) and Kitakojima, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China is seen in the East China Sea, in this photo taken by Kyodo September 2012.

BY BEN BLANCHARD AND LEIKA KIHARA-BEIJING/TOKYO Fri Nov 7, 2014

(Reuters)-  China and Japan agreed on Friday to work on improving ties and signalled willingness to put a bitter row over disputed islands on the back burner, paving the way for their leaders to meet at an Asian-Pacific summit next week.

The agreement, ahead of an expected ice-breaking chat between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the gathering in Beijing, signals a thaw in ties between the world's second- and third-biggest economies.

Relations have been soured over the past two years by the territorial row, regional rivalry and the bitter legacy of Japan's wartime occupation of China.

Abe said the two sides were making final arrangements for one-on-one talks, although neither he nor China's foreign ministry confirmed that the talks were set.

"Both Japan and China are coming to the view that it would benefit not just the two countries but regional stability if a summit is held," he told a TV programme.

But in signs that fundamental problems would not easily be resolved, Abe also said there had been no change in Japan's stance on the isles at the heart of the territorial dispute, while China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, urged Japan to properly handle sensitive issues like history and the islands.

"The two sides have agreed to gradually resume political, diplomatic and security dialogue through various multilateral and bilateral channels and to make efforts to build political mutual trust," the two countries said in statements released simultaneously. The communiques followed a meeting between Yang and Abe's national security adviser, Shotaro Yachi.

The statements said China and Japan also "acknowledged that different positions exist between them" regarding tensions over the islands in the East China Sea and agreed to set up a crisis management mechanism to prevent "contingencies".

Abe, who has not met Xi except to shake hands since taking office in December 2012, has been calling for a one-on-one meeting at the Nov. 10-11 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, while insisting no conditions be set for talks.

China has sought assurances that Abe would not repeat his December 2013 visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine for the war dead, seen in Beijing as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.

Such a promise would be hard for the conservative Abe to make, however, and the Japanese leader told the TV show that the agreement did not cover specific issues such as his shrine visits.

"ENCOURAGING ICE-BREAKER"

Beijing has also demanded that Japan acknowledge the existence of a formal territorial dispute over the tiny islands, which are controlled by Japan but also claimed by Beijing.

The uninhabited isles are known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkaku in Japan.

In an English-language commentary, China's official Xinhua news agency called the agreement "an encouraging icebreaker that has been painfully overdue."

"It has brought the relationship between the world's second and third largest economies back to temperatures above the freezing point. Should it be properly implemented, it will mark a turning point in the trajectory of China-Japan relations."

Analysts said the two sides appeared to have found a diplomatic formula that would allow both to save face and set aside the row over the islands that had threatened to spark an unintended military clash and was hurting vital economic ties.

"It's already a significant step toward thawing the exceptionally chilly relations that have prevailed since 2012, when Japan nationalised the islands," said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University's Japan campus.

"The diplomats made it seem like a win-win situation and helped both sides climb down," he said, adding that the agreement fell short of China's demand that Japan recognise the existence of a formal territorial dispute.

Wang Xinsheng, a Japan expert at Peking University, said it was clear the two countries had agreed to talks at APEC but added he did not expect any substantive breakthroughs.

"Questions of history and of the islands will need time to resolve. However, even a meeting and a chat is in itself a success," Wang said.

(Writing and additional reporting by Linda Sieg and Tetsushi Kajimoto in Tokyo; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

Maryland teen had gun, explosives but was too drunk to kill: police

Police say Sash Alexander Nemphos, 16, was fully equipped to kill at his school last week but it was whiskey that stopped him from pulling the trigger.

Sash Alexander Nemphos, 16, had plans to kill at his school, but was too drunk, police said.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS-

Thursday, November 6, 2014

He was too drunk to kill.

A 16-year-old Maryland boy who was found with explosive devices and a gun ahead of a planned school attack ended up being too intoxicated to carry out the sick act, according tocharging documents obtained by the Baltimore Sun.

That sophomore, Sash Alexander Nemphos, is now being held without bail while charged as an adult for the thwarted attack at George Washington Carver Center for the Arts and Technology last week.

When heading out to school on Halloween the teen packed his backpack with a .38-caliber revolver with the intention to kill, police said.

But when he got to school, they say he realized he had forgotten the explosives and was already too drunk from drinking whiskey.

When heading out to school on Halloween the teen packed his backpack with a .38-caliber revolver with the intention to kill, police said.

But when he got to school, they say he realized he had forgotten the explosives and was already too drunk from drinking whiskey.

He planned to try again on Monday, police said, but by happenstance was collared by officers on three unrelated vehicle break-ins before that could happen.

The teen’s alleged plans to kill at George Washington Carver Center for the Arts and Technology, pictured, was thwarted when he was arrested for unrelated vehicle break-ins, said police.

"Officers responded to the suspect’s Monkton home, where he showed them a handgun and devices believed to be explosive," police stated in a release after that arrest. "These were crude, homemade devices made of readily available components. They also found tools and components that could be used to make additional devices."

The gun found in his possession was identified as one taken from his father’s place of business.

Nemphos faces charges including possession of a destructive device, theft and a handgun violation.

ngolgowski@nydailynews.com

Pakistani Christian couple locked in a factory and beaten to death for throwing out a dead relative's Koran

Pakistani Christian couple locked in a factory and beaten to death for throwing out a dead relative's Koran

A photo of the Christian couple Shama Bibi (left) and Shehzad Masih, who were murdered in Pakistan after a mob accused them of desecrating a copy of the Koran

• Christian couple were locked in factory after boss thought they'd flee debts
• A mob then beat them and threw them onto a brick kiln, witnesses said
• Relatives claim the couple were working in indentured servitude
• Killing latest example of mob violence against minorities in Muslim Pakistan
• Koran was desecrated day before the attack and mob blamed the couple 
• Police boosted security in Christian neighbourhoods after attack
• 
  

By DARREN BOYLE and SAM WEBB and COREY CHARLTON FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 12:48 GMT, 5 November 2014 | UPDATED: 00:06 GMT, 6 November 2014

• 
  

Pakistani Christian Couple Locked in a Factory and Beaten to Death for Throwing Out a Dead Relative's Koran... by Thavam

Would you be ashamed of a drink-driving conviction?

FRIDAY 07 NOVEMBER 2014

Attitudes have been transformed in the 50 years since the first drink-driving advert. But young people are still much less likely to be embarrassed by being caught drink-driving.

50 years ago today, the first drink-drive public information film was aired.

Shot in black and white, and with upbeat background organ music, it offers what is by modern standards a remarkably easy-going message to people who are considering drinking and driving.

Fifteen years later, in 1979, a full-colour advert actually shows a collision between two cars and uses hard-hitting language like "stupid git".

The message from the 1990 campaign is more subtle and allusive. It features a tearful young boy, while the voiceover asks "How am I supposed to explain that you killed a little boy?"

But the most powerful video, from 2004, gives a graphic simulation of what happens to car passengers when a head-on collision occurs.

All the films discussed are shown in the video above

Changing attitudes

A survey by the THINK! Don't Drink Drive campaign, to coincide with the anniversary, shows how much social attitudes have changed since 1964.

It says 92 per cent of people feel ashamed to drink and drive, and 91 per cent believe is is completely unacceptable - despite the fact that, in 2012, there were 230 road deaths linked to drink-driving.

The fact that nearly a quarter of those questioned would rather tell their partner they have had a sexually transmitted infection than admit to a drink-drive conviction shows the extent to which the practice has become stigmatised.

But there is also a big disparity in attitudes, depending on the age group. Nearly all over-65s said they would feel ashamed to be caught drink-driving - but among 18-24-year-olds that drops to just one in five.