Malaysia deports terror-accused Sri Lankan national to Colombo, ignores India's plea

• 

Sunday, 14 December 2014 

A Sri Lankan national wanted in India for allegedly plotting terror strikes at American and Israeli consulates in the country has been deported by Malaysiato the island nation notwithstanding India's plea for his extradition to unravel key aspects of the conspiracy.

Highly-placed sources here said that 47-year-old Mohammed Hussain Mohammed Sulaiman was recently sent back to Sri Lanka by Malaysian authorities without even executing a production warrant issued by a special court in India seeking his extradition.

Sulaiman was deported to Sri Lanka to face murder charges there with Malaysia ignoring repeated requests by India under various treaties, including Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) and even those submitted through Interpol.

A production warrant for Sulaiman was also issued and sent through the diplomatic channel for early execution so that the planning behind the botched terror plot could be unravelled.

However, the Attorney General's office in Malaysia did not proceed with the Indian production warrant and instead suggested to its government that it deport Sulaiman to Sri Lanka where he is allegedly facing charges in a murder case.

India had argued to the Malaysian authorities that Sri Lanka did not immediately require Sulaiman's custody and he could be a key to unravelling mysteries behind the botched terror plot wherein ISI-backed groups were planning to target the US consulate in Chennai and the Israeli consulate in Bangalore, the sources said.

This argument failed to cut any ice with the Malaysian authorities who decided to send Sulaiman back to his home country as he had been arrested in an immigration case only.

India had sought Sulaiman's extradition after he was arrested by the Special Unit of Malaysian Police from the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur in May.

Sulaiman had allegedly conspired with Sakir Hussain, another Sri Lankan national, who was arrested in India in April and has since been sentenced to five years in jail for the conspiracy. 

OCCASIONAL ADDRESS-

A COMEDIAN HONOURED FOR HIS CRITICAL THINKING, ADVISE: “DEFINE YOURSELF BY WHAT YOU LOVE. BE PRO-STUFF, NOT JUST ANTI-STUFF.”

25th Sep 2013 

-Photo courtesy of UWA (photographer – Ron D’Raine)

Hi. I gave an “occasional address” for a graduation ceremony at my old Uni, The University of Western Australia. Here is the video. The text is below. Hope there’s something in it for you.

“In darker days, I did a corporate gig at a conference for this big company who made and sold accounting software. In a bid, I presume, to inspire their salespeople to greater heights, they’d forked out 12 grand for an Inspirational Speaker who was this extreme sports dude who had had a couple of his limbs frozen off when he got stuck on a ledge on some mountain. It was weird. Software salespeople need to hear from someone who has had a long, successful and happy career in software sales, not from an overly-optimistic, ex-mountaineer. Some poor guy who arrived in the morning hoping to learn about better sales technique ended up going home worried about the blood flow to his extremities. It’s not inspirational – it’s confusing.

Occasional Address by Thavam Ratna

A Blast from the Past in Grozny

• BY ANNA NEMTSOVA-DECEMBER 12, 2014

Ona recent afternoon, during a visit to Grozny, the capital city of Russia’s Chechen Republic, I walked with several local reporters down Putin Avenue, a street that was named after the Russian leader in the early years of this century, not long after the Kremlin’s armed forces succeeded in tamping down a long-simmering rebellion and installing a Moscow-friendly government.

A Blast From the Past in Grozny by Thavam Ratna

Israeli parliament seeks to bar Arab lawmaker

Arab-Israeli member of parliament, Hanin Zoabi, right, shouts as Israeli security forces at one of the entrances to Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque during clashes between Israeli police and stone-throwing Palestinians on November 5, 2014. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images)

 CCTV America
By William Booth December 13 at 9:37 PM

Haneen Zoabi has a big mouth. That is not unusual for a politician, especially one in Israel, where members of parliament are not hesitant to express their views even as they are being dragged out of the Knesset by ushers charged with enforcing decorum.
Israeli Parliament Seeks to Bar Arab Lawmaker by Thavam Ratna

Xiaomi's India smartphone ban exposes wider patent risk

Three models of China's Xiaomi Mi phones are pictured during their launch in New Delhi July 15, 2014.

BY SUMEET CHATTERJEE AND GERRY SHIH-MUMBAI/BEIJING Sun Dec 14, 2014

(Reuters) - The court order that banned Chinese mobile maker Xiaomi from selling its phones in India has halted its breakneck expansion into the world's fastest growing major smartphone market and could be just the start of a string of patent challenges.

Xiaomi Technology only started selling in India in July and quickly became the country's fastest growing smartphone brand; with minimal marketing, it is already outselling even low-cost smartphones running Google's (GOOGL.O) Android One.

Hugo Barra, the former Google executive now leading Xiaomi's international operations, told Reuters in November how rapidly the country had taken to his brand.

All it took was a single Facebook post to draw dozens of superfans to a California Pizza Kitchen in Mumbai to meet him, he said.

"It was far more than we expected. The community has really, really embraced us," he said.

And then came Wednesday's court order to stop selling, after a patent infringement case was filed by telecom equipment maker Ericsson (ERICb.ST). The ban will last until at least Feb. 5, when the Delhi court hears the case again.

But that is unlikely to be the end of the young company's battle over intellectual property (IP) rights.

Sources close to Xiaomi say its leadership has privately acknowledged for years its vulnerability to patent entanglements. The higher risks of IP litigation in Western markets even played a role in shaping Xiaomi's strategy of expanding in India and Southeast Asia, the sources said.

Xiaomi said in a statement that "it isn't easy" to build up a patent portfolio as a start-up company, but it aims to have filed 8,000 applications by 2016.

On its home turf, Xiaomi has already been dogged by IP controversies with other Chinese firms, mostly over content rights for its streaming TV service.

As its smartphone business, already number one in China, continues to grow, however, industry analysts expect greater pressure at home, particularly since two of its fiercest handset rivals, Huawei and ZTE Corp, are among the top telecom patent holders in China.

GROWTH SETBACK

Until it is lifted, the ban in India will be particularly hard on growth prospects. In a country where just one in 10 people use smartphones, the potential is vast. The market grew 82 percent in the third quarter, while China expanded at a relatively modest 10.8 percent, according to research firm IDC.

Barra posted a message on the company's website on Friday apologising to fans.

"Rest assured that we're doing all we can to revert the situation," he wrote. "Stay tuned for more information."

In China, Xiaomi already outsells Apple (AAPL.O) and Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) in smartphones, and it became the world's third-largest vendor as of October, though it is little known outside Asia.

Unlike Apple, which introduces a new iPhone just once a year, Xiaomi rolls out updated models frequently, usually in small batches that sell out in seconds. It sells only online, and with minimal advertising, relying on word of mouth to build anticipation for each new launch.

In India, Xiaomi initially imported 10,000 devices a week but soon had to ramp that up to 60,000 to 100,000 to meet demand, India business chief Manu Jain told Reuters before the sales ban. It has chartered flights four times to rush in fresh supplies.

Jain did not respond to a request for comment on the business impact after the order.

Rushabh Doshi, an analyst at technology research firm Canalys in Singapore, said the ban would "leave a gap in the market, to be quickly filled by local or international vendors looking to increase market share".

The court case will also make phone vendors wary about their current patent portfolio and require them to step up their spending on research and development, he added.

($1 = 62.3550 Indian rupees)

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff in Jakarta and Miyoung Kim in Singapore; Editing by Emily Kaiser and William Waterman)

American who says he crossed into North Korea denounces U.S. policies

Arturo Pierre Martinez, 29, delivers his statement at a press conference he said he requested.
By Ralph Ellis and Will Ripley, CNN-December 14, 2014 
(CNN) — An American who said he crossed illegally into North Korea denounced the United States political and economic system Sunday morning at a press conference in that country.

The man said he was Arturo Pierre Martinez, 29, a U.S. citizen raised in El Paso, Texas.

Martinez’s mother, Patricia Eugenia Martinez of El Paso, said their son was bipolar and earlier tried to enter North Korea by swimming across a river, only to be stopped and shipped back to the United States, where he was placed in a California psychiatric hospital.

"Then he got out," she said. "He is very smart and he got the court to let him out and instead of coming home to us he bought a ticket and left for China. He took out a payday loan online and left for China."

She said the U.S. Embassy in Beijing is looking for him.

"My son is very intelligent," she said. "He said he wanted to protect Latinos and he worried about the world and about people. At 15 he obtained his computer certificate. He loves to read and write and work on the computer. He loved to help poor people. He is our only child."

Later she released a statement that said: “I’m glad and relieved that my son is safe. I am appreciative to the North Korean authorities for pardoning my son and releasing him. I look forward to spending Christmas with him after they release him.”

When asked how she knew her son was being released, she said it was from reading the press conference statement.

But the legal status of Martinez in North Korea is unclear and it’s unknown if he’s free to leave the country.

In his 4,000-word statement, Martinez admitted committing a crime by illegally entering the country but said he was “extremely grateful for having been pardoned from the punishments given to violators of these laws, and for the most generous reception I have received.”

He delivered his statement at a press conference he said he requested. Images released by North Korea showed him wearing a suit and sitting in a room facing a large group of people.

North Korea said in a separate statement that Martinez entered the country in November, two days after American diplomat James Clapper arrived. Clapper negotiated the release of Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller, the last two American citizens known to be held by North Korea. They arrived back in the United States on November 8.

Martinez said he first tried to cross over from South Korea’s Han River and tried again from China’s Yalu River in Dandong.

He went on to criticize American politicians and police as well as the electoral and prison systems.

"The illegal war carried out against the nation of Iraq serves as a perfect example of how the U.S. 

government acts much like a Mafia enterprise, but criminally plundering entire nations of their resources, strategic reserves and economies instead of smaller scale business and individuals, and does so without a code of ethics," he said.

He said the electoral system in the United States “is unfairly built for the benefit of the wealthy through the necessity of costly fundraising for political candidates seeking office. The democracy of this nation is an illusion and its representatives act as nothing more than power brokers for those who can offer them.”

Of the wealthy people in the United States, he said, “These billionaires in power are nothing short of sociopathic megalomaniacs on the path to absolute world domination.”

He also talked about unidentified flying objects, CIA involvement in the cocaine trade, “ultrasonic” devices that cause people to hear voices and experience bodily discomfort and how the Western news media unfairly portrayed North Korea.

'I can't breathe': thousands march over US police killings

SUNDAY 14 DECEMBER 2014
Thousands of demonstrators march through streets of New York City to demand justice for the chokehold death of unarmed African American Eric Garner.

Protesters were seen waving banners which read "I can't breathe", the last words of 43-year-old Eric Garner, who died on 17 July after police officers attempted to arrest him for allegedly selling loose, untaxed cigarettes on Staten Island.

Hannah Miller @hanrmiller

Follow

'This is what democracy looks like' - music and marching #Justice4All DC #c4news https://vine.co/v/O6jEd7h7Lez 

12:29 PM - 13 Dec 2014

Vine @vine

The "Justice for All" march in Washington, DC also highlighted the fatal shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, who was shot 12 times by a white police officer on 9 August.

Organisers of the march demanded dismissal of the police officer who placed the chokehold on Mr Garner. They also demanded to pass legislation in order to stop employing officers who use excessive force in New York State, and to set up an independent office to deal with police violence.

The New York march on Saturday drew an ethnically diverse crowd, who headed north up Manhattan's Fifth Avenue from Washington Square Park, before circling back to end the protest with hands raised at police headquarters in lower Manhattan.

The demonstrators chanted "No justice, no peace" and "Hands up, don't shoot." They also carried a sign that said "Black lives matter."

New York police set cordon lines in streets, and police helicopters overhauled the demonstrators to keep order. The demonstration in New York coincided with protests in other cities including Washington, DC, Boston and Los Angeles on Saturday.

As demonstrations continued in Washington DC, body-sized cardboard effigies of lynching victims were seen hanging by nooses on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, school officials said.

University police responded to morning reports of two cardboard cut-outs in public campus areas before a midday demonstration and march assembled on the campus in the Oakland area, spokeswoman Claire Holmes said.

A third figure was also hung before all were taken down.

"It has been unclear to us whether this was racially motivated or part of the protests across the country against police violence," Ms Holmes said, adding the images were disturbing and the school would investigate. There are no suspects at this time.

U.N. talks agree building blocks for new-style climate deal in 2015

Delegates take notes during a plenary session of the U.N. Climate Change Conference COP 20 in Lima December 13, 2014-FeradAntiBoot

BY ALISTER DOYLE AND VALERIE VOLCOVICI-LIMA Sun Dec 14, 2014

(Reuters) - About 190 nations agreed on Sunday the building blocks of a new-style global deal due in 2015 to combat climate change amid warnings that far tougher action will be needed to limit increases in global temperatures.

Under the deal reached in Lima, governments will submit national plans for reining in greenhouse gas emissions by an informal deadline of March 31, 2015 to form the basis of a global agreement due at a summit in Paris in a year's time.

Most of the tough decisions about how to slow climate change were postponed until then. "Much remains to be done in Paris next year," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

The texts, agreed two days into overtime after two weeks of talks came close to collapsing, appeased emerging economies led by China and India, concerned that previous drafts imposed too heavy a burden on emerging economies compared to the rich.

"We've got what we wanted," said Indian Environment Minister Prakash Javedekar, who said the text preserved a notion enshrined in a 1992 climate convention that the rich have to lead the way in making cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

It also satisfied rich nations led by the United States who say it is time for fast-growing emerging economies to rein in fast-rising emissions. China is now the biggest greenhouse gas emitter ahead of the United States, the EU and India.

U.S. Special Climate Change Envoy Todd Stern said that a joint U.S.-China deal last month to curb emissions had helped show new ways to bridge a standoff between rich and poor. "The announcement of a few weeks ago came in handy here," he said.

"This is a good document to pave the way to Paris," EU Climate Action and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete told Reuters at the end of the talks about limiting more floods, desertification, heat waves and rising sea levels.

Some environmental groups, however, said the deal, reached at a tent city on a military base in the Peruvian capital, was far too weak.

"We went from weak to weaker to weakest," Samantha Smith of the WWF conservation group said of successive drafts at the Lima talks.

NEW STYLE

The idea of a U.N. deal with obligations for all nations marks a shift from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which obliges only the rich to cut emissions.

Christiana Figueres, the U.N.'s climate chief, said Lima found a new ways to define the obligations of rich and poor. "That is a very important breakthrough," she said.

"What we are seeing is a new form of international cooperation on climate change where all countries participate with a new set of rules," said Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute think-tank.

The U.N. Climate Change Secretariat says that the combined pledges by all nations likely in Paris will be too weak to achieve a goal of limiting warming to an agreed goal of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

Under the Lima deal, national pledges will be added up in a report by Nov. 1, 2015, to assess their aggregate effect in slowing rising temperatures.

But, after opposition led by China, there will not be a full-blown review to compare each nation's level of ambition.

And the text lays out a vast range of options for the Paris accord, including the possibility of aiming for zero net global emissions by 2100 or earlier in a drastic shift from fossil fuels towards renewable energies such as wind and solar power.

(Reporting by Alister Doyle and Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Ralph Boulton and John Stonestreet)

Ebola diary: burials go on as Christmas is 'cancelled' in Sierra Leone

After a week in west Africa, Sarah Boseley concludes that not enough is yet known 

Family and friends of a man who died of suspected Ebola gather outside his house. Photograph: Sarah Boseley

 Mourners pray before the body of a suspected Ebola victim is taken away for burial. Photograph: Sarah Boseley 

Sarah Boseley-Sunday 14 December 2014

about the virus, except that it must be eradicated

Day seven

A large group of men, women and children, all in their best clothes, is gathered in the yard of a house in Wellington, an Ebola-hit western area of Freetown. The dresses and headscarves are bright but the faces are sombre.

Alie Kamara, the owner of the house, died this morning and lies inside. He will be buried within a few hours. The manner of his burial is difficult for this community, just as it would be for friends and relatives in any town anywhere in the world.

Ebola Diary Burials Go on as Christmas is 'Cancelled' in Sierra Leone by Thavam Ratna

Say No to Hatred Dec 13, 2014 — Bodu Bala Sena, or BBS, is widely believed to have the backing of the current government and has endorsed Rajapaksa’s re-election. Over the past two years BBS has been involved in many attacks on religious minorities and dissenting civil society groups. While the group has been relatively quiet the past few months, many believe it may return to action either before or after the election, perhaps to intimidate or complicate campaigning by the opposition, or to reduce turnout in Muslim-majority areas..

Sri Lankan election – ‘The tighter the race, the more violent it threatens to be’

Say No to Hatred

Dec 13, 2014 — Bodu Bala Sena, or BBS, is widely believed to have the backing of the current government and has endorsed Rajapaksa’s re-election. Over the past two years BBS has been involved in many attacks on religious minorities and dissenting civil society groups. While the group has been relatively quiet the past few months, many believe it may return to action either before or after the election, perhaps to intimidate or complicate campaigning by the opposition, or to reduce turnout in Muslim-majority areas..

Sri Lankan election – ‘The tighter the race, the more violent it threatens to be’

President Mahinda Rajapaksa presents World No Tobacco Day Award to his former ally Maithripala Sirisena, 31 May 2013. FLICKR/Sudath Silva

By Alan Keenan | @akeenan23-11 December 2014

This interview with Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst for Sri Lanka, Alan Keenan, is republished here with permission from Deutsche Welle.

Sri Lankan Election – ‘the Tighter the Race, The More Violent It Threatens to Be’ by Thavam Ratna

Old Mahinda Or New Maithri; Options For Tamils

By Thambu Kanagasabai - December 13, 2014 

Thambu Kanagasabai

The next Presidential Election has pitted two candidates both belonging to the same party, Sri Lanka Freedom Party. One is sitting and the other a choice from circumstances, arising from the divisive and divided opposing parties and groups who got united for the common purpose to defeatRajapaksa’s family empire and their foot hold in Sri Lanka, while seeking personal revenge for the past acts of revenge.

As far as the Tamils are concerned, Tamils have no reasons to cheer about this election. However, one thing remains clear for them. There are thousands of reasons to oppose Mahinda while there is no one reason to support Maithri who is nothing but a proxy representing opposition parties, which are temporarily united with their communal politics, Buddhist –Sinhalaconcept intact coupled with an agenda to liquidate or destroy the political power, strength and identity of minorities, Tamils and Muslims along with their religions.

The past history of experiences of Tamils from 1956 need not be recounted here. The various communal riots and pogroms of Tamils amounting to genocide which commended from 1956 and still going on as structural genocide in the east and north are staring at the faces of Tamils. This agenda is the common goal of all south political parties. And if anyone thinks, there will be a change for the better with a new Maithri or old Mahinda they are sadly mistaken. It will be nothing but a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The one common thread running through the victories of UNP or SLFP parties in the general elections is the communal propaganda with cries of “Tamils are planning to divide the country” bogey of Tiger” Buddhism  in danger” though protected by constitution. Currently the main planks of south parties’ propaganda have been nothing but only based on sellout to the Tamils. The south parties are searching for any hints, expression, remarks or clues emanating from the opposing parties or TNA which touch on “solution to the problems of Tamils” whether “13” or “13 plus” which is a hollow solution for Tamils.Read More