Unofficial reports reaching 'Sri Lanka Mirror' say that an initial probe report of the committee appointed to look into the controversial Bond issue has stated that the Bond issue procedure was flawed.
Initial investigations on this regard concluded last Friday with the report expected to reach Prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in the next few days, sources from the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) say.
Afterwards, the Prime minister would table the report before Parliament, government sources say.
The committee appointed to probe into the issue comprises of Gamini Pitipana, Mahesh Kalugampitiya and Chandimal Mendis.
The governor of the CBSL - Arjun Mahendran, went on leave and distanced himself from all operations of the Bank while the probe was being conducted, a CBSL spokesperson said.
Government sources add that the need for further investigations on the matter will depend on directives of the report.
Although certain ministers had claimed that faith cannot be kept on the panel appointed by the Prime minister, the panel had given an impartial decision, the CBSL spokesperson further added.
[Sinhala Ravaya group attempted to destroy Kuragala Muslim religious places today]
04/04/2015
Kuragala in Balangoda is the oldest archaeological site found so far in the Intermediate Zone of the country and as such the Department of Archaeology has taken all steps to protect the site , Director General of Archaeology Dr Senarath Dissanayake said.
Addressing a media conference held at the Government Information Department today (04) Dr. Dissanayake made a request to the public not to create religious issues based on Kuragala Site protection activities.
He further said that according to the radio-carbon dating done by the US institute using sophisticated technologies, the Kuragala site had five layers of human habitations from 16,000 to 6,000 years before the present age (BPA). “This is the oldest date for a site inhabited. This seconds the previous first which was found at Bellanbendipelessa. The Bellanbendipelessa was dated 13,000 years BPA”, he added.
The Department of Archaeology has conducted extensive excavations in the Kuragala site from April to December last year. The caves at the Kuragala site had been used as a Buddhist monastery during the period between 3rd Century BC to First Century AD, Dr Dissanayake said. Some of the caves had been inhabited by the humans in the pre-historic period.
During the excavations, the archaeologists had found stone tools, fossilized bone fragments and a complete human skeleton which was later sent to the University of Oxford for DNA and other testing, Dr Dissanayake said, adding that the skeleton would be returned to Sri Lanka once the scientific testing is over.
The other most striking discovery from the site was the evidence that humans lived in the Kuragala caves had close links with coastal areas. Among the items found were sea shells, shells of clams living in the sea, indicating that the humans who lived there during the prehistoric times had consumed them.
The Department of Archaeology would conduct further excavations this year too to study the settlement patterns of the prehistoric man, Dr. Dissanayake said and called upon the public not to create religious issues based on these activities. News.lk
Police use water cannons to disperse protesters
Police used water cannons to disperse a group of protesters who attempted to forcibly enter the Kuragala archeological site in Balangoda a short while ago.
Police Spokesman ASP Ruwan Gunasekara told Daily Mirror the protest was organized by the Sihala Raavaya organisation. Although an enjoining order had been issued against holding the protest by the Balangoda Magistrate Courts, the protestors had violated the order and attempted to enter the site by force.
“We have used water pressure to disperse the protestors. None have been injured and no arrests have been made so far,” he said while adding however, further investigations are continuing in order to arrest the organizers who violated the court order. (Lakna Paranamanna)
April 4th, 2015
A Board of Inquiry has found shocking details of corruption running into billions of dollars, manipulations of service contracting, recruitment of unqualified staff and major security breaches at the SriLankan Airlines under the former government.
Under the PA, as during the preceding UNP era, there is well-founded suspicion of Police connivance in attacks on individuals and even killings. We have mentioned allegations against a section of the PSD. The EPDP’s deputy leader N. Ramesh was murdered on 2nd November 1999. His recent writings that were widely read promoted the LTTE, and it was well known that the EPDP leader was finding him a thorn in the flesh. He was gunned down in broad daylight by assassins with automatics, in a well-policed Colombo suburb. There seems to be a lack of interest in finding the killers who could act with such brazen impunity within the City. This furthered suspicion of state-complicity when Tamil Congress leader Kumar Ponnambalam was murdered by a gunman in the same Wellawatte area during the morning of 5th January 2000.
The complicating factor is that the key figure ‘Shantha’ who was instrumental in the murder had been planted on Ponnambalam some months in advance and had been communicating with him. On the fatal morning, Ponnambalam went out alone with him on his request at very short notice, after deciding to spend the day at home. This incautious behaviour is inexplicable in an experienced criminal lawyer. The dealings of Ponnambalam with ‘Shantha’ remain a mystery and were not those of a lawyer with his client.
Kumar Ponnambalam
Whatever the truth behind Ponnambalam’s murder, it has become more embarrassing for the Government after the manner in which the Police handled the investigation. For a start, the Police kept on giving theories that the murder was an LTTE job. These received publicity in the government media. There were also some contrary indications, such as a reported pick-up vehicle for the assassin having tinted glasses, thus pointing to some influential connection. Victor Ivan, the editor of the Ravaya, said that they had reported a tip-off from a police investigator that they had identified the killer as Moratu Saman, an underworld figure. Later, upon hearing that Saman was in police custody, Ivan telephoned SSP Bandula Wickremasinghe, director CDB, and told him about his paper’s reference to Saman. Ivan added that Wickremasinghe angrily dismissed his allegation.
It is being revealed a minister attached to the economic development is involved in many rackets under the pretext of Good Governance. This minister who was promoting Basil Rajapaksa’s theory is revealed taking commissions from many businessmen’s.
It is being a revealed a sum of USD 15,000 has been taken from a container load of Erica nuts. A businessman said Lanka News Web There is 86,000 KG of Erica nut in one container load which costs USD 75,000. However this business was done by businessmen’s from Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Due to the high tax for exporting Erica nut from Indonesia to India, these were brought down to Sri Lanka and exported back to India by forged documents as they were produced in Sri Lanka. The cause for this is due to the low tax rate for Erica nut and the free trade agreement between India and Sri Lanka.
This racket which continued for so many years was stopped by this current minister and given to six of his loyalists under the pretext of facilitating the local business community in the current Good Governance conditioning USD 150,000 per container should be debited to his account. Normally 4-5 containers of Erica nuts been exported in one shipment.
Though it was defined that Sri Lankan is one of the second largest Erica nut exporter to India the people in Sri Lanka could not make large profits as Erica nut is not a famous cultivated crop. (Annual demand of Erica nut in India is more than 10,000 tons) Few mainstream businessmen’s cultivate this as a commercial crop in few acres of lands. Though major development projects of the previous regime was temporarily suspended by the current regime permissions were granted again for many projects worth billions. The above minister has demanded one billion to be deposited to his account in the US in order to renew these contracts back.
There is a gossip that the minister has demanded a commission of USD 25 for one metric ton of oil exported.
During the previous regime there was large scale commission rackets functioned and the business community borne them with patience. Even in the good governance there are similar rackets functioning in order to please the political hierarchy.
A Sri Lankan national has been arrested at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) in Katunayake for attempting to leave the country with Wallpatta chips, worth around Rs 9.6 million in the market, concealed in his baggage.
The 40-year-old from Colombo was preparing to smuggle the haul of chips, from the endemic plant, to Dubai in FlyDubai flight FZ 551 at 4.30am today.
In total 19.29 kilograms of Wallpatta chips were found concealed in the baggage, customs media spokesman Leslie Gamini said.
Following the Customs inquiry, the suspect was imposed a penalty of Rs 150,000 and the goods forfeited, he said.
( April 3, 2015, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Seven Multi Party Leader, first two hour TV Debate in Britain on 2 April 2015 is over. There are other debates coming and 35 days still to go to the polls. Four men and three women battled it out with the women beating the men on presentation and clarity of argument on TV. Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister, Scottish National Party was convincing in her balanced views, arguably stood out top in the viewers’ opinions.
Aid agencies warn of humanitarian crisis after Islamist fighters move to control 90% of camp in town of Yarmouk
Heavily damaged buildings in the rebel-held area of Douma, east of Damascus. Islamist militants have seized control of a refugee camp in Yarmouk, Syria. Photograph: Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP/Getty Images
Aid agencies have warned of an urgent humanitarian crisis after Islamist militants seized control of a refugee camp, just a few miles from Damascus, the Syrian capital.
Fighters for the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s official Syria wing, advanced into the camp in the town of Yarmouk – home to 18,000 refugees – on Friday night, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. They now control 90% of the camp, it said.
The Observatory, which monitors the conflict from the UK, also said jets from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s air forcebombed the camp on Saturday.
Chris Gunness, a United Nations Relief and Works Agency spokesman, called the crisis in Yarmouk “an affront to the humanity of all of us, a source of universal shame”.
He said Palestinian and Syrian refugees in the camp, which had previously been besieged by Assad’s forces, were already suffering from starvation and disease.
Isis militants launched an attack on other groups of fighters in Yarmouk on Wednesday. Their main target was Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis, an anti-Assad militia of Syrians and Palestinians from the camp.
Isis supporters posted photos on social media of the severed heads of two men they said had been beheaded after fighting for the rival group.
Tayseer Abu Baker, head of the Palestinian Liberation Front in Syria, part of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, told Reuters that Isis fighters had killed 21 people including fighters and civilians since Friday.
The evacuation of the camp had been made harder as Isis snipers were shooting refugees as they tried to leave the camp.
Kenya attackers "embedded" in nation's Muslim community - President
GARISSA, KENYA | BY EDITH HONAN - Sun Apr 5, 2015 (Reuters) - Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta said on Saturday that those behind an attack in which al Shabaab Islamist militants killed 148 people at a university were “deeply embedded” in Kenya, and called on Kenyan Muslims to help prevent radicalisation.
His televised speech in response to Thursday’s 15-hour siege at the Garissa university campus came after the Interior Ministry said five suspects in the assault had been detained, some while trying to flee to Somalia.
Four suspects were Kenyans of Somali origin, and the fifth was Tanzanian, the ministry said. The suspected mastermind, Mohamed Mohamud, a former teacher at a Garissa madrasa, is still on the run. Kenya has offered a 20 million shillings ($215,000) reward for his arrest.
"Our task of countering terrorism has been made all the more difficult by the fact that the planners and financiers of this brutality are deeply embedded in our communities," Kenyatta said.
"Radicalisation that breeds terrorism is not conducted in the bush at night. It occurs in the full glare of day, in madrasas, in homes, and in mosques with rogue imams."
The attack at Garissa, which lies 200 km (120 miles) from the Somali border, has put Kenya on high alert and spooked its Christian communities after reports the gunmen sought out Christian students while sparing some Muslims.
Kenyatta’s comments will put more pressure on Kenya’s Muslim community, who make up about 10 percent of the 44-million-strong population.
More than 400 people have been killed by al Shabaab on Kenyan soil since he took power two years ago, including 67 people who died during a siege in September 2013 on a Nairobi shopping mall.
Earlier on Thursday, Somali militants vowed to wage a long war against Kenya and run its cities “red with blood”.
In a message directed at Kenyans, the al Qaeda aligned group said the raid on Garissa was revenge for Kenya’s military presence in Somalia and mistreatment of Muslims within Kenya.
"No amount of precaution or safety measures will be able to guarantee your safety, thwart another attack or prevent another bloodbath from occurring in your cities," the group said in an emailed statement received by Reuters in the Somali capital.
Four attackers died at Garissa, but Kenya has not named them or announced their nationalities. The authorities put their bullet-ridden, swollen bodies on display on Saturday, hoping that crowds coming to view the corpses might identify them.
The interior ministry said three suspects arrested at the border had coordinated the attack. Two were detained at the university, including a security guard and a Tanzanian man named as Rashid Charles Mberesero.
"We suspect the Tanzanian, who was hiding in the ceiling, was one of the combatants. He had ammunition with him when he was arrested on Thursday night," ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka told Reuters. "We suspect the guard facilitated the entry (into the university)."
The Kenya Red Cross said it had found a woman survivor on Saturday in the university, two days after the siege ended.
NO GOING BACK
Al Shabaab’s violence has dented Kenya’s image and ravaged the country’s vital tourism industry. The timing of the attack was embarrassing for Kenyatta, who a day earlier had berated Britain and Australia for issuing travel warnings for Kenya due to security threats.
Kenyatta rejected the notion that Nairobi has neglected Muslims and Kenyan Somalis, who say they are marginalised by the authorities.
But diplomats and analysts criticise what they see as Kenya’s heavy-handed approach in trying to tackle al Shabaab, saying tactics such as indiscriminate mass arrests of the Somali population plays into the radicals’ hands and fuels resentment among Muslims.
Garissa residents have reacted with fury to the massacre, and question why only two security guards were on duty despite warnings that al Shabaab was planning to target a university.
"You can’t say this will be the last attack in Garissa," said construction worker Tobias Ayuka. "We are very worried."
Fearful of further assaults, owners of malls in Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa have sought greater government protection and ratcheted up private security.
"We are getting more armed police and plain clothes police officers. Everywhere is on heightened alert right now," said the owner of one high-end Nairobi mall popular with Westerners, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Along Kenya’s palm-fringed coastline, where several resort towns cater mainly for Western tourists, police have deployed armed officers in major public buildings.
"Officers are everywhere both on the ground and in the air. We have two helicopters that will be patrolling the entire coastal area," Robert Kitur, police chief for Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast region, told Reuters.
Garissa Governor Nathif Jama said the region has a number of security “soft spots”, including schools and hospitals, and asked for more boots on the ground in his county, which forms part of Kenya’s porous 700km border with Somalia.
Jama said Garissa University was shut indefinitely and some students said even if it reopened, they would not return.
"When I just manage to get out of this place safely, I’m telling you I’ll never come back," said Sheillah Kigasha, 20, who survived Thursday’s rampage by hiding under a bed.
(Additional reporting by Joseph Akwiri in Mombasa and Feisal Omar in Mogadishu; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
For most of the past decade, Turkey’s economy has enjoyed remarkable success. Between 2002 and 2006, during the first term of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), growth averaged 7.2 percent per year, making Turkey a star performer in an otherwise difficult region. This economic growth story significantly benefited the AKP, helping it to win three consecutive parliamentary elections (in 2002, 2007, and 2011) with overwhelming majorities.
In 2013, Fox News proudly broadcast an interview with a young food stamp recipient who claimed to be using the government benefit to purchase lobster and sushi.
"This is the way I want to live and I don’t really see anything changing," Jason Greenslate explained to Fox. “It’s free food; it’s awesome."
That story fit a longtime conservative suspicion that poor people use food stamps to purchase luxury items. Now, a Republican state lawmaker in Missouri is pushing for legislation that would stop people like Greenslate and severely limit what food stamp recipients can buy. The bill being proposed would ban the purchase with food stamps of “cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood or steak.”
"The intention of the bill is to get the food stamp program back to its original intent, which is nutrition assistance," said Rick Brattin, the representative who is sponsoring the proposed legislation.
Curbing food stamp purchases of cookies, chips, energy drinks, and soft drinks at least falls in line with the food stamp program’s mission to provide nutrition. Nutrition experts are already discussing whether to remove unhealthy items from the list of foods participants can buy.
But seafood and steak? Seafood has been shown, time and again, to be a healthy part of any diet. And steak is such a broad category that it’s essentially banning people from buying any flat cuts of beef, from porterhouse to flank.
"It just seems really repressive," said Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University and author of the book Living on the Edge: The Realities of Welfare in America. "I don’t see how it makes any sense to ban some of these foods. Fish is something that should really be in your diet. And steak, what does that mean in this context?"
Brattin admits that the language might need some tweaking. “My intention wasn’t to get rid of canned tuna and fish sticks,” he said. But he also insists that people are abusing the system by purchasing luxury foods, and believes that that must be stopped, even if it ends up requiring the inclusion of other less luxurious items.
"I have seen people purchasing filet mignons and crab legs with their EBT cards," he said. "When I can’t afford it on my pay, I don’t want people on the taxpayer’s dime to afford those kinds of foods either."
Currently, a household of one can qualify for up to $194 dollars a month, or fewer than $7 dollars day, as part of SNAP,according to the Department of Agriculture. For a household of two, it’s roughly twice that. For a household of three, it’s about three times the amount.
It doesn’t take too much math to figure out that foods like lobster aren’t exactly within a recipient’s budget. And it’s also hard to draw conclusions based on a single purchase. What if that family that was purchasing a more expensive cut of meat had subsisted on cheaper canned goods for the past month in order to afford it?
Brattin’s proposal is part of what Rank laments is a long history of stigmatizing food stamps and welfare programs in America. Ronald Reaganfamously told the story of one “welfare queen” as though she were representative of the system at large. Rank says that today, the myth is perpetuated using similar anecdotes, like the Fox example, which he argued should be viewed as distortions of reality.
"There are some isolated cases of abuse, sure," said Rank. "But they are hardly representative of what the people struggling to get by on SNAP are actually buying… These people are spending their money extremely frugally."
Brattin says his bill is about making the food stamp program revolve around nutrition, but it also touches on more than that: whether poor people should be allowed to purchase foods that are deemed fancy. And Rank argues that this crosses a line.
"More than anything else, I think this is about controlling people," said Rank. "We should be treating people who are in poverty the same way we treat everyone else."
Roberto A. Ferdman is a reporter for Wonkblog covering food, economics, immigration and other things. He was previously a staff writer at Quartz.
A reported mass suicide attempt in Beijing shows several people lying on the pavement surrounded by onlookers, after apparently drinking pesticide in a busy shopping centre, writes Danny Vincent.
Warning: this video contains graphic images
SATURDAY04 APRIL 2015 This is the video that would be trending on Chinese social media today, if it hadn't already been deleted by Chinese censors.
An apparent mass suicide attempt in central Beijing. Footage obtained by Channel 4 News shows several people lying on the pavement surrounded by onlookers, after apparently drinking pesticide in a busy shopping centre in the capital. We have been unable to independently verify the film.
Beijing police say that more than 30 people were taken away by ambulances and are receiving treatment in a nearby hospital. There have been no reported fatalities.
According to eyewitnesses on social media, the protestors were a group of taxi drivers who came to Beijing in an attempt to draw awareness to injustices in their home provinces.
Seeking redress
China has promised to reform the age old petitioning system, where Chinese citizens travel to the capital to seek redress for complaints, but the system remains frustrating for many.
Channel 4 News reported earlier in the year on the plight of two sisters who travelled to petition but were detained in mental wards.
Today's protest is the latest in a series, in a country where the rule of law often seems arbitrary and citizens' complaints frequently fall on deaf ears.
In the summer of 2014 a Chinese family attempted to kill themselves in Beijing by drinking pesticide after property developers bulldozed their home.
Photographs posted on social media showed two women and five men lying on the ground outside a newspaper office surrounded by their documents.
China's rapid growth has become the envy of many nations, but many Chinese people feel they have been left behind. The disconnect between the governed and government threatens the very stability that the communist party holds above all else.
It's led some to question if the country has already reached the endgame of communist rule.
Rights activists say they have seen little change in the treatment of those who speak out against abuses of power.
"No one listens or takes responsibility," said Zhao, an activist asked to be known only by his family name for fear of reprisal.
"There is no way to communicate with the leaders. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to escape."
Chinese scientists are studying the possibility of building a space power station which would orbit the earth and accumulate a massive amount of solar energy. The energy would then be transmitted back to the Earth either in the form of microwaves or lasers. And no, this is not from the latest sci-fi movie. It is for real. On March 30, Xinhua reported that China is mulling the construction of the largest spacecraft ever built, which would surpass both Apollo and the International Space Station.
Xinhua reported the opinion of Duan Baoyan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, according to whom space-based solar panels can generate “10 times as much electricity as ground-based panels per unit area”.
In spite of the would-be station’s epic proportions, the idea of getting solar energy from panels positioned in space is far from new. It was pioneered by US scientist Peter Glaser, who researched this topic as early as in 1968. Years later, Mr. Glaser stated that accumulating solar energy “can be accomplished on Earth and in space to ensure that the aspirations of all people for a better life can be met without endangering the quality of life on Earth, in this century and in the more distant future.”
The US has been working on this possibility since the 1970s, while Japan began its own research in 1998, when Tokyo began developing a Space Solar Power System. In 2009, Japanese authorities tasked a research group which included 16 companies to come up with the technology needed to transfer electricity through microwaves.
For all these efforts, the creation of an operational solar farm remains beyond reach. In 2000, John C. Mankins , a manager with the Advanced Concepts Studies Office of Space Flight, told the US House Science Committee that the technologies needed for a full-scale in-space platform producing 1-2 gigawatts of power could be demonstrated at a prototype level by 2025-2035. “Very large-scale, in-space SSP platforms in the greater than 10-gigawatt power class,” will only become viable by 2050, according to Mr. Mankins.
China and Japan face the same challenges. Tokyo plans to develop a fully operational 1-gigawatt solar station by 2030, while Xinhua reported that China aims to “build an experimental space solar power station by 2030, and construct a commercially viable space power station by 2050.”
Besides the huge gains it could deliver in terms of clean energy, China’s latest project is relevant because it provides yet more proof that Beijing is trying to step up its role in space-related technologies, a sector in which Beijing is already investing heavily.
After becoming the third country to independently send a human into space in 2003, China’s efforts to become a space power have been relentless, culminating in December 2013 with the launch of Yutu, a robotic rover that is currently exploring the surface of the moon. The robot has suffered a series of technical problems and its ability to operate is now impaired, but the debacle has not prevented Beijing from pursuing even more ambitious goals. Authorities are currently planning to send another rover to Mars in 2020 and create a manned space station by 2022.
This increasing fondness of space missions is motivated by Beijing’s desire to catch up with other countries – notably the United States – in the commercial and military spheres. Or, to put it simply, to acquire the great power status that Chinese leadership covets so much.
The budget is trailing the country’s ambitions: as of 2011, Xinhua reported that Beijing expenditure for its space program had been 20 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) between 1992 and 2005, while between 2005 and 2011 the government had already invested 15 billion yuan ($2.4 billion). The following year, the same agency quoted Wang Zhaoyao, an official with China’s manned space program office, as saying that Beijing had invested 39 billion yuan ($6.3 billion) in its aerospace program, meaning that in the seven years between 2015 and 2012 China had spent almost as much as between 1992 and 2005.
These numbers are a fraction of the United States’ budget, which in 2015 will total over $17 billion, but China is making good use of it. According to ‘China Dream, Space Dream,’ areport prepared this year for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “if the current trajectory of China’s space program continues, by 2030 China will have a new line of advanced launch vehicles, a robust, space-based C4ISR network made up of imagery satellites with resolutions well below one meter, and more capable electronic intelligence communication satellites linked together by data-relay satellites, in addition to a global satellite-navigation system that may gradually approach current GPS standards.”
The paper concludes that the strategy is aimed at becoming China’s capabilities in order to become “militarily, diplomatically, commercially, and economically” as competitive as the United States.
04 April 2015
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