Jaffna mayhem: Action will be taken against cops if found guilty – John 

By Chaminda Silva-May 24, 2015

Minister of Public Order and Christian Affairs, John Amaratunga, has called for a report from the IGP on the conduct of police over the gang-rape and murder of a 17-year-old schoolgirl, which led to the biggest public demonstration recorded in Jaffna in recent times.

The IGP has already transferred several police personnel including the Senior Superintendent of Police of the division for their failure to prevent the outbreak of violence while police had taken actions to arrest the suspects responsible for the rape and murder. The protestors attacked the police and Jaffna Magistrate court on May 20.

Reports indicated that the area police had literally joked when the disappearance of the girl was reported to them and allegedly telling her family that she may have eloped with her boyfriend. The following morning when the family found the body, it had taken Kayts police several hours to get there. 

A top official has been accused of releasing a key suspect, a citizen of Switzerland after he was handed over to the police. He was later arrested in Wellawatte.

Two special teams of CID had been sent to Jaffna to probe the incidents and their reports were expected to be handed over to the IGP today, police headquarters sources said. 

The Jaffna Magistrate on June 21 remanded 121 suspects till June 3 over the violence which erupted in Jaffna the previous day.

The police arrested over 100 protesters following the violence in which marauding protestors attacked the Jaffna Magistrate Court and the police with stones. The police also took into custody 60 motorcycles, 43 bicycles and five trishaws.

 The protestors demanded immediate punishment for the suspects who were residents of Punguduthivu.

Three of the suspects’ houses in Punguduthivu were burnt down by angry villagers following the incident.

Sirisena wavers amid raging waters of SLFP split

By Our Political Editor-

• Sunday, May 24, 2015

New Parliament in September but conflicting claims on dates of dissolution, 20A and general elections - - Polls prospects look good for UNP, but Mahendran issue goes to grassroots with people seeing crooks on both sides
At the media conference at Sirikotha, Prime Minister and UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe defended the committee that probed the controversial Bond issue.

A nation waits in suspense as the ‘on-off’ guessing game continues over dissolution of Parliament to pave the way for general elections. The menu on this week’s political agenda is for a different course. “I can assure that a new Government will be installed by September,” declared President Maithripala Sirisena during a breakfast meeting with heads of state-run and private media. After dissolution, he noted, that it would take two weeks to call for nominations. Thereafter, elections would have to be held within five to seven weeks, he said. He avoided making any reference to the date of dissolution.

Sirisena Wavers Amid Raging Waters of SLFP Split by Thavam Ratna

Sri Lanka Needs Clean & Competent Political Candidates

By Jayadeva de Silva –May 24, 2015 

Jayadeva de Silva

Criminal politicians should go to jail, lose their seats and be disqualified from contesting for a substantial period of time. Sri Lanka’s wheels of justice grind slowly, common man lays the blame squarely on politicians and laments that ‘goondas’ are winnable candidates. But how did criminals come to dominate in the first place? Are there fundamental flaws in our political system that makes it favour the tainted over the sainted? Have civil society’s movements in courts only attacked the symptoms? Can we identify and attack the root causes instead?

Today, candidates typically start their parliamentary careers with monies obtained from big mafias. Candidates who cannot raise white money openly are at a disadvantage. Thereby, clean politicians are crippled by the system.

At the last presidential elections one candidate has spent Rs 43,000 per voter !

*Photo courtesy AP

Therefore, across the board, parties have tried to cope by favouring candidates with black money and the networks and capability to expend those resources. Such candidates, whose political foundations are built on lawbreaking, typically hijack the political system for private profiteering. The rare few get caught and eventually convicted.System should change so that cleaner candidates who can raise limited amount white resources will also be able to compete. Today when people want clean candidates but political parties shun them on the criterion of ‘winnability’. Campaign for clean and competent candidates (CCCC) has been initiated in Sri Lanka to find a solution to this pressing issue.Read More

Keheliya says he said no to Ranil’s offer

2015-05-24 15
Former Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella alleged that following the Presidential Election in January, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had offered him a ministerial portfolio if he were to join the United National Party (UNP).   

The Parliamentarian said he was contacted by the Prime Minister who offered him a portfolio if he would leave with the 26 SLFPers who joined the government. 

“During the three hour conversation the PM said the number would be increased to 30 members. He said if I were to join the party before January 5 (2015) I would be given a powerful ministry,” he said.   

When questioned as to why Harin Fernando, UNP Parliamentarian elected from the same district (Kandy), was not given a ministerial post, the PM had allegedly stated there was a communication issue, Rambukwella said.  

The Parliamentarian said he would never leave the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) as long as former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was in politics. 

“As long as the leader who defeated terrorism is in politics I will be with him or I will remain at home,” Rambukwella said. (DS) 

“Avant Gard” hided money in foreign countries revealed

FRIDAY, 22 MAY 2015

CID informed the Galle magistrate court today (21st May) that Avant Gard established under the Rakna Lanka Company which was managed under the direct supervision of former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapakshe, has deposited a large sum of money in fixed and normal accounts operated through banks in several foreign countries.

CID has informed these information to the court regarding the investigations and court trials that are being carried out by CID on allegedly maintenance of a floating arms store in the Galle port by Avant Gard.

However, CID has not exposedany information on amount of the money deposited and countries and banks where such money was deposited. CID has requested a court order from the magistrate to keep all Avant Gard documents under the security of CID.

After considering the facts made by Avant Gard lawyer, magistrate requested the CID to submit a list of documents exactly required by the CID and fix a next court trial date to 5th June.

The Islamic State Brings the War to Saudi Arabia

With the deadly suicide bombing of a Saudi mosque, the Islamic State may be debuting a new strategy: lone-wolf attacks inside the kingdom.

BY ELIZABETH DICKINSON-MAY 22, 2015

YADH — Not long ago, a young Saudi named Yazeed Mohammed Abdulrahman Abu Nayyan decided he wanted to fight in Syria. The 23-year-old had been deported from studying in the United States in 2012 after being arrested for refusing to stop smoking an e-cigarette on an airplane. When he returned home, he felt desperate and lost. He contacted jihadis online who he hoped could help him join the Islamic State.

Given his U.S criminal record, Abu Nayyan was under a travel ban in Saudi Arabia; it would have required a complex operation to smuggle him to Syria. But his Islamic State contacts had something else in mind. “He was told to stay home, and carry out something inside the kingdom,” said Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour Sultan Al Turki in an interview just days after Abu Nayyan was arrested on April 24 for shooting dead two police officers in Riyadh. According to the police, he had carried out the attack on the orders of Islamic State elements.

Abu Nayyan’s case may be indicative of a growing trend. Some 2,500 Saudi citizens have traveled to fight in Syria or Iraq in recent years — but late last year, the country’s Interior Ministry started noticing a new trend. The Islamic State was growing more aggressive in its online recruiting — but the converts were staying put. “ISIS is now conveying a message saying, ‘We don’t need you to come [to Iraq or Syria]. Stay where you are and carry out jihad in your own country,’” said Al Turki.

The May 22 suicide attack in Qatif, in eastern Saudi Arabia, may indicate the impact of that shift. Late Friday morning, a suicide bomber walked into a Shiite mosque in Qatif, an oil-rich province in the country’s East, as worshippers gathered for prayer. The blast ripped through the Imam Ali mosque, killing at least 19 people and wounding dozens. Photos on social media showed casualties streaming frantically from the wreckage. According to the BBC, citing an Islamic State-linked Twitter account, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the assault.

Like al Qaeda before it, the Islamic State has long had Saudi Arabia in its cross-hairs, accusing the kingdom’s leaders of collaborating with the West and failing to stand up to repressive Shiite regimes in Damascus and Baghdad. Stirring sectarian tensions in the kingdom, which has a minority Shiite population concentrated in its eastern region, may be seen by extremists as a way to destabilize the country. The attack in Qatif is just the latest indication that, even as it fights the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as part of a U.S.-led coalition, Saudi Arabia is also increasingly a target back home. In recent months, the kingdom has arrested nearly 100 people in connection to the Islamic State.

The threat is difficult to predict and nearly impossible to stop, often emerging from lone-wolf attacks coordinated online by young Saudis who have never seen or experienced war.

Abu Nayyan’s story illustrates how the Islamic State is operating in Saudi Arabia, according to the Interior Ministry. The young man was radicalized, the ministry believes, after his own failure in the United States and lack of purpose after being deported. The Islamic State promised a future for him, while his prospects as a high-school graduate at home were limited. That’s a common theme among home-grown radicals, says Khalid Ghannami, a former Saudi extremist who reformed a decade ago. “Some of them are people who want to prove themselves,” he said. “They have something to prove inside, to gain respect.”

Social problems are another commonality, Saudi officials say. “We find that some of them, they are running away from broken homes, family problems, some with criminal histories, or drug addiction,” says Hameed Al Shaygi, a professor at King Saud University and social counselor at Saudi Arabia’s rehabilitation program for radicals, the Mohammed bin Nayef Counseling and Care Center. “They want to run away from the social problems and the best way to do so is to go to die as a martyr. … This is how al Qaeda and other groups appeal to them.”

Abu Nayyan’s accomplice, a young Saudi named Nawaf bin Sarif Samir al-Enezi, fits this latter trend. “His father rejected [his kids] a lot, they grew up on their own,” a 27-year-old relative of Enezi told me. For much of his adolescence, Enezi had been content with the usual pastimes of young men here: video games, shisha, perhaps the occasional drink of smuggled alcohol, the relative said.

Something changed after 2011, when the Middle East exploded with anti-government uprisings. The Enezi tribe spans much of the region, and Nawaf had often visited relatives in Syria as a child. He started following the revolution online, increasingly transfixed as media painted the conflict in sectarian and religious terms. In 2014, he picked up and went to Syria to join the rebels, according to the family member.

“After he came back, he was very against the royal family. Because, he said, ‘They are leaving our people in Syria [to suffer]; they don’t help them,’” the family member told me. “He was never like this before.”

In both Enezi’s and Abu Nayyan’s cases, much of the Islamic State’s ideological work was done online. During an earlier wave of attacks by al Qaeda against Saudi Arabia in the mid-2000s, local cells contacted new recruits personally, which made their networks easier for Saudi authorities to track. Cell members recruited in specific mosques, often from within their own families. Today, many Islamic State recruits find their way to the group in web forums and on Twitter, where they can easily connect to fighters and networks in Iraq and Syria.

Those same networks abroad are helping coordinate attacks inside the kingdom, the Interior Ministry believes. Enezi and Abu Nayyan didn’t know one another when the time came for the Riyadh police attack. Instead, according to the Interior Ministry, both had their own contacts in Iraq and Syria who liaised between them without ever introducing the men. Enezi would be the driver, Abu Nayyan would shoot.

“All [Abu Nayyan] knew [about Al Enezi] was his nickname — he didn’t even know if he is a Saudi or non-Saudi,” said Al Turki. When Abu Nayyan decided he wanted a better gun and more ammunition, Islamic State contacts in Syria made the arrangements. “Somebody managed to give them the gun, ammunition, and money, without having to meet him or to know him. He was directed to put the weapon in a specific place” for Abu Nayyan to pick up, Al Turki said.

The pair had apparently tried several attacks before they finally killed the Saudi policemen in East Riyadh while they were on patrol on the morning of April 8. It followed a string of previous small-scale assaults. In the largest in November, gunmen killed eight citizens in the eastern city of Al-Ahsa; a Danish expat was also shot dead that month in Riyadh.

Despite the growing spate of such attacks, Saudi authorities say they are encouraged by what happens to many of the perpetrators: The Islamic State abandons its lone-wolf recruits. After the shooting, Abu Nayyan was found hiding on a farm some 80 miles from Riyadh — alone. Once arrested, he confessed to the crime and gave the Interior Ministry a description of Enezi; police announced a 1 million Saudi riyal ($267,000) bounty.

Social pressure has been key to finding such wanted men. After Enezi’s name was revealed, leaders of his tribe placed an ad in a local newspaper denouncing him, saying that the killing was a “shameful and cowardly” act and promising to cooperate with police to locate him. The family member said he suspected it was a tip from another relative who finally revealed where Enezi was hiding — among the sheep at a family farm.

“If we rely on the police effort, there isn’t much we can do [to catch radicals], because these people are very careful … they are very careful and try to look normal,” said Al Turki, who credits success instead to “public support and involvement.” A national tip line, for example, offers families and friends a 24-hour mechanism to report suspicious behavior or other concerns.

Within just minutes of the suicide attack on Friday, Saudi authorities began chasing information and public tips again, launching an investigation into who was behind the bombing of the Imam Ali mosque. Dozens of Saudi officials condemned the incident as a “heinous [act] aiming to plant sectarian strife among the people of the kingdom,” as the Muslim World League secretary general in Mecca put it. Yet many in Saudi Arabia may be bracing for more provocations going forward.

This report was produced with the support of a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.

 Photo credit: AP Photo

A Panopticon state: We must not wait until they come for us

by Roel Raymond 

- on 05/23/2015 

On Tuesday last week (12th) I watched, at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute the screening of ‘Citizen Four’: A documentary film concerning systems analyst Edward Snowden and the information he leaked on the nature and scale of the NSA’s spying activities. In that documentary, director Laura Poitras records the manner in which she was first contacted by Snowdon via encrypted email messages and her subsequent dealings with him, holed in a hotel room in Hong Kong, together with Guardian journalist Glen Greenwald who ‘broke’ the story and Ewan MacAskill.

A Panopticon State We Must Not Wait Until They Come for Us by Thavam Ratna

Women’s activists cross from North to South Korea, say divide can be bridged

A group of female activists, including women's rights campaigner Gloria Steinem, march after crossing the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. (Reuters)

By Yoonjung Seo and Anna Fifield-May 24

PAJU, South Korea — A group of international women’s activists made a rare crossing from North Korea into South Korea on Sunday, hailing the trip as a “first step in the right direction” toward bridging divisions between the estranged countries.

But the women — led by Gloria Steinem, the pioneering American feminist — did not walk across the demilitarized zone, as they had hoped, nor did they pass through the symbolic truce village of Panmunjom, where the armistice that halted the Korean War was signed. Both changes were indicative of the controversy that the event generated, amid accusations that the women were legitimizing Kim Jong Un’s regime and ignoring its human rights abuses.

[North Korea said to execute top official by antiaircraft gun]

As they crossed the 2 1/2- mile-wide strip that has divided the Korean Peninsula for more than 60 years, the women, all dressed in white and wearing rainbow-colored scarves, said the fact that the two Koreas agreed to the crossing at all was a sign of progress.

“I firmly believe it was a small but first step in the right direction,” Leymah Gbowee, the Liberian Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said as the women arrived in Paju on the southern side of the demilitarized zone, or DMZ.

Gloria Steinem, left, and Aiyoung Choi arrive in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on Tuesday. (Jon Chol Jin/AP)

Mairead Maguire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work toward ending the conflict in Northern Ireland, said the women were “privileged to come across the DMZ.” She added: “I’m saddened that many South Korean families cannot reunite with their family.”

Other women on the trip, organized by the group WomenCrossDMZ, included Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, who is more often seen protesting on Capitol Hill, and the American documentary filmmaker Abigail Disney.

In Pyongyang, the women held a march in the center of the capital — with the blessing of the government — carrying a banner that said in English: “Calling for Women’s Leadership in the Korean Peace Process.”

The women had hoped to walk across the border at the historically significant and more photogenic Panmunjom, where troops from the North and the South stare each other down across a raised concrete line.

But the South Korean government said the activists should cross at the railway link between the South and the Southern-run industrial complex at Kaesong in the North. They went through by bus, walking only a short final stretch.

As the women arrived in the South, they were greeted by a handful of protesters shouting phrases that included “You are frauds!” and “Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il are international terrorists!” Some held signs that said “If you really want peace, condemn Kim Jong Un’s human rights suppression” and “Pig Kim Jong Un destroys peace.”

“If you like North Korea so much, go back to North Korea! Why are you coming here to pure South Korea?” said Nam Soon-myeong, a protester. “Dialogue doesn’t solve anything between the two Koreas. There should be no compromise on matters of national security.”

The trip, which included women-related events and seminars in North Korea, followed by the crossing and similar events in South Korea, was billed by the organizers as a way to draw attention to the continued separation of the peninsula. Both Koreas technically remain at war because the 1950-1953 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. Families are separated by the division, and most people in the South do not have any contact with their relatives in the authoritarian North.

There were some who supported the activists’ cause. “I miss my family. Let me go to my home town,” one sign in Paju read.

But there were many more detractors. Joshua Stanton, who runs the One Free Korea blog, was among those who accused the group of not paying attention to the well-documented human rights abuses in North Korea.

“Steinem has had to duck questions about the regime’s rape and murder of female prisoners, the endemic and unpunished rapes of North Korean women by its soldiers, and the infanticides and forced abortions this regime inflicts on North Korean refugee women and their babies,” he wrote in a recent post.

[U.N. human rights report says it’s time to hold North Korea to account — in court]

But asked about human rights when the group arrived in South Korea, Steinem told reporters that the women had raised the issue.

“We were told by many people that mentioning human rights in North Korea would be a deal breaker, but it wasn’t. We included human rights issues in the declaration, and North Korea accepted it,” she said, referring to a declaration released during a forum with a North Korean women’s group.

“You can get to human rights when you have a normal situation and not a country at war,” Maguire added. “The sooner we get a peace treaty signed . . .the quicker we will get to human rights.”

Read more:

North Korea’s growing economy — and America’s misconceptions about it

North Korea begins brainwashing children in cult of the Kims as early as kindergarten

Japan arrests son of unofficial North Korean envoy in mushroom case

North Korea releases list of U.S. ‘human rights abuses’: ‘The U.S. is a living hell’

Anna Fifield is The Post’s bureau chief in Tokyo, focusing on Japan and the Koreas. She previously reported for the Financial Times from Washington DC, Seoul, Sydney, London and from across the Middle East.

A Color Revolution for Macedonia

The Macedonian government refused to participate in Washington’s sanctions against Russia and supports the Russian Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline that will deliver Russian natural gas to Europe via Turkey to the Greek border.

by Paul Craig Roberts

( May 23, 2015, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) During the Cold War Washington was concerned about communists fomenting street protests that they could turn into revolutions, with groomed politicians waiting in the wings to take over the new government, thus expanding the Soviet empire. Today this is precisely what Washington does.

We recently witnessed this operation in Ukraine and now it seems to be underway in Macedonia.

The National Endowment for Democracy was established in 1983. The official purpose is to promote democracy abroad. The real purpose was to create dissension in Soviet Eastern Europe. Today the NED uses our tax money to overthrow governments not aligned with Washington.

The NED funds non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in countries targeted by Washington for political destabilization. These NGOs operate under such rubrics as “teaching democracy” and “human rights.” The NGOs develop cadres consisting of idealistic students and disgruntled politicians and set them against the existing government whose independence Washington wishes to curtail.

The idealistic students are simply dupes, and the disgruntled politicians simply desire power in office and will serve Washington in order to get it.

According to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, Washington spent $5 billion in Ukraine grooming politicians and creating NGOs as Washington’s Fifth Columns. When Ukraine’s president Viktor Yanukovich refused to align Ukraine with Washington’s interests, Washington unleashed its Fifth Columns, and Yanukovich’s government was overthrown with violence. Despite Washington’s talk about democracy, the fact that Yanukovich’s government was democratically elected and a new election was only a few months away did not stop Washington from overthrowing Yanukovich.

Now the same fate seems in store for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgystan, and Macedonia. Most Americans don’t know where these places are. Armenia and Azerbaijan are east of the Caspian Sea and are former provinces of the Soviet Union. Kyrgystan is a former Soviet province that borders China. Macedonia, birthplace of Alexander the Great, is a part of northern Greece, but in the 20th century portions of Macedonia became parts of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Albania before becoming a province in Yugoslavia. When Washington destroyed Yugoslavia, Macedonia became an independent republic of two million people. Macedonia is landlocked and surrounded by Greece on the south, Bulgaria on the east, Albania on the west, and by Serbia and Washington-created Kosovo on the north.

Why is Washington interested in controlling Macedonia?

The Macedonian government refused to participate in Washington’s sanctions against Russia and supports the Russian Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline that will deliver Russian natural gas to Europe via Turkey to the Greek border.

Greece is being looted by the European Union, the IMF, and the German and Dutch banks. Consequently, Greece is being pushed into Russia’s arms as Russian support is Greece’s only alternative to the crippling austerity that the EU is forcing upon the Greek people. Macedonia sits between Greece and Serbia, a country with no love lost for Washington and the EU as a result of Serbia’s dismemberment by Washington and NATO aggression. Washington fears the flow of Russian energy, over which Washington would have no control, into its European vassal states via Russian allies in Europe.

If Washington can grab Macedonia, Washington can stand between Greece and Serbia and perhaps persuade Greece to align with a Washington-supported natural gas pipeline that would supply Europe from Azerbaijan, thus reducing Russia’s influence in Europe.

Macedonia has an Albanian minority population. Albania is a Washington vassal and NATO member. Washington has aligned with the dissident Albanians, demonstrators are in the streets, the Macedonian government is accused of corruption as was the Ukrainian government, and the US State Department is expressing its concerns about the Macedonian political crisis that Washington has orchestrated.

Washington is forever talking about democracy and human rights but has no respect for either. Washington uses these words as assertions of their absence in governments Washington intends to overthrow.

The Russian government understands the unfolding events. Whether the Russian government has learned its lesson from standing aside while the Ukrainian government was overthrown remains to be seen.

From an American perspective, as contrasted with Washington’s perspective, the question is whether the reckless pursuit of US hegemony is worth the risk of war with Russia and China. The neoconservatives, who have an iron grip on US foreign policy, believe that hegemony is worth any risk. But do Americans derive sufficient vicarious pleasure from a handful of neocons lording it over the world to accept the risk of nuclear war?

The naked aggression that Washington is displaying toward Russia should alarm not only the American people but also the entire world. War is in the making. War with Russia means war also with China. This is not a war that Washington and its vassals or human life can win.

Greece warns it is set to default on debt repayment loans

Interior minister says Athens simply cannot satisfy IMF deadline next month unless it works out a deal with eurozone creditors

 Pensioners chant anti-austerity slogans during a protest in central Athens. Greece has spent the last four months wrangling with Brussels and the IMF following the election of the anti-austerity Syriza party in January. Photograph: Petros Giannakouris/AP

Phillip Inman Economics correspondent-Sunday 24 May 2015

Greece has threatened to default on €1.6bn (£1.14bn) of debt repayment due on international bailout loans next month, claiming it does not have the funds to satisfy creditors at the same time as paying wages and pensions.

The Greek interior minister, Nikos Voutsis, a long-standing ally of the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, insisted the country was near to financial collapse. In an interview with Greek television station Mega TV he said Athens needed to strike a deal with its European partners within the next couple of weeks or it would default on repayments to the International Monetary Fund that form part of its€240bn rescue package.

Voutsis said: “This money will not be given and is not there to be given.” His comments came as the finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, repeated his warning that the entire euro project would be undermined without a deal that proved acceptable to the Greek people. Varoufakis told the Andrew Marr show that the Syriza-led Greek government has now “made enormous strides at reaching a deal”, and that it is now up to the European Central Bank, IMF and European Union to do their bit and “meet us one-quarter of the way”.

With crucial debt payments looming, combined with the need for Athens to find around €1bn to pay public sector wages and welfare payments in the first week of June, the eurozone appeared to be entering the final chapter in its dispute with Greece. Tsipras wants the EU, ECB and IMF to release a blocked final €7.2bn tranche of the bailout without imposing tough reforms and spending cuts agreed with the previous right-of-centre administration.

Greece has spent the last four months wrangling with Brussels and the IMF following the election of the anti-austerity Syriza party in January. While some senior figures at the EU Commission and IMF have urged greater flexibility from creditors — and Greek ministers have appeared to drop demands for a higher minimum wage — both sides have so far failed to find a compromise deal.

Tsipras has attempted to persuade Angela Merkel to strike a broader deal that includes the refinancing of the entire bailout package in return for commitments to tackle tax avoidance and a re-making of the Greek welfare system, without success.

Syriza’s domestic position was bolstered on Sunday by a poll that showed cash-strapped Greeks remain supportive of the government’s tough negotiating stance, though they rejected a return to the drachma, saying that any deal with creditors must retain the euro as the Greek currency. The poll conducted in May by Public Issue, for the pro-government newspaper Avgi, showed 54% backing the government’s handling of the negotiations despite concerns that the country has been taken to the brink of financial collapse.

A total of 59% believe Athens must resist demands by creditors for further austerity measures, with 89% against pension cuts and 81% against mass lay-offs. Aware that broad electoral support for his government could collapse without a deal that retains the euro, Tsipras warned his far-left supporters, many of them newly elected MPs with little experience of EU negotiations, that they must compromise in talks with creditors.

In a speech to his party’s central committee on Saturday, reported in the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, Tsipras said Greece is in the final stretch of negotiations and is ready to accept a “viable agreement” with its creditors but not on “humiliating terms.” He ruled out submitting to what he described as irrational demands to apply a 23% VAT rate across the board and further labour reform. Echoing Varoufakis, he called on lenders to make “necessary concessions”. He said: “We have made concessions but we also have red lines.”

In a barely veiled reference to Berlin, Tsipras told the committee that many European governments would happily see Greece fail in its talks and be forced to leave the euro. He is under pressure to agree a deal that excludes fresh austerity measures from members of the hardline “left platform” within the party, led by the energy minister, Panayiotis Lafazanis, who have refused to approve any deal that departs from pre-election promises.

Lafazanis, according to reports, has been working on a proposals to find alternative sources of funding that would allow Greece to walk away from a deal. But his search, which has included seeking cash from Russia, have drawn a blank.

John Nash, mathematician who inspired "A Beautiful Mind", killed in car crash

U.S. mathematician and Nobel Laureate John Nash, 83, stands on the podium as he receives an Honorary Doctor of Science at the City University of Hong Kong November 8, 2011.REUTERS/BOBBY YIP/FILES

Mon May 25, 2015

REUTERS - Mathematician John Nash, a Nobel Prize winner whose longtime struggle with mental illness inspired the movie "A Beautiful Mind", was killed in a car crash along with his wife in New Jersey, state police said on Sunday.

The couple were in a taxi when the driver lost control, crashed into a guard rail and hit another car on Saturday afternoon on the New Jersey Turnpike, said police.

Nash, 86, and his wife, Alicia, 82, were thrown from the taxi and pronounced dead at the scene, New Jersey State Police spokesman Sgt. Gregory Williams added, declining to comment on media reports that they were not wearing seat belts.

Russell Crowe, who portrayed Nash in the Oscar-winning movie, said on Twitter that he was stunned by the deaths. "An amazing partnership. Beautiful minds, beautiful hearts," the Hollywood star wrote.

The taxi driver was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries and the driver of the other vehicle was also treated in hospital, police said. No charges had been filed, Williams added.

Nash was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 1994 for his work on game theory and the mathematics of decision-making.

The film "A Beautiful Mind" was loosely based on his battle with schizophrenia.

Nash received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1950 and spent much of his career there and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

He began experiencing what he described as "mental disturbances" in 1959 after marrying Alicia, a MIT physics major who was then pregnant, according to his biography on the Nobel Prize website.

"I was disturbed in this way for a very long period of time, like 25 years," Nash said in a 2004 video interview on the Nobel website.

He stressed that his was an unusual case, as he was able eventually stop taking medication and return to normal activities and his research.

The 2001 movie represented an "artistic" take on his experience, giving insight into mental illness but not accurately portraying the nature of his delusions, Nash said in the interview.

"John's remarkable achievements inspired generations of mathematicians, economists and scientists who were influenced by his brilliant, groundbreaking work in game theory," Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber said in a statement.

"The story of his life with Alicia moved millions of readers and moviegoers who marveled at their courage in the face of daunting challenges," he added.

Nash and his wife were living in Princeton Junction, New Jersey, New Jersey police said.

(Reporting by Letitia Stein and Jane Ross; Editing by David Clarke and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Time to toss your nonstick pans? Maybe not

By RUSS PARSONScontact the reporter-May 20  2015

More than 200 scientists from 38 countries say we should avoid a family of chemical compounds that is found in nonstick cookware. So does that mean we should toss all those slippery skillets?

The answer is more complicated than you might think. Beware, many acronyms and some math follow.

The so-called Madrid Statement published in the online journal Environmental Health Perspectives this month makes a strong argument for tossing.

The compounds in question are called poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASes for short). They’re used in a wide variety of applications, from flame retardants to the grease-proof lining of food to-go cartons as well as the nonstick lining of pots and pans.

The problem with these PFASes is that there is evidence that some of them can cause health problems, including liver issues, disrupting the immune and endocrine systems and causing organ tumors as well as being associated with several specific types of cancers, among other things.

They also last for a long time, in the body and in the environment.

But wait, says the FluoroCouncil, a trade group for the technology. In a response to EHP, they say the science the Madrid Statement is based on refers to a type of PFASes called “long chain,” which the industry has been phasing out for the last several years in favor of “short chain” PFASes that have been found to be less toxic than the old version.

“The FluoroCouncil could support many of [the Madrid Statement] policy recommendations if they were limited to long-chain PFASs,” they say in their response. “However, the application of these recommendations to a broad universe of PFASs simply cannot be supported.”

Another point of view comes from Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill University’s Office for Science & Society and a columnist for the Montreal Gazette.

"The dose makes the poison" is one of the most important rules of toxicology (though these days it is probably the most forgotten). This means that dangerous things in small amounts can be harmless while even the safest things in large amounts can be damaging. That’s why the traces of naturally occurring arsenic in celery are fine, though drinking too much water can make you sick.

Schwarcz reported on a little experiment. The author ground the surface of a nonstick pan with a wire brush and analyzed it for the amount of PFOA (the most worrisome of the PFASes) it contained. He then calculated the amount that would be extracted during cooking and compared it with the lowest safe dose (the lowest dose at which any adverse effect is noted, divided by a safety factor of 100).

He found even for a 20-pound child that factor was still more than 1,500 times more than the maximum safe dose that would come from the pan.

“So the bottom line here is that exposure to PFOA from a Teflon coated pan is insignificant,” Schwarcz concludes.

Should you trash those pots and pans? Not necessarily, though there are some common-sense safety precautions you could take if you are concerned.

Never overheat nonstick pans -- at temperatures above 500 degrees the chemicals become more volatile.

Buy the heaviest nonstick pans you can find -- they heat up more slowly.

Don't use nonstick pans that have become deeply scratched.

And perhaps most obvious: only use nonstick when you have to -- sauteing delicate fish, for example, or cooking eggs. In most cases, though, good cooking technique and a well-seasoned regular pan will be all you’ll need.

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