Brussels terror expert has applauded Israel’s atrocities

A tribute to those killed by Islamic State during its attack on the Bataclan concert venue in Paris. (Roberto Maldeno/Flickr)-----------------------Claude Moniquet

David Cronin-26 November 2015

These are busy days for the Brussels-based “terrorism expert” Claude Moniquet. Ever since it emerged that a few men from Belgium took part in the recent attacks on Paris, his “analysis” has been much in demand by the media.

Brussels Terror Expert Has Applauded Israel’s Atrocities by Thavam Ratna

Source: Colorado shooter politically motivated, said ‘no more baby parts’ after attacking Planned Parenthood

By Peter Holley, Sandhya Somashekhar, Lindsey Bever and Wesley Lowery- November 28

The gunman suspected of storming a Planned Parenthood clinic and killing a police officer and two others told the officers who arrested him “no more baby parts,’’ after being taken into custody, according to a law enforcement official.

Source Colorado Shooter Politically Motivated, Said ‘No More Baby Parts’ After Attacking Planned Parenthood... by Thavam Ratna

Iran seeks $25bn investment from energy 
companies
The investments are related to sanctions relief brought by the nuclear deal between Iran and major Western powers 


Saturday 28 November 2015

Iran seeks $25bn in investments from several energy companies, Tehran told foreign executives on Saturday as the government outlined new contractual terms.

hOil Minister Bijan Zanganeh opened a two-day conference in the capital attended by BP, Shell, Total of France, ENI of Italy, Repsol of Spain, OMV from Austria and other major oil and gas companies.

The new investments are part of the sanctions relief related to the nuclear deal between Iran and major Wester powers. The sanctions expect to be lifted in early 2016.

The new Iran Petroleum Contract will replace "buy-back" agreements in which foreign companies were paid a set price for all oil and gas they helped Iran exploit. Iran at that point took over production.

The new contract will instead launch joint ventures for crude oil and gas production with international companies being paid a share of the total output, officials said.

The Iranian partner in a joint venture must have a majority stake of at least 51 percent.

Zanganeh said consultations with international companies led to the new contracts, which would initially be four years in length at the exploration phase, extendible for a further two years.

Iran will have between five and seven years to pay back initial sums invested by the foreign companies once production starts but cooperation and development in commercially viable fields could go on as long as 25 years, officials said.

"The contract models introduced today are not perfect or ideal, but an effective and responsive model for both sides," Zanganeh said, noting that $25 billion of foreign investment would constitute "success".

“Like any other human creation it may need amendment and development," he said of the new contract.

Iran has the world's fourth largest oil and second-largest proven gas reserves and its energy industry has been under-developed since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

No US companies present

Asked why no US companies attended Saturday's event, Zanganeh said there was no bar on them considering Iran's energy market but American firms were put off because sanctions are still in place.

"The atmosphere and climate is ready for the presence of these companies in development of Iran's oil industry but they themselves have problems for being present in Iran," he said.

Iran is scheduled in February to hold a conference in London regarding investment and the new contracts which, if sanctions have by then been lifted, could attract US energy giants.

An oil embargo imposed in 2012 by the US and European Union as punishment for Iran's disputed nuclear programme - it denies ever seeking to develop a bomb - severely damaged Tehran's energy industry and sales income.

Stephane Michel, president of exploration and production for Total in the Middle East and North Africa, described the contract and project offers as an "important milestone" for Iran but said further analysis was needed before any deal.

"We need to look at what was presented to better understand how it's going to work and to make up our mind," he said. "But it's good to be able to do that now, based on facts.

"It's complex and we need to study first the length of the contracts and second who the partners would be, both in development and operations." 

Iran produces about 2.8mn barrels of oil per day, compared to 4.0 million bpd in 2011, following US and other Western pressure on buyers to steer clear of the country.

The nuclear deal, however, has paved the way for new tie-ups and 152 international companies were at Saturday's event, organisers said, along with 183 Iranian firms.

Despite low crude prices Iran is intent on reclaiming lost market share and has pledged to increase output by 500,000 bpd once sanctions are lifted, independent of OPEC guidance.

Iran's regional rival Saudi Arabia has refused to cut its output despite crude prices falling massively in the past year.

Drought-hit India's quest for water hampered by thirsty crops

A women uses a hand-pump to fill drinking water on the outskirts of Amritsar in Punjab, India, November 15, 2015.-REUTERS/MUNISH SHARMA

BY KRISHNA N. DAS AND MAYANK BHARDWAJ-Sat Nov 28, 2015

Pleas by local officials for farmers to switch from rice to oilseeds and pulses and protect dangerously low water levels are falling on deaf ears, and may be further undermined by government policies encouraging cultivation of thirsty crops.

Back-to-back droughts for the first time in nearly 30 years mean some rural areas in the north are running out of water for human consumption and agriculture, prompting warnings of serious consequences if urgent action is not taken.

"It is unlikely that India will have another drought next year; three years in a row has never happened before," said Ashok Gulati, a farm economist who advised the last government.

"But with extreme events increasing due to climate change, you never know. If we don't wake up now then, God forbid, people will leave farming to become labourers at railways stations."

With more than two-thirds of the 1.25 billion population living off the land, water scarcity could affect the majority and hit long term food supplies.

As world leaders meet in Paris next week to agree a deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, India says climate change is already hurting the agriculture and water sectors, and the impact is amplified by poverty and a heavy reliance on farming.

Locally, officials are trying to change farming habits and enforce stricter rules on water usage.

"We are encouraging crop diversification; we are going for pulses," said Amit Kishore, chief development officer in Rampur, a farm belt city in Uttar Pradesh.

"We have been trying to convince farmers to shift to horticulture as well, but the uptake has not been satisfactory."

Four out of Rampur's six administrative areas are so-called "dark zones", with 80 percent or more of groundwater exhausted. In those zones, the practice of boring wells has been banned this fiscal year.

Without urgent action, the region risks going the way of Punjab and Haryana, two parched states where the groundwater has sunk even further.

Some farmers in those states now need to dig 300 feet (91 metres) for water, compared to five feet (1.5 metres) in the 1960s, according to research by a local government scientist.

"RICE SELLS"

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged farmers to use water wisely, advocating a "per drop, more crop" approach that includes water-saving methods like drip irrigation.

Yet his 18-month-old government has also boosted incentives to grow water-intensive rice, wheat and sugarcane that India exports, at the expense of crops like oilseeds or pulses that it has to import.

Little wonder some farmers in the northern farming belt are ignoring the advice of local officials.

"We grow rice because that is what sells," said Babu Ram Saini, standing by a pond in Jiwai Jadid village in Rampur. "Productivity for lentils is so low that we'll not be able to sustain ourselves without massive government support," he said.

Some experts are advocating tougher measures to force more efficient use of water. Wastage is encouraged by the supply of free or subsidized power which boosts politicians' popularity.

"We have been trying to tell farmers that if you continue growing rice, more places are going to become dark zones," said V.K. Mishra, a regional head of the Central Soil Salinity Research Institute in Uttar Pradesh's capital Lucknow.

"We should make a law that you can't grow rice in areas where the water table is very low."

Rice covers 62 percent of Punjab's area under cultivation, up from 10 percent in 1970. The expansion of rice has been similar in neighbouring Haryana.

Though the droughts have hit crops, India still produces more rice, wheat and sugar than it consumes, drawing accusations from the World Trade Organization that stockpiling to provide cheap grain to the poor unfairly distorts trade.

"It is quite natural for our farmers to go for rice and cane when both power and water are almost free," said economist Gulati, adding that selling such produce abroad is like exporting "precious water for free".

(Additional reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj in NEW DELHI; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

Archaeologists believe they are a step closer to finding Queen Nefertiti's tomb

Rader scans reveal what could be secret corridor inside King Tutankhamun's tomb adding weight to theory that he was laid to rest in his stepmother's burial complex

The linen-wrapped mummy of King Tutankhamun displayed in his climate-controlled glass case in his underground tomb in the Valley of the Kings Photo: AFP

By Rob Crilly, New York, and agencies-28 Nov 2015

Archaeologists searching for the final resting place of Queen Nefertiti say they are almost certain they have found a hollow space behind a wall in the tomb of Ancient Egypt's boy king Tutankhamun, raising hopes that they are on the brink of unveiling passages to a hidden chamber.

Archaeologists Believe They Are a Step Closer to Finding Queen Nefertiti's Tomb by Thavam Ratna

We know the city where HIV first emerged

When HIV and AIDS appeared they seemed to come from nowhere, but genetics has told us when and where the virus first entered the human population

By Colin Barras-19 November 2015

It is easy to see why AIDS seemed so mysterious and frightening when US medics first encountered it 35 years ago. The condition robbed young, healthy people of their strong immune system, leaving them weak and vulnerable. And it seemed to come out of nowhere.

Today we know much more how and why HIV – the virus that leads to AIDS – has become a global pandemic. Unsurprisingly, sex workers unwittingly played a part. But no less important were the roles of trade, the collapse of colonialism, and 20th Century sociopolitical reform.

 

 Simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infects monkeys (Credit: Science Picture Co/SPL)

 

HIV did not really appear out of nowhere, of course. It probably began as a virus affecting monkeys and apes in west central Africa.

From there it jumped species into humans on several occasions, perhaps because people ate infected bushmeat.Some people carry a version of HIV closely related to that seen in sooty mangabey monkeys, for instance. But HIV that came from monkeys has not become a global problem.

It seems that this form of HIV simply took advantage of events

We are more closely related to apes, like gorillas and chimpanzees, than we are to monkeys. But even when HIV has passed into human populations from these apes, it has not necessarily turned into a widespread health issue.

HIV originating from apes typically belongs to a type of virus called HIV-1. One is called HIV-1 group O, and human cases are largely confined to west Africa.

In fact, only one form of HIV has spread far and wide after jumping to humans. This version, which probably originated from chimpanzees, is called HIV-1 group M (for "major"). More than 90% of HIV infections belong in group M. Which raises an obvious question: what's so special about HIV-1 group M?

A study published in 2014 suggests a surprising answer: there might be nothing particularly special about group M.

 

Simian immunodeficiency virus (Credit: Sriram Subramaniam/National Cancer Institute/SPL)

It is not especially infectious, as you might expect. Instead, it seems that this form of HIV simply took advantage of events. "Ecological rather than evolutionary factors drove its rapid spread," says Nuno Faria at the University of Oxford in the UK.

Faria and his colleagues built a family tree of HIV, by looking at a diverse array of HIV genomes collected from about 800 infected people from central Africa.

The very first person to be infected with HIV-1 group M probably picked up the virus in the 1920s

Genomes pick up new mutations at a fairly steady rate, so by comparing two genome sequences and counting the differences they could work out when the two last shared a common ancestor. This technique is widely used, for example to establish that our common ancestor with chimpanzees lived at least 7 million years ago.

"RNA viruses such as HIV evolve approximately 1 million times faster than human DNA," says Faria. This means the HIV "molecular clock" ticks very fast indeed.

It ticks so fast, Faria and his colleagues found that the HIV genomes all shared a common ancestor that existed no more than 100 years ago. The HIV-1 group M pandemic probably first began in the 1920s.

Then the team went further. Because they knew where each of the HIV samples had been collected, they could place the origin of the pandemic in a specific city: Kinshasa, now the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

 

Kinshasa may be the origin of the HIV pandemic (Credit: Zute Lightfoot/Alamy Stock Photo)

At this point, the researchers changed tack. They turned to historical records to work out why HIV infections in an African city in the 1920s could ultimately spark a pandemic.

A likely sequence of events quickly became obvious.

Everything was in place for an explosion in infection rates in the 1960s

In the 1920s, DR Congo was a Belgian colony and Kinshasa – then known as Leopoldville – had just been made the capital. The city became a very attractive destination for young working men seeking their fortunes, and for sex workers only too willing to help them spend their earnings. The virus spread quickly through the population.

It did not remain confined to the city. The researchers discovered that the capital of the Belgian Congo was, in the 1920s, one of the best connected cities in Africa. Taking full advantage of an extensive rail network used by hundreds of thousands of people each year, the virus spread to cities 900 miles (1500km) away in just 20 years.

Everything was in place for an explosion in infection rates in the 1960s.

 

An HIV-infected cell (Credit: Sebastian Kaulitzki/SPL)

The beginning of that decade brought another change.

The story of the spread of HIV is not over yet

Belgian Congo gained its independence, and became an attractive source of employment to French speakers elsewhere in the world, including Haiti. When these young Haitians returned home a few years later they took a particular form of HIV-1 group M, called "subtype B", to the western side of the Atlantic.

It arrived in the US in the 1970s, just as sexual liberation and homophobic attitudes were leading to concentrations of gay men in cosmopolitan cities like New York and San Francisco. Once more, HIV took advantage of the sociopolitical situation to spread quickly through the US and Europe.

"There is no reason to believe that other subtypes would not have spread as quickly as subtype B, given similar ecological circumstances," says Faria.

The story of the spread of HIV is not over yet.

 

HIV infecting a cell (Credit: Ami Images/Dartmouth College - Louisa Howard/SPL)

For instance, in 2015 there was an outbreak in the US state of Indiana, associated with drug injecting.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been analyzing the HIV genome sequences and data about location and time of infection, says Yonatan Grad at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. "These data help to understand the extent of the outbreak, and will further help to understand when public health interventions have worked."

This approach can work for other pathogens. In 2014, Grad and his colleague Marc Lipsitch published an investigation into the spread of drug-resistant gonorrhoea across the US.

"Because we had representative sequences from individuals in different cities at different times and with different sexual orientations, we could show the spread was from the west of the country to the east," says Lipsitch.

What's more, they could confirm that the drug-resistant form of gonorrhoea appeared to have circulated predominantly in men who have sex with men. That could prompt increased screening in these at-risk populations, in an effort to reduce further spread.

In other words, there is real power to studying pathogens like HIV and gonorrhoea through the prism of human society.

TNA marks Maaveerar Naal in Jaffna

Photographs: Tamil Guardian

27 November 2015

At a ceremony in Jaffna, parliamentarians from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) commemorated Maaveerar Naal on Friday.

In a ceremony at the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kathchi (ITAK) offices in Martin Road, Jaffna, TNA MP Mavai Senathirajah led commemorations, as party members gathered to remember lives lost in the Tamil struggle.  With the party offices decorated in red and yellow, the Tamil national colours, members lit deepams and held a moment of silence.

At 18:05 local time, Mr Senathirajah light a flame of remembrance, marking the exact time the first LTTE cadre Lt Shankar died in November 1982.

Minister Kiriella: Engineering At Oluvil To Be Closed And Students Shifted

November 27, 2015

When the Ceylon College of Technology was upgraded to the University of Ceylon, Katubedde Campus (now University of Moratuwa) it was backwater. Since then it has taken strides forward and is the first preference for nearly all of those admitted to engineering. How did Moratuwa catch up with Peradeniya and overtake it? This is because engineering needs striving industries close by to drive student research and most academics prefer to live in the city close to amenities, schools, and consultancy opportunities. This is why Ruhuna’s engineering is still badly short staffed, despite the city of Galle close by, and never took off despite the Minister of Higher Education, Richard Pathirana, pouring millions into that faculty in his electorate.

Minister Kiriella

Similarly, when University of Jaffna planned an engineering faculty, both Prof. L.L. Ratnayake and Prof. K.K.Y.W. Perera wrote reports urging that it be sited in the city of Jaffna or close to it.

However, the LTTE had planned Arivu Nagar in Kilinochchi as a university town and many felt compelled to argue for Arivu Nagar even after the LTTE was gone.

The experience of the one big University of Sri Lanka was that campuses had to practically shut down regularly when all Department Heads and Professors had to come to Colombo for Senate meetings, recruitment and promotion committee meetings, leave applications, etc. A multi-campus university with one Vice Chancellor turned out to be a foolish venture, and the campuses soon became independent universities. Yet, despite this experience, Jaffna’s engineering faculty ended up in South Kilinochchi, 80 km away from the administration in Tinnavely, with the university already having problems managing the Vavuniya Campus 140 km away. It meant Assistant Registrars, Assistant Bursars, Assistant Librarians, libraries, play grounds, and hostels being duplicated and triplicated.

Similarly, when the Z-score fiasco occurred in 2012, one hundred more engineering students had to be admitted, and students were admitted before recruiting the staff out of political rather than academic considerations. The faculty went to Oluvil, 350 km from Colombo, adding one more campus to the already two-campus South Eastern University, Sri Lanka. The isolation meant more serious problems than in Jaffna.

Helping Kilinochchi, Oluvil, and places develop is a laudable goal. But why should a few hundred students bear the brunt when all of us need to contribute? Moreover, at the expense of ruining the hard earned reputation of our engineering degree, which will plummet when untrained engineers are certified? Would the UGC accredit a foreign university coming in with the staff and infrastructure as at Oluvil?

Today we have the Jaffna and Oluvil Engineering faculties being run without staff. Visiting lecturers do not like to come because of travel time. Most Jaffna staff members live in Jaffna and the Dean in Vavuniya. The problems are even more severe in Oluvil. Many staff members live in Colombo, locating their children there in good schools. There are often no classes Monday to Friday, and on weekends students often wait for visiting lecturers who do not show up because of the weather or this or that. Oluvil’s engineering students have given up on the university and stopped attending classes. These are our best students in the maths stream.

                                                                  Read More 

Great Heroes’ Day Passes Off Peacefully in Jaffna

( Several Tamil youths gathered in Maanippaay today to commemorate Maaveerar Naal – Tamil Guardian photo)

27/11/2015 

COLOMBO: Great Heroes’ Day (Maaveerar Naal), which commemorates dead  Tamil Tiger cadres, passed off peacefully in the Tamil speaking parts of Sri Lanka’s Northern and Eastern Provinces on Friday.

Great Heroes’ Day Passes Off Peacefully in Jaffna by Thavam Ratna

North remembers the war victims

27 November 2015

The people of the Northern province today commemorate their loved ones lost in the three decades of war with special religious observations across the region, provincial sources said. 

The University of Jaffna commemorated the day with the lighting lamps and candles inside the campus premises. Students, lecturers and other staff of the university participated in the event.

In view of a school student’s suicide in Jaffna yesterday , the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) announced today as a holiday for the schools in the region. Most of the schools are closed.

Meanwhile NPC councilor M. K.Sivajilingam with some of the relatives of the war dead commemorated the at Nallur Kandaswamy temple in Jaffna with lighting an oil lamp.

Police spokesperson Ruwan Gunasekara told the Times Online that nobody would be allowed to remember the fallen cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) but the people can commemorate their loved ones who died during the war.

According to the provincial sources the security presence is relatively high in the region as it remembers the war dead.

Northern Province schools closed

Northern Province schools closed

2015-11-27

All schools in the Northern Province have been closed today (26) except for a few Sinhalese schools.

Meanwhile, the last rites of the 18-year-old school student who committed suicide by jumping in front of a train, calling for the release of Tamil political prisoners, are being performed now.

A positive change in the COPE committee – Sunil Handunneththi

 Nov 27, 2015

The new chairman of the COPE said the previous government did not take any credible steps about the allegation leveled by the COPE and in many occasions the the people who were alleged was given ministerial positions.

JVP parliamentarian gave his opinion when the latter participated to a discussion with BBC following his appointment as the new chairman of the COPE committee.

The minister said by being a committee member except creating a report nothing beyond has done so far.

“Under the head of the previous chairman Wijedasa Rajapaksa a report was submitted against 150,000 million of frauds and corruption but no action has been taken” the minister said.

Sunil Handuneththi said under his chairmanship he would try to do a positive change. When Saroj Pathirana of the BBC questioned as how he would commit a change the minister said that the country’s media, civil society and the public has a credible responsibility over this.

“Our aim is to amend the statutory orders and expose the activities of those institutes to the media. We are anticipating to take some actions exceeding the discussions which was limited to a room”

There is a power within the common business committee to check all state institutions for irregularities and discrepancies but it was not implemented during the former regime.

Minister said during the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration the state institutions were highly politicized and under the current administrations there is no significant change.

However the minister said during his tenure he would not obliged to any pressure and hoping to make a positive change against corruption and fraud

Tax Reforms To Make Businesses More Viable

By Hema Senanayake –November 27, 2015

Hema Senanayake

Global Economic Revolution Is Overdue: Part 4

Sri Lanka intends to make strong reforms to tax regime. This was told by the Minister of Finance, Ravi Karunanayake during his budget speech of 2016. He said that, “…However, it is time to deviate from temporary solutions but endeavor to create a tax regime based on strong reforms to move forward, implementing such reforms which will have far reaching benefits to the country.” (Paragraph 63, Budget speech -2016)

We agree that strong reforms of taxation are needed. There is no argument about the need of reforms. Yet, the argument is about the basis or the principles of reforms. In fact this is one of the topics I intended to discuss through this column. I guess it is appropriate to discuss it now. I like to begin from fundamentals of economics. These fundamentals may vary from text book fundamentals.

Since, I have been discussing through this column about developing a new economic model let me first submit the possible objectives of taxation under the new model. Basically it is twofold. One objective is to find money for the government to produce common interests for the society. In regard to this objective of taxation I have written previously, hence in this article I will not discuss about it.

The second objective of taxation is to make businesses more viable – and this means that we are going to reform the tax regime in order to make businesses more viable. This does not necessarily mean that we are going to reduce taxes or give more tax concessions to businesses, instead this intimates that we are going to tax, subjected to a small adjustment, the unutilized consumable income in the economic system no matter such money accumulates in rich private households or under the balance sheets of businesses. Once we do this the income redistribution will not be an issue any more hence as at now I ignore “income redistribution” as an objective of taxation.

Therefore, in regard to “strong reforms” we should be interested not about determining the percentage of indirect taxes and direct taxes. Instead our goal must be to bring in necessary reforms in order to achieve above mentioned two objectives namely to collect revenue for the government in order to produce common interests and to make businesses more viable.Read More

A Tale of Taxation – A rundown on Budget 2016

Featured image courtesy nation.lk

• by Raisa Wickrematunge 
 
• - on 11/27/2015 

In the wake of the Budget being presented in Parliament, Groundviews spoke to several people, including economists, trade union representatives and government officials, on their thoughts– from positives to reservations.

A Tale of Taxation – a Rundown on Budget 2016 by Thavam Ratna

Maithripala Sirisena in his desperation to rescue his millionaire bro lies brazenly and blatantly

(Lanka-e-News - 27.Nov.2015, 11.00 PM) President Maithripala Sirisena in order to rescue his millionaire younger brother was profusely lying come what may after arriving at the ‘display’  box of Kili Maharaja’s.. Answering the question posed by Upul Shantha Sannasgala , the president said ,his brother as SLT chairman is not drawing one cent more than the salary of his predecessor. 

This is an absolute lie. The first truth is Kumarasinghe’s  predecessor Nimal Welgama did not collect any salary when he was the SLT chairman. In that case Kumarasinghe Sirisena should be not receiving any salary as SLT chairman , if the president is not lying.

The other shameless  lies of Maithripala Sirisena are as follows :

Kumarasinghe Sirisena whom the president is trying to defend most desperately was receiving a monthly salary of Rs.400,000.00. Governed by the family overriding rapacious  traits , being not satisfied with it , Kumarasinghe submitted a paper to the Board of Directors to increase his salary three fold. This request  is depicted herein. (please read the yellow highlighted section of the third letter).Based on Kumarasinghe’s request , one Institution had agreed to raise the salary to Rs. one million
 
The fourth letter :
Kumarasinghe Sirisena is the chairman of SLT and 9 affiliated Institutions. Accordingly , if he is to draw a salary of Rs. 1 million from one institution , his total salary is Rs. 9 million ! 

Surely these are not funds brought from Polonnaruwa by Sirisenas. These are public funds out and out.

It is a pity that the president in his desperation to rescue and defend his younger brother is blindly  pushing himself to the edge , oblivious of his onerous public duties while lying most shamelessly  using not only his mouth but every orifice in  his body.

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by     (2015-11-27 20:54:49)