Thursday, March 3, 2016

Rio 2016: Refugee team to compete at Olympics

Mar 03, 2016

A team of refugees will compete at this summer's Olympics in Rio.

A total of 43 prospective athletes have been identified for the Team of Refugee Olympic Athletes (ROA), which will compete under the Olympic flag.

"By welcoming ROA to the Olympic Games in Rio, we want to send a message of hope to all the refugees of the world," said International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach.

"This team will be treated like all the other teams."

As well as sporting ability, selection criteria will include personal circumstances and United Nations-verified refugee status.

Athletes will then be supported with funds to train.

"This team may end up between five and 10 athletes maybe," said Bach. "We have no target. It depends very much on the sporting qualifications."

The ROA will be housed in the athletes' village and will enter the opening ceremony as the penultimate team, ahead of hosts Brazil.

The IOC also issued assurances over the Zika virus, slow ticket sales, water pollution and facilities.

Fewer than half of tickets sold

So far, fewer than half of the 7.5 million tickets issued for the Games, which will run from 5-21 August, have been sold.

Sales of more expensive tickets for premium events and the opening ceremony mean ticket revenues have reached 74% or $195m (£139m).

But the build-up to the Games has been overshadowed by an economic downturn in Brazil, political turmoil and Zika.

The 2012 Olympics in London reached its revenue target from ticket sales months before it began. Overall, 96% of the 8.2 million tickets were sold.

"I have no concerns at all," said Bach. "Brazilians, they do not buy tickets at such an early stage, as the British or the Germans. I have no doubt that when the time comes, these numbers will increase."

Chandima Weerakkody's Yahapalanaya at CPC

(Lanka-e-News -03.Mar.2016, 11.30PM) On January 19th 2016 the CPC opened the 3 term supply tenders for the supply of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel. Suppliers who have registered with the CPC were all eligible to participate. The CPC received a number almost 50 different offers which were given to the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) for their recomendations. These recommendations were then passed to the Cabinet appointed procurement and negotiation committee who confirmed the TEC’s findings that the Lowest Bidder who met all the tender terms and conditions:

 Diesel and gasoline - Swiss Singapore

 Jetfuel and diesel - Petrochina Singapore

 Motor gasoline - Petrochina Singapore

It is at this stage that Yahapalanaya was Put To The Test..!

Al Masafi General Trading (http://www.al-masafi.com) was registerered as a supplier to CPC just a few months ago under suspect circumstances. Usuallly registration the supplier to prove its experience as petroleum suppliers; however in this case the CPC ‘ignored’ this requirement. A visit to Al Mafasi’s website where they boldly claim “Al-Masafi International Group has become a global leader for construction development” brings attention to why CPC has registered a construction company as a petroleum supplier. Furthermore the Al Mafasi website shows a wide range of pumps, valves, fans ect along with contact details for a mining company in Sierra Leone and a ‘sports corner’ discussing cricket.

This is the company who will supply sri lanka with its entire petroleum requirement?!

Al Masafi General Trading did not directly bid for the above mentioned term tenders. However the CPC did get offers from Al Masafi International .These offers were not in agreement to the CPC tender terms, it did not even come with a valid bid bond. A bid bond is a debt secured by a bidder for a tender for the purpose of providing a guarantee to the CPC that the bidder will take on the job if selected. Without a bid bond CPC and the people of sri lanka have no way of knowing if Al Mafasi will deliver on its product to supply our nation with fuel. Not only that – Al Mafasi General Trading was the party registered with CPC but the offers came from Al Mafasi International?!? This entity has not registered at CPC so cannot be bidding in the first place.

Despite all of these obvious disqualifications the higher ups and CPC and Ministry of Petroleum have ignored the technical evaluation committee reccomentdations, ignore the cabinet appointed tender committee rulings and instead of submitting an unsolicited proposal to cabinet . Sounds like the good old days are back..!! Former deputy speaker Chandima Weerakkody is the Minister of petroleum in this govt.

The CPC has approximately 50 registered suppliers who are waiting to see if Al Mafasi’s non-compliant bid can be politicaly pushed into a winning offer to CPC. Our nation is looking at a position where our nations supply of petorluem will be a Dubai based construction company who specializes in pumps/valves and who has NEVER SUPPLIED A SINGLE SHIPMENT OF PETROLEUM TO SRI LANKA. The energy security of our country lies in the balance .If the CPC and Cabinet of Ministers allow this non-compliant bidder they will effectively make a mockery of the national tender procedure.

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by (2016-03-03 22:48:30)

Police seize 60 kg Kerala ganja in Jaffna – VIDEO

February 22, 2016

Amid concern over growing drug addiction especially among youth in the Northern Jaffna peninsula, Sri Lanka police on Monday have seized over 60 kilograms of Kerala ganja (cannabis) while the consignment was being smuggled into the northern Jaffna peninsula.

According to Jaffna police sources, Valveddithurai police on information have carried out the pre-dawn raid as the illegal consignment was waiting to be smuggled into the peninsula after being brought via sea at the shores of Inparutti near Point Pedro.

This consignment of Kerala ganja has been brought in using fishing boats and atwenty seven year-old resident of Vadamarachchi has also been arrested on suspicion in this connection.

The number of drug addicts and sale of drugs to the under-age people are fast increasing in the war-ravaged Northern province after the end of war in May 2009.

It has been discovered that the cannabis in extensive usage, especially in Jaffna and Mannar districts are regularly brought in from Indian State of Kerala.

Curbing Illegal Possession Of Elephants & Cruelty To Animals

By Vositha Wijenayake –March 3, 2016

Vositha Wijenayake

The case of elephants in Sri Lanka has come to the forefront of public discourse due to the incident involving the baby elephant which is claimed to have been abandoned at the temple of Ven. Dhammaloka Thero. While the facts remain questionable on the arrival of the elephant to the temple, the case of the unregistered elephant which was reported to be kept in Ven. Dhammaloka Thero’s temple has succeeded in bringing the attention to a much needed discussion on the plight of elephants in Sri Lanka, their ownership, and the ongoing yet not so spoken of baby elephant trade in the country.

Possession of an unregistered elephant is a punishable offence in Sri Lanka, and it is reported that since 2015, the Department of Wildlife has been able to uncover 30 cases of unregistered elephants. This article is not an attempt to analyse the truth of Ven. Dhammaloka Thero’s statements, but an attempt to help better understand the laws that exist, need to be strengthened and better implemented for the protection of animals in Sri Lanka, in this case the wild elephants illegally held in captivity.

Registering and Licensing

According to the Flora and Fauna Act 22 of 2009, possession of an elephant that is not licensed and registered is a punishable offence. The Act provides “no person shall own, have in his custody or make use of an elephant unless it is registered and unless a licence in respect of the elephant has been obtained” in accordance with the provisions of the Act. Among other requirement that fall within the duties of a custodian of an elephant that is being registered under the Act includes registering the elephant with the prescribed officer, paying a registration fee as prescribed, obtain an annual licence in respect of the elephant.

SL among countries with worst passports

2016-03-03

Sri Lanka is among the countries which have the worst passports in the world with having visa-free accesses only to 39 countries, the Visa Restrictions Index-2016 compiled by London-based immigration and citizenship consulting firm, Henley and Partners said.

The Index is a global ranking of countries according to the travel freedom that their citizens enjoy. Since 2006, the Index has been produced in collaboration with IATA, which maintains the world’s largest database of travel information.

Afghanistan made it to the top of the worst list as it has free-visa accesses to only 25 countries.

Liberia, Burundi, North Korea, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon, Kosovo, South Sudan, Yemen, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Nepal, Palestinian Territory, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Iraq and Pakistan were the countries which have worst passports.

Germany, Sweden, Finland, France, Italy, Spain, UK, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, US, Austria, Japan and Singapore are the countries which have the best passports in the world.

Germany is the country with the best passport as it has free-visa access to 177 countries around the world.

Civil rights attorney charged over “disruption” of Israeli speaker

University of Minnesota Law School leaders say protest against Israeli army “ethicist” was an attack on “free speech.” (Jeremy Yoder)

Charlotte Silver-29 February 2016

Minneapolis prosecutors are charging a civil rights attorney for allegedly disrupting an Israeli speaker at the University of Minnesota last year.

Emails obtained by The Electronic Intifada show that the trial of Jordan Kushner is proceeding after the Israeli government-funded group StandWithUs wrote to city attorneys urging them to ensure that “the individuals responsible for the illegal disruptions are prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

The case against Kushner, who has previously defended Black Lives Matter activists, appears to be another example of heavy-handed prosecution being used to silence free speech critical of Israel.

“Fabricated charges”

When Kushner sat down to listen to Moshe Halbertal deliver a lecture at the University of Minnesota Law School on 3 November, he had no desire to interrupt the speaker.

Kushner, who has been involved in Palestine solidarity work, expected activists to disrupt the lecture by a manwho helped draft the Israeli army’s “ethics code,” but was not planning to participate in the protest himself. He told The Electronic Intifada he wanted to hear what Halbertal had to say.

Before Halbertal began his lecture, which was titled “Protecting Civilians: Moral Challenges of Asymmetric Warfare,” approximately two dozen protesters entered the room carrying signs denouncing Israeli militarism.

After Halbertal was introduced by UMN professor Oren Gross, protesters stood up, one at a time, and called out various chants in support of Palestine, as this video, taken by another observer, shows.

North Korea fires projectiles into sea after U.N. passes new sanctions

By Anna Fifield March 3

The U.N. Security Council unanimously voted to impose harsh new sanctions on North Korea. Hours after the sanctions were announced, South Korean officials said the North had fired several short-range projectiles. (Reuters)

TOKYO — North Korea fired six short-range projectiles into the Sea of Japan on Thursday, just hours after the United Nations passed sweeping new sanctions against Kim Jong Un’s regime as punishment for its recent nuclear test and rocket launch.

It was not immediately clear what the projectiles were — but if they were missiles, it would be a clear contravention of U.N. resolutions and a sign that North Korea is spoiling for a fight.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it was investigating to see whether the projectiles were artillery rockets or short-range ballistic missiles. The projectiles were fired from Wonsan, a port city on North Korea’s east coast, about 10 a.m. local time, ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun told reporters in Seoul.

They flew as far as 100 miles before falling into the sea, according to local reports.

[U.N. adopts sweeping new sanctions on North Korea]

This appeared to be North Korea’s response to the U.N. Security Council’s unanimous adoption of harsh sanctions, some of the strongest measures ever used to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

The new sanctions require cargo inspections for all goods going in and out of North Korea by land, sea or air, and the measures choke off supplies of most aviation fuel for the North’s armed forces. They also ban the sale of all small arms and conventional weapons to Pyongyang and prohibit transactions that raise hard cash for North Korea through sales of its natural resources.

The tough measures — which won the support of China and Russia, North Korea’s neighbors and closest allies — come after several provocations from the regime this year.

In January, Kim ordered North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, and its first in three years. The regime claimed it had detonated a hydrogen bomb, which would be exponentially more powerful than a traditional atomic weapon, but analysts said these claims appeared vastly exaggerated.

Just a month later, Kim oversaw the launch of a long-range rocket, ostensibly part of North Korea’s space research program but widely viewed as cover for its efforts to develop a long-range ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to the continental United States.

As the Security Council prepared to vote on the resolution Wednesday, North Korean news media reported that Kim had visited a factory that produces ballistic missiles and related armaments.

The Moral Perils of Being Polish

Lech Walesa, Poland’s legendary dissident, may have been a communist informant, but that makes him neither hero nor villain — only complicated, like his country.

BY EMILY TAMKIN-FEBRUARY 29, 2016

Lech Walesa was the leader of Poland’s 1980s opposition movement, Solidarity (Solidarnosc), a national hero, and the country’s first post-socialist president. Until a few days ago, when he became a Soviet spy.

Earlier this month, accusations emerged that Walesa was a paid communist informant from 1970 to 1976 (four years before the emergence of the Solidarity party). This is not the first time such accusations have been made against Walesa, who was cleared of similar charges in 2000, and who has long maintained that the communists falsified such documents to besmirch his reputation. This time, however, the documents were taken from the home of a former communist interior minister and, according to Lukasz Kaminski, head of the Institute of National Remembrance, a government-affiliated research organization, appear authentic.

The news has shaken Poland — there has already been talk of renaming Gdansk’s Lech Walesa airport, and some have even called on Walesa to returnhis 1983 Nobel Peace Prize — and reverberations have been felt throughout the former Eastern Bloc (even the Russian media have joined in, sayingWalesa worked for the KGB as well as the Polish secret police). The 279 pages of documents, released on Feb. 22 to a long line of journalists and historians, may or may not show that Walesa was indeed a paid informant; they seem to, though he has denied the charge. But they have already shown how those who shaped Poland’s political past and, in turn, its present and future were not pure and perfect souls, but imperfect humans.

To be sure, if true, Walesa could have been helping an organization ruin people’s lives. The Polish United Workers’ Party, via the secret police and the help of those who provided it with information, could censor and silence, blackmail and bribe, torture and tear families apart. Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, from whose house the files were turned over to the Institute of National Remembrance, was one of its most feared operatives.

But the other reason the accusations are so serious is because of how central Walesa, and Solidarity in general, has become to the self-image of post-communist Polish society. Most opposition movements in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc were, up until the very end of the 1980s, composed of intellectuals (i.e., Russia) or small bands of patriots (e.g., the Baltic States). They may have had moments where they managed to tap into the power of the masses — in 1978, for instance, Georgian dissidents brought thousands of people to the streets to protest against changing the special status of the Georgian language in the constitution — but they were, for the most part, made up of a small, exceptional portion of the country’s population.

Zimbabwe's Mugabe says government to take over all diamond operations

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe laughs before addressing the ZANU-PF party's top decision making body, the Politburo, in the capital Harare, February 10, 2016. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo

Fri Mar 4, 2016

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe said on Thursday his government would take possession of all diamond operations because existing miners had robbed the country of its wealth.

Mugabe's comments came a week after the ministry of mines ordered all mining companies to halt work and leave the Marange fields, saying they had not renewed their licences. At the time it denied it was seizing the mines.

"The state will now own all the diamonds in the country," Mugabe said during a two-hour interview with state broadcaster ZBC TV.

"Companies that have been mining diamonds have robbed us of our wealth, that is why we have now said the state must have a monopoly," Mugabe said.

The largest diamond mine in Marange, Mbada Diamonds, on Monday sued the government at the High Court and was allowed to take control of its mining assets.

Chinese-run Anjin Investments also challenged the government ban at the same court on Wednesday, according to a court application seen by Reuters on Thursday.

Mugabe said he had told Chinese President Xi Xinping during his visit to Zimbabwe last December that his government was not getting much from Chinese-owned mining firms.

Zimbabwe was the eighth largest diamond producer in the world with 4.7 million carats in 2014, according to industry group Kimberly Process. Last year, the government received $23 million in royalties and other fees from diamond mines, down from $84 million in 2014.

(Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

BREAKING Possible missing Boeing 777 #MH370 horizontal stabilizer found off Mozambique

Joao Abreu, head of Mozambique's Civil Aviation Institute, showing debris possibly from Malaysia Airlines during a press conference.

An object that could be debris from a Boeing 777 has been found off Mozambique and is being examined by investigators searching for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said “high possibility debris found in Mozambique belongs to a Boeing 777

03/03/2016 06:36 Possible MH370 plane debris is sent to Australia

Photos of debris found off Mozambique

03/03/2016 08:06
The man who found the piece of Boeing 777 wreckage off the Mozambique coast has been traveling around the Indian Ocean for one year in a quest to solve the mystery of missing Malaysia flight MH370.

Blaine Gibson, a U.S. lawyer from Seattle, is spearheading his own self-funded hunt for the missing plane in an exhaustive search that has taken him from the Maldives, to Mauritius and Myanmar.

The object with the words “NO STEP” could be from the plane’s horizontal stabilizer. It was found on a sandbank in the Mozambique Channel.

Investigators in Malaysia, Australia and the U.S. have looked at photographs of the latest object and sources say there is a good chance it derives from a Boeing 777.

Boeing engineers are looking at the photos, according to sources, but the company has declined to comment. It was discovered by an American who has been blogging about the search for MH370.

First 2 hour flight of Missing Malaysian Airlines MH370

Osama bin Laden left $29m for global jihad

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden left $29m in his will, with instructions that most of this should be used to wage jihad.

TUESDAY 01 MARCH 2016

One of the documents seized in the house where bin Laden was killed by US special forces in 2011 is believed by the Americans to be his will.

The hand-written note, thought to have been composed in the 1990s when bin Laden lived in Sudan, set out how he wanted $29m (£21m) to be distributed.

He said 1 per cent of this sum should go to Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, a senior al-Qaeda militant who used the nom de guerre Abu Hafs al Mauritani.

Another 1 per cent was to be given to Abu Ibrahim al-Iraqi Sa'ad for helping to set up bin Laden's first company in Sudan, Wadi al-Aqiq Co.

'For the sake of Allah'

But bin Laden wanted his relatives to spend most of the $29m on holy war/jihad.

"I hope for my brothers, sisters and maternal aunts to obey my will and to spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on jihad, for the sake of Allah," he wrote.

Bin Laden wanted some of the money distributed to his mother, a son, a daughter and other relatives.

In a letter dated 15 August 2008, he asked his father to take care of his wife and children in the event of his death.

'I entrust you well for my wife and children'

"My precious father: I entrust you well for my wife and children, and that you will always ask about them and follow up on their whereabouts and help them in their marriages and needs," he said.

In a final paragraph, he asked his father for forgiveness, "if I have done what you did not like".

The documents have been translated from Arabic and declassified by US intelligence.

Bin Laden, who was behind the 9/11 terror attacks in the US in 2001 in which nearly 3,000 people died, was killed in a raid on his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan, five years ago.

The Saudi militant lived in Sudan for five years as a special guest of the government, but was told to leave in 1996 under pressure from the US.

Over 90,000 people have fled conflict-ridden

Darfur: UN

The UN has sought to verify reports that an additional 50,000 people have been driven from their homes in central Darfur

More than 300,000 people have been killed in the Darfur conflict since 2003, according to the UN (AFP)

Thursday 3 March 2016

More than 90,000 people have fled an upsurge of fighting over the past six weeks in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, the African Union and United Nations said on Thursday.

Expressing deep concern, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and African Union Commission chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma called on Khartoum to allow humanitarian aid to reach those in need.

They also urged the Sudanese government to grant peacekeepers from the joint AU-UN mission access to the displaced in Darfur.

The UN has sought to verify reports that an additional 50,000 people have been driven from their homes in central Darfur, but the government has denied the UNAMID mission access to that area.

Clashes erupted on 15 January between government forces and rebel fighters in Darfur's mountainous Jebel Marra area.

Back in February, UNICEF told AFP that tens of thousands of children have fled those clashes.

"Children who already have very little are once again traumatised with what seems to be an endless, endless war," said Geert Cappelaere, head of UNICEF in Sudan.

Sudan's army has been trying to crush rebels of Abdulwahid Nur's faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA-AW) in Jebel Marra.

"The chairperson and the secretary-general call on the government to fully cooperate with UNAMID to facilitate its freedom of movement, as well as that of the humanitarian actors, in their continued efforts to protect and provide assistance to the civilian population affected by the fighting," said a joint statement from Ban and Dlamini-Zuma.

About 63,000 civilians - most of them women and children - have taken refuge at a base at Sortoni in North Darfur run by UNAMID peacekeepers.

More than 300,000 people have been killed in the Darfur conflict since 2003 and there are some 2.6 million displaced, according to the UN.

By the time you read this, I’ll be dead

THE CANADIAN KEVORKIAN The author pictured in 1992 at Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria (Image: Courtesy of John Hofsess)

Between 1999 and 2001, I helped eight people die, including the poet Al Purdy. Now, as I prepare to take my own life, I’m ready to tell my story

Editor’s note: John Hofsess died at 4:45 p.m. EST on February 29, 2016, as planned, in Basel, Switzerland.

BY JOHN HOFSESS | PHOTOGRAPH BY TROY MOTH

Imet the Québécois filmmaker Claude Jutra in 1963, when he visited McMaster University for a showing of his first feature,À tout prendre. Years later, when I was the film critic atMaclean’s magazine, I visited Jutra on several occasions in Montreal, and he invited me to preview his film Mon oncle Antoine prior to its release. In 1982, he read an idealistic article I’d written about assisted dying. He had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s and wanted help to end his life, but I put him off. I couldn’t bring myself to convert my words into actions. Jutra’s condition deteriorated until at last he had to act alone. On November 5, 1986, he leapt from the Jacques Cartier Bridge in Montreal. Punishing winter weather surrounded him: fog, icy rain and snow. The desperation of his suicide altered me in ways I did not fully realize at the time.

Five years after his death, I established the Right to Die Society of Canada. I was a reluctant activist, and initially, I invested my energy in law reform. In 1992, the Society initiated a challenge under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on behalf of Sue Rodriguez, the Victoria woman who had been diagnosed with ALS at age 41. We attempted to strike down Section 241(b) of the Criminal Code, which made assisted suicide a criminal offence. The Supreme Court of Canada rejected the challenge in a 5–4 ruling. It would be many years before it would accept a comparable challenge—I foresaw a painful future for thousands of Canadians.

I was horrified anew in 1999 when the gifted conductor Georg Tintner, who was dying from a rare form of melanoma, jumped from the balcony of his 11th-floor apartment in Halifax to end his agony. Many Canadians would hear such news, shake their heads, utter a few sympathetic platitudes and move on. But I couldn’t just sit back and wring my hands. That year, I went from advocating for assisted suicides to facilitating them. Let’s not mince words: I killed people who wanted to die.

Nothing in my background prepared me for what needed to be done. I’d heard numerous horror stories about people who relied upon advice from do-it-yourself suicide books, such as Derek Humphry’sFinal Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying. He prescribed a plastic bag over the head to hasten death. That technique often created so much discomfort that many people failed.

I created an underground assisted death service that offered innovative non-medical methods of dying to Society members. My partner was Evelyn Martens, a retired office worker who’d watched her brother die in agony from bone cancer (she died in 2011). Following Jack Kevorkian’s example, we didn’t require clients to pay for our services. We operated on the Robin Hood principle: members who could afford to cover the costs of our illegal operations helped compensate for those who couldn’t.

All of this took place in secret. Between 1999 and 2001, we provided eight members of the Society with assisted deaths. The celebrated Canadian poet Al Purdy was one of them, and he authorized me to publish this posthumous account. The question of when, he left to my discretion. “You write it. You arranged everything. Wouldn’t be possible without you,” he said in his famous gravelly voice. “I don’t mind a bit being labelled a suicide.”

Salmon caught near Seattle proven to be inundated with antidepressants, cocaine and more

Wednesday, March 02, 2016 by: Daniel Barker

(NaturalNews) We're all familiar with horror stories about juveniles on drugs, but normally it's humans that are involved, not fish. This case, however, involves juvenile chinook salmon who never had the chance to "Just Say No."

Disturbing new research has indicated that young salmon found in Puget Sound tested positive for more than 80 different drugs, including cocaine, antidepressants and dozens of other medications used by humans.

When researchers tested the water at and near sewage treatment plants in the estuaries of Puget Sound near Seattle, Washington, they discovered high levels of drugs and personal care products – at some of the highest concentrations found anywhere in the nation.

The tissues of migratory chinook salmon and local staghorn sculpin also contained these compounds – even in the fish found in estuaries far from the sewage treatment plants where the water was previously considered "pristine."

As reported by The Seattle Times:

"The medicine chest of common drugs also included Flonase, Aleve and Tylenol. Paxil, Valium and Zoloft. Tagamet, OxyContin and Darvon. Nicotine and caffeine. Fungicides, antiseptics and anticoagulants. And Cipro and other antibiotics galore.

"Why are the levels so high? It could be because people here use more of the drugs detected, or it could be related to wastewater-treatment plants' processes, said Jim Meador, an environmental toxicologist at NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle and lead author on a paper published this week in the journal Environmental Pollution."

Sewage treatment plants unable to cope

The presence of these drugs in the water appears to be related to the inability of the wastewater plants to fully remove these chemicals during treatment. But high fecal coliform counts in some areas of the Sound suggest that leaky septic tanks may also be contributing to the problem.

Some of the drugs found in the fish and the water of Puget Sound are difficult to remove using standard sewage treatment methods:

"Treatment plants in King County are effective in removing some drugs in wastewater, but many drugs are recalcitrant and remain. Seizure drugs, for instance, are very hard to remove, and ibuprofen levels are knocked down — but not out — during treatment, said Betsy Cooper, permit administrator for the county's Wastewater Treatment Division."

Who is really to blame?

But the blame should not be placed entirely on the treatment plants, according to Cooper. "You have treatment doing its best to remove these, chemically and biologically," she said, "but it's not just the treatment quality, it's also the amount that we use day to day and our assumption that it just goes away."

Shamefully, our own drug dependence is now poisoning other species as well. We have become a nation of drugged-out zombies, but that doesn't give us the right to turn fish and other animals into the same.

Maybe it's time to start realizing that prescription pharmaceuticals, over-the-counter remedies and illicit drugs are doing us – and our environment – far more harm than good.

We've bought into the Big Pharma-created myth that there is a chemical solution to all our problems – physical and mental – when in reality these substances are the cause of much of our "dis-ease" and general out-of-balance lifestyles.

The obvious solution

Although Western pharmaceutical medicine arguably has some value, almost everything these drugs are designed to treat can be more effectively dealt with using natural methods which promote healing rather than dependence.

And one of the obvious lessons from the situation in Puget Sound is that when you make bad decisions at one level, there will be negative effects on other levels as well. We don't live in a vacuum, and our unhealthy lifestyles have an impact on all living things.

We're simultaneously poisoning ourselves and our surroundings. Maybe it's time for another approach ...

Genetics of cancer tumours reveal possible treatment revolution

Breakthrough could allow potent personalised treatments which prime patients’ own immune systems to attack biological markers on tumours

How immune cells could tackle tumours.

Ian Sample Science editor-Thursday 3 March 2016

A landmark discovery into the genetic makeup of tumours has the potential to open a new front in the war on cancer, delivering potent therapies that are tailored to individual patients, scientists have said.

The breakthrough comes from research into the genetic complexity of lung and skin cancers which found that even as tumours grow and spread around the body, they carry with them a number of biological “flags” that the immune system can be primed to attack.

Because the flags, which appear as surface proteins, are found only on cancer cells, they provide what scientists described as “exquisite targets” for new therapies that draw on the power of the immune system to combat cancer.

Treatments that harness the immune system have shown great promise against some forms of cancer, such as melanoma, but they do not work in everyone.

One approach releases the brakes on the immune system, unleashing the full force of killer T cells, which are otherwise dampened down by cancer cells. But to work, the patient’s immune system must first recognise the cancer as the enemy.

Charles Swanton, an expert on cancer evolution who led the latest study at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said the discovery of surface proteins shared by all of a patient’s cancer cells provided an “achilles heel” for future therapies to target.

How immune cell treatment works

The international team, involving scientists from Harvard, MIT and University College London, found that the patients in their study had already launched immune reactions against their cancers. But the attacks were too feeble to destroy the malignant cells. Close inspection of the tumours revealed immune cells buried inside them: some had recognised the cancer’s unique flags, but were either outnumbered or defeated by the cancer’s defences.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Fundamental Duties of the State, Political Parties and Citizens

It is the duty of all political parties, politicians, national, provincial or local, to maintain high standards of professional ethics and refrain from favouritism, nepotism and any kind of monetary or other misdeeds. It is the duty of the State to have codes of ethics for all members of parliament, provincial councillors, and local government representatives.

by Laksiri Fernando

( March 2, 2016, Sydney, Sri Lanka Guardian) In seeking public opinions for a New Constitution, the Public Representations Committee (PRC) led by senor lawyer and social activist, Lal Wijenayake, has asked what form that a chapter on ‘directive principles of State policy’ should take. There is such a chapter in the present constitution, and there was one in the previous 1972 constitution. However, both constitutions said ‘these are not justiciable,’ to mean legal proceedings could not be initiated, making them effectively inoperative.

The related questions asked or topics given by the PRC are ‘fundamental rights and duties’ and ‘individual rights and group rights.’ Considering that the proposed New Constitution should be ‘progressive, futurist, innovative and people centred,’ it is the opinion of the present author that instead of merely emulating a chapter on ‘directive principles,’ there could be a more effective chapter on ‘Fundamental Duties of the State, Political Parties and Citizens.’ This is in addition to a chapter on ‘fundamental human rights and freedoms.’

This chapter could be ‘justiciable’ in the sense that ‘public interest litigation’ could be initiated in contrast to individual fundamental rights cases, and under any necessary prescribed limitations, to make particularly the State and the political parties accountable on the principles enunciated in this chapter.

One necessary ingredient might be a ‘Human Rights Court’ both hearing cases under the fundamental rights chapter and ‘public interest litigation’ under the proposed present chapter. There is also an increasing awareness and opinion, following some initiatives in Germany, to make the political parties accountable and/or make them effective and constructive parts of a constitutional system.

This article proposes 16 propositions as examples of how such a chapter on fundamental duties, binding on the state, the political parties and also the citizens could be formulated. As you could see, the ‘non-governmental sector’ is roped into the formulations. The private sector is also not spared. While some of the propositions are routine or traditional, others might give perspectives on future directions.

Constitution and Country

It is the primary duty of the State, all state institutions and representatives/officials to recognize the Constitution as the supreme and fundamental law of the country and obey its provisions. All political parties, non-governmental sectors and all citizens are obliged to do the same while retaining the freedom to peacefully criticise and seek changes to its provisions in part or as a whole.

It is the duty of the State to protect and preserve sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity of the country. All political parties, non-governmental sectors and all citizens are obliged to do the same while retaining the freedom to peacefully differ, criticise and seek changes to the policies of the State in respect of the above.