GARBAGE DISPOSAL THE MEGAPOLIS WAY

By Ravi Ladduwahetty-2016-04-17

Clouds of controversy loom over the manner in which the Ministry of Megapolis and Western Development, under which the Urban Development Authority now comes, is handling the garbage disposal issue, where lack of coordination between two options seems to be the order of the day, one of which could cost the government and the country a colossal US $ 80 Million more!

Ministry insiders pointed out to Ceylon Today, the absurdity of the lack of coordination of two options in the handling of the much vexed garbage issue in a classic example as to the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing!

The UDA, on one hand, has negotiated with a company by the name of Western Power to convert the garbage into energy amounting to 600 Tons of the 1200 Tons of garbage which is collected in the Colombo District. In addition, it has also called for the Expressions of Interest from private companies to process the remainder from waste to energy. All well and fine. But the unanswered question is, why the 200-250 tons of residue ash is to be to transported by rail to a location in Aruwakkallu in the Puttalam District which will be bordering the Holcim Cement Quarries, which will cost the government and the country, a whopping US $ 110 million when there is a cheaper option. The alternative is to transport the residue ash to a closer location which is within a 50 kilometre radius within the Colombo District, an option which will cost the government and the country only between US $ 20-30 Million! A staggering US $ 80 Million cheaper!

Although the solution is expensive, there is some rationale underpinning the earlier option of transporting the raw garbage to Aruwakkalu where the Holcim cement quarries are – where garbage itself is an environment and health hazard – and the people's protests are within comprehension. But to transport the residue ash, which does not attract flies or not smelling, seems to be a farfetched idea, while a cheaper location closer to Colombo should be available. All it requires is an engineered sanitized landfill which is US $ 70 Million cheaper! Taking the garbage all the way to Puttalam District might have made some sense as a landfill for the raw garbage would definitely attract vehement protests from the area residents claiming, "We do not want Colombo garbage" according to the NIMBY ( Not In My Back Yard) syndrome.

Puttalam was thought of as the original proposal as there are no people living near the Aruwakkallu Holcim limestone quarries. It makes sense as people do not want another 'Meethotamulla' in their neighbourhood. The proposal was almost finalized and the Megapolis Ministry wanted to pursue the waste to energy option. However, if the residue is ash, questions arise as to why the residue ash had to be transported to Aruwakkalu which is the more expensive option.

The irony is that the Megapolis Ministry is having the two projects in isolation without amalgamating the two. It is a classic example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing!

Rail transport
Irrespective of which option is to be used, whether to transport either the raw garbage or the processed ash to Puttalam, there are specifically designed trains to transport either. They have to be imported. The railway lines also have to be double tracked in certain areas and one has to construct an engineered sanitary landfill where the cement quarries are as Aruwakkalu is well beyond the reach of the normal railway lines.

With the proposal of the Megapolis Ministry to convert the Western Province into a hub, which is not even realized yet, garbage is well poised to increase from the current 1200 tons per day to 3000 tons. But according to the present projections, transporting
200-250 tons of residue ash to Puttalam does not make any sense at all.

Granted that the garbage issue has reached epic proportions. But, the questions remain whether the issue is going to be solved sensibly or using a much more expensive option.

Sri Lanka has attempted to solve the garbage problem from the warily 1990s. No landfill area was made close due to public protests. Everyone wants the garbage managed but no one wants it in their backyard. It is the people which are generating the garbage and not the government! It is also up to the public to cooperate with the government in finding a lasting solution to this perennial problem. Real estate prices are far too excessive in Colombo for the acquisition of a landfill.

On the other hand, Western Province Chief Minister Isura Devapriya has said that he will not allow anyone or statutory body to shift the Colombo garbage outside the District.

If that is so, why is the Megapolis Ministry attempting to squander State funds to the tune of US $ 110 Million or even for that matter, the cheaper option? This is indeed funny, and again, an example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing!! It is important that the government finds a coordinated solution to the issue. An uncoordinated solution would see the government spending millions of dollars which will serve no purpose at all.

SriLankan Airlines: Need Of The Hour, An Exit Strategy

By Rajeewa Jayaweera –April 17, 2016

Rajeewa Jayaweera

After 37 years of making losses, it is abundantly clear, the state of Sri Lanka does not have the political will or the expertise to do what it takes to manage and operate SriLankan Airlines as a viable commercial enterprise. Profits declared during a few financial years have not been from its core business of transport of Passengers and Cargo but from ancillary operations such as Ground Handling and Engineering in which the carrier has a monopoly and by disposal of assets from time to time.

Meanwhile, some ministers have begun speaking of restructuring the airline by way of infusion of ‘direct foreign capital or through a management agreement with a foreign airline’.

Every government is duty bound to decide and act based on what is best for the country. The national carrier played a pivotal role during the years of the armed conflict. It kept afloat, the hospitality industry, the movement of labour traffic to the Middle East and facilitating Sri Lankan exports even at times when foreign carriers withdrew. Traffic Rights could have been better managed allowing the national carrier a reasonable chance to compete with carriers with modern fleets, equipment and large networks. Emirates, Qatar Airways, Etihad, Oman Air, Kuwait Airways and Saudia now operate 84 weekly flights between their home bases in the Middle East and Colombo. It is expected to increase to 98 flights from summer 2016. If a Liberal Aviation Policy or Open Skies is what is best suited for the country in post conflict Sri Lanka, so may it be. However, the national carrier does not have the wherewithal to compete with them. It has been literally overwhelmed, especially in the European markets. This writer discussed this issue at length in an article titled “What ails our National Carrier IV – Question of a National Carrier or a Liberal Aviation Policy” published in the Sunday Island edition of 19 July 2015.

The most important and fundamental issue that need be addressed is ‘does Sri Lanka need an airline’. It need be a hard business decision thought out rationally and not emotionally in the context of archaic concepts such as ‘national carrier’, ‘flag carrier’ etc. nor in the context of the welfare of its 7,000+ employees. More important is that every citizen has to bear a debt of LKR 6,000 on behalf of the national carrier and it is still increasing. The only justification for an airline would be if it contributes to the growth of the country’s economy without being a burden to the Treasury.

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Scottish woman stabs abuser with a pen

2016-04-17
A trishaw driver who had abducted two young Scottish women from Kandy town and attempted to sexually abuse one of them at an abandoned house in Hantane had to flee the place as the second woman had stabbed him with a pen. 

However, the man had managed to grab the valuables of the women before he fled in his trishaw. He had taken away a mobile phone worth Rs. 90,000 and a bag containing Rs. 30,000 belonging to the women, police said. 

The women, staying in a lodge at Sangaraja Mawatha in Kandy had come to the town in the night of the Sinhala and Hindu New Year Day and hired the trishaw to return to the lodge. 

The trishaw driver had deceived the women and taken them to an abandoned house in Hantane and attempted to molest one of them when the other woman had stabbed him with a pen forcing him to flee. 

Kandy police are conducting investigations to apprehend the trishaw driver.  

PRECIFAC to complain about Gota’s disappearing act

Apr 17, 2016

Officials of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry for Fraud and Corruption (PRECIFAC) have decided to make a request to President Maithripala Sirisena to take necessary action against former Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa on his unexpected trip to the United States avoiding PRECIFAC investigations against him.

The officials intend making this request to the President through the Secretary to the Commission.

According to PRECIFAC sources, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had not informed the Presidential Commission about his US visit which had led to a setback in their investigations.

However, sources close to the former Defence Secretary say he is expected to return to the country during the first week of May.

- http://www.thesundayleader.lk-

Decades on, Israel tries to bury its darkest times

A Palestinian man looks out a window in a house that was torched in the Palestinian village of Duma near the West Bank city of Nablus, this month. Majdi Mohammed / AP Photo

Jonathan Cook-March 22, 2016

One might expect that only historians would care to revisit the 1948 war that created Israel. And yet the debate about what constitutes truth and myth from that period still provokes raw emotions.

Much rests on how those events are reconstructed, not least because the shock waves have yet to subside. Israelis fear, and Palestinians crave, a clearer picture of the past because it would powerfully illuminate the present. It might also influence the international community’s proposed solutions for the conflict.

That is why the unearthing of an Israeli soldier’s letter from 1948 detailing what was probably the war’s worst massacre – one long buried by Israel – is of more than historical significance.

It comes as Moshe Yaalon, the defence minister, this week accused Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organisation that exposes military abuses, of “treason" for collecting evidence from the army’s current whistle-blowers.

Western understandings of the 1948 war – what Palestinians term their Nakba, or catastrophe – are dominated by an enduring Israeli narrative. Israel’s army, it is said, abided by a strict moral code. Palestinians left not because of Israel’s actions but on the orders of Arab leaders.

In this rendering, the Palestinians’ mass dispossession was the fault of the Arab world – and a solution for the millions of today’s refugees lies with their host countries.

For decades Israel’s chief concession to the truth was an admission that a massacre took place just outside Jerusalem, at Deir Yassin.

Israel claimed the atrocity was the exception that proved the rule: a rogue militia killed more than 100 villagers, violating Israel’s ethical codes in the chaotic weeks before statehood was declared.

Palestinians have always known of dozens of other large massacres of civilians from 1948 carried out by the Israeli army. The barbarity, they say, was intended to terrorise the native population into flight. This account puts responsibility on Israel for taking the refugees back.

But history is written by the victor.

In recent decades a few brave Israeli scholars have chipped away at the official facade. In the late 1990s a Haifa University student collected testimonies from former soldiers confirming that over 200 Palestinians had been massacred at Tantura, south of Haifa. After the findings were made public, he was pilloried and stripped of his degree.

A decade ago, the historian Ilan Pappe wrote a groundbreaking book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, arguing that massacres like the one at Tantura were exploited to drive out Palestinians. He and others noted the suggestive titles of military operations such as “Broom" and soldier’s’ orders to “clean" areas.

Pappe now lives in academic exile in the UK.

The biggest obstacle to shifting Israeli and western perceptions of 1948 has been the lack of a clear paper trail connecting the political leadership to the massacres. Israel locked away bundles of documentation precisely not to jeopardise the official narrative.

But things are changing slowly.

Last year a key deception was punctured: that Israel urged many of the war’s 750,000 Palestinian refugees to return. In a letter to Haifa’s leaders shortly after the city’s Palestinians were expelled, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, demanded that any return be barred.

Now another letter, located by Israeli historian Yair Auron and published last week for the first time in English by the Haaretz newspaper, trashes the idea of an ethical Israel army.

Written by Shabtai Kaplan, a soldier and journalist, the letter confirms long-held suspicions of a massacre – one that dwarfs Deir Yassin – at Dawaymeh, near Hebron. Soldiers executed hundreds of men, women and children who offered no resistance.

The massacre, near the end of the war, was carried out by elite troops under the command of Yitzhak Sadeh. He developed the Israeli army’s famous doctrine of “purity of arms".

Kaplan argues that the Dawaymeh massacre was part of “a system of expulsion and destruction", with a clear goal: “The fewer Arabs who remain, the better."

Kaplan’s letter was consigned to the vaults, as were so many other documents from 1948 that officials considered too damaging.

Nearly seven decades later, in an age of 24-hour news and social media, Israel is still desperately trying to conceal its darkest episodes by bullying the army’s current whistle-blowers.

Last week Benjamin Netanyahu’s government launched an investigation into Breaking the Silence. On Sunday Mr Netanyau called the collection of soldiers’ testimonies “intolerable", indicating that he may try to ban the group.

It is hard not to see parallels between the cover-ups of 1948 and those of today. Breaking the Silence’s disclosures, especially those relating to Israel’s series of attacks on Gaza, each of which has left hundreds of civilians dead, similarly give the lie to the army’s continuing claims of ethical behaviour.

In his 1948 letter, Kaplan observed of the failure by the political leadership to hold anyone to account for the massacres: “Inaction is in itself encouragement."

Israel’s politicians hoped then that the Palestinians could be quickly terrorised from their lands. Decades later, the atrocities continue – and to the same end. But Israel must face facts: the days when such systematic brutality could be kept under wraps are now over.

Jonathan Cook is an independent journalist in Nazareth

China May Be the Big Winner in the Pentagon’s Newest Spying Scandal

BY DAN DE LUCE, ELIAS GROLL, PAUL MCLEARY-APRIL 13, 2016

The U.S. naval officer at the center of a burgeoning spy scandal may not have simply betrayed his country: He may have also helped China compromise Washington’s most-sophisticated tool for tracking Beijing’s submarines, ships, and planes.

The surveillance aircraft potentially exposed in the espionage case are America’s high-tech “eyes in the sky” in the western Pacific, the EP-3E Aries II and P-8A Poseidon, which are equipped with sensors and radar that allow them to scoop up the electronic communications of Chinese forces and monitor their movements.

The Aries, which has undergone significant upgrades in recent years, delivers “near real-time” signals intelligence and full motion video, according to the Navy. The aircraft’s sensors and dish antennas — their range is classified — can pick up distant electronic communications, allowing the U.S. military to pick up on any possible threats and eavesdrop on foreign militaries.

The Poseidon, meanwhile, is equipped with the Advanced Airborne Sensor, a sophisticated radar system capable of generating high-resolution imagery at what the military calls “standoff” distances. Coupled with a powerful data link system, the Poseidon can serve as a targeting platform for other weapons in the U.S. arsenal. Its radar can reportedly track a single car at extreme distances, lock onto it, and stream the targeting data to a nearby fighter jet, which can fire a long-range missile at the target. An earlier version of that radar system has also been deployed on some of the Aries planes.

Both aircraft play a pivotal role in tracking China’s growing naval might in potential flashpoints like the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait. Beijing and Washington have been at loggerheads over China’s construction of an extensive network of runways and harbors that can accommodate military aircraft and ships on atolls and man-made islands in the disputed waters of the South China Sea. If the two countries were to ever engage in open conflict there, the surveillance craft would also be used to relay targeting information to American warplanes.

Determining the planes’ exact capabilities and vulnerabilities is of critical importance to Beijing, and now an alleged American spy may have unlocked those secrets.

It’s not clear if the naval flight officer at the center of the scandal, Lt. Cmdr. Edward Lin, meant to help Beijing when he allegedly began slipping secrets to Taiwan. U.S. authorities haven’t yet made public — and may not themselves know — whether they believe Lin was knowingly providing intelligence to China, or whether the information he allegedly gave Taiwan was stolen by Chinese spies inside Taiwan’s security services.

Either way, Lin is a source of potentially enormous importance to the Chinese. Lin had worked for the Navy’s Special Projects Patrol Squadron 2 for a year before he was arrested in September. The Hawaii-based unit is one of two elite squadrons that fly the Aries and Poseidon planes, which means that Lin has an unusually deep and granular understanding of the two planes.

“The area in which Lin was working matches up with Chinese areas of interest, including their military modernization programs and the tension over the South China Sea,” Mike Sulick, the former head of counterintelligence at the CIA as well as the agency’s national clandestine service, told Foreign Policy.
As someone with advanced training and knowledge of the surveillance planes, Sulick added that Lin would be “somebody of incredible interest” to China.

The espionage case comes at a fraught moment in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, with the United States and its Asian allies increasingly concerned about Beijing’s assertive moves in the area. Beijing has beenbuilding artificial islands to bolster its expansionist claims in the strategic waterway, escorting fishing flotillas in contested waters and deploying radars, missile defense systems, and fighter jets in the Paracels.

The alleged espionage could undercut the U.S. military’s surveillance operations in the Asia-Pacific, where U.S. and Chinese vessels are engaged in a game of cat and mouse — and increase the potential that a misunderstanding could escalate into an armed clash.

Peter Singer, a senior fellow at New America, said that if Lin has spied on behalf of China he could have clued in Beijing about what the United States knows about Chinese capabilities. American admirals, Singer said by way of example, are deeply concerned about the possibility of a Chinese submarine attack on a U.S. carrier group. Lin, by virtue of his experience in an airborne submarine hunter, could provide China with key intelligence about how and at what range the United States can detect Chinese attack submarines. That might allow Chinese admirals to evade America’s premier submarine hunter, said Singer, co-author of the novel Ghost Fleet, which depicts a future war with China.

Planes such as the Poseidon and Aries also soak up electronic data as they fly along China’s coastline. This includes, for example, emissions from coastal radar stations, radio communications, and other data traveling through the air. That information can be used in mapping radar stations and planning for an eventual strike on Chinese territory. Lin’s suspected espionage could possibly compromise such plans by revealing what weaknesses in Chinese defenses that the United States has managed to observe.

The Poseidon, Singer said, represents “the cutting edge of our maritime surveillance and anti-submarine warfare planes.” The plane marries a highly advanced set of sensors with an innovative way of sharing the information it collects with planes, ships, and submarines. “Imagine it as a key hub in a hub-and-spokes approach,” he said.

Lin, who is being held in pretrial confinement at the Navy Consolidated Brig in Chesapeake, Virginia, faces possible charges of espionage, attempted espionage, and patronizing a prostitute.

Lin was born in Taiwan and has written critically online about China’s Communist government, raising questions about whether he would knowingly try to help Beijing. Sulick, the former CIA officer, said one possible explanation is that Lin was a victim of a “false flag” operation in which Chinese agents posed as Taiwanese spies — leading Lin to mistakenly provide information to an American rival instead of an American ally
Taiwan has had its own troubles with mainland Chinese intelligence agencies infiltrating its military. As trade has blossomed between the two sides, cross-strait espionage has also expanded, said Patrick Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific security program at the Center for a New American Security.
“There have been a number of arrests of Taiwanese military personnel, and concern has grown over how lax security has become on the island,” Cronin told FP.

In a 2011 case that rocked the Taiwanese military establishment, Taiwanese Gen. Lo Hsien-che was sentenced to life in prison for selling classified information to China. It was Taiwan’s worst spy case in 50 years, and the general was the highest-ranking official to ever be caught spying for the mainland. In 2013 and 2014, Taiwan uncovered 15 more cases of espionage for the Chinese, almost all by members of active duty or retired members of the military.

Cases of Americans passing secrets to Taiwan are more rare. U.S. State Department official Donald Keyser pleaded guilty in 2005 to charges of unauthorized handling of classified information and passing information to a Taiwanese intelligence agent with whom he was having an affair. Then in 2010, retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. James Wilbur Fondren Jr. was convictedof passing information to a Taiwanese contact, who then forwarded it to Beijing. Fondren had been serving as a deputy director of the U.S. Pacific Command’s Washington liaison office.

If the charges against Lin prove true, it would add yet another notch to the U.S. Navy’s disastrous record of failing to protect state secrets. A cash-strapped American sailor named John Walker spilled a trove of secrets to the Soviets from 1967 to 1985, allowing Moscow to read a vast number of coded messages and know where American submarines were operating. After the damaging Walker scandal, the Navy tightened its rules to ferret out spies and soon discovered that a civilian intelligence analyst, Jonathan Pollard, had been passing suitcases of classified documents to Israel. Pollard was convicted of espionage and served 30 years in prison before he was released in November 2015.

Sulick, who spent years hunting moles within the CIA, said the military has improved its counterintelligence procedures in recent years. If the allegations against Lin are true, Sulick pointed out that his capture is an improvement on the Walker years, when a spy compromised America’s most closely held secrets for 17 years. Still, he said, “I wouldn’t be having a pep rally as a result.”

Beijing hasn’t needed spies to learn damaging secrets about the American planes. The capabilities of the Aries, in particular, were compromised by China once before, when one of the planes collided with a Chinese Shenyang J-8 fighter near Hainan Island in the South China Sea in June 2001.

The U.S. crew was forced to land on the Chinese island. The personnel and the plane were eventually handed over, but not before Chinese technicians are thought to have pulled as much data from it as possible, forcing the U.S. Navy to take a more cautious approach to surveillance flights near the Chinese coast and to upgrade the plane’s systems.

FP reporter Molly O’Toole contributed to this article.

Photo credit: ROB GRIFFITH/AFP/Getty Images

Kabul Libre! One new Afghan trail to the West goes through Cuba.

KABUL — With roads to Europe increasingly blocked by strict border controls, Afghans hoping to flee war and economic peril are desperately searching for new escape routes by way of refugee camps in India, airports in Russia and even the beaches of Cuba.

The shifting travel plans — which are also seeing Afghans attempting to buy their way into Europe before leaving Kabul, through the purchase of visas — may signal the next phase in a migration crisis that is rattling world leaders and draining Afghanistan of its workforce.

After a year in which hundreds of thousands of Afghans poured into Europe by land, more migrants are now trying to skirt hostile border agents and dangerous boat trips by flying to their destinations. As a result, although human smuggling was a booming industry in Afghanistan last year, criminal rackets that trade in ­visas may be reaping a windfall this year.

“People now are not willing to take great risks,” said Tamin Omarzi, who works as a travel agent in Kabul’s largest mall. “They want to just travel with a passport, and don’t come back.”

Last year, along with more than 1 million refugees from Syria and Iraq, about 250,000 Afghans journeyed to Europe in hopes of securing asylum there. Many traveled through Iran and Turkey before crossing the Aegean Sea to Greece.

How Europe is punishing migrants

Overwhelmed by the influx, European leaders have shown less sympathy for Afghans than for refugees from Syria and Iraq. Much of Afghanistan, they note, remains under the control of a Western-backed government.

Last month, the European Union reached a deal with Turkey to send migrants back to refugee camps there, effectively severing the land route to Europe.

Since then, travel agents in ­Kabul report that requests for visas to Iran and Turkey are down by as much as 80 percent compared with last year at this time. A United Nations report released Thursday also concluded that the flow of migrants from Afghanistan has slowed while “people reconsider destinations and subsequent optimal routes.”

“There is currently lower movement but no dropoff in the people wanting to go,” said Alexander Mundt, assistant representative for protection at the U.N. refugee agency. “They are just exploring their options, their means and the right moment to go.”

Plenty of Afghans are still on the move, however, in a mass migration that is raising new challenges for immigration agencies across the world.

Sulaiman Sayeedi, a travel agent in Kabul’s middle-class ­Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood, said there has been a surge in demand for flights to India, Indonesia and Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Once they arrive, Afghan travelers often claim refugee status with the United Nations in hopes of being resettled. In India, for example, Afghan asylum applications have doubled in recent months, according to Mundt.

Other Afghans are flying to Moscow, believing that from there they can cross into Ukraine or even Belarus and then move onward to E.U. countries.

“Some people are coming in and just asking for tickets to anywhere they can get to,” Sayeedi said. “They just want a better life, a more civilized, modern life.”

To achieve that in the United States or Canada, Afghans may make Cuba their gateway to the Western Hemisphere.

Over the past two months, travel agents in Kabul have been surprised by Afghans showing up at their offices with Cuban visas, which are suspected of having been issued in Iran or acquired on the black market.

“Ten or 15 people have come just since January asking for tickets for Cuba,” Sayeedi said. “And they are not staying there. The only option is to move forward, probably on to Mexico and then America or Canada.”

Other agents in Kabul also report a spike in interest in Cuba, and U.N. officials in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz say they recently encountered a family with Cuban visas. Havana has been a way station in the past for South Asians hoping to transit to Central America and from there to the United States.

Besides Cuba, some Afghans are attempting to land in South America, either to seek residency there or make the trip north toward the U.S.-Mexico border.

Rahimihi, a travel agent in Kabul’s central Shar-e Naw district, recently booked flights for relatives who had obtained visas for Ecuador, as well as transit visas through Brazil.

“They first had to go to Pakistan to get the transit visa [from the Brazilian Embassy], and then left two weeks ago,” said Rahimihi, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. “They want to go to Canada.”

But central and northern European countries remain Afghans’ preferred destinations, reflecting the widely held belief here that Germany, Norway and Sweden are the most welcoming toward refugees.

Mohammad Unus has been deported from both Italy and Turkey over the past two years while attempting to reach Germany. Now, for his third attempt, he’s working with a local travel agent.

“Since Ashraf Ghani became president, all the people want to escape from Afghanistan,” Unus said, reflecting widespread concern here that Ghani’s promised economic reforms haven’t materialized. “I’ve already spent $40,000 trying to get to Europe, and now I plan to sell my house to get there if I have to this time.”

Such desperation is fueling the shady enterprise of visa dealing on the streets of Kabul.

According to travel agents, Afghans are now paying dealers $15,000 to $25,000 to obtain a “Schengen visa” — a reference to countries that are part of the Schengen Agreement, which was drawn up to allow unrestricted movement among 26 European nations. The business continues even though seven of those nations, including Germany and Sweden, have re-imposed temporary border controls.

The visa dealers work directly with rogue staffers at European embassies who issue the visas for a kickback, the agents claim.

“You never know who is doing it on the inside, but it’s someone with a soft heart who is approving these documents,” said Peer ­Muhammad Roheen, managing director of Air Gateway Travel and Tours in Kabul.

One travel broker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss his sensitive business, said Afghans even with modest means are now turning to visa dealers because “people now prefer to go by air to Europe directly.”

“If you got good contacts inside the embassy, you can get it done in one week,” the broker said.

When visa dealers fail to obtain valid visas, they sometimes turn to even more elaborate schemes, according to travel agents.

Legal residents of Europe, for example, are being paid to travel to Afghanistan or Pakistan and then give their passports to Afghans with similar physical characteristics, said Mustafa, a travel agent in southwest Kabul who also uses only one name. The person who gives up the passport then claims it was lost or stolen.

“People will pay, and those short on cash will sell anything they have,” Mustafa said.

But U.N. officials question how many Afghans will be able to afford expensive options for fleeing.

“The people with that kind of money to spend are already gone,” Mundt said, adding that many of those now trying to flee are poor and middle-class families. “They may still have some means, but maybe $6,000 to invest and not $20,000.”

The recent outflow of wealth and talent from Afghanistan has alarmed Ghani, who has been urging Afghans to stay home.

But until stability returns, travel agents expect to stay busy planning one-way trips.

“For survival, people will do anything,” said Roheen, who estimates that 30 percent of urban Afghan youths hope to leave the country. “If they encounter a problem, then they will just try another option.”

Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.

Syria opposition threatens to quit peace talks amid Aleppo carnage

Opposition groups to meet amid Aleppo fighting, impasse over fate of President Assad, and decide 'what to do'

Syrian opposition delegation (L -R) George Sabra, delegation head Asaad al-Zoabi, chief negotiator Mohammed Alloush attend peace talks at the UN in Geneva (AFP) 

Sunday 17 April 2016

Fighting in Aleppo killed at least 22 civilians as the opposition delegation threatened Sunday to quit Syria peace talks in Geneva if there is no progress on a political transition.

The opposition High Negotiations Committee said the indirect negotiations could collapse if Syria's government refuses to compromise on political and humanitarian issues.

"We might suspend (our participation in) the talks if things carry on this way, and then there will be no prospect for any political solution," HNC member Abdulhakim Bashar said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the number of civilians killed in flashpoint Aleppo city was one of the highest single tolls since a fragile truce came into force on 27 February.

Nearly all warring parties in Syria - the government, rebels, militants and Kurds - have carved out zones of control in war-torn Aleppo province.

The truce has seen violence drop across parts of Syria, including the northern city of Aleppo, but renewed clashes there in the past 24 hours have seriously strained the truce, the Observatory said.

At least six civilians were killed and eight wounded in government air strikes on rebel-held eastern parts of the city on Saturday. 

And a barrage of rockets and sniper fire by opposition groups onto government-controlled western districts killed 16 civilians, including 10 children and two women.

"There's a clear escalation. This was the bloodiest incident in Aleppo and its province" since the ceasefire began, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

"This escalation directly threatens the truce."

The HNC has questioned the government's commitment to a political solution to Syria's five-year war, particularly in the wake of the renewed violence in Aleppo.

"The humanitarian situation is continually deteriorating, the issue of the detainees has not seen any progress, the ceasefire has almost collapsed, and now there is an attack on Aleppo from three sides," Bashar said in Switzerland.

"Given these factors, we are reviewing everything, and we will continue our meetings today (Sunday) so that tomorrow we can decide what to do."

Talks nearly at 'impasse'

A second member of the HNC delegation, speaking anonymously, said the talks were nearly at "an impasse".

"The negotiations have nearly reached an impasse with the intransigent regime's refusal to negotiate the fate of (President Bashar al-) Assad in the Geneva talks," the member said.

Assad's fate has remained the main sticking point in peace talks, with Syria's opposition clinging to its call to depose him since the conflict broke out in 2011.

But the government has rejected the embattled leader's departure, calling his fate "a red line".

In Tehran, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini used her discussions with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and National Security Chief Ali Shamkhani to press Iran to push Damascus into a political process that could end in constitutional reform and free elections after five years of bloodshed, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Iran has not only a lot of influence in Damascus still but also a deep knowledge of the regime that can help the international community to find formulas that could be useful to have a political process that is successful,” Mogherini told a small group of journalists on Saturday evening.

The peace plan outlined by UN envoy Staffan de Mistura and backed by world powers envisions a political transition, a new constitution, and presidential and parliamentary elections by September 2017.

But Syria's government hosted its own regularly scheduled parliamentary elections last week, which Assad's ruling Baath party easily won. 

As expected, the Baath party and its allies won a majority of the 250 parliamentary seats in a vote that only took place in government-held parts of the country.

The election was denounced by the opposition as a "farce".

In Geneva on Sunday, the chief negoyiator of the HNC delegation called for renewed attacks on government forces, despite the shaky truce.

"Don't trust the regime and don't wait for their pity," Mohammed Alloush, a leading political figure in the Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) rebel group, wrote on Twitter. 

"Strike them at their necks (kill them). Strike them everywhere," he said.

A fellow opposition figure said Alloush's hawkish statement did not represent the HNC's position. 

Brokered by Russia and the United States, the ceasefire agreement to cease hostilities excludes the fight against the Islamic State group or Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria.

The truce had largely held across parts of Syria since late February, despite frequent accusations of breaches on both sides.

But recent violence has sparked concerns the ceasefire may peter out, partly because rebels are involved in the battles too.

The Islamic State group has seized fresh territory from rebel groups in Syria's north, threatening the key opposition town of Azaz, just eight kilometres south of the Turkish border.

The onslaught has forced 30,000 Syrians to flee, and tens of thousands more are at risk of displacement.

Since the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011, half of the country's population has been displaced - including five million who have fled to neighbouring states.

More than 270,000 people have been killed.

Saudi-Iran tensions scupper deal to freeze oil output

Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi arrives to a meeting between OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers, in Doha, Qatar April 17, 2016.REUTERS/IBRAHEEM AL OMARI

A worker looks at a pump jack at the Rosneft company owned Samotlor oil field outside the West Siberian city of Nizhnevartovsk, Russia, January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

BY RANIA EL GAMAL AND REEM SHAMSEDDINE- Mon Apr 18, 2016

A deal to freeze oil output by OPEC and non-OPEC producers fell apart on Sunday after Saudi Arabia demanded that Iran join in despite calls on Riyadh to save the agreement and help prop up crude prices.

The development will revive oil industry fears that major producers are embarking again on a battle for market share, especially after Riyadh threatened to raise output steeply if no freeze deal were reached.

Iran is also pledging to ramp up production following the lifting of Western sanctions in January, making a compromise with Riyadh almost impossible as the two fight proxy wars in Yemen and Syria.

Some 18 oil nations, including non-OPEC Russia, gathered in the Qatari capital of Doha for what was expected to be the rubber-stamping of a deal - in the making since February - to stabilize output at January levels until October 2016.

But OPEC's de facto leader Saudi Arabia told participants it wanted all members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to take part in the freeze, including Iran, which was absent from the talks.

Tehran had refused to stabilize production, seeking to regain market share post-sanctions.

After five hours of fierce debate about the wording of a communique - including between Saudi Arabia and Russia - delegates and ministers announced no deal had been reached.

"We concluded we all need time to consult further," Qatar's energy minister Mohammed al-Sada told reporters. Several OPEC sources said if Iran agreed to join the freeze at the next OPEC meeting on June 2, talks with non-OPEC producers could resume.

Russian oil minister Alexander Novak called the Saudi demand "unreasonable" and said he was disappointed as he had come to Doha under the impression that all sides would sign the deal instead of debating it.

Novak said Russia was not shutting the door on a deal but the government would not restrain output for now.

Russia is a key ally of Iran and has been defending Tehran's right to raise output post-sanctions while also supporting the Islamic Republic in many of its conflicts with Riyadh.

TOUGH SAUDI STANCE

The failure to reach a global deal could halt a recent recovery in oil prices.

"With no deal today, markets' confidence in OPEC's ability to achieve any sensible supply balancing act is likely to diminish and this is surely bearish for the oil markets, where prices had rallied partly on expectations of a deal," said Natixis oil analyst Abhishek Deshpande.

In December, OPEC failed to agree on output policy for the first time in years after Iran disagreed over a production ceiling proposed by Saudi Arabia, arguing again that it wanted to boost output post-sanctions.

"Without a deal, the likelihood of markets balancing is now pushed back to mid-2017. We will see a lot of speculators getting out next week," said Deshpande, who added that prices could fall close to $30 per barrel.

Brent oil LCOc1 has risen to nearly $45 a barrel, up 60 percent from January lows, on optimism that a deal would help ease the supply glut that has seen prices sink from levels as high as $115 hit in mid-2014.

Ecuador earthquake: at least 246 killed with many still trapped

People search for their belongings amid the debris of their destroyed homes in Pedernales, on Ecuador’s Pacific coast. Photograph: Dolores Ochoa/AP

 A woman cries as she views the crumbled remains of her home in the town of Pedernales. Photograph: Jose Jacome/EPA

7.8-magnitude quake brings devastation to cities and villages along Pacific coast, with authorities warning death toll is likely to rise

7.8-magnitude earthquake hits Ecuador – video

Jessica Elgot, Jonathan Watts, Eduardo Varas and Marcela Ribadeneira in Quito
Sunday 17 April 2016

Ecuador’s most devastating earthquake in 40 years has killed at least 246 people, with bridges buckling and buildings collapsing in Pacific coastal cities and fishing villages.

The official death toll as dawn broke after the 7.8-magnitude quake was 235, but authorities warned that the numbers were likely to rise, with many people still trapped and rescue efforts in the remote region at the epicentre of the quake hampered by landslides. More than 10,000 troops have been deployed to keep order and help with rescue operations. Venezuela and Mexico’s governments pledged specialist aid to help search teams.

The earthquake struck shortly after night fell on Saturday near Muisne, in a sparsely populated area of mostly small ports and tourist villages about 100 miles from the capital, Quito. Local officials reported deaths in the cities of Portoviejo, the Tarqui neighbourhood of Manta and Guayaquil, where at least one person died after a bridge collapsed on top of a car. Houses were upended or reduced to rubble, some with washing lines still strung up or photos hanging on the walls.

Ecuador: car pulled from under fallen bridge after earthquake – video

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Pushing the Envelope

Nov 19, 2014

Four imaging experts talk about new innovations in preclinical in vivo modeling

The human brain contains 100 billion neurons—with 100 trillion connections—surrounded by structural support cells closely packed together. Understanding how these networks of neurons process information would enable neuroscientists to better study and model the twisted circuitry of neurological disorders.

But most of the current options for imaging the brain have limitations, noted Jin Lee, who heads an Imaging Research Group at Stanford University. Methods like Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) can be used to trace activity across the entire brain, but identifying relationships between measured neural activities and structural phenotypes only gets us so far, she says. "Even if you have full connectivity in front of you, it's hard to relate that to given behaviors, so you need to understand the dynamics of the brain," said Lee, one of four imaging experts who delivered talks during Charles River's scientific luncheon at the Society of Neuroscience meeting.

Lee, an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, Neurology and and Neurological Sciences, has been applying optogenetic functional magnetic resonance imaging (ofMRI), to probe brain circuitry at the cellular level.

Optogenetics, the combination of genetics and optics to control well-defined events within cells of living tissue, is a hot topic in neuroscience right now. In the four years since the journal Naturedeclared it their "method of the year" the field of optogenetics has expanded rapidly. Some of the most well-attended poster presentations at SfN were on applications of this technology, and Nature Communications recently described using a wireless-powered optogenetic designer cell implant to switch on genes using the power of thought. Brainwaves from human participants activated a tiny light which had been implanted in mice, the BBC reported.

Lee's lab is capitalizing on recent advances in ofMRI, which allow for the integration of much faster data acquisition (13 milliseconds rather than 8 seconds) and high signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio to visualize brain activity by modulating genetically, spatially and topologically cell populations in real-time. Some of her recent work has involved stimulating the dorsal and medial temporal regions of the brain (where the hippocampus is located) to induce seizures in mice, and dissecting out different pathways associated with different phenotypes. But her lab is also interested in stem cell integration, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Yet while the technology could open doors for future studies of neurological disease. Lee acknowledged that it's not an easily translatable technique. Her lab uses recombinant adeno-associated viral viruses to introduce the transgenes into neural cells, and must constantly validate the vector from lot to lot to ensure that the variable results they are seeing in animals are reproducible.

Head Injuries

Advances in neuroimaging are also allowing scientists to study traumatic brain injuries (TBI) with a greater degree of specificity. Because so many factors determine the immediate and long-term consequences of head trauma—from the speed, angle and force at which the skull is struck, to the frequency of the injury, and the time and quality of the medical response—studying TBI in a controlled environment with defined endpoints seems almost counterintuitive to what actually occurs when you hit the windshield of your car, step on a land mine, take a bullet, or suffer repeated blows to the head.

Moreover, the therapeutic window is extremely narrow for intervening in the cascade of secondary complications that a TBI triggers, notably the catastrophic rise in chemically reactive molecules that destroys cellular structures, and leads to brain edema, inflammation, apoptosis and late cell death. Understanding this complex TBI cascade remains a major focus in animal studies.

"Acute changes in the brain trigger a number of different processes that go on for months and leads to different outcomes in patients," says Olli Gröhn, professor in Biological Nuclear Magnetic Resonance at the University of Eastern Finland, who also spoke at CR's scientific luncheon,Pushing the Envelope: MRI Applications in Preclinical In Vivo Modeling. "Imaging methods are not very specific so we are trying to find better ways of detecting these processes."

Those ways include using both microstructural and fMRI to study progressive damage and plasticity after a TBI.

Gröhn says DTI has been useful in studying the microsctructural changes that occur after injury (and which could be responsible for the persistent cognitive and behavioral impairments that often occur after TBI). But because the MRI results lack specificity, labs have turned to high angular resolution diffusion-weighted imaging or HARDI as a next-generation application that is designed to extract more information from the signals being produced by MRI. "We are starting to work with this and we're hoping this kind of technique will give us new information that we can use," says Gröhn.

The two other speakers who rounded out the luncheon event included Dr. Fuqiang Zhao, Senior Imaging Scientist at Merck, who spoke about preclinical fMRI and olfactory responses, and Thomas Mueggler, Principal Scientist and Imaging Expert at Roche, who spoke about fMRI in models of neurodevelopmental disorders.