Saturday, May 20, 2017

US Soldier Accused of Stealing Humvees from South Korean Base

Scott Olson / Getty Images

18.05.2017

An American soldier in South Korea has been accused of being a member of a smuggling ring that stole three Humvees from a US base and tried to sell them. Six South Korean civilians have also been accused of involvement in the crime.

The soldier's full name has been withheld, but he is a 47-year-old Korean-American with the surname "Jeon." The six Koreans who have been accused include a civilian contractor who worked on the base, three junk dealers, a prop maker and a middleman. So far, they have not been detained or charged.

The crimes took place in June and September 2016. According to Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency detective Kim Dong-hwan, Jeon and the contractor allegedly camouflaged the vehicles as unused items. They told their colleagues on the base that the Humvees (disguised as other material) were being sent to the Defense Logistics Agency, but then they shipped them to the other members of the ring instead.

An F/A-18E Super Hornet lands on the flight deck of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson as the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain (L) and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer transit the western Pacific Ocean May 3, 2017.

USS Carl Vinson to Remain Near Shores of Korean Peninsula in Open-Ended Mission

Kim said that the prop maker bought the Humvee for about $9,800, but the police later retrieved the vehicle. This is a fraction of a Humvee's market value, which is usually between $35,700-65,200, according to UPI.

The other two Humvees were to be smuggled out of the country and sold in Cambodia, Mongolia or Sri Lanka, but the police detained the other suspects before this could happen. They found the missing vehicles on one of the junk dealer's lots.

"[Jeon] insists that he was not trying to steal the vehicles with the rest of the guys," Kim told Stars and Stripes. "The Koreans kept denying what they did at first. But they've been saying lately that they attempted to sell the Humvees." Seoul police suspect the ring of receiving stolen goods, larceny and trespassing on military facilities.

More US Bombers to Korea? Not Right Now, Says Air Force General

US Forces Korea (USFK) declined to comment on this specific case as it is still under investigation. A spokesperson did say that USFK take "all allegations of misconduct or criminal activity very seriously."

Investigators from the US Departments of Defense and Homeland Security are assisting in the investigation, according to Seoul police. They are also investigating to see whether the ring stole any other military material from the base.

South Korea has the fourth highest deployment of US troops of any nation after Germany, Japan, and the United States itself. 28,500 American servicemen are deployed there, primarily Army and Air Force personnel.

‘I think Islam hates us’: A timeline of Trump’s comments about Islam and Muslims

Trump lauded the "tremendous day" and "tremendous investments into the United States" from Saudi Arabia. (The Washington Post)

By Jenna Johnson and Abigail Hauslohner May 20 at 3:16 PM

President Trump is in Saudi Arabia this weekend to meet with Arab leaders, visit the birthplace of Islam and give a speech about religious tolerance with the hope of resetting his reputation with the world's 1.6 billion Muslims. But it's unclear if a two-day visit is enough to overshadow his past statements about Islam and its faithful, with his rhetoric becoming more virulent as he campaigned for president.

‘I think Islam hates us’ A timeline of Trump’s comments about Islam and Muslims.docx by Thavam on Scribd

Chelsea Manning's controversial journey to freedom

While dealing with gender dysphoria, Manning sparked a political firestorm just 3 years after enlisting

Protesters, including those at a Pride parade in San Francisco on June 28, 2015, consistently called for the release of Chelsea Manning. Manning was finally released from a military prison early Wednesday. (Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters)---Manning is escorted by military police at Fort Meade, Md., before an early hearing on Dec. 18, 2011 — the year charges were finalized to include aiding the enemy. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Manning is escorted to a security vehicle outside the courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., on Aug. 20, 2013. Prosecutors asked for a 60-year sentence after Manning's conviction, but the colonel who adjudicated the case handed down a 35-year term. (Patrick Semansky/The Associated Press)---In a now-famous image provided by the U.S. Army, Pte. Chelsea Manning poses for a photo wearing a wig and lipstick. Believed to be taken in early 2010, Manning first shared it with a superior in the army via email. (U.S. Army via The Associated Press)

By Chris Iorfida- May 16, 2017

Chelsea Manning, now freed from a military prison, has impacted the U.S. military like few others in modern times.

Unknown just over seven years ago, the low-level army analyst — who was first widely known as Pte. Bradley Manning — unleashed a torrent of 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to WikiLeaks.

Convicted by a military court, she has been characterized as a vital whistleblower by some — and as a traitor by others.

Chase Strangio, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing Manning in a lawsuit, has written on the eve of her release that the 29-year-old "will walk into a different world than the one she left behind when she was arrested in 2010. And she will walk as a different person than she was seven years ago."

Changes since her imprisonment include the lifting of a long-standing ban against transgender men and women serving openly in the military, and WikiLeaks now being firmly established as part of the American political landscape after its activist role in the U.S. presidential election.

Here are some key dates in the Manning saga:

Dec. 17, 1987: Bradley Edward Manning is born in Oklahoma City, the younger of two kids to an American IT professional and a British-born mother.

1987-2001: Manning is said to be a quiet child with gifted computer skills. Soon before moving to Wales with his mother following his parents' divorce, a friend says he confides he is gay.

2005-06: Manning returns to Oklahoma from Wales, but struggles to hold employment and is said to clash with his father and stepmother, culminating in a 911 call from the home in March 2006. It is alleged he threatens them while brandishing a knife. No charges are filed.

2007-09: Manning enlists in the U.S. army. Standing just five-foot-three, Manning at times struggles physically and emotionally with the rigours of basic training, but completes intelligence-analyst training and receives top-secret clearance.

October 2009: Manning is deployed to Iraq.

January 2010: Manning begins to compile classified files from a defence department intranet. The information is copied to a CD labelled Lady Gaga and then transferred to an SD card housed in a camera he takes back to the U.S. while on leave.

After cursory attempts to interest the Washington Post and New York Times, Manning decides to send the files to WikiLeaks, uploading them in February through a broadband connection at a Barnes & Noble bookstore.

Manning later tells a judge that she felt the public had the right to know the information, to spark a debate on U.S. military and foreign policy. Three years later, she says her conscience is clear and she didn't believe the information would damage U.S. national security.

April-May 2010: Manning emails a superior, admitting to gender confusion that is "not going away" and including an attachment of the now-famous picture showing Manning in a blond wig and makeup.

"I don't know what to do anymore, and the only 'help' that seems to be available is severe punishment and/or getting rid of me," Manning writes.

Two weeks later, Manning strikes a female soldier, leading to discipline and intensive sessions with a therapist. He is diagnosed as having gender dysphoria.

May 20-26, 2010: Manning meets a convicted hacker online and, through a series of chats on AOL Instant Messenger using encryption software, reveals that he has leaked information regarding detainees and military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The leak includes video of a deadly 2007 Baghdad helicopter attack posted on WikiLeaks in April, in which civilians and journalists were killed.

"He was just grabbing information from where he could get it and trying to leak it," Adrian Lamo, who contacted authorities, would later tell The New York Times of their exchanges.

June 7, 2010: It is publicly announced that Pte. Bradley Manning, of the Second Brigade, 10th Mountain Division in Baghdad, was arrested in May on suspicion of releasing classified information.

March 2, 2011: Previous charges are revised and upgraded, leading to a total of 22 counts, including charges involving the Espionage Act and of aiding the enemy. Manning faces the prospect of life in prison.

Feb. 28, 2013: Manning offers the first detailed explanation of his actions while offering to plead guilty to 10 of the 22 charges of misusing classified information.

"The most alarming aspect of the [helicopter] video to me was the seemingly delightful blood lust the aerial weapons team happened to have," he says.

June 3 - July 30, 2013: During his military trial at Fort Meade, Md., the prosecution brands Manning an anarchist whose leaked files ended up in the hands of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's communications arm, saying the collaboration with WikiLeaks was earlier and much less passive than the defence claims. The defence portrays Manning as a naive and confused person who gave ample signs to superiors through behavioural issues and incidents that top-secret access should have been revoked.

Manning is acquitted of aiding the enemy but convicted of 20 counts, including six involving the Espionage Act.

Aug. 22, 2013: Manning receives a 35-year sentence. With time already served in detention, Manning is eligible for parole in just over seven years.

Aug. 23, 2013: In a statement first aired on NBC News, Manning requests to be referred to by a new name, reflecting her transgender identity.

"I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female," she writes, adding, "given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible."

April 2014: A judge in Kansas approves her legal name change to Chelsea Elizabeth Manning.

September 2014: Manning files a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defence in Federal Court, claiming she's been denied access to "medically necessary treatment" such as hormone therapy in her transition. Long held in solitary confinement, the suit claims she is at risk for self-castration and suicide.

March 2016: Through a freedom-of-information request from prison, Manning and her legal team learn of "insider threat" guidelines that were specifically created in the wake of her actions.

While the document stresses that not all leakers have "malicious intent," it states that unwitting insiders could find themselves used or compromised by U.S. enemies. Critics say the warning signs outlined in the guidelines are broad and unhelpful, and that it smacks of the tactics used to weed out Communists in the 1950s.

September-November 2016: Manning's lawyers confirm reports she attempted suicide while being imprisoned in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. She goes on a brief hunger strike over delayed treatment for her gender dysphoria.

January 2017: The White House announces that Manning will have her sentence commuted.

"I feel very comfortable that justice has been served," outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama says, pointing out Manning's sentence was "disproportionate" compared to others convicted of leaks.

With a May release, she will have served nearly seven years.

Obama emphasizes it is not a pardon, but that hardly appeases critics. Republican Senator and decorated war hero John McCain calls it a "grave mistake" that "devalues the courage of real whistleblowers."

Weeks later, the ACLU's Strangio says the commutation was "life-saving" for Manning.

The future

Manning indicated in January she planned to live in the Maryland area upon her release. A week before her being freed, she expressed optimism for her future and thanked supporters, saying her "spirits were lifted in dark times" by letters she received from veterans and young trans people, among others.

A U.S. Army spokesperson told USA Today that Manning will not receive pay, but is "statutorily entitled to medical care while on excess leave in an active-duty status" pending an appeal of the court-martial conviction.

WikiLeaks sets up a bitcoin fund to help Manning in her future endeavours.

With files from The Associated Press and Reuters

Roots of anti-Muslim Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar

Saturday, 20 May 2017

If Myanmar is known throughout the world today, it is not for the fabled “Burma” rice and teak, or its ornate Buddhist pagodas, but for the persecution of its Muslim minority, chiefly the Rohingyas, who were formerly known as Arakanese or Rakhine Muslims.

Ironically, anti-Muslim feelings and actions have surged with the restoration of democracy in Myanmar, after 50 years of rule by a military junta. Even more ironical and deeply disturbing is the fact that this is taking place also under the rule of pro-democracy icon and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Today, more than 150,000 Rohingyas are living in refugee camps and thousands have fled to other countries, principally to Bangladesh. But wherever they go, doors are slammed on their face. Along with Sri Lankan Tamils, the Rohingyas have the dubious distinction of being the only “boat people” from the South Asian region.

Muslim population in Myanmar

The Muslim population in Myanmar is varied, both racially and linguistically. In the north, in Rakhine state, formerly called Arakan, the Muslims are basically immigrants from East Bengal (now Bangladesh) and speak Bengali. A majority in North Arakan, the Rohingyas trace their history to the 15th Century, though the bulk of the immigration took place after the establishment of British rule in Myanmar in the 19th Century. In South Arakan or South Rakhine, however, Myanmarese Buddhists are in majority.

In the southern part of Myanmar, the Muslims are of mixed origin, tracing their ancestry to a bewildering variety of ethnic groups from various parts of India, Iran and the Middle East. Those Indian Muslims who have Myanmarese blood are called Zerabadis. Many Myanmarese Muslims in the south sport Myanmarese names but that has not given them any protection.

Before the British established themselves in Myanmar after the First Anglo-Burman War in 1826, the Muslim population in the country was small, even in Arakan, which is close to Muslim-majority East Bengal. But the violent way in which the British took over Myanmar following the First and Second Anglo-Burma Wars (1826 and 1852 respectively), and the heavy Indian immigration which they encouraged as rulers, created anti-Indian feelings among the Myanmarese, who, unlike the immigrants, were also Buddhist.

It was as if the British had opened the floodgates to Indian immigration. At the turn of the 20th Century, annual arrivals had touched 250,000 and Yangon had become an Indian majority city. According to Anthony Ware of Deakin University of Australia, Yangon, which was a Buddhist town with innumerable pagodas and monasteries, became a multi-ethnic and multi-religious town in less than 50 years of British occupation.

Since the town had been burnt down completely during the 1852 war, and only major Buddhist shrines like the Sule and Shwedagon pagodas were allowed to stand, Yagon was laid out afresh by the British. In that process, shrines of non-Buddhist communities were built, vastly outnumbering Buddhist shrines.

With their places of worship having disappeared or pulled down to make way for development, the Myanmarese Buddhists of Yangon migrated virtually en masse to Upper Myanmar.

Buddhism and the Myanmarese were both marginalised simultaneously by British power. Their place was taken by Hindus, Muslims, Parsees, Jews, and others from all parts of India.

Marginalisation of Buddhism

The abolition of the Myanmarese kingdom by the British also contributed to the marginalisation of Buddhism as the king was seen as the embodiment of Buddhist power and as its protector. The Myanmarese Buddhist edifice had lost its cornerstone with the abolishing kingship.

It is therefore not surprising that Myanmarese nationalism kicked off with the establishment of the Young Men’s Buddhist Association. Buddhist feelings ran quite high in 1938, when an Indian Muslim cleric made an anti-Muslim remark. Buddhist mobs attacked Muslims all over Myanmar. Malayalam speaking Moplah Muslim tea vendors in Myanmarese railway stations, a fixture in Myanmar railways, made easy targets. Thousands were forced to flee to their native Kerala.

When World War II spread to Myanmar in 1942, most Indians fled to India but the Muslims stayed on. To fight the Japanese invader, the British formed a local resistance group called the V Force in Arakan and recruited Arakan or Rakhine Muslims for it. The Buddhists of Myanmar and Rakhine tended to be pro-Japanese and had formed the Burma Independence Army to fight alongside the Japanese who had promised to make Myanmar an independent country after the war.

Buddhist-Muslim war

In the event, this war-time division triggered a Buddhist-Muslim war in which the majority of the victims were the non-militarised Muslim and Buddhist populations of Arakan or Rakhine.

As the British were clearing out of the Indian sub-continent in the late 1940s, a largely Hindu India and a largely Muslim Pakistan were going to be formed and Myanmar was going to be independent with a Buddhist majority to boot. At this time, the Muslims of Arakan or Rakhine started a movement to get their area attached to Pakistan as East Bengal was to become East Pakistan. This exacerbated relations between the Muslims and Buddhists in Rakhine and elsewhere in Myanmar.

But the Muslim movement failed because Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, rejected the plea for accession in order not to annoy Myanmarese nationalist leaders.

However, the Rakhine Muslims were unfazed. They started a Jehadi movement to secure independence for Rakhine. This eventually became the most fiercely contested separatist movement in Myanmar after independence in 1948. It was finally put down by force in the 1960s by the military government led by Gen. Ne Win.

During the 50-year rule of Myanmar by a military junta, the communal situation was kept under control even as the regime actively promoted the Mynamarisation and “Buddhistisation” of the country. Most of the remaining Indians, barring the Muslims, fled as a result of this.

Vote bank politics

However, when democracy was being restored in phases, the Muslims of south Myanmar, who seemed to be getting along the Myanmarese Buddhists, gradually began to feel the heat. Democracy, even in its incipient phase, had unleashed the politics of numbers and the Buddhist majority saw the need for maintaining its numerical superiority and also for using it to capture and retain power.

The Muslims were portrayed as an ever-increasing group based on the belief that that they had at least four wives and that they encroached on the Buddhist population by marrying and converting Buddhist females.

When ex-General Thein Sein was in power, he brought in a law to govern inter-faith marriage, family size, religious freedom and conversion to other religions. The “Ma Ba Tha” (Association for the Protection of Race Religion) movement, led by the vitriolic monk Ven. Ashin Wirathu, praised President Sein for this, even though it was campaigning for the full restoration of democracy to fully unleash Buddhist power.

Intense anti-Muslim propaganda led to riots in 2012 and 2014. By the time Nobel Peace Prize winner and pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi came to full power in 2016, Wirathu’s movement had become the strongest in the country with branches in 250 of the 330 townships in Myanmar and thousands of followers. By this time, the Muslims had also begun to be seen as local representatives of the world-wide Jehadi or Wahabi movement and as a security threat to the country as well as Buddhism.

Persecution continues

Meanwhile, efforts to marginalise and push out the Rakhine Muslims had progressed. Way back in 1982 itself, the Rakhine Muslims had been entered as “Stateless Bengali Muslims” in the census. Since the 1990s, they have become refugees in their own country and also abroad. 150,000 of them are presently in refugee camps and several had tried to flee to countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan (Karachi) and India.

But nowhere are these people welcome. Bangladesh, which has had to bear the brunt, put them up in a previously uninhabited island called Thengar Char, which is accessible only in winter and is a refuge for pirates.

Attempts to get the Aung San Suu Kyi Government to take back the Rohingyas and stop the violence against them by Buddhist extremist-inspired Myanmarese mobs drew no response from Suu Kyi. She would dismiss these pleas by saying simply: “We have other priorities” or “There is another side to the story”.

The US and human rights groups have highlighted the plight of the Rakhine Muslims or Rohingyas as they are called generally now. But to no avail. Apparently, the Western powers do not want to pressurise Aung San Suu Kyi so as not to push her towards China. The military junta which ruled Myanmar before her, had been very pro-China and had kept the West out of Myanmar. Suu Kyi had reversed this. The West had rewarded her for her pro-West leanings by giving her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

With emerging Asian power China not interested in human rights, the West and India indifferent to their plight, and Bangladesh having shut the door to them, the persecution of the Rohingyas in Myanmar is likely to continue unabated.

The hypocrisy of owning nuclear weapons

2017-05-20

During the French election no candidate talked about France’s nuclear weapons. In Britain, the subject has been raised at its election in an attempt to undermine the Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn. But the long-time anti-bomb activist compromised his views, saying in effect he was against them but Labour Party policy was for them. Meanwhile, the Western nations worry and rage about North Korea developing nuclear weapons. There is a lack of principle and honesty as well as an overdose of self-delusion as to their effectiveness as a deterrent in this whole bomb game.

We were standing in Hiroshima looking at a stone wall. All there was to see was a shadow of a man. It had been etched into the wall at the moment of his obliteration by the blinding light of the first atomic bomb. Olof Palme, prime minister of Sweden, stared hard at it. An hour later he had to give a speech as head of the Independent Commission on Disarmament of which I was a member. “My fear,” he remarked, “is that mankind itself will end up as nothing more than a shadow on a wall.”

It’s time not just to rant about North Korea’s bomb but to get on with disarmament in the West and Russia, even taking unilateral moves. After all, that was the pledge they made in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Charles de Gaulle once observed, “After a nuclear war the two sides would have neither powers, nor laws, nor cities, nor cultures, nor cradles, nor tombs.” Nikita Khrushchev, who presided over the Soviet Union in the days of the Cuban missile crisis, later wrote, “When I learned all the facts about nuclear power I couldn’t sleep for several days.” And one of his successors, Mikhail Gorbachev, once recounted how during training to use his “nuclear suitcase,” he never pretended to give the order to fire.

Yet against this sense and sensibility is arrayed popular inertia on one side and an extraordinarily deeply embedded culture of nuclear deterrence on the other. As former West German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt analysed it, “There is an enormous body of vested interests not only through lobbying in Washington and Moscow but through influence on intellectuals, on people who write books and articles in newspapers and do features on television.” And, in a shrewd afterthought, he added, “It’s very difficult as a reader or as a consumer of TV to distinguish by one’s own judgment what is led by these interests and what is led by rational conclusion.” There are two main issues -- moral and political -- in any discussion on nuclear weapons. For some, nuclear armaments are so wicked, so evil, in their capacity to execute life as we know it that there can be no talk of modifying or controlling them; they must be banned, if necessary unilaterally renounced. Deterrence, even if it could be proved to have kept the peace, is profoundly immoral in concept and tone, for the threat to destroy is as wrong as the act itself.

This latter observation is true. But equally it can lead to the conclusion that we have to deal with the problem by multilateral means -- by agreement between the antagonists. The means of getting rid of them is as important a moral issue as the means of deterrence. If a reduction of the stockpile was done in such a way as to increase instability and the likelihood of war, this would be as reprehensible an act as one which provoked war by initiating a new round in the arms race.

Thomas Nagel in his essay, “War and Massacres,” has suggested that we are working between two poles of moral intuition. We know that there are some outcomes that must be avoided at all costs and we know that there are some costs that can never be morally justified. We must face the possibility, Nagel argues, that these two forms of moral intuition are not capable of being brought together into a single coherent moral system.

There is an enormous body of vested interests not only through lobbying in Washington and Moscow but through influence on intellectuals, on people who write books and articles in newspapers and do features on television

Yes, but. We have to be careful not to be carried away with the tortuous logic of such an argument. I suspect that John Mearsheimer, America’s pre-eminent balance of power theorist, might find comfort in this rather fine moral balancing. He has called nuclear weapons a powerful force for peace. Today he advocates well-managed proliferation, and he would like to see Germany and Japan armed with nuclear weapons.

The title of Herman Kahn’s book on Cold War nuclear strategy, “Thinking the Unthinkable,” captured the dilemma perfectly:

That it is unthinkable to imagine the wholesale slaughter of societies, yet at the same time it appears necessary to do so, in the hope that you hit upon some formulation of deterrence that will preclude the act. But then in the process you may wind up amassing forces that engender the very outcome you hope to avoid.

It’s time not just to rant about North Korea’s bomb but to get on with disarmament in the West and Russia, even taking unilateral moves. After all, that was the pledge they made in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

For 17 years the writer worked as a foreign affairs columnist for the International Herald Tribune.

UK's first proton beam machine arrives at Newport clinic

How the final proton beam therapy room will look-PPI

19 May 2017

A key component of the UK's first high-energy proton beam machine has been delivered to its new home in Newport.

Proton Partners International (PPI) received the part that will fire the cancer-treating beam at its Rutherford Cancer Centre.

PPI said the UK's "most-advanced piece of cancer machinery" could transform treatment for 500 patients a year.

Currently, only low-energy treatment is available in the UK for rare eye cancers.

The Welsh Government said proton beam therapy will be available at the centre to NHS Wales patients with certain cancers "within the next year".

PPI chief executive Mike Moran said it was the "most strategic health project in this country in decades".

"It's significant for the people of Wales to have high-energy proton beam therapy available," he added.

He said the treatment would "certainly improve" clinical outcomes and the experience for patients, who up to now have had to spend up to six weeks abroad to get proton beam therapy.

The use of proton therapy was highlighted by the case of five-year-old Ashya King, whose parents took him to the Czech Republic for treatment for a brain tumour three years ago.

After its installation, the machine will be up and running next year.

PPI said treatment at the centre will be available to medically-insured private patients, self-paying patients and patients referred by the NHS.

Analysis by BBC Wales health correspondent Owain Clarke

This is certainly a coup for those trying to make Wales a hub for health innovation and research.

But it is unclear how many of the 500 patients a year expected to be treated at the privately run centre will be from the Welsh NHS.

That is because the NHS in England is currently building two similar proton beam centres "in-house".

Located at established hospitals (in London and Manchester), some argue they'd be better placed to provide more comprehensive, "wrap-around" care than would be possible at a stand-alone centre.

Discussions between the company, the Welsh Government and Welsh NHS I'm told are well advanced but whatever the outcome of those, as the first centre of its type in the UK, this is certainly a significant development.

Proton beam therapy is a highly-targeted type of radiotherapy which can treat hard-to-reach cancers, such as spinal tumours, with a lower risk of damaging the surrounding tissue and causing side effects.

About 140 patients a year are sent abroad from across the NHS - mostly to the US and Switzerland - at a cost of around £114,000 each.

Experts have said the proton beam clinic in Newport could half that cost, while also allowing patients to remain close to their families while receiving treatment.

The Rutherford Cancer Centre opened in February and receives referrals for conventional cancer treatments.

PPI is building three more proton beam centres in the UK - in Northumberland, Reading and Liverpool.

The firm has received £10m from the Welsh Government's Wales Life Sciences Investment Fund.

UK's first proton beam machine arrives at Newport clinic

Published on May 20, 2017

A key component of the UK's first high-energy proton beam machine has been delivered to its new home in Newport.

Proton Partners International (PPI) received the part that will fire the cancer-treating beam at its Rutherford Cancer Centre.

PPI said the UK's "most-advanced piece of cancer machinery" could transform treatment for 500 patients a year.
Currently, only low-energy treatment is available in the UK for rare eye cancers

Friday, May 19, 2017

Tamil civil society hold Mullivaikkaal memorial event with restrictions after varied court order

19 May 2017

Hundreds of people attended a memorial event organised by Tamil civil society marking 8 years since the slaughter of thousands at Mullivaikkaal, after a court order banning the event was varied earlier in the day restricting it to occuring inside of St. Paul's church grounds.

The remembrance event took place at St. Paul's Church in Mullivaikkaal, with relatives of the massacred laying flowers and rocks with the names of their dead loved ones before three makeshift graves.

Earlier in the day, a Sri Lankan judge ruled that commemoration events could not take place in an area across from the church grounds where Tamil civil society activists had set up a display with items gathered from Mullivaikkaal beach, a commemorative statue and a number of the engraved rocks.

The decision varying the original order prohibiting the memorial event came after Tamil civi society activists argued a motion challenging the order in the Mullaitivu Magistrate's Court on the morning of May 18. Sri Lankan police had obtained the court order banning the event the evening before on May 17, plastering posters of the order on the display and on signs nearby. Sri Lankan police vans had also driven around the area, announcing that the event was not allowed to commence.

However, following submissions made by Mr. Guruparan Kumaravadivel on behalf of Tamil civil society, and the Mullaitivu Police Headquarters Inspector, the order was varied, allowing the event to take place within the church premises only but prohibiting any commemoration from taking place within the display set up with a statute and engraved rocks across from the church.

As Sri Lankan Criminal Investigation Department officials in civilian clothing looked on, hundreds came forward to pay their respects to the dead. A number of the rocks with names of those who died at Mullivaikkaal in 2009 which were on the church grounds and thus not prohibited by the judge's court order, were laid before the makeshift graves.

Plainclothes CID officers watch over proceedings from a distance at Mullivaikkaal

The ceremony was followed by a mass prayer inside the church.