Russia Threatens U.S. Warplanes in Syria, Escalating Tensions

BY PAUL MCLEARY-JUNE 19, 2017

Russia warned Monday that any U.S. or coalition aircraft flying west of the Euphrates River in Syria will be tracked by Russian warplanes and anti-aircraft batteries, a swift reaction to Sunday’s shoot-down of a Syrian Su-22 bomber by an American F-18.

It is unclear if the Russians have the capability to track the dozens of sorties flown by U.S. and coalition aircraft over Syria on any given day, but the threat further raises tensions as U.S.-backed Arab and Kurdish fighters press on the Islamic State’s stronghold of Raqqa, and American forces increasingly tangle with Iranian-backed militias in Syria’s south.

Russia is a staunch ally of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, along with Iran, and the downing of the Syrian warplane by a U.S. fighter jet represented yet another escalation in an increasingly tense situation unfolding in southeastern Syria.  With Islamic State losing territory, forces loyal to the Syrian regime and Iranian-backed militia are increasingly butting heads with troops aligned with the United States.

As part of its protest against the shooting down of the Syrian jet — which the Russian Ministry of Defense called a “flagrant violation of international law, in addition to being actual military aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic” — Moscow also said it was shutting off the hotline maintained by U.S. and Russian military officers in the region, where each side provides warnings about impending air operations in Syria.

U.S. defense officials said on Monday the hotline remains open. Speaking in Washington on Monday afternoon, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford said the two sides discussed the matter as recently as Monday morning, and urged patience as the two sides continued to discuss operations in Syria.

“I’m confident that we are still communicating between our operations center and the Russian Federation’s operations center,” Dunford told an audience at the National Press Club. “I’m also confident that our forces have the capability to take care of themselves.”

Russia briefly shut down the line in April, after U.S. ships fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in response to a chemical weapons attack on civilians launched from the base.
“The Russian Federation has indicated that their purpose in Syria, like ours, is to defeat ISIS, and we’ll see if that’s true here in the coming hours,” Dunford said.

“We will continue to conduct air operations throughout Syria,” despite the Russian rhetoric, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition Col. Ryan Dillon told Foreign Policy Monday. The shoot-down was in “accordance with the rules of engagement and international law,” he said.

Dunford backed that up during his appearance Monday, saying the shoot-down was legal under the 2001 authorization Congress passed for the U.S. military to strike al Qaeda and its offshoots. Since U.S. forces are targeting the Islamic State in Syria, they are covered under that blanket protection.
The Russian statement was careful not to promise to shoot down coalition aircraft, but warned that any coalition aircraft “will be followed by Russian ground-based air defense and air defense aircraft as air targets.”

The shoot-down of the Su-22 was the first time an American plane shot another manned aircraft down since an incident in Bosnia in the late 1990s. Last week, an F-15 shot down a Iranian-made drone that had attacked U.S. commandos and a group of anti-ISIS Syrian fighters on patrol in southern Syria, near the Iraqi border.

Russia has deployed its S-300 and S-400 air defense systems to bases in western Syria, but it is doubtful they could engage aircraft as far away as Raqqa. Michael Kofman, a research scientist at CNA Corporation told FP that due to the presence of mountains between the Russian coastal batteries and the rest of the country, “they probably can only see only at really high altitudes, and even then it’s doubtful they can see out that far east,” to target aircraft near Raqqa.

The incident began on Sunday after pro-regime forces — a blanket term the Pentagon attaches to the groups of Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters, Iraqi Shiite militias and other groups fighting alongside Syrian government forces — attacked a U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces unit near the city of Taqba, west of Raqqa. The assault came despite what one U.S. defense official told FP was an agreement between the local SDF commander and the Syrian commander not to attack one another in the specified area.

The United States’ involvement in the six-year old Syrian conflict is getting more complicated. The downing of the Syrian jet, and the subsequent Russian warnings, come as American forces and their allies have grown increasingly entangled with Iranian-backed forces in Syria. As the Islamic State’s hold on territory shrinks, Iran has pushed to gain a foothold over as much territory as possible to keep lines open from its border with Iraq, all the way through to Damascus, and on to Lebanon.

U.S. warplanes have bombed Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters three times over the past month, after they moved too close to a U.S. garrison at al-Tanf near the Iraqi border.

Col. Dillon said that the U.S. is tracking the pro-regime forces as they continue to move east from the Taqba area toward Deir Ezzor province that borders Iraq. U.S. commanders have said much of the Islamic State’s leadership has fled Raqqa for the villages along the Euphrates River Valley in the province, and they expect the city of Maydan, in the valley, to be another large battle.

On Sunday, Iran fired six ballistic missiles at Islamic State targets in Deir Ezzor in response to the recent attack on the Iranian parliament building and a shrine in Tehran.

The Trump administration has been engaged in an internal debate about how to respond to the presence of Iranian-backed militia in southeastern Syria, with some White House officials pushing for a more aggressive approach that would prevent Iran and its proxies from securing the Iran-Syria border area.

FP‘s Dan De Luce contributed to this article.

Photo Credit: PAUL GYPTEAU/AFP/Getty Images

Supreme Court to hear potentially landmark case on partisan gerrymandering

 The Supreme Court will consider whether gerrymandered election maps in Wisconsin violate the Constitution. The Post's Robert Barnes explains. (Video: Gillian Brockell/Photo: Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

By Robert Barnes June 19 at 11:02 AM

The Supreme Court declared Monday that it will consider whether gerrymandered election maps favoring one political party over another violate the Constitution, a potentially fundamental change in the way American elections are conducted.

The justices regularly are called to invalidate state electoral maps that have been illegally drawn to reduce the influence of racial minorities by depressing the impact of their votes.

[Supreme Court says Virginia redistricting must be reexamined for racial bias]

But the Supreme Court has never found a plan unconstitutional because of partisan gerrymandering. If it does, it would have a revolutionary impact on the reapportionment that comes after the 2020 election and could come at the expense of Republicans, who control the process in the majority of states.

The court accepted a case from Wisconsin, where a divided panel of three federal judges last year ruled last year that the state’s Republican leadership in 2011 pushed through a plan so partisan that it violated the Constitution’s First Amendment and equal rights protections.

The process of re-drawing district lines to give an advantage to one party over another is called "gerrymandering". Here's how it works. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)

The issue will be briefed and argued in the Supreme Court term that begins in October.

[Wisconsin case offers Supreme Court chance to tackle partisan gerrymandering]

The justices gave themselves a bit of an out: They said they will further consider their jurisdiction over the case when it is heard on its merits.

And they gave an indication of how divisive the issue might be: after granting the case, the court voted 5 to 4 to stay the lower court’s decision, which had required new districts be drawn this fall. Wisconsin had argued that would create unnecessary work should the Supreme Court ultimately overturn the lower court’s decision.

The liberal justices—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—went on record saying they would have denied the stay, meaning that the court’s five conservatives granted it.

The court’s action comes at a time when the relatively obscure subject of reapportionment has taken on new significance, with many blaming the drawing of safely partisan seats for a polarized and gridlocked Congress. Former president Barack Obama has said that one of his post-presidency projects will be to combat partisan gerrymanders after the 2020 Census.

Both parties draw congressional and legislative districts to their own advantage — a challenge to a congressional plan drawn by Maryland Democrats is making its way through the courts.

But Republicans have more to lose because they control so many more state legislatures. The Republican National Committee and a dozen large Republican states have asked the court to reverse the Wisconsin decision.

That state’s legislative leaders asked the Supreme Court in their brief to reject any effort that “wrests control of districting away from the state legislators to whom the state constitution assigns that task, and hands it to federal judges and opportunistic plaintiffs seeking to accomplish in court what they failed to achieve at the ballot box.”

But the dozen plaintiffs — voters across the state — said the evidence laid out in a trial in the Wisconsin case showed that “Republican legislative leaders authorized a secretive and exclusionary mapmaking process aimed at securing for their party a large advantage that would persist no matter what happened in future elections.”

In the election after adoption of the new maps, Republicans got just 48.6 percent of the statewide vote, but captured a 60-to-39 seat advantage in the State Assembly.

The head of a group representing the plaintiffs in the Wisconsin case welcomed the court’s decision to consider it.

“The threat of partisan gerrymandering isn’t a Democratic or Republican issue; it’s an issue for all American voters,” said Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center, and former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission. “Across the country, we’re witnessing legislators of both parties seizing power from voters in order to advance their purely partisan purposes. We’re confident that when the justices see how pervasive and damaging this practice has become, the Supreme Court will adopt a clear legal standard that will ensure our democracy functions as it should.”
The Supreme Court has been reluctant to tackle partisan gerrymandering and sort through arguments about whether an electoral system is rigged or, instead, a party’s political advantage is because of changing attitudes and demographics, as Wisconsin Republicans contend.
The justices last took up the topic in 2004 in a case called Vieth v. Jubelirer. It split the court five different ways, with the bottom line being that the justices could not agree on a test to determine when normal political instincts such as protecting your own turned into an unconstitutional dilution of someone else’s vote.

Four justices — only Justice Clarence Thomas remains of the group — said it was not the court’s business to make such decisions. Four others — only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer remain — said such challenges could be heard by the court but disagreed on the method.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy was in the middle. He joined the first group to decide the specific case against the challengers of a Pennsylvania redistricting plan, but he left the door open for future cases.

Kennedy said he could envision a successful challenge “where a state enacts a law that has the purpose and effect of subjecting a group of voters or their party to disfavored treatment.” What was elusive, Kennedy said, was “a manageable standard by which to measure the effect of the apportionment and so to conclude that the state did impose a burden or restriction on the rights of a party’s voters.”

In the Wisconsin case, plaintiffs pushed a plan called the “efficiency gap” to determine how Republican mapmakers hurt Democrats with the main tools of gerrymandering: “packing” and “cracking.” These refer to packing like-minded voters, such as supporters of the same party, into a limited number of districts or cracking their influence by scattering them across districts in numbers too small to make an impact.

Under the approach, developed by two University of Chicago professors, every voter packed into a district above the threshold needed to elect a candidate from his party creates a “surplus” vote. And someone in a cracked district, who votes for a candidate that is unable to win, is a “lost” vote. Surplus and lost votes are considered wasted votes.

The efficiency gap measures the difference between the wasted votes of the two parties in an election divided by the total number of votes cast.

The Wisconsin court was not so definitive. It acknowledged the efficiency gap, but only as one of several theories the court said corroborated its findings that the Republican leadership had a discriminatory intent, that its plan had a discriminatory effect and that the state had no legitimate reason for drawing the districts in the way it did.

The state contends that while Wisconsin is a purple state in national elections, its geography favors Republicans in legislative elections. Democratic voters are clustered in cities such as Milwaukee and Madison, while Republican voters are more evenly spread across the state. Any method of drawing districts will favor Republicans, they contend.

Before 2011, the last two electoral maps were drawn by federal judges after the legislature was unable to reach agreement. Under both, the state maintains, Republicans gained majorities in the legislature in excess of their proportion of the statewide vote.

Robert Barnes has been a Washington Post reporter and editor since 1987. He has covered the Supreme Court since November 2006.

Follow @scotusreporter

USA: Democracy Is A Front For Central Bank Rule

by Paul Craig Roberts-Jun 20, 2017

( June 19, 2017, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) Several years ago when the Federal Reserve had its Fed funds rate at zero to 25 basis points (one-quarter of one percent—0.25%), there was a great deal of talk, somehow presented as urgent, whether the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates.

RT asked me if the Fed was going to raise interest rates. I answered that the purpose of low interest rates was to restore the solvency of the balance sheets of the “banks too big to fail” by raising debt prices. The lower the interest rate, the higher the prices of debt instruments. The Fed drives bond prices up by purchasing bonds, and the Fed raises interest rates by selling bonds, or by purchasing fewer of them than previously.

I told RT that a real increase in interest rates would undercut the Fed’s policy of rescuing the balance sheets of the big banks whose balance sheets were loaded up with bad debt that desperately needed a rise in debt prices for the banks to remain solvent.

When shortly thereafter the Fed raised the overnight funds rate, it blew my credibility with RT. RT did not understand that real interest rates had not increased. Indeed, two days after the “rate increase” the nominal interest rate had not changed. It was still 18 basis points. The announced rate had gone from the old range of zero to 25 basis points to a new range of 25 basis points to 50 basis points. The former max was the current minimum.

Moreover, over the long time period in which there was such well marketed concern over whether such an inconsequential interest rate rise would occur, inflation had risen, making the real interest rate negative well below the 18 basis points official interest rate. By the time the Fed raised the nominal rate, the real rate was already more negative. Thus, there was no rise in real interest rates.

The financial press did not explain this, either from incompetence or collusion. RT accepted the fake news as reality and wrote off my credibility. I am often interviewed by RT, but no longer on economic matters, about which I know the most.

A couple of days ago, after a long period of waiting for another interest rate rise, an announcement from the Fed, amidst further indication of US economic decline, announced another 25 basis point increase in the target range for the Fed funds rate.

Inflation aside, in fact interest rates declined, as my sometime co-author Dave Kranzler reports.

Despite this publicized “rise” of the Fed funds rate, the 10-year interest rate on Treasuries “has declined 30 basis points this year. Thus for certain borrowers, the Fed has effectively lowered the cost of borowing.”

Kranzler goes on to point out that “the spread between the 30-day Treasury Bill and the 10-yr Treasury has declined this year from 193 basis points to 125 basis points – a 68 basis point drop in the cost of funding for borrowers who have access to the highly engineered derivative products that enable these borrowers to take advantage of the shape of the yield curve in order to lower their cost of borrowing.”

Kranzler provides a chart that shows that the spread between the 30-day Treasury bill and the 10-year Treasury bond is narrowing. As the short-term rate rises, the long term rate is falling, and the spread between the long and short rate has declined 68 basis points from almost two percentage points to one and one quarter percentage point.

Clearly, this is not a rise in interest rates.

Clearly also, a rise in the Fed funds rate no longer signals a rise in all interest rates.

Why is the Fed raising short rates when the long rates are falling?

Why do “democratic Western democracies” have central banks that do nothing except protect big banks at the expense of the people?

How long will the insouciant peoples of the West continue to conspire in their own demise?

BJP’s choice of Ram Nath Kovind as presidential candidate takes Oppn. by surprise

Current Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind.   | Photo Credit: Ranjeet Kumar

 

Nistula Hebbar-June 20, 2017

Party’s parliamentary board picks Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind as presidential candidate

rBJP president Amit Shah on Monday declared Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind as the party’s candidate for the presidential polls, taking the Opposition by surprise. Mr. Kovind would also be the joint candidate of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), headed by the BJP.

The decision was taken at the party’s parliamentary board, presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and attended by Mr. Shah and senior Ministers of the Union government.

“Ramnathji has always spoken for the deprived sections, and has had a long career in speaking out for Dalits and oppressed sections,” said Mr. Shah, while making the announcement. The reference to Mr. Kovind’s attributes as the voice of the weaker sections and Dalits is a very strong signal of the BJP’s moves through the years to shed its upper caste image, and appeal to a wider section of society.

He will be the second Dalit President India has had since the late K.R. Narayanan was elected to the office in 1997. As a party insider, having held many posts in both the Uttar Pradesh BJP unit and at the national level, Mr. Kovind will also be the first from the party fold to make it to the Rahstrapati Bhavan.

BJP leaders said four sets of nomination papers had been prepared, with the Prime Minister, the BJP chief, Akali Dal leader Parkash Singh Badal and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu as the first proposers. Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister H.N. Anantha Kumar, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and BJP chief whip Rakesh Singh arrange for the other signatures on these papers. The nomination papers will, in all likelihood, be filed on June 23.

ALSO READ

Ram Nath Kovind as presidential candidate: Congress says it was not consulted

A farmer’s son: PM

Mr. Modi, who called Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former PM Manmohan Singh after the meeting, described Mr. Kovind as “a farmer’s son, who comes from a humble background” and who has “devoted his life to public service and worked for the poor and marginalised.”

“With his illustrious background in the legal arena, Shri Kovind’s knowledge and understanding of the Constitution will benefit the nation. I am sure Shri Ram Nath Kovind will make an exceptional president and continue to be a strong voice for the poor, downtrodden and marginalised,” Mr. Modi tweeted after the decision of the parliamentary board meeting became public.

Mr. Kovind, 71, has been associated with the RSS and causes related to Dalits. He was a member of the Rajya Sabha twice, from 1994 to 2006, before being appointed Bihar Governor in 2015. He was the general secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Koli Samaj in Kanpur (the Koli community is mainly engaged in weaving), and the national president of the BJP Scheduled Caste Morcha. A trained lawyer, he became advocate on record in the Supreme Court in the 1970s. Mr. Kovind’s record within the BJP has been steady, if uneventful.

His roots in rural Kanpur are also being seen as a way of bolstering the party among the Dalits of Uttar Pradesh. The State’s Saharanpur district has been the scene of violent clashes between the upper castes and the Dalits after the new BJP government took charge. This move will, BJP hopes, 

reinforce its recent successes in co-opting Dalit communities into its fold, the larger project of consolidation of a mass base that it envisages for itself.

The move will also put several parties, including Bahujan Samaj Party and the Janata Dal (United) in a spot over how to oppose a candidate from the Dalit community, who has held high constitutional office before.

Brexit negotiations start today. What’s going on?

• By Georgina Lee-19 JUN 2017

361 days ago, Britain went to the ballot box to decide whether we should be the first member state to leave the European Union. 52 per cent of those that turned up chose to leave.

Today is the first official day of divorce proceedings, after 44 years of rocky marriage. And like any break-up, it’ll be messy.

What’s happening today?

The first talks began at 10am at the EU Commission in Brussels. We don’t expect much substance. The focus for today will be on the “terms of reference” – what is and is not on the agenda, how often they’ll meet, and in what order key issues will be discussed. Today’s meetings will be talks about talks.

There’ll be a joint press conference this evening from both sides. We can expect more of the conciliatory language we heard from Davis and Barnier this morning. (Take a drink every time you hear the words “partnership”, “constructive”, and “friends”).

Who’s on Team Brexit?

The UK’s negotiating team will be led by Brexit Secretary David Davis, who campaigned for Leave in last year’s referendum. At the time, he claimed that the EU “has been in decline for some time”, describing it as “a crumbling relic from a gloomy past“.

He’s had to soften his tone since then, publicly at least, and said today that he is “determined to build a strong and special partnership” with what he calls the UK’s “allies and friends” in Europe.

His deputy is Olly Robbins, the most senior civil servant at the catchily-titled Department for Exiting the EU. A former official at the Home Office, he’s familiar with some of the trickiest issues facing Brexit negotiators on both sides – including immigration and border security.

We don’t know much of Robbins’ personal views on Brexit. Quite right too, as he’s a civil servant. He’s been praised for his non-partisan approach in the past, including by Labour peer and former minister Tessa Jowell, who described him as “very popular” and someone who embodies “the essence of the impartial civil servant”.

Robbins will be joined at the negotiating table by fellow civil servant Sarah Healey, who’s director general at the Brexit department.

Finally, representing the UK in the Brexit gladiatorial ring, we come to Sir Tim Barrow, the UK’s ambassador to the EU. He was rapidly installed into this key role after his predecessor, Sir Ivan Rogers, resigned last year, urging his colleagues to challenge the “ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking” of those in power.

Barrow’s appointment divided opinion among prominent Brexiteers, drawing praise from Boris Johnson and frustration from Nigel Farage(although Farage’s beef might be that he didn’t get the gig himself).

What is the government’s position on the big issues?

Immigration

We’ve had mixed message from the government on this. The recent Tory manifesto said that “leaving the European Union means […] that we will be able to control immigration from the European Union” and that the government will “reduce and control the number” of EU migrants to Britain.

But earlier this year, Theresa May seemed to suggest that free movement of EU citizens into the UK could continue for a time after we officially leave the EU in 2019. Indeed, the Prime Minister said in April that she “cannot guarantee” that migration levels will fall after Brexit.

Part of the reason that immigration will be so difficult is because it’s closely linked to…

Membership of the single market

Membership of the single market allows the free movement of goods, services, money and people between the countries that are part of the arrangement.

If you’re in the single market, your citizens can live and work in any of the 32 member countries, but it’s not the same as having open borders. You still need to get your passport checked before you can come into the UK. That won’t change whether we stay in the single market or not.

In January, Theresa May said that the UK will leave the single marketbecause staying in it would mean “not leaving the EU at all”. But that is probably not the only reason – or even the main one. It’ll be almost impossible for the Tories to meet their commitment to reduce migration from the EU if the UK stays in the single market.

Germany’s foreign policy spokesman Jurgen Hardt has said that being part of the single market and restricting free movement of people is “not a realistic option”.

So despite Boris Johnson’s infamous statement that his policy on cake is “pro having it and pro eating it”, that may not be the way the cookie crumbles.

And in a further culinary flourish, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made clear that the UK cannot “cherry pick” the terms of its Brexit deal when it comes to single market access.

The message from Europe is clear: you can’t be in the single market if you restrict immigration from the EU.

What happens if Theresa May stops being Prime Minister?

The Prime Minister said she called the election to secure the parliamentary mandate she needed to get the best deal for Britain in Brexit negotiations.

She’s just about held onto her job, but the results of this month’s poll have – by her own logic – put her in a worse negotiating position than when she started. Her parliamentary majority is lost, and her personal credibility is under attack.

There are a few ways she might leave Downing Street – a Tory leadership coup, the collapse of the parliamentary deal with the DUP, or simply public pressure forcing her out.
It’s very difficult to tell what that would mean for Brexit.

Technically speaking, a new tenant in Number 10 wouldn’t derail Brexit talks. But it could shift the balance of power between the UK and the EU – especially if a new Prime Minister took office with a significant parliamentary majority for a specific vision of Brexit.

Can we go back on Brexit?

New French President, Emmanuel Macron, ruffled feathers on this side of the Channel last week by reminding Theresa May that “the door remains open” to Britain if it wants to remain in the EU.
But legal opinion is split on whether that would be possible. The UK has triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which formally begins the process of departure. There’s nothing in the law itself that says whether it can be revoked or not.

Lord Kerr, who drafted the text of Article 50, says that it could be reversed if the UK chose to. However, the UK Supreme Court said in its recent judgement on Gina Miller’s Brexit challenge that it accepted “as common ground” that “once given [Article 50] cannot be withdrawn”. But that still hasn’t been formally put to the courts.

In either case, it’s unlikely to be tested, given the political ramifications.

First flight marks new air cargo link between Afghanistan and India

Workers load export materials into a Cargo plane in Kabul, Afghanistan. June 19, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

Workers load export materials into a Cargo plane in Kabul, Afghanistan. June 19, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani--Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani speaks during an inauguration of Afghanistan-India Air corridor ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan June 19, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

By Mirwais Harooni | KABUL- Mon Jun 19, 2017

An aircraft packed with 60 tons of Afghan plants with medicinal uses marked the opening of the first air cargo corridor between Afghanistan and India on Monday.

The cargo, worth about $5 million dollars, was the first in what officials from the two countries hope will be many flights allowing Afghan and Indian companies to bypass Pakistan, which strictly limits the shipment of goods by land between India and Afghanistan and is often involved in border disputes with them.

"Our aim is to change Afghanistan to an exporter country," Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said at a ceremony marking the inaugural flight.

"As long as we are not an exporter country, then poverty and instability will not be eliminated."

The cargo service aims to improve landlocked Afghanistan's links to markets abroad and boost the growth prospects of its agricultural and carpet industries while it battles a deadly Taliban insurgency, Indian officials have said.

"We will continue to assist you in various ways as this corridor expands and grows into a network of cargo flights as per demand of the market," India's ambassador to Afghanistan, Manpreet Vohra, told Ghani.

"There are bound to be some teething problems in any major initiatives such as this but my embassy and my government is committed to working together with your team to resolve all issues that may pop up from time to time."

Afghanistan depends on the Pakistani port of Karachi for its foreign trade. It is allowed to send a limited amount of goods overland through Pakistan into India, but imports from India are not allowed along this route.

Border crossings are often closed as Afghan and Pakistani forces clash over the disputed border, and Afghan farmers have complained of fruit and other produce rotting without other options for shipping.

Next week, a second flight to India is scheduled to depart from the southern city of Kandahar, carrying 40 tons of dried fruit.


(Writing by Josh Smith; editing by Robert Birsel)

Burma: Religious tensions simmer as madrassas shuttered

Buddhist ultranationalist monks from the radical Ma Ba Tha group attend a meeting to celebrate their anniversary with a nationwide conference in Yangon, Burma May 27, 2017. 

19th June 2017

CHIT TIN, a 55-year-old Muslim man has prayed at the same madrassa in eastern Yangon his whole adult life, most of it spent under a junta that crushed opposition, ruined Burma’s economy and turned it into an international pariah state.

But even as the father-of-four endured poverty and isolation, the Muslim religious school, which doubles as a mosque, had remained a focal point of his community – until a month ago, when Buddhist nationalists raided it and forced authorities to shut it down on the grounds it did not have a permit to operate as a place of worship.

When Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, started some three weeks ago, hundreds of residents braved the monsoon rain to join prayers organised in the street nearby. Local authorities banned the event and threatened those attending with jail.

“I feel deeply sad, as if the sky has fallen down,” said Chit Tin, one of the few Muslims from the neighbourhood who agreed to speak to Reuters. Most residents refused to discuss the restrictions, saying they feared repercussions.

SEE ALSO: Burma’s Muslims face restrictions on where to pray during Ramadan – Rights group

One of the youth members of the community, Moe Zaw, now faces a fine or six months in jail for not obtaining a permit to organise the prayers, according to a notification he received from a court.

The closure of the religious school is among a series of incidents that have stoked religious tensions in the country’s commercial capital in recent weeks.

Although some of the Buddhist hardliners involved were arrested, human rights monitors say the incident shows how Aung San Suu Kyi’s 14-month-old civilian administration is struggling to tackle discrimination against Muslims.

Suu Kyi’s ruling party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) did not field any Muslim candidates in the historic 2015 election that elevated it to power on pledges of modernizing the country and democratization.

Tensions between the two communities have simmered since scores were killed and tens of thousands displaced in clashes between Buddhists and Muslims accompanying the start of the country’s democratic transition in 2012 and 2013.

“Mosques and madrassas that have been forcibly shuttered should be immediately re-opened, and religious believers should not be threatened or criminally charged simply for exercising their fundamental right to observe and practice their religion,” said Phil Robertson from watchdog Human Rights Watch.

Local administrators refused repeated requests for comment. Burma‘s government spokesman was not available for comment, and two other government officials contacted by Reuters declined to comment.

NO REPLY

The madrassa, opened nearly half a century ago, typically attracted around 1,000 people on Friday nights. Around 300 children between the ages of five and 12 studied Islam there daily.

The two-storey building is now cordoned off by barbed wire and the gate is locked.

“The children were about to sit exams, so we feel it’s a big loss for their education,” said Chit Tin, whose two 6-year-old grandchildren started classes at the madrassa a year ago.

He now attends another mosque 20 minutes walk away, where the congregation has swelled from 5,000 to 8,000 in recent weeks due to the closure of his madrassa and another nearby that was also targeted by Buddhist nationalists.

SEE ALSO: Burma: Suu Kyi govt to probe video allegedly showing army’s torture of civilians

In the city of Meikhtila, 500 km (310 miles) north of Yangon in central Burma, three private homes that have been used by about 150 people for prayers since mosques in the city were destroyed in the 2013 violence were also ordered to close down by local administrators.

The police has been patrolling the neighbourhood since last week, checking whether the houses have stayed closed and whether the prayers have ceased during Ramadan.

“Since the authorities don’t allow us to pray anymore, we requested them to arrange a suitable place for us,” San Win Shein, an Islamic scholar and a secretary of a local inter-faith group told Reuters by telephone. “There is no reply until now.” – Reuters

Prostate cancer blood test 'helps target treatment'

SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY-Image caption-Blood tests could help target precision drugs at the right people with cancer

19 June 2017

Scientists have developed a blood test that could pick out which men with advanced prostate cancer would benefit from a new drug treatment.

The test detects cancer DNA in the blood, helping doctors check whether precision drugs are working.

Cancer Research UK said the test could "greatly improve survival".

But larger studies involving more men needed to take place to confirm if doctors could rely on the test, the charity said.

Blood samples from 49 men with advanced prostate cancer were collected by researchers, as part of the phase II clinical trial of a drug called olaparib.

This type of precision drug is seen as the future of cancer medicine but because it is a targeted treatment, the drug does not work for everyone.

Researchers from The Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust said the test could help target treatment better and also reduce its side effects.

They used it to identify men who were not responding to the treatment in four to eight weeks and also to pick up signs that the cancer was evolving and becoming resistant to the drugs.

'Major impact'

Prof Johann de Bono, consultant medical oncologist at the two organisations, said: "From these findings, we were able to develop a powerful, three-in-one test that could in future be used to help doctors select treatment, check whether it is working and monitor the cancer in the longer term."

He added: "Not only could the test have a major impact on treatment of prostate cancer, but it could also be adapted to open up the possibility of precision medicine to patients with other types of cancer."

Dr Aine McCarthy, senior science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said the blood test was an "exciting" development.

"The test has the potential to greatly improve survival for the disease by ensuring patients get the right treatment for them at the right time and that they aren't being given a treatment that's no longer working," she said.

"Further studies involving a larger group of men will confirm if doctors should use this test when treating patients with advanced prostate cancer."

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men.

Over 46,000 men are diagnosed with the disease every year in the UK.

Dr Matthew Hobbs, from Prostate Cancer UK, said: "The results from this study and others like it are crucial as they give an important understanding of the factors that drive certain prostate cancers, or make them vulnerable to specific treatments."

In support of religious minorities, rule of law and Lakshan Dias

Image from Sri Lanka Mirror

RUKI FERNANDO on 06/18/2017

Religious minorities in Sri Lanka – particularly Muslims and Evangelical Christians – faced serious persecution under the Rajapakse Government, which has continued even under the Sirisena-Ranil Government. The Catholic Archbishop of Colombo, who has been hostile towards Evangelical Christians (a numerical minority amongst Christians), now appears to be assisting this Government’s approach of denying the actual problem and attacking those who are attempting to highlight the gravity of the problem. The latest victim is well known human rights lawyer and my good friend, Lakshan Dias.

In support of religious minorities, rule of law and Lakshan Dias.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Three Cheers “Again“ To The Governor Of CBSL Who Recognizes Citizens Rights

By Chandra Jayaratne –JUNE 19, 2017

Chandra Jayaratne

We are living amidst media reports that forces us to question, whether the leaders in governance, who having taken the solemn oath to uphold the Constitution in the discharge of their duties in, duly recognize the rights of citizens as vested in them by the Constitution.

In the context of constitutional provisions  embedding and defining fundamental rights of citizens, how could it be possible that leaders in governance, purportedly as quoted in the media, had taken public stances that;

1. Recognition medals and awards won by sportspersons competing in their personal capacity, but under nomination and flag of the country, cannot be sold or otherwise disposed of at will; and where necessary to do so, special laws will be promulgated to prevent such sales or transfers.  Whether memorabilia related to significant global / national sporting events were also to fall in to this category of items, the sale of which is to be prohibited is unclear ( eg. bat/ball/gloves, wickets, hat and clothing used by a world cup wining team member). It is presumed here that despite training facilities , costs of training, fitness and travel having been state sponsored, there were no specific contracts that required such persons winning medals to hand them over or to hold them  in trust for the state or at the disposal of the state.  It is possible that the leader in question may have failed to get best advice as to whether the proposed prohibition of disposal of medals would tantamount to a violation under the constitution of the property rights and other rights of the sportsperson.

2. The import of some brands of pharmaceuticals, merely on the ground that the value thereof exceeds a specified maximum import price specified for that category of pharma product, being prohibited by gazette. Such prohibitions could adversely affect the fundamental rights of citizens, including right to life, if that particular drug was the only one that the particular patient could tolerate without side effects or the only drug must use to get the desired medical outcome post use out, as determined by a qualified medical practitioner.

3. A purported threat was issued by a leader to debar a person from the practice of his profession and vocation, on the grounds that he has made a false statement in quoting some incidents as reported in a published source, which statement could tantamount to hate speech or a statement made to incite violence; whereas the Constitution has provisions to allow any citizen to practice a profession of choice, so long as it is legal. The freedom to practice a profession can be restricted only in terms of a code of ethics and conducts of the profession when developed in terms of the by-laws of the profession and binding on the member.

In the back drop of the above potentially unconstitutional stances taken by leaders and subsequently uncorrected, the citizens saw the highly professional and citizen’s rights conscious action coming from the new Governor of the Central Bank and his top team as reported in the media, following what appeared to be a citizen unfriendly action proposed by the Central Bank and published in a news report in the media.

A media release quoting Central Bank of Sri Lanka stated that “CBSL will not make payments on mutilated, altered or defaced currency notes after 31.12.2017.” This news item made citizens panic and wonder what would happen to damaged notes they may acquire or posses in the future, especially where such damage was purely accidental. As public panic set in, activists started a review of the applicable legal rights of potentially negatively impacted citizens.

It is a punishable offense under the Monetary Law for “mutilation, alteration and deface of currency notes”. Willful damage to notes or utter disregard of expected good practices in storing, using and transport of currency notes must be avoided by citizens as printing and issuing of currency note with essential security is a costly exercise for the state.

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My way or the highway

Pirassath Maheshwaran-Monday, June 19, 2017

Members of three constituent parties of the TNA, namely the TELO, PLOTE and EPRLF have decided to sit independently in Parliament and the Northern and Eastern Provincial Council if the No-Confidence Motion (NCM) against Chief Minister C. V. Wigneswaran is moved, internal party sources said. The two factions failed to reach a compromise despite repeated talks held yesterday.

The crisis comes in the wake of the ITAK, the main constituent party’s insistence on permitting two ministers to continue to work pending a fresh investigation.

A team led by the Leaders of TELO, PLOTE and EPRLF met with Chief Minister Wigneswaran on Saturday. After this meeting Wigneswaran has sent a reply to Opposition Leader R Sampanthan over the latter’s request not to take action against the two NPC ministers on whom there is no finding of guilt by the board of inquiry.

In his reply, Wigneswaran has stated that his position on Provincial Health Minister Dr. P Sathyalingm and Civil Transport and Fisheries Minister B.Denishwaran could be reconsidered, if Sampanthan could make an assurance that they (Denishwaran and Sathyalingm) would not influence the fresh investigations to be held over the allegations. However, it was learnt that Opposition Leader Sampanthan yesterday sent another letter to Wigneswaran informing that he could not and have no right to make such an assurance on behalf of two Provincial Ministers who are under Wigneswaran.

In the meantime, the two camps of the TNA convened separate meetings yesterday. The Provincial Council members who support the Chief Minister were to meet him yesterday evening, while the members of ITAK, the remaining constituent Party of the TNA, were to meet with their Leader MP Mavai Senathirajah in the afternoon.

MP Senathirajah also met with religious leaders in Jaffna yesterday to educate them on the latest political developments in the NPC.