Notorious Gammanpila admits his guilt in the fraud he committed on Australian national ! Doesn’t remember what he did with the money !!

(Lanka-e-News - 16.July.2017, 1.25PM) Like how  Udaya  Gammanpila’s putrid antecedence is well known among the people , so is  the fraud he committed to misappropriate a land worth many billions  belonging to an Australian  national  by the name of Bryan Shadrick  .  In keeping with Gammanpila’s inborn crookedness and craftiness , he went on making a big din and telling the  media  the charges against him were false in order to cover up the fraud. But now based on an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court (SC)  he has admitted his guilt thereby proving  beyond doubt once again that Gammanpila is a confirmed accomplished liar . 

Not only Gammanpila , even his close crony Sydney Jayasinghe via the affidavits had admitted they did sell the property of Bryan Shadrick , but now they do not remember what they did with the money. This loss of memory is a ruse  adopted by  born racketeers and fraudsters to circumvent the laws. Nothing can  be more ridiculous than the utterance of  Gammanpila that he has forgotten  what he did with millions of dollars  he collected by cheating Bryan Shadrick . It  is  a lie that can win him an award as the greatest liar on earth.  The affidavits of these two crooks can be obtained from courts , if anyone wishes. ( Their averments in the affidavits are  herein  ) 

Gammanpila the most notorious blackguard  who prefers  spotless white attire ( to conceal  his evil nature) first said , the police has uncovered information that Bryan Shadrick did not have any shares in the Panasia bank .He should have  had shares before he got cheated. Gammanpila’s next lie was there is no evidence whatsoever to testify that Bryan Shadrick gave the   former a power of attorney ,any day .

Gammanpila who is noted as an individual   who has a rare ability to speak using every orifice in his body including  the one that stinks  , is therefore capable of lying much more than any other ordinary being. Therefore despite Gammanpila profusely lying , and concocting all bogus stories to cover up his colossal fraud , when the truth declared itself  proving   Bryan had shares , it is being considered by one and all that truth has triumphed , specially because   Gammanpila in his  confession admitted that he  collected the proceeds after selling Bryan’s property . 

Meanwhile based on reports reaching Lanka e news inside information division ,  minister of justice Wijedasa Rajapakse widely known as a tie coat, turncoat , cutthroat another faceless unscrupulous corrupt politico is seeking to rescue Gammanpila from being remanded by bending and twisting the laws . 

(The statements of Gammanpila and Sydney in the affidavits admitting their guilt are marked in yellow color in the image  herein) 

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by     (2017-07-16 07:55:41)

New power plant tender to Korea through corrupt deal

Jul 16, 2017

There is an allegation of a corrupt deal in the awarding of the tender for the construction of a 350 megawatt natural gas power plant at Kerawalapitiya. According to energy experts, a top official of the ministry of power and energy, who is also in the tender board, is influencing the tender to be given to a Korean company, the highest bidder. The CEB called open international competitive bids for the 250 million US dollar (Rs. 3,750 million) project that aims to cater to electricity requirements in the next 25 years.

Eight bidders made submissions which were inspected by the CEB and a technical evaluation committee for their professional technical capabilities.

 

The committee disregarded influence by the ministry official and shortlisted three foreign companies, two foreign-local partnerships and a local company for a second round of evaluation by the tender board.

 

There, the ministry official intervened and tried to get only the tender paper submitted by the Korean company opened on July 13, but that was stopped due to opposition by other members of the tender board. That official is raising various technical issues and trying to get the tender awarded to the Korean company on the basis of a personal clarification he was given by that company without the tender board’s knowledge. That reason alone is enough to blacklist the Korean company, energy experts point out.

 

Also, the deputy chairman of this Korean company was involved in the massive bribery scandal that brought down that country’s president, and had been imprisoned. Therefore, the ministry official’s intervention on behalf of such an ill-famed company is highly questionable. Energy experts say the state will have to spend an additional Rs. 15,000 million a year if this construction is handed over to the Korean company.

 

When contacted, ministry secretary Dr. B.M.S. Batagoda said the tender has been put off due to issues that have arisen due to the tender board’s refusal to accept unqualified bids. He claimed all bidders, excepting one, chosen by the technical evaluation committee have not fulfilled the tender requirements. Batagoda said he would submit a report to the subject minister and the cabinet with regard to the differing views the technical evaluation committee, tender board and himself were having. He also refuted the allegation that he was trying to get the tender awarded to a particular company as a mud-slinging. He had not made any influence as allege, Batagoda added.

 

Kashyapa Kotelawala

India plays it cool as China mounts multi-pronged verbal assault to drag it into war

Saturday, 15 July 2017

In an undisguised bid to humiliate India in the eyes of the rest of South Asia, and reduce its clout in the world at large, China has been trying hard for the past month to provoke India into a short and sharp war, the result of which, it believes, will be a replay of the rout that the Indian army suffered in 1962.

Indian and Chinese army officers point accusing fingers at each other

However, right through the series of provocative statements and open threats, India has shown an ancient Indian “yogic stoicism”, remaining unmoved and maintaining silence. Even the normally noisy and belligerent Indian electronic media have kept the coverage at a low key.

One cannot but see the difference between this and India’s belligerent reactions to provocations from Pakistan, a weaker neighbour. India’s forbearance vis-à-vis China could, partly or even substantially, be due to an awareness that it cannot win a shooting war with China, while it can at the very least draw with Pakistan.

China is militarily enormously much stronger than India. It is well entrenched in the Tibetan heights. It is also economically much stronger. It will be able to fight a prolonged war and engage the enemy without seeking outside assistance. On the contrary, India, it is believed, is not in a position to fight for prolonged periods without outside help, both diplomatic and military. It is under-armed and under-manned at the officer level. In the present case, the US will have to stand by India full square to keep the Chinese at bay.

For India, it makes sense not to match China’s brazen threats to promote anti-Indian feelings in Bhutan, Sikkim and the rest of the Indian North East, with counter threats of subversion in Tibet. China’s Tibet is not the same thing as Pakistan’s Balochistan.
India-China border – Hindustan Times
Vituperative statements are bound to raise the temperature and lead to war, and India cannot afford a war at this stage when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is still to deliver his election promise to fast track economic development with his “Make in India” project with massive FDIs; given the massive mandate for development which he got in the 2014 elections. Past experience shows that wars, including successful campaigns, tend to bring economic misery to the common man and weaken governments.

The other reason for India holding its horses in the face of daily provocations from China is probably the theory that forbearance will gain world appreciation for being a responsible nation.
Restraint helps

India’s case on the Bhutan-China border and its commitment to honour its treaty with Bhutan will be better appreciated by the comity of nations if it shows restraint, and insists on talks to resolve the issue instead of going to war.

It is perhaps for this reason that the leading lights of the Modi regime, who talked of taking an eye for an eye or a “whole jaw for a tooth” in reacting to an aggressive action by Pakistan, are silent in the face of Chinese belligerence.

Even after China openly questioned the legitimacy of Sikkim’s integration with India and its special relations with Bhutan, Prime Minister Modi did not utter a word of dismay or anger. Instead, he went out of the way to shake hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the BRICS meet in Hamburg. Though China cancelled the bilateral talks planned during the summit, the Indian government claimed that the two leaders discussed a “range of issues.” There was no reaction when the Chinese denied the Indian claim.
Playing down severity

More recently, India has been playing down the severity of the barrage of threats from the Chinese, both official and non-official.

Even as the Chinese official spokesman insisted that there could be no talks before the Indians withdraw their troops from the Doklam (or Doka La) area, and suggested that if India insists on sending troops to a disputed area to help out Bhutan, China can very well send troops to disputed Kashmir in aid of Pakistan.

Prior to this, Chinese government-backed scholars and commentators had called upon the Sikkimese and the Bhutanese to throw off the Indian yoke. They accused India of bullying its smaller neighbours. They reminded New Delhi that communities in India’s North-East have a history of rebellion and could revolt against Indian hegemony even now.

Speaking at the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore on Tuesday, India’s Foreign Secretary, S. Jaishankar, said that Modi and Xi had agreed at Astana in Kazakhstan on 8 June, that India and China “must not allow differences to become disputes”.

Jaishankar said that differences over terrorism (the banning of Pakistan-based Azhar Masood); nuclear energy access (membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Club); and connectivity initiatives (China’s One Belt One Road project) exist, but none of these should be allowed spoil the totality of the bilateral relationship.

“That the powers in question are civilizational ones, with a positive long history, and a difficult near history, adds to the challenge. India-Sri Lanka relations have acquired so many dimensions and so much substance, that reducing them to black and white augmentation cannot be a serious proposition,” Jaishankar reasoned.He also said that not only the India-China border in Doklam, but the entire stretch of the border of more than 3,000 kms is undefined.

If India flinches in these matters, its credibility as a reliable partner will be badly dented, and that will affect its relations with other countries, especially those in the neighbourhood.It is probable that China might ease the pressure somewhat if India agrees not to oppose Xi‘s OBOR international roads and sea ports project, and not to plot with the US to thwart its economic projects in South Asia.

“It’s a long border you know. No part of the border has been agreed upon on the ground. It is likely that from time to time there are differences along the 3,500 kilometre boundary,” Jaishankar said. This is significant statement in as much as it concedes that the entire India-China border is in dispute.

India’s former National Security Advisor and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told The Hindu that India-China relations show “stress points” and that it is time the relationship was “recalibrated”; but the recalibration has to be done without bowing to Chinese pressure tactics, he added.

Menon advised India to hold the ground in Dolklam and also its rights in Bhutan which flow from a treaty. If India flinches in these matters, its credibility as a reliable partner will be badly dented, and that will affect its relations with other countries, especially those in the neighbourhood.
Glimmer of hope

Uncharacteristically, Prime Minister Modi has still not spoken or tweeted about the standoff in the border. Neither has President Xi. This generates hope in Indian minds that they are keeping the door open for talks at a convenient time. Modi and Xi will meet at the 9th BRICS summit in Xiamen in China in September. It is hoped that they will break the ice there.

Nevertheless, nobody has any idea as to what the solution might be. Doklam is strategically critical for both India and China. While China wants Bhutan to come over to its side, India fears that the road which the Chinese are constructing in Doklam will help them reach the Siliguri corridor. Once China occupies the corridor, which is a chicken neck, India will lose the only land connection with its troubled and strategically important North Eastern states. With the rise of China and its burgeoning influence over Nepal and Bangladesh, the North-East has become India’s soft underbelly.

However, it is probable that China might ease the pressure somewhat if India agrees not to oppose Xi‘s OBOR international roads and sea ports project, and not to plot with the US to thwart its economic projects in South Asia.

India will find these conditions difficult to meet because its self-respect demands that it enjoys primacy in South Asia – its backyard. India also fees that it has to control the Indian Ocean and that it cannot allow it to become a Chinese lake, bristling with their submarines. This is the reason why this time, the “Malabar” naval exercise with the US and Japanese navies, had anti-submarine warfare as its main theme.
Guest Column


By P.K. Balachandran

Israel reopens sensitive Jerusalem holy site, but Muslims refuse to enter

Muslim worshippers are refusing to enter due to new security measures including metal detectors and cameras

Muslim worshippers, who refuse to enter due to new security measures, pray as Israeli border policemen stand outside the Lion's Gate, a main entrance to Al-Aqsa mosque compound (AFP)

Sunday 16 July 2017

Israel reopened an ultra-sensitive holy site Sunday closed after an attack that killed two policemen, but Muslim worshippers were refusing to enter due to new security measures including metal detectors and cameras.

Crowds chanted "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest) as a number of initial visitors entered Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

The flashpoint holy site includes the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock.

But midday Muslim prayers were held outside the site due to the new security measures.

"We reject the changes imposed by the Israeli government," Sheikh Omar Kiswani, Al-Aqsa director, told reporters outside.

"We will not enter through these metal detectors."

Some women wailed and cried while telling people not to enter.

Jordan says escalation must be avoided

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of the security measures late Saturday before departing for a trip to Paris.

"This evening I held a discussion with the top security leadership and I instructed that metal detectors be placed at the entrance gates to the Temple Mount," he said.

"We will also install security cameras on poles outside the Temple Mount but which give almost complete control over what goes on there."

Netanyahu spoke by phone with Jordan's King Abdullah II on Saturday night, a statement from Amman said.

Abdullah condemned the attack, but also called on Netanyahu to reopen the Al-Aqsa compound and stressed the need to "avoid any escalation at the site".

Three Arab Israeli assailants opened fire on Israeli police Friday in Jerusalem's Old City before fleeing to the compound.

Israeli authorities said they had come from the flashpoint holy site to commit the attack.

Israel took the highly unusual decision to close the Al-Aqsa mosque compound for Friday prayers, triggering anger from Muslims and Jordan, the holy site's custodian.

The site remained closed on Saturday, while parts of Jerusalem's Old City were also under lockdown.

Israeli authorities said the closure was necessary to carry out security checks and announced it would reopen the compound Sunday.

Police said Sunday that so far two gates leading to the holy site had been opened, equipped with metal detectors.

North Korea Needs Nukes Because of Its Religion

Kim Jong Un can’t stop his nuclear program without threatening the national ideology that keeps him in power.

BY PAUL FRENCH-JULY 7, 2017

Another missile test, another step forward for North Korea’s ambition to successfully deliver a nuclear weapon, another round of hand-wringing, anger, and editorials globally. It’s all become rather familiar — as have the solutions proposed, from lunatic first strikes to final ultimatums to careful programs of engagement.

But we have to face an uncomfortable truth: There is no negotiating stance that can convince the North to abandon its nuclear program. North Korea’s ideology, Kim Jong Un’s own sense of familial destiny, and the sheer amounts of money and time spent on the project all work to ensure this. And, as 19th-century Americans said about their own conviction that their “manifest destiny” was to dominate the continent, the North sees possessing a deliverable weapon as both justified and inevitable.

It doesn’t matter what any outsiders propose. It is now essentially a done deal. Any military response is doomed to fail. But even engagement strategies can’t stop the relentless move toward a deliverable North Korea nuclear arsenal.

Lessening the sanctions regime, or perhaps even abolishing it, would make little difference to Pyongyang. The economy is humming along OK, and trade with China is continuing. Additionally, various illegal sources of money, from meth to gold to weapons tech, are virtually impossible to stop. Predictions of the North’s economic collapse have been many and constant — but there is no actual reason the current level of austerity and some black market dealing cannot sustain the population indefinitely.

Pursuing a “buyout” strategy, whereby Washington buys the North’s nukes and an agreement to end the program, is equally problematic. President Bill Clinton essentially attempted this in 1994 when he approved $4 billion in “energy aid” to North Korea. The money would be filtered into the North over a decade, primarily via the now mostly forgotten Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, in return for Pyongyang freezing and then dismantling its nuclear program. The idea was to divert the North’s nuclear program into civilian use. But the regime lied, took the money, and used it to carry on developing the weapons program.

The reality of the dictatorship is why the reasonableness argument is not a strategy. It would be reasonable to calm tensions; it would be reasonable to take aid in return for de-escalation. But the North is not reasonable — at least not in the terms we understand. It wishes to have a nuclear arsenal, pure and simple.

Why is getting the bomb so crucial? Because it’s the latest big promise that the Kim clan has made to the North Korean people. And that’s core to the notion of the Kims’ supreme leadership. The leader doesn’t make mistakes; problems are never the fault of the leadership; the theories of the leader are entirely correct; and the leadership always delivers on its big promises. In some ways, that last one — the only tenet to have a faint connection to reality — props up the propaganda about the first three.

The leadership successfully delivered on all the big promises of the past — albeit at a gruesome cost in life.

The leadership successfully delivered on all the big promises of the past — albeit at a gruesome cost in life.Kim Il Sung led the liberation struggle and built the nation into a fortress to withstand attack.

Kim Jong Il took the nation through the famine of the mid-1990s and then successfully navigated the “Arduous March,” after the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc collapsed, to a point where the North remained independent and was able to restart its nuclear program.

Of course, all these big promises are fraught with problems. Kim Il Sung was really a proxy for the liberation of the northern portion of Korea by the Soviets, who then propped him up while he destroyed the economy though the imposition of Stalinist command economics and agricultural collectivization. Kim Jong Il took over during a famine engendered by his father’s disastrous policies and later, in 2002, failed completely to rejuvenate the economy with his own cockeyed reform process. Kim Jong Un will probably eventually attain a fully deliverable intercontinental ballistic missile as promised, but will he then switch to the economy?

He has intimated that he might, as laid out in the central plank of his own addition to his grandfather’s Juche theory of self-reliance. Byungjin (“parallel development”) is described as a “new strategic line on carrying out economic construction and building nuclear armed forces simultaneously” — i.e., an attempt to restart North Korea’s stalled economy and raise living standards while continuing to develop a nuclear arsenal. A nuke in every silo, and then a chicken in every pot.

Kim Jong Un’s developing cult of personality seems to be based more on the legacies and style of his grandfather than his father — he speaks to the people, smiles a lot, interacts with them to a greater degree than Kim Jong Il ever did. But he also stresses, as did Kim Il Sung did very strongly, that deterrence and the protection of a nuclear arsenal are necessary. Kim Jong Un has regularly referred to the lessons of the Balkans (meaning the civil war in the former Yugoslavia) and the Middle East.

When Kim Jong Un outlines Byungjin (which he did first in March 2013), he constantly refers to his grandfather, repeatedly citing his 1962 revolutionary slogan: “A gun in one hand and a hammer and sickle in the other!” This echoing is not accidental; it repeatedly tells the North Korean people (and any possible dissident forces within the ruling Workers’ Party) that he is a modern reincarnation of his grandfather — a nation builder, a guarantor of national defense.

It is of course possible that Kim Jong Un is not serious about the second half of Byungjin, the economic portion. Instead of using his nuclear security and unchallenged position domestically to turn his full attention to economic reconstruction, he may simply demand more toys: more nukes, chemical and biological weapons, even better cyberwarfare capabilities.

But economic promises can always be brushed under the carpet or blamed on malevolent outside forces. The failure to produce a nuclear weapon — or, even worse, a humiliating climbdown under pressure — is a lot less excusable. Personally, no doubt Kim feels the weight of his father and grandfather on his shoulders. Politically, backing away from nuclear weapons could undermine the foundations of the dynasty’s own mythology — the great protectors of the North Korean people. If this Arduous March to achieve the Juche ideals of self-sufficiency and self-defense is suddenly bargained away after a generation of seeking nuclear defense, then the population may begin to ask some hard questions.

No amount of pressure can realistically force Kim to back off his nuclear destiny, then. But if the world accepts a nuclear North Korea (and it accepted a nuclear Pakistan, as North Koreans have reminded me), then the second half of Kim’s theory might just give the kind of pressure that can be used. You want to rebuild the economy, with U.S., Japanese, and South Korean assistance? Then you’ve got to get back into the system — into the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Nonproliferation Treaty, and back to engaging with the world again.

Of course, Kim might shy away from any economic-centered engagement — his father will have taught him that “if you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in,” as Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping put it. But right now the economy is dependent on China and illegal money flows “to get things done,” and, as defector testimonies now indicate, rampant and fast-spreading corruption infects every level of the country. There will be some tough choices for Kim, but he’ll have his nukes — and perhaps then the political space to give his people some appliances of their own.

Photo credit: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Poll finds Trump’s standing weakened since springtime

A look at President Trump’s first year in office, so far

July 15, 2017 President Trump waves to supporters as he arrives at the U.S. Women's Open at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

By Scott Clement and Dan Balz July 16 at 12:01 AM-

President Trump’s standing with the American people has deteriorated since the spring, buffeted by perceptions of a decline in U.S. leadership abroad, a stalled presidential agenda at home and an unpopular Republican health-care bill, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Approaching six months in office, Trump’s overall approval rating has dropped to 36 percent from 42 percent in April. His disapproval rating has risen five points to 58 percent. Overall, 48 percent say they “disapprove strongly” of Trump’s performance in office, a level never reached by former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and reached only in the second term of George W. Bush in Post-ABC polling.

Almost half of all Americans (48 percent) see the country’s leadership in the world as weaker since Trump was inaugurated, compared with 27 percent who say it is stronger. Despite the fact that Trump campaigned as someone skilled at making deals that would be good for the country, majorities also say they do not trust him in negotiations with foreign leaders and in particular Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Just over one-third of all Americans say they trust the president either “a great deal” or “a good amount” in any such foreign negotiations. Asked specifically about Trump-Putin negotiations, almost 2 in 3 say they do not trust the president much, including 48 percent who say they do not trust the president “at all.”
Perceptions about the role of Russia in the 2016 election and possible collusion or cooperation with Trump campaign associates continue to be a drag on the president, though like many other questions, results show a clear partisan divide.
The Post-ABC poll finds 60 percent of Americans think Russia tried to influence the election outcome, up slightly from 56 percent in April. Some 44 percent suspect Russian interference and think Trump benefited from their efforts. Roughly 4 in 10 believe members of Trump’s campaign intentionally aided Russian efforts to influence the election, though suspicions have changed little since the spring.

Americans’ views on Russia’s role in the election continue to divide along partisan lines. Among Democrats, 8 in 10 believe Russia attempted to influence the election and more than 6 in 10 think members of Trump’s team attempted to aid their efforts. But among Republicans, one-third think Russia tried to influence the election outcome, and fewer than 1 in 10 think Trump’s associates sought to help them.

Last week, information was revealed by the New York Times that Donald Trump Jr. and two other senior campaign officials met with a Russian lawyer and others after being offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton and told that the information was part of a Russian government effort to help Trump.
Asked about this revelation, more than 6 in 10 Americans say the meeting was inappropriate, with just about a quarter saying it was appropriate. But almost half of all Republicans call the meeting appropriate.


Suspicions of Trump have eased at least slightly on one front. While 52 percent think he is trying to interfere with investigations into Russia’s possible election interference, that is down slightly from 56 percent in June.
The president’s strongest assets continue to be the healthy economy and a view among many Americans that the Democrats do not have a coherent message or program in opposition, other than opposition to the president.

Trump’s approval rating on the economy, in contrast to his overall rating, is about one-to-one, with 43 percent giving him positive marks and 41 percent giving him negative ratings. Meanwhile, fewer than 4 in 10 say the Democratic Party currently stands for something, while a slight majority say it “just stands against Trump.”

Beyond those areas, Trump continues to be deeply unpopular. His standing is a mirror opposite of Obama and Bush at this point in their first terms. Each held a 59 percent job approval rating in Post-ABC polling. Trump’s standing is closer to that of Bill Clinton’s, who hit a record low 43 percent approval in late June 1993, before rebounding later that year.
Half of Americans say Trump is doing a worse job than most past presidents, while just under one-quarter say he is doing better, and a similar share say he is faring about the same as previous presidents. A 55 percent majority say Trump is not making significant progress toward his goals.

The survey points to many causes for Trump’s troubles. As Republican senators attempt to pass major health-care legislation, the poll finds about twice as many Americans prefer the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, to GOP plans for replacing it — 50 percent to 24 percent. About a quarter volunteer either “neither,” say they want something else or offer no opinion.

Beyond those areas, Trump continues to be deeply unpopular. His standing is a mirror opposite of Obama and Bush at this point in their first terms. Each held a 59 percent job approval rating in Post-ABC polling. Trump’s standing is closer to that of Bill Clinton’s, who hit a record low 43 percent approval in late June 1993, before rebounding later that year.
Half of Americans say Trump is doing a worse job than most past presidents, while just under one-quarter say he is doing better, and a similar share say he is faring about the same as previous presidents. A 55 percent majority say Trump is not making significant progress toward his goals.

The survey points to many causes for Trump’s troubles. As Republican senators attempt to pass major health-care legislation, the poll finds about twice as many Americans prefer the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, to GOP plans for replacing it — 50 percent to 24 percent. About a quarter volunteer either “neither,” say they want something else or offer no opinion.

Independents are an important factor in the Republican law’s struggles. They favor Obamacare over the GOP replacement by a 29-point margin. Democrats are more strongly behind the current law, with 77 percent preferring Obamacare to the proposed alternative. Meanwhile, only 59 percent of Republicans back their party’s proposal, though only 11 percent say they prefer Obamacare. The remaining 30 percent of Republicans say they prefer neither, something else or give no opinion.

On one key issue in the debate over the Republican plan, the public by 63 to 27 percent says it is more important for the government to provide health coverage to low-income people rather than cutting taxes. Republican proposals include major reductions in spending increases for Medicaid, while eliminating many taxes and fees imposed by the 2010 Affordable Care Act to expand the program.

Whatever Trump’s struggles, the poll shows clear risks of Democrats’ opposition to Trump. Some 37 percent say the party currently stands for something, while 52 percent say it mainly stands against Trump. Even among Democrats, over one-quarter say their party primarily stands in opposition to Trump rather than for their own agenda.

The Post-ABC poll was conducted July 10-13 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults reached on cellular and landline phones. The margin of sampling error for overall results is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Emily Guskin contributed to this  report.

Hossein Fereidoun, brother of Iran's president, is arrested

Hassan Rouhani’s supporters see his brother’s arrest as part of efforts to undermine him during his second term in office

 Hossein Fereidoun’s detention comes a few weeks ahead of Rouhani’s swearing-in ceremony. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP

Saeed Kamali Dehghan Iran correspondent-Sunday 16 July 2017

The brother of Iran’s moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, has been arrested amid escalating tensions between the government and the country’s hardline judiciary ahead of his swearing-in ceremony next month.

Hossein Fereidoun, a top presidential aide who played a senior role in more than two years of high-level negotiations between Iran and the west over Tehran’s nuclear programme, was taken to prison after failing to secure bail on Saturday, local agencies reported.

The exact reasons behind Fereidoun’s arrest are unclear but it was reported that it was on charges connected to financial crimes.

Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, the spokesman for the Iranian judiciary, confirmed the news on Sunday during a weekly press briefing in Tehran. “A bail order was issued for him yesterday and because he did not secure the bail, he was taken to jail. If he does so, he will be released on bail,” he said, according to quotes carried by the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency.

Mohseni-Eje’i also announced an American dual national had been sentenced to 10 years in prison. He did not name the individual but said the accused was an “infiltrating agent”, terminology used to describe those collaborating with foreign governments. Mizan Online, a news agency affiliated to the Iranian judiciary, later identified him as Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-born American professor at Princeton University.

Rouhani’s supporters have seen his brother’s arrest as part of efforts to undermine him during his second term in office.

Fereidoun’s detention comes a few weeks ahead of Rouhani’s swearing-in ceremony following his landslide victory in May’s presidential election, complicating an already tense atmosphere between him and hardliners. The reformist-backed Rouhani increased his mandate by 5 million votes in an election that dealt a blow to conservatives.

A widening rift has since opened at the highest level of the Islamic republic between the president and the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The dispute concerns who has the ultimate power in Iran, particularly over the judiciary and the armed forces.

Rouhani has recently sharpened his rhetoric over the conduct of the judiciary, saying recently that some arrests were arbitrary.

Iranian presidents are generally weakened in their second term and Rouhani’s predecessors have all fallen out with Khamenei at some point during their second term as they jostled to leave their own legacy and test their limits of power under Iranian constitution vis-a-vis Khamenei’s supreme authority. Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was blocking from running in May’s election and his top aide was recently rearrested.

Rouhani was heckled in June during an annual pro-Palestinian rally in Tehran, with protesters allied with the hardliners shouting slogans comparing him to Abolhassan Banisadr, the country’s first president who was impeached and later exiled after falling foul of the clerical establishment.
Local news agencies, even the country’s state-run English-language Press TV, widely covered Fereidoun’s arrest in a sign that demonstrated hardliners were prepared for a showdown.

Fereidoun came in high-level contact with American officials during the nuclear talks. In March 2015, at the height of intense negotiations, when the news broke that the president’s mother had died, the then US secretary of state, John Kerry, went to Fereidoun’s room to personally express his condolences. Pictures of that meeting circulated online as a rare sign of an American official sympathising with a senior Iranian.

Prior to Rouhani’s first victory in 2013, Fereidoun was a veteran diplomat and had served as Iran’s ambassador to Malaysia for eight years and later as a senior diplomat at Iran’s delegation to the UN.

The difference between the two brothers’ surnames is due to the fact that the president changed his family name to Rouhani as a security measure to avoid the attention of the Savak secret police when preaching against the shah before the 1979 Iranian revolution. Rouhani means cleric in Farsi.

Merkel says must tackle bottlenecks before boosting investment

German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives for a TV interview by ARD public broadcaster in Berlin, Germany July 16, 2017.

Michael Nienaber and Andreas Rinke-JULY 16, 2017

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected criticism from her SPD challenger on Sunday that she was neglecting the country's infrastructure, pointing to already increased investment levels and capacity bottlenecks in some parts of the economy.

SPD leader Martin Schulz has accused Merkel of making empty promises about Germany's economic and political future as the former president of the European Parliament set out his own plans to boost investment and enhance European unity.

The exchange comes 10 weeks before the federal election in which Merkel seeks a fourth term and follows a repeated call on Berlin by the International Monetary Fund to increase investment as a way to boost imports, support the recovery in other countries and reduce its record trade surplus.

Asked in a television interview by ARD public broadcaster about her investment plans and Schulz's criticism, Merkel said: "We currently cannot spend the money that we have." She pointed to planning and capacity bottlenecks in the construction industry as well as at the level of regional authorities.

Germany has earmarked billions of euros in investments for schools, nurseries, hospitals and housing, but local authorities have so far spent only a fraction of that windfall due to planning bottlenecks.

Merkel said the federal government had put aside additional money for more investment in its mid-term budget plans, adding: "We still have a lot to do in this regard."

Merkel said Germany had to increase investment in high-speed internet broadband connections. "We say, for example, that we have to use at least one third of the additional tax revenues for investment. It can also be more," she said. "But we also must be able to get everything built on the ground."

Merkel underlined her determination to run for a full four-year term in the Sept. 24 election.

She also said again that she was opposed to the introduction of a cap to limit the number of refugees that Germany can integrate each year, as demanded by her Bavarian CSU allies, saying there were other measures to control migration flows.

Asked about the violence at the G20 summit in Hamburg earlier this month, Merkel defended the decision to hold the meeting in Germany's second-biggest city.

She distanced herself from local politicians within her conservative party who had called for Hamburg's mayor Olaf Scholz, a senior SPD member, to step down because of the riots.

Merkel said the riots were absolutely unacceptable but it was still right to have invited G20 leaders to Hamburg. "For this, I have the same responsibility as Olaf Scholz does - and I'm not dodging," she added.

Turning to Turkey, Merkel said that German lawmakers should be allowed to visit the Bundeswehr soldiers at a NATO air base in Konya and that more talks were needed to resolve the dispute.

But Merkel said there could be no negotiations with Ankara about the extradition of Turkish asylum seekers and granting German lawmakers access to the air base because both issues were completely unrelated.

Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Greg Mahlich

Burma: Rohingya villagers tell media of abuses during army crackdown

A Rohingya woman speak to media in Maung Na Ma village, northern Rakhine, Myanmar July 13, 2017. Pic: Reuters

16th July 2017

ROHINGYA Muslim women lined up to tell reporters of missing husbands, mothers and sons on Saturday, as international media were escorted for the first time to a village in Myanmar‘s northern Rakhine state affected by violence since October.

“My son is not a terrorist. He was arrested while doing farm work,” said one young mother, Sarbeda. She had bustled her way — an infant in her arms — through several other women telling reporters their husbands had been arrested on false grounds.

In November, Burma‘s army swept through villages where stateless Rohingya Muslims live in the area of Maungdaw.

Some 75,000 people fled across the nearby border to Bangladesh, according to the United Nations.

UN investigators who interviewed refugees said allegations of gang rape, torture, arson and killings by security forces in the operation were likely crimes against humanity.

Burma’s government, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has denied most of the claims, and is blocking entry to a UN fact-finding mission tasked with looking into the allegations.

The government has also kept independent journalists and human rights monitors out of the area for the past nine months.

This week, the Ministry of Information escorted more than a dozen foreign and local journalists representing international media, including Reuters, to the area under a guard of officers from the paramilitary Border Guard Police

Brutal tactics

The reporters spent nearly two days in Buthidaung, a township in Maungdaw district of Rakhine state, where they were taken to sites of alleged militant activity.

They were taken to Kyar Gaung Taung, one of three settlements requested by the journalists. Officials cited time constraints for the limited access.

Reuters had previously gathered accounts from residents by phone and from former residents who have fled to Bangladesh, of brutal counterinsurgency tactics unleashed in Kyar Gaung Taung and several nearby villages in mid-November.

When a group of journalists insisted on speaking to villagers away from security forces, allegations of abuses by troops emerged almost immediately.

SEE ALSO: Burma vows ‘no restrictions’, escorts media to restive Rakhine  

Kyar Gaung Taung resident Sarbeda, 30, had been able to visit her son, Nawsee Mullah, 14, at a police camp where he is being held separately from adult detainees. She was not sure if he had a lawyer, she said.

Reuters reported in March that 13 boys under the age of 18 were detained during security operations. They were included in a list of 423 people charged under the colonial-era Unlawful Associations Act, which outlaws joining or aiding rebel groups.

At least 32 people from Kyar Gaung Taung village had been arrested and 10 killed, said a village schoolteacher, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals. He estimated that half the village’s 6,000 residents had fled during the clearance operation.

Burned to death 

Another villager, Lalmuti, 23, pointed to a small pile of ashes where she said she found her father’s remains. She described how he was bound and thrown into a house and burned to death.

Her mother was later arrested when authorities deemed her complaint about the killings to be fabricated. She is serving a six-month jail sentence, Lalmuti and two other villagers said.

Reporters were not given a chance to put these allegations to authorities, and Reuters was unable to reach officials to confirm the details of the cases by phone.

In a press briefing on Friday, Brigadier General Thura San Lwin, commander of Burma‘s Border Guard Police, said some villagers had made what he said were erroneous claims and were subsequently charged and jailed for lying to the authorities.

“The media said we torched houses and that there were rape cases — they give wrong information,” Thura San Lwin told reporters.

He also disputed the UN’s estimates for the number of people who fled, claiming local records showed that only 22,000 people were missing in the conflict.

Burmese officials say a domestic investigation, led by Vice President Myint Swe – a former lieutenant general in the army – and a commission headed for former UN chief Kofi Annan – which is not mandated to investigate human rights abuses – are the appropriate ways to address problems in Rakhine State. – Reuters

Don’t be fooled by obfuscations Dummies guide to solar, wind and grid power

Daily output variation of a large solar power plant in Spain (The messiness is due to passing cloud cover)

by Kumar David-July 15, 2017, 5:22 pm 

Controversies frequently erupt around renewable energy availability, prices and incorporation in the grid. Much is couched in language opaque to the newspaper reader. That’s a pity because the citizen eventually foots the bill and suffers the power cuts. Since I have some slight familiarity with electricity I am drafting a primer to help layman decode experts and wag a finger at their obfuscations.

The starting point is an appreciation of the difference between power and energy; in our context MW (power) and MWh (energy). One MWh =1000 kWh; kWh is a fancy name for a ‘unit’. If you have a 480 horse-power Ferrari you sure have lots of power but if your petrol tank is near empty you don’t have much energy to go places. A big MW solar plant is not much good if there is frequent cloud cover like a Ferrari with an empty tank. When people con you with solar and wind and talk in MW (power), ask about energy, the MWh expected per year. Lanka has a limited number of onshore wind sites and is nowhere near as prolific in insolation (sunlight falling on the earth) as the Arabian, Thar or Mohave desserts or the bright and cloudless Chilean Andes. We don’t have vast uninhabited lands for photovoltaic or wind farms unlike China and the US; no sites for large, say 500 MW, projects as in Pakistan or India. The 100 MW first stage of Quad-e-Azam solar (final 1000 MW) in Pakistan needed 500 acres! An average wind speed of 5m/sec at 50m height is poor, over 7m/sec is good; few places in Lanka meet the requirement.

The technical catch is that coal, liquefied natural gas (LNG) or nuclear, if well maintained and if fuel supply is not disrupted, can run flat out say 85% of the time (capacity factor). There are 8,760 hours in a year so a 1MW plant can generate 0.85x8760x1 = 7446 MWh average a year. The story with wind and solar is different. The sun does not shine at night and seasonal cloud cover bucks expectations. The wind blows when and where it listeth. Solar and wind plant may provide full output, absolutely no output, and much of the time partial output. The capacity factor for solar and wind at a good site may reach 35%, humbler ones may be constrained to 20%. Therefore, a solar or wind farm will provide only 25% to 40% of the energy of a thermal plant of the same name plate rating. A 1MW solar or wind plant at a location with capacity factor say 28% will provide an average annual energy of 0.28x8760x1 = 2453 MWh. So, talking megawatts (MW) alone is a smokescreen.

The government foolishly dumped the proposed 500 MW coal station at Sampur and recently turned its back on a 1200 MW Japanese LNG proposal in the Western Province. Instead the Energy Ministry has opted for a 50 MW solar plant at Sampur. If we calculate as in the previous paragraph, it has dumped 3.7 TWh of Sampuor energy, and has declined 8.9 TWh of Japanese LNG energy for a mere 0.12 TWh of solar electric energy (1 TWh = 1 million MWh). Incredible! The silly sods in the line ministry, SEMA and PUCSL have set us up for a massive shortage of future electric energy. Pie in the sky talk of 2,600 MW of solar and wind power by 2037, even in the MWs materialise, will not meet a fifth of the country’s then electric energy needs.

The within-day, daily and seasonal energy availability of solar and wind electricity fluctuates. When the sun shines effective costs are good thanks to rapid technological and price advances. The best sites, globally, are competitive with coal and LNG – say Rs 9 to 14 per kWh. The problem is the capital cost of additional (reserve) plant needed when solar/wind power is unavailable. This pushes the effective energy cost up by say 30 to 50% depending on the assumptions made in calculations.

Do the rich subsidise the poor?

There is a peculiarity about our tariffs. Services like state health and education are paid out of national revenue into budget accounts and are evenly priced for all. Similarly, at the retail store you do not pay a different price for sugar, rice or thalana batu depending on your consumption, income or social class. It’s different with CEB electricity. Domestic premises consuming 90 units a month pay Rs 9.25 per unit averaged over all component charges; if consumption is 200 units this rises to about Rs 23 per unit and at 400 units a month it is a shade over Rs 33 per unit. So, there is a commodity specific cross-subsidy; bad in principle and bad in practice. People get the municipality to provide different assessment numbers for upstairs and downstairs and pay Rs 9.25 a unit on each bill instead of Rs 20+ or 30+ rupees a unit on a composite bill. This tariff system should be dumped. The supply authority should divide revenue needed by units expected to be sold and charge everyone at a uniform rate. It is mockery to attempt social justice on a commodity by commodity basis.

The silliness does not stop there. The tariff on industrial and commercial customers is complicated depending on time of day (this is reasonable since generation cost at peak time is high), consumption and type of industry. It varies from more than Rs 25 at peak time to less than Rs 10 from late night to early morning. But it is irrational to have so many classes of consumers.

The craziest is religious premises. The charge is less than Rs 2 per unit for the first 30 units and even at 200 units (average middle-class household consumption) it is less than Rs 10 a unit! There is a big cross-subsidy. Subsidising less well-off households is one thing, but why the devil should I pay to have the gullible misled with myths and superstitions? Let the dayakayas and parishioners pay.

Net-metering

When the sun shines bright on your old Kadawatta home the electric energy produced by a roof-top array may be more than needed at that moment. The rating of plant of course is matched to the highest insolation at midday. The thing to do is to store up the extra energy for later. The wind and solar power injected into the Lankan grid in the foreseeable future will be so small that the system can absorb it without flinching (without storage). A few hundred MW when the sun is blazing and wind howling is easy to absorb in a four thousand of MW system. No special measures such as smart-grids or pumped storage are needed. It is different in Holland, Denmark and Germany where the sudden cessation or surge of huge amounts of wind power can panic system controllers. Wind all over a country will only rarely shut down or surge up all at the same time but to deal with big fluctuations the system needs fast acting plant (gas turbines for example) that can kick in quickly. These spinning and standby reserves have to be entered on the cost side of a wind or solar balance sheet. Storage systems for renewables, especially large grid connected plant are now receiving a lot of attention.

The term net-metering is not used for grid level stuff but for consumer premises. That solar panel on your roof may be yanking out full power at midday when no one is home and only the fridge is running. In the evening, your wife turns on the rice cooker, kids switch on study lights and you relax in a brightly lit room with a well earned scotch after a hard days work! (OK, call me an MCP!). Now you need lots of electricity. The trick is a meter which keeps count of the energy injected into the CEB and sets it off against consumption when demand is high – hence the name net. You are billed for net consumption and a surplus can be carried over as a credit (‘banked’) for months or years.

This is where the dispute about cross-subsidies arises. I said a big consumer may pay an average of say Rs 30 a unit. If he sees the light (poor pun) and goes solar maybe his net consumption can come down to 90 units, Hey presto, he pays at Rs 9.25 a unit! So, the argument goes that the CEB loses lots of money and its ability to cross-subsidise poor consumers is undercut. Is this correct? Well yes, revenue is top-sliced and something will have to be raised to recoup it. The most expensive plant is run at peak time but these rich solar types do not top-slice their demand at these times. Hence the cost saving to the system from their ‘returned’ energy is small.

This objection is invalid if time of day pricing (a more sophisticated version is called ‘spot-pricing’) is used. Credit for energy returned and charge for energy consumed depend on the utilities cost of generation at the relevant moment. If you inject 100 units at noon when, for example, the utilities’ marginal cost is Rs 12 a unit, your credit is Rs 1200, but if 100 units in consumed during the evening peak when the utility is running its plant flat out at a marginal cost of Rs 25 per unit, the debit side of your account will show an entry of Rs 2500. You are in energy balance but not in money balance.

Since our solar and wind penetration will remain minuscule for a long time it is unlikely to make much impact on overall generation costs. It is good in principle to encourage renewable energy but not to rush in like a bull in heat, create future energy shortages and fall prey to the rapacious oil lobby – which is where we are heading. Trump is cuckoo to spurn the environment; our half-baked experts and perplexed regulators are dyslexic and foreswear a measured approach. A US Energy Administration graph showing how coal usage gradually declined is reproduced. Other forms of fossil fuel usage have not declined, but that’s a story I should take up another time.