(Lanka e News -04.Sep.2018, 7.30AM) The murderous opposition which has a long experience in criminalities and had been demanding a ‘dead body’ from the good governance government over a long period has planned to take its revenge on the 5 th of September when it is staging its ‘people’s force’ protest , based on reports reaching Lanka e News inside information division.
Godfathers behind this conspiracy are : a Russian mafia which enjoys Russian government patronage and the murder squad of local ‘Gotler’.
The protest on 5 th September is aimed at diverting the bitter power struggle among the Rajapakses towards another direction , and is a drama to glorify notorious crook Namal Rajapakse the synthetic lawyer . In much the same way as the teachers of the book of Chinese forces are trying to exalt Gotabaya and make him a ‘king’ , the Russian mafia is maneuvering to decorate Namal as a ’king’ , which is by dumping the ill earned colossal illicit cash in that direction . It is for this purpose Namal along with his younger brother Yoshitha (not the samanala malaya) the other jaltharaya (racketeer) toured Russia twice every month during the recent past . Information received by Lanka e News in connection with their conspiracy is as follows ….
During the demonstrations on 5 th September , one participant who is with Namal is to be killed allegedly by police firing. It is most likely the assistance of a sniper is to be sought for the shooting . However , the most important side of the conspiracy is not that . It is hereunder …
Another individual is to be enlisted to rob the bullet used in the shooting in order that in the subsequent investigations , the bullet cannot be found . Making use of the inability to search and find the bullet , it is to be publicized the government is suppressing the investigation into a homicide , and stage massive protests Island wide. This is the second part of their brutal power crazy conspiracy .
Whether this conspiracy will involve the death of one , two or more victims has not been decided , it is learnt . In any event for the moment attention is being focused most sharply on the shooting and robbing the bullet .
Though only the masterminds behind this conspiracy to murder ‘Hollywood style’ are aware , the responsibility without the knowledge of each other is delegated among various other individuals.
Of course as a news website which stands by truth and fearlessly exposes any impending dangers to the people and the country , this is all we can highlight and spotlight in the best interests of Democracy and a Democratic government , and against murderous and terrorizing groups trying to capture power at any cost .
All what we can say is , it is for the State intelligence Service to maintain a perfect surveillance operation and be most alert .
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Falling sick could be one of the most expensive things that could ever happen to your life. With the soaring prices of medicines, channelling fees and hospital charges, people try their best to avoid falling sick. But your immune system may not be that strong in certain instances. In terms of the prices of medicines Sri Lanka has been struggling to regulate the prices of essential medicines and streamline the importation of various drugs for the past few years. As the pharmaceutical industry went in search of more profits, its sole purpose of curing patients from ailments and illnesses took a back seat. Hence the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) was established in 2015 by an Act of Parliament. The difference between the Cosmetic Drugs and Devices Regulatory Authority and NMRA is that the NMRA is mandated by law to look at four areas including the safety, efficacy of medicines, the need and the cost. With the reduction of prices of 48 essential medicines, the authorities took a step in the proper direction. But to what extent it has impacted patients’ lives remains a question.
With that in mind, the Daily Mirrorspoke to Prof. Asita de Silva, Chairman of the NMRA who expressed his views about the impact of the reduction of prices, how it will be continued for 25 more essential drugs, challenges with bringing prices down and benefits to patients.
How effective was the initial reduction of prices of 48 essentialmedicines?
Practically every regulatory authority including those in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries regulate the prices of medicines in different ways. In the UK they regulate through a number of mechanisms. They do what’s called profit capping and will show a particular profit margin after studying balance sheets. The second is that they incentivize pharmacies for using generic substitutions. My main objective is to increase the availability or accessibility to quality assured medicine. Price is a key determinant of access to medicine. In Sri Lanka, 50% of people purchase medicine out of their pocket. So whom we have targeted are people spending out of their pocket and we have regulated prices of 48 essential medicines. So the principal is essential and very commonly used medicines. These 48 medicines covered over 450 brands and the prices were regulated through a maximum retail price. By doing that we said that if there are brands with prices above the MRP their prices had to come down and all brands with prices below that cannot change. We follow some international guidelines given by the World Health Organization (WHO) when it comes to price regulation. During the 2015-2016 period, WHO experts were sanctioned to work here and study the drug market and she wrote a report titled ‘Pharmaceutical price control in Sri Lanka’. She goes on to say how corrupt the supply chain is. She also underlines the need for a major price control exercise based on retail prices. She identifies things that we knew and the argument is why we can’t have a mark-up based on the Cost Insurance Freight (CIF).
Take paracetamol for example, panadol is the most widely used brand. So from Rs.3 we brought the price down to Rs.1.30. As a result, there was a 91% increase in their market share. People believe panadol is better than other drugs because it is more affordable
Why is that?
According to the report, pharmaceuticals importers almost inflate the CIF. This means that we have a massively loaded CIF and the request was to give an 85% mark-up on top of that. The CIF model doesn’t work in countries where this value isn’t verifiable. This happens in Saudi Arabia and to do that Saudi Arabia follows the CIF plus percentage approach. But in doing that the regulator requires exhausting information. In summary they ask the factory price of the country of origin certified by that country’s regulator. They also look at the wholesale price in the country of origin. They also require the proposed CIF to the country plus the price of the product in all the countries that it is sold and these should be certified by the Saudi Embassies in those countries. It is after this process is complete that they take the CIF as real. As a result the CIF model is completely discouraged and it goes on to say that there’s unethical and inappropriate drug promotion within the pharmaceutical industry which is widespread. Inappropriate drug promotion takes place in the form of rebates and discounts in the distribution chain like bonuses and sample perks. This is over and above the mark-up you’re allowed to keep as a retailer. So you’re leveraging the whole system by doing that. Therefore if you go back to the argument of an open market economy, the patients’ choice is not free. The patient is hugely leveraged by an overloaded CIF and a brand that is prescribed by the pharmacist who prescribes the brand that gives him the best deal.
Will price reduction continue for more medicines that are essential to cure diseases?
We did that with 48 medicines and follow the Indian model. Our opinion based on this report is that current pricing needs to be regulated. Then we had the question of how best our approaches were. In OECD developed countries pharmaceutical cost of medicine is only 18% of their budget. In low and middle income countries this can go up to 60%. In Sri Lanka it is between 30-40% of the health budget. This shows that we spend more. We analyzed the impact of these 48 medicine prices from the last quarter of 2016 to the last quarter of 2017. Out of these 271 brands have impacted and others remain the same. In the near future we are going to price regulate 25 more medicines out of which 15 are normal medicines and 10 are cancer drugs.
Cancer drugs are known to be very expensive. Why weren’t they regulated before?
There is a reason why cancer drugs were not regulated before. For cancer drugs the retail market is only relevant for only 5% of the population because a large majority seek treatment in the state institutions. Therefore capping retail prices in cancer drugs benefit only 5-10% of the population. We need to save money for the patients. Over this one year period the savings to people was Rs. 4.5 billion by spending less on the medicine we take. Since very few people seek cancer therapy in the private sector we didn’t want to regulate retail prices since they did not impact very much. Therefore we are regulating tender prices which the government purchases. So with this new proposal the saving is to the treasury and by saving money to the treasury we believe that more patients can be given these cancer products. The cost in state institutions for cancer care medicine is about Rs. 7.1 billion rupees every year. 60% of that is spent on tenders. So our advice to the minister was to regulate the prices of tenders of these 10 products. We estimate an annual Rs. 1.7 billion saving to the government when we implement this.
What benefits do patients have with this reduction in prices?
Take paracetamol for example, panadol is the most widely used brand. So from Rs.3 we brought the price down to Rs.1.30. As a result, there was a 91% increase in their market share. People believe panadol is better than other drugs because it is more affordable. This could be done only if there’s competition and we encourage this competition by registering more quality-assured medicine and because the pricing is not appropriately done we have to intervene per the WHO guidelines. This is the same with stents. The National Cardiology Institute believes that for a year the number of deaths due to increased number of stenting has come down by about 3-4%. By creating a competition for the price and by lowering the tender price from Rs. 100,000 to Rs. 50,000 all people interested in going for that tender would have to compete below Rs. 50,000.
Isn’t there an issue when there are more brands?
Of course. The NMRA now follows strict conditions. We do a significant capping regarding the number of brands. But you may have heard that there are 100-150 brands of one drug and if you go to the market you won’t be able to find the prices of more than 10 of these brands. This is completely unaccepted and unethical. Here what happens is they registered two or three brands of the same medicine and they don’t bring a single tablet into the country. They hold it for tenders or they block competition because once they register the product nobody else could take it. The problem with medicine is that importation is only allowed through one local agency. In the new legislation it very clearly states that if you haven’t supplied the medicine for two years after getting registered, the registration will be removed. Through this mechanism we have identified so many and we would be implementing it.
How do you ensure that cheaper, lesser quality drugs are not brought into the country?
Quality assurance comes by stringent evaluation internally which our regulatory pharmacists do. The second would be looking at data in other countries, post-marketing surveillance and so on. Most importantly a rigorous assessment should be made here. The third component would be quality assurance in terms of laboratories. We do that but it’s not good enough because the National Quality Assurance Laboratory lacks capacity. That will be our next phase where we will setup a state-of-the-art laboratory and then we will test every batch of medicine that comes into the country. Therefore we currently depend on the information that we get from outside and the stringent evaluation we do. By price regulation we are taking out a lot of drugs we believe are not quality assured. As a result, people now have access to better drugs.
On October 28, 2012, Savita Halappanavar, a young Indian dentist, died in Ireland due to a septic miscarriage. This created major uproar in Ireland because she had requested an abortion at an earlier stage in the pregnancy but was denied her request because the medical team did not judge her life to be in danger (the law in Ireland was that an abortion could only be granted if the mother’s life was at risk). The campaign that followed culminated in a referendum in Ireland earlier this year, where nearly two in three Irish voters opted to changethe current law. The referendum also saw the highest turnout for a ballot on social issues. The amendment that is currently being discussed will allow for terminations in the first 12 weeks of the pregnancy, and up to 24 weeks for exceptional circumstances.
In November 2012, former President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, was appointed by the Ireland Health Services as the Chair of a panel inquiry into the death of Savita Halappanavar. Arulkumaran recently visited Sri Lanka, and on August 9 spoke at a discussion on unsafe abortions, organised by the Family Planning Association of Sri Lanka. The other speakers included Past President of the Sri Lanka Medical Association, Professor Wilfred Perera, retired Supreme Court Judge, Justice Shiranee Tilakawardane, and Attorney-At-Law Ermiza Tegal.
This article will look at the current abortion debate in Sri Lanka and Prof. Arulkumaran’s contribution to it, as well as what can be learnt from the Irish example.
Abortion in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka has some of the strictest abortion laws in the world, where abortion is only permitted if the mother’s life is at risk, as per Section 303 of the Penal Code of 1883. As Tegal noted, the punishment for causing a miscarriage is a fine and/or up to 3 years imprisonment.
Despite these laws, the number of abortions carried out in Sri Lanka remain high, with the Ministry of Health reporting in 2016 that 658 abortions are carried out daily in Sri Lanka. This means that approximately 240,170 abortions take place annually. Contrary to common belief, most women seeking abortions in Sri Lanka are married. Research carried out in two abortion clinics in Colombo in 1997 showed that more than 90% of patients were married women, and more than half of them already had one or two children. The reasons given by married women for needing an abortion were that their pregnancy was too soon after the last delivery, poverty and foreign employment.
Professor Wilfred Perera said many of the women he has treated have come in for post-abortion care “following unsafe illegal abortions, performed by quacks, with high charges, when these can be performed legally and safely at no cost in our hospitals”.
“If we don’t legalise abortions, it will be the illegal abortionist who would be most happy”, he went on to say.
There have been several attempts to reform these archaic laws in Sri Lanka, but opposition groups have continuously rejected all proposals. In 1995 an amendment was proposed to allow abortions in cases of rape and foetal impairments. In 2011 the National Action Plan for Human Rights included a goal to decriminalise abortion for rape and major congenital abnormalities, in 2013 the Law Commission proposals called for legalisation in cases of rape and foetal impairments, and more recently in 2017 recommendations were made by the Justice Aluvihare Special Committee to allow abortions in cases of rape and incest, pregnancy in a girl below 16 and with serious foetal impairments.
The attempt to reform the law in 2017 was met with initial success, with the then-Minister of Justice Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe saying “I don’t think there will be much challenges”. However, the drafting of the Bill was put on hold because President Maithripala Sirisena wanted to consult with religious leaders, who showed strong opposition to the reform. It was later reported that the proposals had not been put forward to the Health Ministry or the Government and it was only a discussion that took place. When the proposal was received, it would be debated by the Cabinet. However, Minister of Christian Affairs, John Amaratunga, was reported to have said that the Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, assured him that abortion would not be legalised.
Proposals have also been made to legalise Mifepristone and Misoprostol, two drugs that are commonly used for illegal abortions in Sri Lanka. Although they are currently banned, stocks are smuggled into the country in the bags of people returning from India, where they are readily available. Misoprostol is sold covertly in most pharmacies at a cost of 150 rupees per pill. Medical abortions do have benefits relative to surgical abortions because they are less intrusive procedures, there is no risk from general anaesthesia, and there is less risk of secondary infertility due to scarring and intrauterine adhesions (scar tissue that forms between the inner walls of the uterus.) However, due to the inability to regulate the sale of these drugs, patients don’t have complete information on correct doses, so may potentially face health risks from taking incorrect dosages. An attempt to legalise Misoprostol in 2010 failed when the responsible body was unable to reach a decision on registration.
Religious leaders have always been one of the main sources of opposition to proposed reform of Sri Lanka’s abortion laws. Despite the Pope’s pronouncement that absolution can be given by a priest, as shown by Prof. Wilfred Perera, Catholic leaders in Sri Lanka have maintained a strong view against legalising abortion. President of the Bishops’s Conference, Bishop Winston Fernando, said “no one has a right to take a life. Natural birth to natural death, life is sacred. And we believe life begins at the moment of conception”. Cardinal Malcom Ranjith reportedly said that children born as a result of rape or incest would be institutionalised by the church in their orphanages and care homes. “I invite you all to spread the message to all you meet that abortion is murder”, he said. Other religious leaders, from Christian, Buddhist and Muslim communities have also voiced opposition to reform.
However, the Feminist Catholic Network has made a public statement, signed by over 100 Sri Lankan Roman Catholics, showing their support for the proposed reforms. The statementargues “we object to any barrier that would stop women from making a conscientious choice of their own free will to seek safe, legal medical care”, as well as that “the ‘official’ position put forward by a few clergymen of the Catholic hierarchy makes a false representation of the opinion of ordinary Catholics”.
The key focus of the recent discussion on this issue, is the problems and complications created by women carrying out at-home abortions or turning to illegal abortion clinics. At one time, coat hangers, bicycle parts and papaya leaves were the most common methods used. Although, there are now safer alternatives available to women, there are still significant risks. These include, as Professor Arulkumaran highlighted, a haemorrhage, sepsis, peritonitis, trauma to the cervix, vagina, uterus and abdominal organs and secondary infertility. In the developing world, around 5 million women are admitted to hospitals annually for complications due to induced abortions. Post-abortion care is estimated to cost USD 232 million per year. In Sri Lanka, 12.5% of all maternal deaths are due to illegal abortions, making this the third most common cause of maternal mortality. Since a majority of women seeking abortions are married mothers, maternal mortality has an additional impact on the estimated 220,000 children worldwide who lose their mothers annually to abortion-related deaths. Professor Wilfred Perera highlighted that illegal abortions affect the reproductive health of around 35,000 women in Sri Lanka annually.
Moreover, a study in Gabon, where abortion is only legal to save the life of the woman, showed that women who seek medical care due to complications related to abortions waited almost 24 hours for medical assistance, while those with a post-partum haemorrhage or eclampsia waited an hour. A study of 56 women admitted to government hospitals for post-abortion care in Sri Lanka showed that women delayed seeking medical care because they felt they would be discriminated against, and 10% did experience verbal abuse from hospital staff. Another studyshowed that patients also faced sexual advances by providers.
Until quite recently, relatively safe abortion services could be accessed through Marie Stopes International, a global nongovernment organisation that provides sexual and reproductive health services. Although governments in the past were willing to turn a blind eye to these services, the previous government shut them down. The impact of this is likely to be felt most by poorer women who will be compelled to access riskier illegal clinics.
One of the main concerns raised is that women are often kept out of the decision-making process. Women’s rights activists noted on social media that when a group of medical doctors representing the Health Ministry met with religious leaders of the Congress of Religion at Sri Sambodhi Maha Viharaya to discuss the issue of abortion, not even one woman was present. Moreover, the MPs discussing reforms often voice regressive views around women seeking abortion as “promiscuous, conniving and vulnerable”. Moreover, as Ermiza Tegal showed, views are held that women will “run wild if given the opportunity” and “allowing abortion would open the flood gates”. Professor Arulkumaran used evidence from France and Italy to prove that legalisation actually reduces the number of abortions because it is often coupled with more availability and information on the use of contraceptives.
In a survey published by the Ceylon Medical Journal in 2015, 65% of respondents said abortion should be legalised in cases of rape and 53% agreed that it should be legalised in cases of foetal abnormalities.
The philosophical debate
The philosophical debate centres on whether the foetus is a person and has rights. Those in favour of abortion generally hold the view that the foetus is not a person, while those against abortion argue that the foetus is a person, and their right to life trumps the mother’s right to autonomy. Scientifically, there is still a lot of debate regarding when independent life begins.
Those who oppose abortion argue that the foetus is a human being (though immature) because it is a complete or whole organism, growing in its own distinct direction, and its growth is internally directed for its own survival and maturation (unless prevented, the foetus is able to develop himself or herself into a mature human being).
An argument in response to this view is that although the foetus is an immature human being, this does not entail personhood. This is based on the argument that a foetus cannot exercise higher mental capacities or functions and is not self-aware. However, accepting that a foetus does not have a right to life because it cannot exercise higher mental capacities and is not self-aware, would force us to accept the conclusion that anybody without these two characteristics (including newly born babies and those in a reversible coma) have no right to life.
The view, then, is that although the foetus is an immature human being who cannot immediately exercise higher mental functions, their capacity or potentiality for such mental functions is enough reason to accept that the foetus is a person with a right to life.
Those who argue in favour of legal termination of pregnancy, on the other hand, argue that a foetus is a possible (not a potential) person because the support of the mother is required for the foetus to develop into a mature human being, and this process cannot occur independent of the mother. Therefore, this argument focuses on the mother’s right to autonomy.
This is based on the idea that we are not morally or legally required to do everything in our power to save another person. For example, we are not required by law to donate our organs upon our death, although there will be almost no cost to us. In the same way, a woman should not be required to do everything in her power to support the foetus, even if the foetus is a person with a right to life. This differs from murder because aborting a foetus involves taking away something that the foetus would never have had without the mother.
Pregnancy comes with physical and medical risks, as well as social risks. It has been proven that pregnancy often results in increased domestic violence and abandonment by families and communities. Moreover, pregnancy and motherhood are very intimate relationships between a mother and a child, which a woman may not be ready to partake in.
It is also important to consider the lifestyle that a child will have after birth. Abortion is supported in cases of severe foetal deformities because the child would have a short and low-quality life. Moreover, many women in Sri Lanka consider abortion because they live in poverty and are unable to support an additional child. It is possible to argue that unless the quality of the child’s life will be worse than not existing at all, the woman has an obligation to not terminate the pregnancy. It can equally be argued that it is morally wrong to force a woman to raise a child without the necessary resources to give them a lifestyle she deems adequate.
Many argue that if a woman is not in a position to raise a child, she has the option of giving the child up for adoption rather than having an abortion. However, what needs to be acknowledged is that this is likely to have a strong psychological impact on the woman. It is also well known that not all children are given to loving homes and many are treated very poorly in children’s homes.
An opposing issue that was raised by a member of the audience at the recent discussion is the view that the language used by pro-choice advocates needs to be more carefully considered. For example, “the right to choose” makes it only about the woman’s choice and “termination of the pregnancy” makes it only a medical issue. The existence of a unique organism, the foetus, must also be acknowledged in the language used.
He also brought up the issue that abortions could lead to future regret and psychological issues for the mother. However, there is no confirmed relation between abortions and psychological trauma, and the possibility of regret is not enough of a basis for criminalising abortion.
Although the woman should be allowed to choose whether or not to terminate her pregnancy, the foetus is still respect-worthy, so restrictions (in terms of the number of weeks up to which abortion is allowed) must also be considered.
The next step for Sri Lanka
The Irish example highlights the global relevance of the current abortion debate. Director of Advocacy at the Sri Lanka Family Planning Association, Sonali Gunasekera says that for real progress to be made in Sri Lanka, the issue needs to be brought into the public sphere with campaigns and discussions for the community. Young people need to be motivated to take on this challenge and continue fighting for reform.
Doctors from the Ministry of Health are continuing to push for legal reforms for cases of rape, incest and severe foetal deformities. However, this reform will only cover a small percentage of the women seeking abortions in Sri Lanka.
Sonali highlights that “the full campaign should focus on the woman’s right to choose, up to 12 weeks, however, if a compromise has to be reached, whereby abortion is legalised as per the medical requests (in cases of rape, incest and severe foetal deformities), this itself will be a win for women in Sri Lanka”.
Editor’s Note: For more viewpoints on the debate around abortion, click here.
Each tree matters
Forests : Beyond The Wood - III
By Dr. Ranil Senanayake-September 6, 2018, 9:38 am
The diversity of a forest is not restricted to the species that it contains; it is also reflected in the ages of its components. Thus in a forest, all the age classes of its plants are represented from the tiny seedling of the tree, to the tall 100ft adult it becomes. Each tree providing the forest ecosystem its needs at every stage of its growth. The seeds and seedlings providing food for forest floor animals, the young saplings becoming the host for forest vines, the flowers, fruits and seeds of the adult serving insects and animals, finally the decaying trunk becoming the host for fungi, beetles and habitat for nesting birds. This is clear that an even aged plantation can never be classed as a ‘forest’ as it cannot provide the ecological services of a forest. The age diversity of a forest is still not utilized as a defining factor.
The only value given to large trees in the modern economy was for its timber, thus little by little all the large trees disappeared without any notice.
Do you remember what a large tree looked like?
Once they were all around us, not just the forest giants like the Hora or Palu, but the fine old Mango and Jak trees that would have taken at least four or five men to girdle.
The next time you leave the city on any road, look for those big trees and you will find that there are none. The only large trees that remain are the Rain trees planted for the comfort of the road users about a hundred years ago or the Bodhi trees planted for worship even earlier.
The home gardens, plantations and the stream reservations that once boasted the old giant trees have now lost them. This is not to say that there are no Mango trees or Jak trees in these parts. To be sure, there are many: but the largest of the trees commonly seen in Sri Lanka today are about fifty to one hundred years away from becoming a large tree of the size we were so familiar with in our recent past.
If this is so, it will mean that the present generation and the next will not be able to experience a large tree. Further, if we do not arrest this destructive trend during our lifetime we rob the future of their right to the fruits of our forefathers.
In fact, if one examines our roadside Mara trees it’s hard to find any young trees of a decade or so in age. If this was not bad enough, over the last few years, the only action on roadside trees is that they have begun to systematically cut down the large trees that were planted many years ago.
For what reason, we may ask, are these trees being felled and by whom? A major offender seems to be the Ceylon Electricity Board who sees the placement of power lines by roadsides their inalienable right.
Another is the Highways Department, busily expanding the roads for big development machines to move on. Underwriting all this is the fact that old Mara trees give a very valuable timber that is presently substituted for Nedun (Percopsis mooniana) in furniture making.
There is an act termed the Implementation of Order Under felling Trees (Control) Act. which currently stipulates that Permits should be obtained for felling of Jack, Bread Fruit and female Palmyra trees because yield (nuts) of those trees are used as daily food of human being. If used properly, all trees over a certain girth and height should be protected by this act.
Do we have a single person in the decision-making bureaucracy who will act to slow the destruction of our large trees? Will someone begin to catalogue what we have left and where? Or, will they all stand by, pass the buck and say "not my responsibility" and treat us to the dubious pleasure of watching the giants disappear. Disappear they will, just like the huge roadside Ebony tree on the Badulla road, known by everyone in the vicinity, suddenly, in the midst of road building it disappeared roots and all, overnight ! The large trees outside forests should be catalogued, the large trees in the forest protected by strengthening the legal protection for the little forest patches that do remain.
For a real understanding of what we lost, travel from Galle along the road to Hiniduma, the road passes through the Kottawa Forest Reserve and reflect that this was once the height of the forest that covered over 80% of the lowland wet- zone just 150 years ago. The loss of both forest biomass and forest biodiversity from then to now is phenomenal. The much vaunted ‘Sinharaja’ forest is but a final remnant patch of the massive cover of forest that recently covered the south western quarter of the inland.
All the so called ‘forests’ that are planted as a substitute for the native forests are even aged and are felled after 30-40 years for timber, not a single tree is maintained to maturity and the possibility of the future of large trees diminish with each passing year of avoiding the subject. Further these plantations do not exhibit any of the characteristics of the native forest. The ecosystem created by these plantations usually become very desiccated due to the lack of a topsoil and poor water retention capacity. As any traveller in our highlands can attest to, the months of July and August are illuminated by the fires in the Pinus and Eucalyptus plantations. These fires further destroy the soil organisms and bakes an impervious surface creating a hard soil that water cannot leach into, thus rainwater rushes down with erosive forces.
Perhaps one aspect of the problem lies in ourselves. Perhaps we have lost our ability to understand as Carl Jung states, "People who know nothing about nature are of course neurotic for they are not adapted to reality", in one sentence he has encapsulated the major problem with modern, technological society. It represents a collective of decisions that constantly evolve away from nature. Nature is seen as a group of simple variables – rain, wind, temperature, etc., that can be modified, changed or developed through the agency of technology. The managers who make the decisions spend less and less time in natural areas, as their environment becomes more and more ‘controlled’ or urbanized. These people or the societies they try to create become unable to live in or cope with natural surroundings or processes, and have to spend vast amounts of energy and resources to maintain their artificial environments.
At this stage the emergence of a reality other than nature must be perceived. For otherwise the neurosis of the modern planners will be exposed. The reality that they describe can be best described as a ‘machine reality’, where society will require an incredible input of energy and resources for the maintenance of this reality. But there is no question of the cost
The other tragedy in the current definition of forests and the idea that any area covered by a 10-30% canopy cover constitutes a forest.
Smoke rises above Gaza City after an Israeli airstrike targeted a multi-story building housing the Said al-Mishal cultural center, obliterating it, on 9 August.
Mohammed ZaanounActiveStills)
2 September 2018
Fifteen Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces during the month of August. A further two Palestinians died of wounds sustained during Great March of Return protests in Gaza months earlier.
Ahmad Mahamid, a 30-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel, was shot and killed after attempting to stab police in Jerusalem on 17 August. His family said that the man was mentally unwell and that the stabbing was not politically motivated.
All other fatalities during the month occurred in or near Gaza.
Inas Muhammad Khamash, 23, her unborn, full-term child Hayat and toddler daughter Bayan were killed when Israel bombed their home in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah on 8 August.
The bombing was part of a two-day military assault in which Israel struck 150 targets across the coastal territory, destroying a multi-story building housing a prominent cultural center in reprisal for a medium-range rocket fired from Gaza towards Beersheva that resulted in no injuries or damage.
Fifty Palestinians and 28 Israelis were injured during the round of hostilities, during which Palestinian armed groups fired around 180 rockets and mortars towards Israel, a few of them hitting built-up areas.
Paramedic and child killed
Seven other Palestinians, including volunteer paramedic Abdallah al-Qatati and 15-year-old boy Muath Ziad Ibrahim al-Soury, were shot and killed during Great March of Return protests during the month.
Two fighters in the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, were killed by shelling on 7 August, and another fighter was slain the following day.
Hani Almajdalawi, who was a nurse with Doctors Without Borders, was killed while off duty on 20 August. Israel, which is holding the slain man’s body, claims that Almajdalawi was a gunman who had infiltrated into Israel over the Gaza boundary, shooting and throwing a grenade at soldiers.
Doctors Without Borders stated more than a week later that though its representatives had met with Israeli authorities, “we have not yet received information clarifying the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr. Almajdalawi, and therefore cannot confirm the reported versions of events.”
Some 210 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire so far this year, 130 of them fatally wounded during Great March of Return protests ongoing since 30 March. Eight Israelis were killed by Palestinians during the same period.
On 15 August Israel lifted tightened restrictions on imports and exports to Gaza, imposed in early July, and increased the permitted fishing zone from three nautical miles to six to nine nautical miles off of the coast.
Yet UN officials reiterated warnings that essential services in Gaza would soon shut down if emergency fuel was not immediately funded. Such fuel is used to operate health, water and sanitation facilities, particularly backup generators at Gaza’s hospitals.
Egypt opened Rafah crossing, the sole point of exit and entry for the vast majority of Gaza’s two million residents, several days throughout the month.
West Bank demolitions
On 28 August, Israeli forces demolished a home in the West Bank village of Kobar belonging to the family of a 17-year-old Palestinian who was killed after stabbing and killing an Israeli settler last month.
A mobile health clinic in the Hebron area of the southern West Bank, provided by an international organization, was among the property seized or destroyed by Israel during the month. The Masafer Yatta area where the clinic was located “is designated as a ‘firing zone’ for military training and its 1,300 residents face risk of forcible transfer,” according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In the northern West Bank, Israeli forces demolished two structures in a charcoal factory, destroying more than 10 tons of wood, citing Israeli environmental regulations.
During the month of August the European Union reported that 26 structures funded by the EU or its member states were among the nearly 200 Palestinian-owned structures targeted with demolition, seizure, sealing off or eviction during the first half of the year.
The EU stated that more than 40 schools in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have received “stop work” or demolition orders “and face the risk of full or partial demolition due to lack of building permits.” Almost half of those schools have received funding from the EU or its member states.
US punishes Palestinians
The Trump administration announced during the month of August that it had decided to cut more than $200 million in bilateral assistance to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The amount cut by the Trump administration represents most of the $250 million in aid requested annually by the State Department for 2018 and 2019.
On 31 August the US halted all funding to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees. The US was the single largest donor to the agency until it withheld $300 million earlier this year, throwing UNRWA into unprecedented financial crisis.
UNRWA’s director-general Pierre Krähenbühl said that the withholding of funds was “clearly related” to tensions following Trump’s declaration that the US recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in defiance of international law and UN resolution 242.
“The announcement made yesterday further challenges the notion that humanitarian funding should be depoliticized. It risks undermining the foundations of the international multilateral and humanitarian systems,” Krähenbühl stated on 1 September.
“Absolutely devastating”
UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness told the BBC: “The impact will be absolutely devastating. It’s likely to be widespread, profound, dramatic and unpredictable because let’s make no mistake, some of the most marginalized and fragile and vulnerable communities in the Middle East are going to likely suffer because of this.”
He added that Palestinian refugees “Cannot simply be airbrushed out of history. These are people who have been a UN-protected population for 70 years and we have a continuing obligation towards them.”
The UN secretary-general called on other countries “to help fill the remaining financial gap, so that UNRWA can continue to provide this vital assistance, as well as a sense of hope to this vulnerable population.”
During the month of August more than 20 Palestinians were recorded as having died as a result of the war in Syria.
Most of them were refugees from al-Ramal camp near Latakia whose names had been included on a list of 8,000 people who had died in Syrian government detention.
“Two thirds of Diddly Squat” is what we’ll get from Theresa May’s Chequers Brexit plan, according to Boris Johnson.
In reply, her office said that his criticisms were not accompanied by an alternative plan.
So began the back-to-school Brexit bickering, which looks like it’s fast developing into a full-scale feud between the prime minister and her former foreign secretary.
Tens of thousands of people have flocked to an anti-racism concert in Chemnitz which aims to drown out recent far-right protests and violence in the eastern German city.
Under the banner #wirsindmehr (‘There are more of us’), city authorities estimated that as many as 50,000 people had come out to challenge a wave of far-right and neo-Nazi demonstrations since a Syrian and an Iraqi were suspects in a fatal stabbing more than a week ago.
After a minute’s silence for the German Cuban victim, identified as Daniel H, speakers addressed a crowd that bobbed with anti-racism placards. “If only there was this much solidarity every day – and not just in Chemnitz, but across the country,” said Rola Saleh of a Chemnitz youth group.
Originally to be held near a towering Karl Marx sculpture in Chemnitz, the event was moved to make space for a larger crowd. Organisers were expecting more than 20,000, but that had been far exceeded by early evening, with police saying that 5,000 people had arrived for the concert by trains from Leipzig, the Saxony region’s biggest city, alone.
Earlier on Monday, the chancellor, Angela Merkel, had urged Germans to mobilise against hate. “These people who march and are prone to violence – some have also shamelessly shown their closeness to Nazism – they stand neither for Chemnitz nor for Saxony overall, nor are they ‘the people’,” said her spokesman, Steffen Seibert.
Even before the first chord was played, the lineup caused a stir. The general secretary of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, criticised the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for supporting the open-air concert. She told Die Welt she was irked by the inclusion of Feine Sahne Fischfilet, a controversial rock band known for its far-left lyrics which refer to street violence and hurling stones at police.
The band Feine Sahne Fischfilet perform at the concert in Chemnitz. Photograph: Hannibal Hanschke/ReutersOther bands playing in Chemnitz included Germany’s famous punk outfit Die Toten Hosen, Chemnitz-based indie band Kraftklub and the rappers Marteria and Casper.
Toralf Staudt, author of several books on far-right extremism, said the mix of performers remained “a fair cross-section of the German music scene” and believed the concert would have clout. “Music plays a big role in this sphere. It has also long been the most important recruiting tool for neo-Nazis,” he said.
On its Twitter account, event organisers urged festival-goers to donate to a fund that would be shared between the family of the stabbing victim, and local anti-fascist and anti-racist groups.
Organisers had expected more than 20,000 people to attend, but said it far surpassed that. Photograph: John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images
Meanwhile, the political response to the protests stepped up a notch. Politicians from both left and right pressed for surveillance of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) after some of its leaders marched in Chemnitz alongside the far-right Pegida, which stands for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.
The SPD leader, Andrea Nahles, was among those urging state scrutiny. “The AfD allowed itself to become a front organisation for radical rightists in the streets of Chemnitz, either willingly or unwillingly,” she told reporters.
The AfD, which entered the German parliament last September as the third largest party, has seen its support rise following the Chemnitz protests. Its share of the vote rose two percentage points to 16% according to an RTL poll, as the SPD slipped to 17%.
(Lanka e News -04.Sep.2018, 7.30AM) The murderous opposition which has a long experience in criminalities and had been demanding a ‘dead body’ from the good governance government over a long period has planned to take its revenge on the 5 th of September when it is staging its ‘people’s force’ protest , based on reports reaching Lanka e News inside information division.
streamline the importation of various drugs for the past few years. As the pharmaceutical industry went in search of more profits, its sole purpose of curing patients from ailments and illnesses took a back seat. Hence the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) was established in 2015 by an Act of Parliament. The difference between the Cosmetic Drugs and Devices Regulatory Authority and NMRA is that the NMRA is mandated by law to look at four areas including the safety, efficacy of medicines, the need and the cost. With the reduction of prices of 48 essential medicines, the authorities took a step in the proper direction. But to what extent it has impacted patients’ lives remains a question.
medicines?
The location of the event in Chemnitz, east Germany, was changed to accommodate larger than expected crowds. Photograph: John Macdougall/AFP/Getty
Organisers had expected more than 20,000 people to attend, but said it far surpassed that. Photograph: John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images