Bonjour Planet Earth

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Indian student facing life imprisonment for refusing to stand up during national anthem at theatre...

An intense debate sparked in India, after the local police in Kerala recently arrested a philosophy student and charged him for sedition, under which he faces life imprisonment, for refusing to stand up during the national anthem at a theatre.

Salman M, 25, was arrested in Thiruvanathapuram on 20 August. He was charged under section 124 A of the IPC (sedition) for allegedly "sitting and hooting" when the anthem was played at the theatre.

Salman has also been accused under section 66A of India's Information Technology Act for allegedly publishing abusive social media posts about the Independence Day on 15 August.

A Thiruvananthapuram court denied bail to Salman for the second time on 6 September. The 25-year-old will now face life imprisonment, if the charges against him are proved.

The arrest was made after Salman and his friends refused to stand up when a music video of the national anthem was played at a government-owned local theatre, prior to the screening of a movie, on 18 August.

The group's refusal to stand up led to protests from a section of the audience. A heated argument followed, and a few people filed a complaint with the police. Full story...

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Tuesday, October 07, 2014

Bahrain spends $95million yearly on protest crackdown...

The Bahraini regime spends some 95 million dollars a year to crack down on the country’s pro-democracy protesters, a new report has revealed.

The newspaper al-Maidan said on Monday that the Al Khalifa regime has hired 21,000 security forces, including Pakistani expatriates, for the crackdown.

More than 2.5 billion dollars has also been spent on arms purchase since the protests began three years ago.

Since mid-February 2011, thousands of pro-democracy protesters have held numerous demonstrations in the streets of Bahrain, calling for the Al Khalifa royal family to relinquish power.

On March 14, 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates invaded the country to assist the Bahraini government in its crackdown on peaceful protesters.

According to local sources, scores of people have been killed and hundreds arrested.

On June 10, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) censured the Manama regime for human rights violations in the country. A total of 46 members of the international body expressed deep concern over the Al Khalifa regime’s crackdown on peaceful protesters. Source...

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'Hundreds in jail for exercising their human rights in Bahrain'

Bahrain: torture in hospitals and attacks on innocent people...(Graphic)

Jailing of Bahrain Shiite activists is ‘appalling’

Deplorable Bahraini human rights abuses continue...

The Al Khalifas: the perverts of Bahrain...

Turkish president proclaims “I am increasingly against the internet every day”

A very significant and dangerous trend has been accelerating in recent weeks. This trend consists of leaders throughout the globe coming out and blatantly calling for censorship and restrictions on free speech.

Of course, in so-called Western democracies, the leaders have to be more subtle and nuanced in their approach. They can’t just come out and say they hate the internet. We saw this tactic from the UK Conservative Party as of late with its call for the banning of “non-violent” extremism from public discourse. I covered this terrifying plan in my recent post: The UK’s Conservative Party Declares War on YouTube, Twitter, Free Speech and Common Sense.

While that’s how British politicians pitch totalitarianism, their Turkish counterparts don’t seem to have any qualms about just coming out and admitting their disdain for the proliferation of free speech that the internet allows. We learn from the Independent that:

The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has defended his government’s efforts to control online speech, telling a press freedom conference: “I am increasingly against the Internet every day.” Full story...

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Twitter has quietly learned to censor and ban its users when government ask...

India leads the world in Facebook censorship...

Vietnam’s love-hate affair with the Internet...

Singapore: Escalating restrictions on Internet expression...

Massachusetts student facing terrorism charges for Facebook post...

Up to a dozen Ukraine officials dumped in rubbish bins...

It’s a bad time to be a Ukrainian politician.

The war in the east refuses to end, despite a “ceasefire”. Winter is approaching, and with it all the worries of another “gas-war” with Russia. And with parliamentary elections just weeks away, pre-revolutionary MPs are getting nervous about hanging on to their jobs.

To make things worse, there is a growing chance of ending up in a wheelie bin.

Since early September up to a dozen MPs, city councillors and other officials accused of wrong doing have been hauled from their offices by masked gangs in what has become know as the “Trash Bucket Challenge.”

The perpetrators - often members of the radical right-wing group Right Sector - say the public humiliations are to punish the corruption and criminality that characterised the previous regime. Full story...

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Angry mob throws Ukraine MP in rubbish bin...

Jayalalitha: The downfall of India's 'Mother' politician...

Uganda students smuggle pigs into parliament to prostest against corruption...

Bloggers expose lavish lifestyles of Putin loyalists...

Which faceless Eurocrat did you vote for?

Just two kangaroos fighting...

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Ron Paul: US war achievements; a mountain of corpses and ripped-off Americans...

After 13 years of war in Afghanistan – the longest in US history – the US government has achieved no victory. Afghanistan is in chaos and would collapse completely without regular infusions of US money. The war has been a failure, but Washington will not admit it.

More than 2,000 US fighters have been killed in the 13 year Afghan war. More than 20,000 Afghan civilians were also killed. According to a study last year by a Harvard University researcher, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost in total between four and six trillion dollars. There is no way of looking at the US invasion of Afghanistan and seeing a success.

So in light of this failure, what does the Obama Administration do? Do they admit the mistake? Do they pull the remaining US troops out of Afghanistan and try to avoid making matters even worse? No! As with all US government programs, if the desired result is not achieved they just pump in more resources and continue with the same policies. The past 13 years have been an utter failure, so this past week the US government signed on for ten more years of war!

US troops were legally required to be out of Afghanistan by the end of this year, according to a status of forces agreement between the US and Afghanistan. The US was unsuccessful in negotiating a new status of forces agreement with outgoing president Hamid Karzai. The Afghan leader had grown critical of the US military presence – which has actually increased under President Obama. So, the US needed a new puppet in government. Full story...

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'My husband kills kids with drones'

Democracy in the United States is a ‘hollow myth’

Democracy in the United States is a “hollow myth” which has led to the American people losing confidence in the “oligarchy system” running the country, a researcher and historian in Washington says.

“The American public doesn’t have real reason to trust their government right now that seems to only work for the rich and work for people in Israel,” Randy Short told Press TV on Sunday.

“Democracy in reality is a hollow myth for the rich. The oligarchical system of America is becoming more and more evident to even the American public,” Shorts stated.

He said the US government suffers from a “lack of leadership, a lack of vision, a lack of passion about solving problems that the American people face, (such as) mass unemployment, the collapsing infrastructure, the lack of care for seniors, the collapsing school system, the lack of jobs.”

“The American public doesn’t see leadership and they don’t see voting as necessarily as being the answer because you have a monopoly of a two-party system.” Full story...

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Monday, October 06, 2014

Why Liverpool let its neighbourhood go to hell...

There's a set playbook sports teams follow when they want a new stadium. The team announces its intentions, commissions a few architectural designs, and pays for an economic impact study touting the (mostly fictional) benefits a new stadium would have on the community. Few teams have taken the Nixonian approach of poisoning their own community to make those benefits more apparent.

As of last year, Liverpool F.C. owned 150 homes around their historic stadium, Anfield. Almost all of them were vacant. "There are thieves ripping the lead off people's roofs," Chris Coyle, whose mother lived among the vacants, told the Liverpool Echo at the time. This was just the tip of the iceberg: the Guardian reported that over the past decade, miscreants lit some of the blighted houses on fire, threw bricks at the few remaining residents, and in 2001 a woman using one of the vacant homes was murdered. In what one resident called "dereliction by design," Liverpool was accused of buying properties just to let them rot, driving prices down and residents out so they could more cheaply expand Anfield.

(...)

There's no question Liverpool could have handled this situation better, either by fairly compensating the residents—reports consistently indicated Liverpool would try to underpay the largely senior citizen occupants for their homes—or by keeping the neighborhood functional in the interim. But, perhaps most insultingly of all, the club was deceitful, using third-party brokers to mask the club's motives. As a Lothair Road resident told the Guardian last year, "If Liverpool had been honest from the beginning, said they wanted our houses to expand their ground, we're realistic, we know they're a huge football club, most of us support them, deals could have been done. Instead they were underhand, blighted the area and we've had to live like this for years." Whether Liverpool's neighbors would have been reasonable at the onset is up for debate, but ultimately beside the point since the club never bothered to find out.

One of the main reasons Liverpool needs to expand the stadium is to keep revenues in line with soccer's global powerhouses. Arsenal, for example, has made boatloads of money off its new stadium in North London. But this global presence and ambition comes with a price, often to the people closest to the club. As much as Liverpool—and every sports team, really—wants to market itself as a tight-knit community of die-hards, the reality is the club is governed by a global perspective, often at the expense of their closest fans. After almost two decades of neglecting its neighbors, Liverpool may finally be ready to repair their own home. Full story...

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India holds Bill Gates accountable for his vaccine crimes...

As Bill Gates faces a lawsuit for the illegal testing of tribal children in India, it appears that his crimes against humanity have finally caught up with him.

A recent report published by Health Impact News has reported that the Gates Foundation has found itself facing a pending lawsuit, due to an investigation that is being carried out by the Supreme Courts of India.

Health Impact News stated:

“While fraud and corruption are revealed on almost a daily basis now in the vaccine industry, the U.S. mainstream media continues to largely ignore such stories. Outside the U.S., however, the vaccine empires are beginning to crumble, and English versions of the news in mainstream media outlets are available via the Internet.

One such country is India, where the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and their vaccine empire are under fire, including a pending lawsuit currently being investigated by the India Supreme Court.”

The Health Impact News article centered largely on a four-page report that was recently published by Economic Times India.

Eager to know more, I investigated their story and discovered that the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation and two organizations funded by them, PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) and GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization), have found themselves under fire, after a writ of petition originally submitted to the Supreme Court of India, by Kalpana Mehta, Nalini Bhanot and Dr. Rukmini Rao in 2012, was finally heard by the courts. Full story...

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Bill Gates polio vaccine programme caused 47,500 cases of paralysis death in India...

We're not safe in Belfast, says dad after racist thugs smash window and set car ablaze...

A father of two young girls fought back tears as he told how he was too afraid to stay in his Belfast home after a terrifying race hate attack.

Ashraful Alam, whose daughters are seven and four, saw his window smashed and his next door neighbour's car set ablaze.

The ordeal of the two families is the latest in a wave of hate crimes in Northern Ireland over the past 18 months.

It prompted the head of the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities to say the threat posed to foreign nationals here was higher than ever.

And Patrick Yu predicted the problem would only get worse unless urgent action is taken.

The perpetrators struck at 3am yesterday in the Ulsterville Avenue area of south Belfast. Their targets were a Bangladeshi family – Mr Alam's – and the Kuwaiti family next door. Full story...

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Chomsky: The crass and brutal approach used to keep Gaza mired in misery...

On Aug. 26, Israel and the Palestinian Authority both accepted a cease-fire agreement after a 50-day Israeli assault on Gaza that left 2,100 Palestinians dead and vast landscapes of destruction behind.

The agreement calls for an end to military action by Israel and Hamas as well as an easing of the Israeli siege that has strangled Gaza for many years.

This is, however, just the most recent of a series of cease-fire agreements reached after each of Israel's periodic escalations of its unremitting assault on Gaza.

Since November 2005 the terms of these agreements have remained essentially the same. The regular pattern is for Israel to disregard whatever agreement is in place, while Hamas observes it - as Israel has conceded - until a sharp increase in Israeli violence elicits a Hamas response, followed by even fiercer brutality.

These escalations are called "mowing the lawn" in Israeli parlance. The most recent was more accurately described as "removing the topsoil" by a senior U.S. military officer, quoted in Al-Jazeera America.

The first of this series was the Agreement on Movement and Access between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in November 2005. Full story...

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Jayalalitha: The downfall of India's 'Mother' politician...

Her face adorns cheap food canteens, pharmacies, salt packets, laptop computers, baby care kits, bottled water, medicine shops and cement bags in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

And if things go according to plan, a chain of frugal supermarkets and cinemas will soon bear her picture and the moniker Amma (Mother), as she is more popularly known to her followers.

Her fall from grace ironically comes months after her regional AIADMK party bravely stood up to the Narendra Modi-led BJP surge in the recent general election.

Ms Jayalalitha's resounding victory - AIADMK won 37 of the 39 parliamentary seats in the state - was attributed mainly to her reputation as an able administrator and a welfare populist.

Many believe the former film actress-turned-politician is possibly India's only contemporary leader who has successfully built up a near-indelible personality cult through welfarism - or her inexpensive Amma-branded food, water, salt. No wonder subsidies make up more than 37% of Tamil Nadu's revenue spending. Full story...

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Sunday, October 05, 2014

Gapple and Oogle, our defenders...

I read that Apple and Google have begun encrypting the data of customers so that nobody, including Apple and Google, have plaintext access to it. This of course means “so that the government will not have access to it.” The FBI is terribly upset about this, the first serious resistance against onrushing Orwellianism. God bless Apple and Google. But will they be able to stand up to the feds?

Here is a curious situation indeed. The government has become our enemy, out of control, and we have to depend on computer companies for any safety we may have.

NSA spies on us illegally and in detail, recording telephone conversations, reading email, recording our financial transactions, on and on. TSA makes air travel a nightmare, forcing us to hop about barefoot and confiscating toothpaste. The police kick in our doors at night on no-knock raids and shoot our dogs. In bus stations we are subject to search without probable cause. The feds track us through our cell phones. Laws make it a crime to photograph the police, an out-and-out totalitarian step: Cockroaches do not like light. The feds give police forces across the country weaponry normal to militaries. Whatever the intention, it is the hardware of control of dissent. Think Tian An Men Square in China.

And we have no recourse. If you resist, you go to jail, maybe not for long, not yet anyway, but jail is jail. Object to TSA and you miss your flight. They know it and use it. The courts do nothing about this. They too are feds.

Fools say, “If you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.” This might be true, or partly true, or sometimes true, or occasionally plausible, if government were benevolent. It isn’t. Full story...

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Friday, October 03, 2014

14 infants die in 24 hours in West Bengal's Burdwan Hospital...

14 infants have died at the Burdwan Medical College and Hospital in West Bengal in the past 24 hours.

Hospital deputy superintendent Dr Tapas Kumar Ghosh said six infants died between midnight last night till 6 AM today, while eight others died earlier.

Some of the infants were born in the hospital while the rest were referral cases, he said, adding, all of them were in critical condition.

The infants belonged to the age group of 0-1 year.

Stating that there was staff shortage because of the festive season, the deputy superintendent said two nurses had been looking after 360 infants.

Two more nurses were arranged later, he said.

Dr Ghosh said relatives of the dead infants had demonstrated in the hospital and he himself was heckled.

Beds were increased in the recent years but the number of employees was not increased, Dr Ghosh said. Source...

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16 Pakistani air hostesses disappear in Canada...

At least 16 air hostesses and cabin crew members of Pakistan's national carrier have disappeared in the last five months in Canada after going there on international flights.

Four air hostesses of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) last month failed to show up for their return flights after disappearing from the hotel in which the flight crew members were staying, Ary News channel reported.

The channel said that a spokesman of the PIA had confirmed that in the last five months air hostesses and women cabin crew members had slipped away after flying to Canada on PIA flights.

"Disciplinary departmental action against those who have slipped away has been initiated by PIA while these staffers will also have to face action under international aviation laws," the channel quoted the spokesman as saying.

The cash-strapped airline has some 17,000 employees but just 36 aircraft, and 10 of them are grounded due to a lack of spare parts.

Two Boeing 737-800 (180-seater) aircraft reached Karachi which have been acquired by the national airlines from Turkish airlines on a wet lease programme.

Sources in the airlines said the slipping away of the PIA air hostesses highlighted the lack of discipline in the airlines and proper training.

Last month, customs officials detained cabin crew members of the national airlines after they returned from a international flight and tried to smuggle new Iphone 6 models in their personnel baggage. Source...

Police want to get rid of their pentagon-issued combat gear. Here's why they can't...

An officer with the Chelan County Sheriff's Department in central Washington is offering me a tank. Three of them, actually.

"We really want to get rid of these," Undersheriff John Wisemore says. "We've been trying to get the military to take them back since 2004."

The tanks came from a vast Defense Department program that has furnished American police arsenals, at no charge, with $4.3 billion worth of combat equipment leftover from two foreign wars. The tanks are amphibious, capable of firing 107-mm mortars—and not remotely useful to Wisemore's rural police department. But the county can't seem to unload them. Back in June, Wisemore got an email from a Defense Department liaison promising to explain how Chelan County can get rid of the tanks. Then, nothing. Until further notice, Wisemore says, "they're just going to sit there."

In the past eight years, the Pentagon program has loaned local law enforcement some 200,000 ammunition magazines, 94,000 machine guns, and thousands of armored vehicles, rifles, aircraft, land mine detectors, silencers, and grenade launchers—all at the request of the local agencies themselves. But images of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, of police in military gear cracking down on peaceful protesters, have turned many communities against a program critics say has eroded the line between police officers and soldiers. Recently, in response to the local outcry over aggressive policing tactics, San Jose, California's police department announced plans to return its mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle (MRAP), and the Los Angeles school system police department has agreed to return its three grenade launchers.
Law enforcement agencies across the country have quietly returned more than 6,000 unwanted or unusable items to the Pentagon. Full story...

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Sport & gender: A history of bad science & 'biological racism'

Having become the first Indian sprinter to reach a final at a global athletics event in 2013, the 18-year-old was already the national champion at 100m and 200m, and an Asian Games bronze medallist.

Such was the excitement about her potential that the Sports Authority of India's director general Jiji Thomson described her as a "sure shot Olympic medallist" of the future, and a place in a final on her Commonwealth Games debut looked within her reach.

But then, less than a fortnight before the opening ceremony in Glasgow, she "failed" a test that had nothing to do with fitness, form or even doping, and was dramatically withdrawn from the national team.

Like South African 800m sensation Caster Semenya before her, Chand discovered - in bold newsprint - that she had natural levels of the hormone testosterone normally only found in men. It did not take long before reporters were outside her parents' humble home asking them and her six siblings if she was a boy or a girl.

Now, almost three months later, Chand is in limbo, unable to join the Indian team at the 2014 Asian Games, and unwilling to subject herself to the "corrective" treatment (hormone suppression therapy and sometimes even genital surgery) prescribed by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other leading sports bodies.

"I am who I am," says Chand with a mixture of defiance and dismay. Full story...

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Meet FireChat – How Hong Kong protesters are communicating without the internet...

Wired first reported on a new iOS app called FireChat back in late March. It described it in the following manner:

A new iOS app called FireChat is blowing up in the App Store. But it’s not the app itself that’s causing such a stir, it’s the underlying networking technology it taps into.

The idea behind FireChat is simple. It’s a chatting app. After registering with a name — no email address or other personal identifiers required — you’re dropped into a fast-moving chatroom of “Everyone” using it in your country. The interesting aspect, however, is the “Nearby” option. Here, the app uses Apple’s Multipeer Connectivity framework, essentially a peer-to-peer feature that lets you share messages (and soon photos) with other app users nearby, regardless of whether you have an actual Wi-Fi or cellular connection.

You read that correctly. You’re able to send and receive messages even when you don’t have a data connection. FireChat accomplishes this magic by allowing each device to connect directly to others nearby using Bluetooth, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, or traditional Wi-Fi networks. Because you’re connecting directly with other users, you don’t actually need to be connected over Wi-Fi or a cellular network.

Apple gives a good high-level overview of how the Multipeer Connectivity Framework works on its developer site. Basically, your phone goes through separate discover and session phases. In the former, the app browses for other users nearby while simultaneously broadcasting to peers that it is available to connect to. This allows you to be invited into a “session” with multiple users all daisy-chained together. Once a session invitation is accepted, you can directly communicate with those other users independent of a cellular signal or Wi-Fi access. This creates what’s known as a wireless mesh network. Full story...

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Can space-conquering India sort out its earthly toilet problem?

India may have set a record in space with its recent Mars mission, but it also remains the world leader in a distinctly less glamorous category: almost 600 million of its people still defecate in the open - more than in any other nation.

It's not just about all the poo that's lying out there.

Lack of adequate sanitation costs the economy an estimated $54 billion a year, and the practice puts people at risk from cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid - not to mention the women and girls who risk violence, or even death, at the hands of vicious men when they leave home to defecate in the open.

India has launched various campaigns over the decades to improve its people's access to sanitation, but its progress has been less than impressive, and half the population still has no access to a proper toilet.

Still, a wind of change does seem to be blowing in India, even if not for the first time.

When independence leader Mahatma Gandhi said in 1925 that "sanitation is more important than independence", he could not foresee that almost 90 years later, the prime minister would use his birthday, October 2, to launch a "Clean India" campaign and tell top officials to clean their ministries, including the toilets. Full story...

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Asian Games: Controversy taints home team victories...

Indian boxer Sarita Devi stood on the podium during the medal ceremony at the Seonhak Gymnasium, Wednesday, but didn’t bend down for the bronze medal. Instead, she took it and slipped it around South Korea’s silver medalist Park Jin-a’s neck. The Korean appeared too stunned to immediately react.

The abrupt refusal came as the Indian boxer lost a decion to Park in the semifinals of the women’s lightweight class on the previous day at the Seonhak Gymnasium.

“I felt that I should not accept the medal because I deserved to be in the finals,” Sarita said after exiting the arena. “I’m ready to face any repercussions. I did not feel like accepting the medal and so I didn’t.”

It was the latest in a series of controversies in which South Koreans’ achievements have been tainted with claims of a “home advantage” gone too far.

After the match, many questioned the judging, some calling it “dubious” and too much “in favor of the home boxers.”

The judges, none of whom were from Asia, scored the three-round bout by identical 39-37 margins.

When Park was announced as the winner, Sarita wept uncontrollably and her husband Thoiba Singh rushed to the judges’ bench and shouted, “You’ve killed boxing.” Full story...

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Thursday, October 02, 2014

A cop killing and a beheading: How Fox News picks and chooses its "terrorism" targets...

Fox News is increasingly fixating on the gruesome workplace beheading last week in Moore, Oklahoma by a recent Muslim convert, suspect Alton Nolen. Perhaps sensing a way to once again fan its patented flames of Islamophobia while simultaneously blaming President Obama for being indifferent to the threat of terrorism, Fox is treating the murder as a national story with sweeping political implications.

Sounding the jihadist alarms, Fox News and the right-wing media are eager to label the ghastly crime an act of Islamic terror. Law enforcement officials, however, aren't in the same rush, noting that the attack came immediately after Nolen was fired and stating that they've yet to find a link to terrorism. While that story continues to play out, it's worth noting that an actual act of political terror remains in the news. It's just not a priority for Fox.

On the night of September 16, 31-year-old marksman Eric Frein was allegedly laying in wait outside the Blooming Grove police barracks in northeastern Pennsylvania, preparing to assassinate state troopers. Shortly before 11 p.m., Bryon Dickson was shot and killed as he walked towards his patrol car. Moments later, as he approached the barracks to begin his overnight shift, trooper Alex Douglass was shot and seriously wounded by a bullet fired from a .308-caliber rifle.

Described as a "survivalist," Frein disappeared into the Poconos Mountains woods where he's been hiding ever since, eluding law enforcement and its massive manhunt, which includes hundreds of law enforcement officers with assistance from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Full story...

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Israeli airline faces calls to stop 'bullying' of female passengers by ultra-Orthodox Jews...

Israel’s national airline is facing outrage over what critics call the “bullying” of women on flights by ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who refuse to sit next to them.

The issue was brought to international attention last week, when a flight from New York to Tel-Aviv descended into an “11-hour long nightmare”.

A group of Haredi Jewish passengers refused to sit next to women, believing that the sexes should be segregated.

After delaying the take-off by standing in the aisles and attempting to trade seats, despite numbers being allocated in advance, the passengers continued disturbing the flight during the journey.

A spokesperson for the airline, El Al, then said it had done its best “to address the needs and requests of all our travellers” in the busy period before Rosh Hashanah – Jewish New Year.

As news of the incident spread, a petition was launched by a woman in Chicago, Sharon Shapiro, calling on El Al to change its policy. Full story...

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Why Norway is the best place in the world to grow old...

It is a country famed for its long dark winter nights and high cost of living – but Norway should also, thanks to a new survey, be recognised as the best place in which to grow old.

Its citizens benefit from decades-old policies designed to provide financial security in old age, plus an efficient public transport system, a strong sense of security and a high level of employment among senior citizens.

“It’s a combination of good management of natural resources coupled with planning ahead,” said Gustavo Toshiaki, an economist and global ageing specialist based in Norway. “They have identified the issues and are dealing with them.”

Research from HelpAge International, released on Wednesday to coincide with the UN International Day of Older Persons, showed that Norway had the highest global level of well-being for people over 60.

The London-based charity created its second annual index of 96 countries, and ranked countries on economic security, health, access to public transport and societal inclusion. Sweden, Switzerland, Canada and Germany completed the top five – while Britain was 11th. Full story...

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Asylum seekers Australia returned to Sri Lanka say they were tortured...

Asylum seekers who sought protection in Australia and were returned to Sri Lanka say they have been tortured, in new claims aired on SBS.

In an SBS Dateline program aired on Tuesday night two asylum seekers – known as Bhanu and Narada – made allegations they had been tortured after being returned to Sri Lanka from Australia.

Despite the end of the civil war in 2009 between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam there have continued to be allegations of torture and rape of Tamils by the government.

Bhanu told the program: “They always hit me. They took this nail and this nail and this nail, they removed, with one of those things they use with electricity.

“They put two chairs with a pole between them and tied me like this – very painful.” Full story...

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Hindu temple in India purified after low-caste chief minister visits...

The government in the Indian state of Bihar has ordered an investigation after reports that a Hindu temple was cleaned and its idols washed after a visit by the state’s chief minister (governor), who belongs to a lower caste community.

Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, a member of the Musahar community, said he had been told the shrine in Bihar’s Madhubani district was “purified” after he visited it last month.

“I have asked the local divisional commissioner and inspector general of police to probe the case and bring out the truth,” Manjhi, who is from the Janata Dal United (JDU) party, told journalists on Monday.

He said he had ordered the investigation because it was important to highlight caste biases in the society, adding that if the reports were true, those responsible would be punished according to the law.

Caste-based discrimination, or “untouchability”, was banned in India in 1955, but centuries-old feudal attitudes persist in many parts of the country and Dalits still face prejudice in every sector from education to employment. Full story...

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Indian officials ordered to take up brooms on day off...

India's four million federal government staff and millions of schoolchildren have taken up brooms and dusters to spearhead a drive to clean up the country.

The nationwide campaign has been launched on 2 October, the birthday of independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.

The day is traditionally celebrated as a national holiday, but this year civil servants and pupils in government-run schools do not have time off. Instead they are busy sweeping away the dirt and dust in their offices and schools - and even cleaning the toilets.

And many of the civil servants are not happy about it.

The cleanliness drive is being led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi - on Thursday morning he was seen with a broom in hand, sweeping clean a part of a street in Valmiki Nagar, the largest sweeper colony in the capital, Delhi, while launching the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign).

In his independence day address to the nation on 15 August, Mr Modi spoke of how he was bothered by the all-pervasive filth around him. Full story...

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Indian boxer faces action after refusing medal...

Indian boxer L Sarita Devi could face disciplinary action after being reported to Asian Olympic officials for refusing to accept her bronze medal at the Asian Games on Wednesday.

Sarita refused to wear the medal when it was presented to her on Wednesday, taking it only in her hand before trying to drape it over another competitor who had beaten her in a fight the previous day.

When the presentation was over, she left the medal behind, despite being told by the organizers to take it with her.

The International Boxing Federation took a dim view of her actions, submitting a formal report to the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) over her behavior.

"The whole incident looked like a well planned scenario by her and her team, and it is regretful to watch a boxer refuse the medal regardless of what happened in the competition," AIBA supervisor David Francis said in a statement. Full story...

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US OKs $1.75 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia...

The U.S. State Department has approved a $1.75 billion sale to Saudi Arabia to upgrade its Patriot air defense system with PAC-3 missiles, a deal that would benefit Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) and Raytheon Co (RTN.N), the Pentagon said Wednesday.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which implements foreign arms sales, notified Congress on Wednesday about the potential arms sale, which must still be finalized. Lawmakers have 30 days to block the deal, although such action is rare.

DSCA said the deal would help Saudi Arabia replenish its current Patriot missiles, which are becoming obsolete and difficult to sustain due to age and lack of spare parts.

Lockheed, maker of the PAC-3 missiles, welcomed the congressional notification and said it was working with both governments as they discussed the potential sale.

If the deal is finalized, Saudi Arabia would become the eighth country to order PAC-3 missiles, joining the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan and Kuwait. Source...

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Wednesday, October 01, 2014

10 untold stories from the wild days of the Beatles...

When The Beatles arrived in America in 1964, they sparked a wild tide of mass hysteria that we all know as Beatlemania. Over 75 million people tuned in to watch their performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, and when they showed up in Washington, D.C., they had to rent the entire seventh floor of the Shoreham Hotel to escape their frenzied fans.

During their 34-day tour, the band played at Carnegie Hall and San Francisco’s Cow Palace, but perhaps their most painful performance was at the Coliseum in D.C. A boxing arena, the stage was set in the middle of the auditorium, meaning the boys were surrounded. Throughout the gig, they had to turn around continually so everyone could glimpse their faces. That meant Ringo had to get up between songs and drag his kit around by himself.

Then fans brought out the jelly beans.

Before their performance, The Beatles had been interviewed by the New York Times, and George made a comment about how much he liked “jelly babies.” Eager to please, starstruck fans loaded their pockets with jelly beans and hurled them at the stage, hitting the band from every side. The candies hit their guitar strings, pinged against Ringo’s cymbals, and smacked the performers in the face.

There’d been a major misunderstanding. Jelly beans aren’t jelly babies. Babies are soft (the US equivalent would be gummi bears), while beans are pretty hard. George was worried he might go blind. “It’s a bit dangerous, you know,” he once said, “because if a jelly bean, traveling about 50 miles an hour through the air, hits you in the eye, you’re finished.” Fortunately, the boys made it through, battered but alive, and went on to play another day. Full story...

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A doctor accuses his profession of dangerous dishonesty...

The noblest professional of all-to heal fellow human beings- is certainly witnessing its worst decay. Dr Peter Gotzsche, Director, Nordic Cochrane Centre and Professor in University of Copenhagen, said to Citizen News Service (CNS): "There is a lot that needs to change in healthcare. It is one of the most corrupted sectors in society. In Denmark, for example, we have thousands of doctors who are on industry payrolls - they are consultants, they sit on advisory boards - but in reality it is a soft form of bribery because if you do not behave as expected you will no longer be on the payroll." Dr Gotzsche is one of the sanest voices in medical fraternity striving hard to bring evidence-based medicine, ethics and integrity back in fashion.

Dr Gotzsche spoke with CNS on the sidelines of 22nd Cochrane Colloquium.

Normalization of practices that stink of 'soft bribery' such as gifts, incentives or other financial favours of pharmaceutical companies and other medical manufacturers to medical professionals is indeed a slap on the face of medical ethics. The conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies/medical manufacturers, and public health is seldom made evident. "This contributes to using expensive drugs, or at times using drugs that are not totally rational, or even using drugs instead of thinking of other evidence-based treatments - this has been well documented. I have tried to change attitudes towards accepting industry money. We should learn to say, 'No, Thank you'" asserted Dr Gotzsche.

Not just corrupted, but medical practices are often not evidence-based. Despite strong evidence pointing to the contrary, they remain popular as some strong opinion makers in medical field keep propelling them. Despite Cochrane review showing that directly observed treatment therapy for anti-tuberculosis treatment has no edge over self-administered therapy, there was no hesitation in aggressively promoting what we knew will not give any better results. Similarly mammography screening for breast cancer remains popular despite research evidence pointing against it. Full story...

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Young entrepreneur uses $23,000 worth of air miles to travel on most luxurious flight in the world from Singapore to New York...

With endless lobster meals, a full-size bed and designer toiletries, it could be a five-star hotel.

But this is actually a private suite on a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 - worth a staggering $23,000.

Young entrepreneur Derek Low cashed in his frequent flier miles to travel in the airlines's Suites Class - voted the most luxurious cabin in the world - from Singapore to New York.

He snapped photos of his experience - from an exclusive departure lounge called 'The Private Room' to hand-stitched leather armchairs - before posting them online.

His Medium.com blog, titled 'What it’s like to fly the $23,000 Singapore Airlines Suites Class', documents his incredible flight experience, from check-in to landing. More + photos...

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'Ugly' fruit and vegetables prove a hit in France...

"Ugly" fruit and vegetables – such as bumpy oranges, two-legged carrots or misshapen aubergines – have proved such a hit in France that supermarket chains – which would previously dump them – are putting the produce on sale in thousands of outlets across the country.

The initiative lets consumers buy the products at a 30 per cent discount compared to their "beautiful" equivalents and allows farmers to sell vegetables that were previously rejected, says Intermarché, one of the supermarkets involved.

It tested selling the oddly-shaped food in one outlet in the town of Provins earlier this year and the trial was such a success that it plans to launch the initiative across its 1,800 stores from next month to encourage customers to try “fruit and vegetables that are ‘ugly’ (twisted, deformed, the wrong size) but just as tasty”.

A government-sponsored day of action against food waste in general is scheduled to run at the same time as the Intermarché initiative. French officials say that seven million tonnes of food are thrown out every year and the government is aiming to reduce this by half within the next decade. Full story...

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Beating of African students by mob in India prompts soul-searching on race...

As India’s prime minister visited the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial with President Obama in Washington on Tuesday, a debate about racism was taking shape in the Indian news media, prompted by video of an angry mob beating three African students in a New Delhi metro station this week.

The video clips show that the men unsuccessfully sought cover inside and on top of a glass booth in the station used by the Delhi Police, who were notably absent for at least five minutes as the students were beaten with sticks and fists.

“Delhi’s ugly face — racist and without a trace of humanity or compassion — was visible at Rajiv Chowk Metro station on Sunday evening,” The Times of India editorialized. “That an entirely avoidable situation with racial overtones was allowed to develop so easily must sit heavy on the conscience of this city.”

As the Indian website Scroll reported, “The video shows what looks startlingly like a lynch mob beating the black men with sticks while yelling, ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai,’ ” or “Victory for Mother India.” More + videos...

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Three Israeli soldiers who fought in Gaza war commit suicide...

Three IDF soldiers who fought in Operation Protective Edge have taken their own lives in recent weeks. The army is investigating whether there was a connection between the suicides and traumatic experiences the soldiers had during the war.

The three soldiers, conscripts serving in the Givati Brigade, each ended their lives within days of each other. The three are believed to have used their personal weapons, which were found next to their bodies, to commit suicide.

The IDF's criminal investigation division (CID) opened an investigation into the three incidents.

One of the possible lines of inquiry is the possibility the soldiers were suffering serious emotional trauma as a result of their experiences in the war, and decided to end their lives as a consequence.

The IDF spokesman said in response: "The IDF expresses its condolences to the families and will continue accompanying them. The CID is investigating the incidents."

Several days ago, the Medical Corps sent text messages to conscript soldiers who took part in Protective Edge, informing them of the option to receive psychological help should they need it from the mental health officer in their unit. Source...

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