The EU has called on Sri Lanka to ensure the families of protesters shot dead by troops during a demonstration over polluted water receive justice.
It has made a similar request for those hurt in a series of attacks on mosques by Buddhist mobs.
The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has faced strong criticism over a series of incidents including the death of three civilians during a protest in Weliweriya town northeast of Colombo. The Weliweriya protesters had claimed a local factory was polluting the drinking water by discharging chemical waste.
Mr Rajapaksa has been condemned for deploying troops to break up the peaceful protest. Two teenagers and a 29-year-old man were killed and dozens of people were wounded. Members of the media were attacked. ?Sri Lanka's Roman Catholic church has accused the military of breaking into St Anthony's Church in Weliweriya and beating people who sought refuge.
?Separately, there have been a series of attacks on mosques and Muslim-owned properties following campaigns by Buddhist nationalist groups. Thirty such attacks have been recorded since 2011, with the latest coming on Saturday when a mob attacked a mosque in Colombo. Seven people were hurt.
?The right to freedom of peaceful assembly and the right to freedom of worship are fundamental to democratic societies and should be protected by the state,? said the EU, according to the Associated Press.
Mr Rajapaksa has said he will either shut down or relocate the factory. He said tests would be conducted to determine if the factory was responsible for polluting the water supply. If the factory is not found to be responsible for the water crisis, it will still be moved from the residential area to an industrial zone, the president?s office said.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Same-sex marriage in prehistoric societies Although the truly nightmarish conditions for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people that existed prior to the Stonewall Rebellion and the modern movement for equal rights and liberation have abated somewhat, the struggle is ... Transgenderal homosexual relationships are those in which one of the two individuals is markedly cross-gendered, while the other is more or less conventional for his or her own sex.
Greetings everyone! I'm making myself and my potential game known here before I decide to get this off of the ground.
Would anyone be interested in playing a Second Edition-esque game where characters are generated by placing their Stat rolls straight down the board and seeing which classes and races they qualify to be?
Example Races: Human (default if you are unable to roll the other races minimum requirements) Elf Half-elf Dwarf Gnome Halfling
Stats would be rolled with the standard 3d6 (3 six-sided dice for those who are unfamiliar) with no rerolls, placing them straight down the line. I would then quote and reply with the classes and races you could possibly qualify for.
Let me know!
"No remorse, no mercy, no forgiveness. Not a single step back, not a single moment of hesitation. You will not succumb to fear or doubt, and you will relent only after you have given your last moment for the Emperor. Nothing less than this will be tolerated." - Colonel Kostan Drescher, Mordian 18th Iron Guard
The subject of ghost cities and real estate bubbles in China is not a new one (as we have discussed here, here and here). However, as this brief but devastatingly insightful clip from CBS 60 Minutes shows, "if you go to China, it's easy to see why there's all the talk of a bubble. We discovered that the most populated nation on Earth is building houses, districts and cities with no one in them - no residents, desolate condos and vacant subdivisions uninhabited for miles, and miles, and miles, and miles of empty apartments." But... "they've all been sold" to foreign liquidity and more worryingly, to the domestic Chinese middle class who have been 'repressed' into this speculation.
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Excerpts from the Transcript:
China has been nothing short of a financial miracle. In just 30 years, this state-controlled economy became the world's second largest, deftly managed by government policies and decrees.
One sector the authorities concentrated on was real estate and construction. But, as we first reported in March, that may have created the largest housing bubble in human history. If you go to China, it's easy to see why there's all the talk of a bubble. We discovered that the most populated nation on Earth is building houses, districts and cities with no one in them.
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He's showing us around the new eastern district of Zhengzhou, in one of the most populated provinces in China - not that you'd know it. We found what they call a "ghost city" of new towers with no residents, desolate condos and vacant subdivisions uninhabited for miles, and miles, and miles, and miles of empty apartments.
Lesley Stahl: Why are they empty? I've heard that they have actually been sold.
Gillem Tulloch: They've all been sold. They've all been sold.
Lesley Stahl: They've all been sold? They're owned.
Gillem Tulloch: Absolutely.
Owned by people in China's emerging middle class, who now have enough money to invest but few ways to do it. They're not allowed to invest abroad, banks offer paltry returns, and the stock market is a rollercoaster. But 15 years ago, the government changed its policy and allowed people to buy their own homes and the flood gates opened.
Gillem Tulloch: So what they do is they invest in property because property prices have always gone up by more than inflation.
Lesley Stahl: And they believe it will always go up?
Gillem Tulloch: Yeah, just like they believed in the U.S.
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Lesley Stahl: Giant cities being built with people not coming to live here.
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Gillem Tulloch: Yes. I think they're building somewhere between 12 and 24 new cities every single year.
Unlike our market driven economy, in China it's the government that has spent some $2 trillion to get these cities built - as a way of keeping the economy growing. The assumption is "if you build it, they'll come." But no one's coming.
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Lesley Stahl: And it's all Potemkin.
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Lesley Stahl: So if the bubble bursts, who's left holding the bag?
Gillem Tulloch: There are multiple classes of people that are going to get wiped out by this. People who have invested three generations worth of savings -- so grandparents, parents and children - into properties will see their savings evaporate. And then, of course, 50 million construction workers who are working on all these projects around China.
The prognosis of a bubble about to burst isn't only coming from financial gloom-and-doomers. We heard it from the most unlikely source.
Lesley Stahl: Are you the biggest home builder in the world?
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Lesley Stahl: Here's a number I saw. A typical apartment in Shanghai costs about 45 times the average resident's annual salary.
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It could become a debt crisis because of the huge loans most of the developers took out. If they can't repay them, the whole economy'll seize up.
The government's great fear is that all this could lead to social unrest and that's not hypothetical.
Last year when home prices fell, it infuriated all those owners of multiple dwellings, who watched the value of their nest eggs plummet.
Lesley Stahl: And there's already been some demonstrations over real estate around the country.
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Dominican pride is be on full display this afternoon in Midtown Manhattan, as the always colorful and festive Dominican Day Parade makes its way up Sixth Avenue.
The parade started at 36th Street and heads up Sixth Avenue until 52nd Street.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg is scheduled to attend, along with multiple lawmakers and political candidates.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]New research explores the positive effects of reading as part of a parental intervention strategy for children struggling with social issues.
