Excise seize illicit fags worth over Rs.60mn in Mattakkuliya

 Saturday, 01 August 2015

A large stock of foreign made illicit cigarettes worth over Rs.96 million was seized by Excise Headquarters Special Crime Unit from a warehouse in Mattakkuliya yesterday amidst unconfirmed reports of a container illicit cigarettes discreetly being released through the Customs recently.

The detection was carried out following an arrest of a trader in Wattala yesterday morning along with a stock of illicit cigarettes, Excise sources said.

The Excise sleuths, who had been investigating reports that had reached them of a large stock of illicit cigarettes being circulated around Colombo City, had arrested the trader who was transporting 250 cartons of contraband in his van at the time.

On being questioned about the source of this illicit stock of fags, the trader had led the authorities to his warehouse situated on Ferguson Road in Mattakkuliya where they discovered more than 16, 000 cartons of cigarettes.Each carton contained 200 sticks of cigarettes of the foreign brands like Top Mountain and Gold Leaf brand sold in Dubai which the sale in Sri Lanka is entirely prohibited.

The cartons were found neatly packed inside large flat screen televisions, used refrigerators and metal boxes which were suspected to have come from Dubai.

The Daily Mirror learns that the seized contraband was suspected to have arrived in the country in a 20-foot-container which was alleged to have been released from the Colombo Harbour under the influence of top Customs officials.

When contacted, Customs Spokesman Director Leslie Gamini said that there had been no such slip ups according to his knowledge but assured that he would not hesitate to take immediate measures to conduct a probe if concrete evidence of misconduct reached him.

However a separate investigation was being conducted by the Ceylon Tobacco Company regarding the container load of illicit cigarettes that would have entered the local market with the government incurring a massive loss of tax revenue as a result.

The estimated loss of revenue to government through taxes from the illicit products had been calculated at Rs.50 million.

Excise Inspector A R Lambert and Guard Lokupitiya (685) were conducting investigations on the instructions of Excise Commissioner General L K G Gunawardena, and Deputy Excise Commissioner Crimes, Pushpakumara Silva

Courtesy - http://www.dailymirror.lk

Fire breaks out at CB Ratnayake’s house

August 1, 2015
A fire had broken out in a three-storied house belonging to former Minister C.B. Ratnayake located at Subadrarama Mawatha in Madiwela this morning. 

The Police Spokesman’s Office said that fire had erupted at around 2.30am today in the top most floor of the residence. 

The fire had caused damages to the second and third floors of the house before the Kotte fire brigade managed to douse the flames. 

The cause for the fire is yet to be ascertained. 

Israel intentionally killed civilians after soldier’s capture in Gaza — Amnesty

A man injured by Israel’s bombs is taken to al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, at the beginning of August last year. 

 Eyad Al BabaAPA images

Rania Khalek - 30 July 2015

Electronic Intifada

A joint investigation by Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture found “strong evidence” that the Israeli army carried out war crimes in an attempt to kill an Israeli soldier captured in Gaza last summer and as revenge for his capture.
Israel Intentionally Killed Civilians After Soldier’s Capture in Gaza — Amnesty by Thavam Ratna

Bin Laden plane crash: jet went down in near-perfect conditions

Sana bin Laden, who is thought to have died in the crash. Photograph: Social

Smoke rises from the crash site on Friday. Photograph: Nathan Greenwood / Barcroft Medi/Nathan Greenwood / Barcroft

Questions raised over why state-of-the-art jet carrying three relatives of Osama Bin Laden came down at end of long runway at Blackbushe airport

Jamie Doward-Saturday 1 August 2015

Questions have been raised over the cause of Friday’s plane crash in which three members of the Bin Laden family were killed, given the aircraft had used the runway, which is fitted with hi-tech safety features, regularly in recent months.

Bin Laden Plane Crash Jet Went Down in Near-perfect Conditions by Thavam Ratna

The Taliban’s New Number 2 Is a ‘Mix of Tony Soprano and Che Guevara’

Sirajuddin Haqqani has killed hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghans and could ensure that his country’s future is even bloodier than its past.

BY YOCHI DREAZEN-JULY 31, 2015

The new head of the Taliban supports peace talks with Afghanistan’s fragile central government. Unfortunately for both Washington and Kabul, Mullah Akhtar Mansour’s deputy commands the country’s deadliest militia — and has given little indication that he would be prepared to order his men to lay down their weapons anytime soon.

Sirajuddin Haqqani, who will now serve as the Taliban’s second in command, runs the Haqqani network, an al Qaeda-linked group that U.S. military commanders describe as their most dangerous battlefield foe. The Haqqani network was the first to regularly use suicide bombings in Afghanistan and has carried out many of the bloodiest attacks of the long war there, including a high-profile 2009 bombing at a CIA outpost in eastern Afghanistan that killed seven American intelligence personnel and was one of the most lethal strikes against the spy agency in decades.

All told, U.S. officials believe the group is responsible for killing hundreds of American troops and thousands of Afghan soldiers. The State Department, which calls the Haqqani network “the most lethal insurgent group targeting coalition and Afghan forces in Afghanistan,” classifies Sirajuddin Haqqani as a “specially designated global terrorist.” It is offering a $7 million reward for information leading to his killing or arrest.

Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded all U.S. troops in Afghanistan until 2010, said the Haqqanis were “a disciplined, focused group” driven as much by a desire to control a large swath of eastern Afghanistan as by religious or political ideology.

“To describe it as business-oriented probably sells them a bit short, but they were practical, focused, and ruthless,” McChrystal told Foreign Policy. “I felt they were, in many ways, the most serious threat to the ability of the government of Afghanistan to achieve stability in contested areas the Haqqanis operated in.”

The militia was established by Sirajuddin’s father, Jalaluddin, a legendary tribal fighter who had received enormous amounts of money and weaponry from the CIA in the 1980s as part of the successful American-backed effort to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. The elder Haqqani had long been battling serious health issues, and there were unconfirmed reports Friday that he had died at least one year ago and had been buried in his native Afghanistan.

The younger Haqqani’s elevation within the Taliban poses a difficult strategic question for both Washington and Kabul: either continue to seek talks with the armed group in the hope that Haqqani will be sidelined in favor of militia leaders willing to discuss laying down their weapons, or continue — and perhaps even intensify — the ongoing effort to kill Taliban and Haqqani fighters and disrupt their supply lines from neighboring Pakistan.

The militant’s new prominence also offers an unsettling reminder that the next generation of Taliban leaders could be more violent and ruthless than the ones they’re replacing. Mullah Mohammed Omar, whose 2013 death was confirmed just this week, sheltered Osama bin Laden and launched a guerrilla war that continues to rage nearly 14 years after American troops first swept into the country. Sirajuddin Haqqani, nominally now in command of more fighters than ever before, could ensure that Afghanistan’s future is even bloodier than its recent past.

Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, described Sirajuddin Haqqani as a “mix of Tony Soprano and Che Guevara,” an ideologue who is willing to engage in criminal acts like drug trafficking and kidnapping for ransom in order to raise money to fund his military operations.

“His criminality feeds his ideology, and his ideology feeds his criminality,” Haqqani, who is unrelated to the fighter, said in an interview. “He would say, ‘If we’re selling heroin, that will be used in the West? That will help destroy the enemy at home. And if we kidnap civilians? That helps buy weapons.’ He’s not like his father, who was a great Islamist warrior. He’s been running a criminal network as well.”

The Haqqanis hadn’t always been so devoted to killing Americans. In fact, the family and its fighters had for a time been among Washington’s closest allies in Afghanistan. In 1987, Rep. Charlie Wilson made his way to eastern Afghanistan and spent four days hunkered down with Jalaluddin Haqqani and his fighters. At one point, the elder Haqqani helped the American lawmaker — who would later be played by Tom Hanks in the movie Charlie Wilson’s War — fire rockets at a nearby Soviet base. The two men even posed for a picture together.

The elder Haqqani also enjoyed exceptionally close ties to the CIA, which shipped him both money and weaponry, including the shoulder-fired Stinger missiles that would ultimately down enormous numbers of Soviet aircraft. When Haqqani was shot in the knee during a firefight, the CIA shipped him a portable X-ray machine that helped find the bullet. Milton Bearden, who was running the CIA’s covert program in Afghanistan at the time, later recalledthat Haqqani refused to take medication during the subsequent operation because it was Ramadan and he wouldn’t break the fast. “Instead, he put a stick between his teeth and told his medic to go after the bullet with a knife,” Bearden wrote years after the incident.

The Haqqanis also forged close ties with Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which provided them with weapons, training, and money. The group also maintained safe havens within Pakistan that gave the fighters space to plan attacks and then cross over into neighboring Afghanistan to carry them out.

Some U.S., Pakistani, and Afghan officials believe that the family’s current campaign against U.S. and Afghan troops could have been avoided. In the fall of 2002, representatives of the elder Haqqani — including his brother, Ibrahim — met with CIA personnel in the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. The reason for the talks: a potential agreement that would have given Jalaluddin Haqqani a senior position in the government of newly appointed Afghan President Hamid Karzai in exchange for his fighters laying down their guns, according to a retired CIA official familiar with the matter.

The two sides couldn’t come to a deal, and any prospect of a peaceful agreement evaporated after U.S. troops arrested Ibrahim Haqqani and mounted an airstrike against a family compound that killed at least a dozen women and children. The Haqqanis have not engaged in substantive peace talks with Washington or Kabul since the two incidents, in part because American officials believe Sirajuddin Haqqani is simply uninterested in a deal.

The younger Haqqani has long been seen as far more of an ideological extremist than his father. He has forged close ties with Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based terrorist group that carried out a deadly attack in Mumbai in 2008, and embraced both the use of suicide bombs and sophisticated improvised explosive devices (IEDs) powerful enough to destroy heavily armored American vehicles.

Sirajuddin Haqqani has shown little compunction about hitting civilian targets. Among the strikes linked to the group: a massive car bombing in July 2008 outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed 41 people, a June 2011 assault at Kabul’s best-known and most heavily fortified hotel that left 12 dead, and a suicide bombing at a volleyball match in eastern Afghanistan late last year than killed 57 people. The group also tried to kill Karzai.

The group’s IEDs and other bombs, meanwhile, have killed or maimed thousands of American and Afghan troops. The Taliban used crude pressure plates that exploded when a vehicle passed; the Haqqani network built more sophisticated ones that could be triggered remotely.

The United States, for its part, has tried — and failed — to kill Sirajuddin Haqqani, including mounting a November 2013 drone strike that killed a handful of other senior Haqqani network commanders. Sirajuddin’s younger brother Nasiruddin was killed earlier that month in a drive-by shooting near Islamabad.

It’s not entirely clear what the younger Haqqani’s elevation to the top rungs of the Taliban hierarchy will mean that for the on-again, off-again peace talks between the armed group and the Afghan central government. U.S. officials see no signs that Sirajuddin Haqqani is open to a negotiated deal and believe he will keep fighting until all Western troops depart the country and the Taliban, or a group that shares his hard-line Islamist views, retakes control of Afghanistan.

At the same time, the Haqqani network for years has functioned as a de facto arm of the Pakistani intelligence services, and Islamabad could potentially use its long-standing ties with the younger Haqqani — and its influence over the group — to persuade them to come to the negotiating table. Unconfirmed press reports from the region said at least one Haqqani representative took part in a recent round of peace talks in Islamabad in mid-July.

Husain Haqqani, the former Pakistani ambassador, isn’t optimistic.

“The only reason he would engage in peace talks would be because he was told to do so by the Pakistani intelligence services,” Haqqani said. “But most of his objectives can only be served by a state of permanent war. What could they offer him that would be enough to make him stop fighting?”

Hong Kong delegation to discuss maid abuse in Manila visit

Domestic helpers and their supporters attend a protest to support Erwiana Sulistyaningsih in Hong Kong in January. Pic: AP.

By Meredith McBride | @MeredithJamie-Aug 01, 2015 

On August 2, a delegation of representatives from Hong Kong‘s Legislative Council and domestic workers groups will travel to Manila to meet with their Filipino counterparts to discuss concerns of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong.

The delegation, headed by Legislative Council member Emily Lau of the Democratic Party, a pro-democracy group, says that it aims to discuss the exploitation of domestic workers by employment agents and loan sharks, who often collude with agents in domestic workers’ home countries to collect extortionate fees for training and placement. Hong Kong placement agencies can legally take 10 percent of the first month’s salary but often take many times this for loans.

According to the Domestic Workers Roundtable (DWRT), a conglomeration of interest groups and NGOs representing domestic workers in Hong Kong which organized the delegation, the “key aim of the visit is the establishment of an Inter-Governmental Working Group on Domestic Worker Issues,” which it says would focus on high-level policy issues between the governments. Current discussions take place on a case-by-case basis.

Over the four-day visit, the groups also hope to address the onerous legal procedures that domestic workers must go through in order to access justice for abuses in Hong Kong.

The delegation will be led  by Emily Lau. Pic: AP.

Around 169,000 of Hong Kong’s 330,000 migrant domestic workers come from the Philippines, where salaries are drastically lower than the US$530/month they can make in Hong Kong. The other half of domestic workers come primarily from Indonesia, with small numbers from Thailand, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Burma (Myanmar). Earlier this year the Burmese government announced a ban on sending domestic workers to Hong Kong and Singapore amid reports of abuse.

The Domestic Workers Roundtable (DWRT) emphasized that better collaboration from both origin and destination countries was necessary to pursue agencies that circumvent Hong Kong laws. “Policy adjustments are required by both the Hong Kong Government and the Governments of the Sending States to resolve outstanding issues,” said the DWRT in a statement. The delegation has plans to make a similar trip to Jakarta later in the year.

The Hong Kong government has been vilified by domestic workers groups and the media for not doing enough to protect domestic workers. Last week, the United States Report on Human Trafficking rated Hong Kong as a Level 2 country, indicating that it does not fully comply with minimum efforts to combat human trafficking.

(READ MORE: Malaysia taken off US human trafficking blacklist; no upgrade for Thailand)

Though the report acknowledged that Hong Kong was making efforts to combat trafficking, including partial funding of six domestic worker NGOs, the territory did not prosecute anyone suspected of trafficking in 2014, despite claims from NGOs that employment agents often misled domestic workers about their working conditions and confiscated passports and ID cards to ensure repayment of loans, actions that qualify as trafficking.

“Labor officials conducted inspections of approximately 1,300 employment agencies but revoked the licenses of only three, despite NGO and media reports of employment agencies violating regulations by charging exorbitant recruitment fees, requiring domestic workers to make deposits as a guarantee to work, and confiscating employees’ identification documents,” said the report.

Indonesian maid Erwiana Sulistyaningsih shakes hands with supporters as she arrives at a court in Hong Kong in February. Pic: AP.

Hong Kong’s government refuted the claims, pointing to the high-profile case against the employer of Indonesian maid Erwiana Sulistyaningsih, who was sentenced to 6 years in prison for assaulting Erwiana and another maid. Though both Erwiana and her employer testified that her passport was confiscated by her employment agent, migrant groups say that the agent has not been punished.

About the author:
Meredith McBride is a Hong Kong based journalist and advocate with Hong Kong Helpers Campaign.

  

New Human Terrain System? Army, PACOM Séance Reveals News

By John Stanton-31.07.2015

The US Army Human Terrain System (HTS) will become a "shining star, you'll see" said a music critic, part-time divinity professor, retired military officer, and former HTS contractor. He was incensed that with the alleged demise of the US Army program, it having been murdered, killed and defeated, the HTS suddenly has new life thanks to "those pro-HTS intellectuals authorized by somebody higher up in their organizations to take up the HTS cause. Hey! Shining Star. Do you know that song by Earth, Wind and Fire?" the former HTS contractor said. "That should be the theme song for the new HTS ramp-up. And you know what? The HTS rebirth will be like the story of that guy from Greek mythology who was crucified, died, buried and then came back to life. What was his name, again?"

The former contractor went on. "Where were those people when we needed them?...Did you know they were all hiding in the Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict shop in the Pentagon and didn't want to go public with their support of HTS?  Now they work for all kinds of contractors and think tanks and whatever having spun through the revolving door. Man! Can you say that anymore or do you have to say Woman too....Sorry. I got off track there. Anyway they are cashing in big-time now making as much money as they can and just waiting for the next real war-like Iraq--that involves lots of contractors, media analysts, tanks, trucks and troops. Think of the armor battles we could have with the Russians and Chinese! I miss those days" groaned a former HTS staffer who rode along with combat hardened American soldiers who protected him while he asked questions and handed out lollipops, and other types of candy, sure to rot the teeth of the children in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A HTS staffer who works with the former HTS contractor cited above said this: "You know that song by Earth, Wind and Fire, right? Shining Star is the one I am referring to like my colleague said. The lyrics that go 'You're a shining star, no matter who you are, shining bright to see, what you can truly be...That really applies to HTS because, really, it was never given a chance to be what it could truly be. But now we are seeing what it could have been thanks to articles in Foreign Policy, Bloomberg and Front Page Magazine. There will be more to come. Just wait and see."

Indeed. The woodwork has produced a flurry of pro-HTS articles ever since USA Today broke the story of its apparent demise on June 29, 2015. The most recent is in the increasingly belligerent publication Foreign Policy owned by Graham Holdings Company. The Grahams sold off the Washington Post to Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame preferring to focus on its Kaplan education and standardized testing preparation businesses. The Grahams have an interesting mix of companies engaging in health care, meeting planning (Foreign Policy), social media and combustion and lifting equipment.

But what of the mysterious fate of HTS? "It's like Big Foot," said a veteran correspondent. It's true.  The US Army and PACOM will not respond to media queries from anyone. Nonetheless, the demonic media, which is always at the ready to hear-out any source with verifiable information that can't be found in normal channels, is on the case with the help of US Army and PACOM insiders. "We've conducted a number of séances with members of the media," said insiders.  We know that HTS still lives in pieces but will reassemble. Think of the second Terminator and that liquid metal creature that is chasing Arnold and John Conner and Conner's mom. There is a scene in the movie where the liquid metal thing is frozen then blown apart, its pieces are scattered all over the floor but they reunite into the creature and it is reborn! That's HTS! And I tell you what! HTS is going to come back like that bad-ass metal creature."

If that were not enough to make former HTS staffers and proponents jump for joy, they have received significant support from the Dentists for the Resurgence of the HTS (DRHTS) who want to get in on the ground floor of any new HTS, particularly since US soldiers and contractors hand out so much candy to the conquered.

According to a DRHTS spokesperson, "We want to get in on the action too. There are a lot of teeth and gums in the AOR's [area of responsibility] of the COCOMS [combatant commands] that need fixing. We can synthesize [sic] with the anthropologists: While they are questioning the locals, we can be fixing their teeth and gums. I know this sounds terrible but as we probe inside the villager's mouths we can aggressively poke around in there causing not insignificant pain which may yield some useful information for the HTS people. You know kind of like that scene in the movie the Marathon Man where Olivier, playing the Nazi dentist, abuses the cavities in Hoffman's mouth saying, 'Is it safe.' Dentists are patriots too," he added.

Alas, as Whitney Kassel of the Arkin Group laments, "With the quiet death of the military's controversial Human Terrain System, America's soldiers have lost a guiding light that is needed now more than ever." No question about that. She is right. HTS has its parallel of course. The television soap opera the Guiding Light ended in 2009, a year that saw two beginnings: The catastrophic success of HTS and the failure of the United States to murder, kill and defeat insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

John Stanton

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer. Reach him at captainkong22@gmail.com

Female Ukrainian war hero facing 25 years in Russian jail

Nadiya Savchenko, center, after completing a grueling training with a Ukrainian military contingent before heading to Iraq in 2004. (Courtesy of Savchenko family/Courtesy of Savchenko family)

By Andrew Roth July 30

MOSCOW — The contentious trial of a female Ukrainian war hero charged in the deaths of two Russian journalists began in southern Russia on Thursday, amid public protest from the Ukrainian government and private negotiations to strike a deal for her release

Female Ukrainian War Hero Facing 25 Years in Russian Jail by Thavam Ratna

After uproar, India ups budget for some social welfare sectors

A passenger sleeps along with her children at a railway station on a hot summer day in Allahabad, May 26, 2015.-REUTERS/JITENDRA PRAKASH/FILES

Fri Jul 31, 2015

The government on Friday sought parliamentary approval to raise federal spending on social welfare, months after opposition lawmakers and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's own officials slammed his cuts in spending.

Modi's finance ministry plans to raise the budget for women and child welfare, as well as sanitation programmes, by around 40 percent, a government document tabled in parliament showed.

Modi in February redirected funds from social programmes towards infrastructure, asking states to fill the gap. He hoped this would fasten the pace of economic growth, but critics said it could endanger the country's most vulnerable. (reut.rs/1HrmVfy)

The changes, once approved, will come as a relief for Modi's women and child welfare minister, Maneka Gandhi, who had protested after her ministry's budget was more than halved to $1.62 billion. The new proposal put her budget at $2.24 billion.

The bulk of additional funds will go to a child welfare scheme that provides free food to 85 million children. Gandhi had warned the finance minister of political fallout if the focus on malnutrition was reduced.(reut.rs/1Kh3aYK)

The government also proposed to increase the budget for the drinking water and sanitation sector by 43 percent to $1.39 billion.

Health officials had also complained about a shortage of funds in the sector. The main health department will see its budget rise by 2 percent, while the budget to fight HIV/AIDS will see a nominal increase of $1,500. The HIV prevention programme has been suffering funding shortages in several states.

While unveiling the new policy shakeup in February, the government said lower federal welfare spending would be compensated for by giving state governments a larger allocation of tax revenues. But many poorer states complained, saying they were facing net losses under the new policy.

Modi's government had denied social budgets were being squeezed, saying India was going through a reset of the fiscal architecture by providing states more money.

Naresh Saxena, an adviser to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), welcomed the move but called for more focus on social sectors.

"It is a sign that the central government has to take on the majority of the burden for helping the most disadvantaged groups," Saxena said. "Still, social spending is too low."

(Reporting by Aditya Kalra and Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Discovery prompts rethink on metals and Alzheimer's disease

Researchers at the University of Melbourne have discovered that a protein involved in the progression of Alzheimer's disease also has properties that could be helpful for human health.

by Jane Gardner-July 30, 2015

The discovery helps researchers better understand the complicated brain chemistry behind the development of Alzheimer's disease, a condition that affects hundreds of thousands of Australians.

An international team of researchers, led by Dr Simon Drew at the University of Melbourne and Prof Wojciech Bal at the Polish Academy of Sciences, has revealed that a shorter form of a protein called beta amyloid, may act as a sponge that safely binds a metal that can damage brain tissue when it's in excess.

Researchers have been intensely interested in the role of beta-amyloid in the development of Alzheimer's disease. This is because clumps of the protein are formed in brains of people with the illness.

In the late 1990s, high levels of copper were discovered within these clumps. Copper is essential to health, but too much can produce harmful free radicals. Many scientists began to suspect that this copper might be contributing to the disease. They found that beta-amyloid can bind to copper indiscriminately and allow it to produce these damaging free radicals.

Closer analysis of beta amyloid protein has revealed different sizes. A good proportion of beta amyloid is missing the first three links at the start of the protein's chain-like structure.

"This short form has been overlooked by most researchers since the composition of beta amyloid was first identified 30 years ago," Dr Simon Drew explains.

"We know that the shorter form of beta amyloid is present in the diseased brain, but we now know that it is abundant in healthy brains as well.

"The small change in length makes a huge difference to its copper binding properties. We found that the short form of the protein is capable of binding copper at least 1000 times stronger than the longer forms. It also wraps around the metal in a way that prevents it from producing free radicals.

"Given these properties and its relative abundance, we can speculate this type of beta amyloid is protective. It's very different from the current view of how beta amyloid interacts with biological copper."

So far, therapies aimed at lowering the production of beta amyloid have shown only a modest ability to slow cognitive decline and the number of people affected by the Alzheimer's disease continues to grow.

Dr Drew and the team from Poland are now working to develop a method for identifying the copper-bound form of the short beta amyloid in the body.

This will enable them to screen how much copper it holds in the brain, whether it safely escorts the copper from one place to another, and how this may change in ageing and disease.

"If a beneficial role in copper balance can be established, it's still possible to have too much of a good thing," Dr Drew said.

"As the amount of beta amyloid in the brain increases during Alzheimer's disease, the shorter form can also clump together and this may interfere with its normal function. Higher levels of the short form may further enable it to soak up copper from other places where it is needed. It could be a Jekyll and Hyde scenario."

Dr Drew's research was published in Angewandte Chemie.