Athirady

You are browsing the archives of 2010 July 09.

Activists of Hindu Makkal Katchi (a political outfit in Tamil Nadu) staged a protest in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore city on Friday against Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa for not allowing the United Nations Committee to investigate into the war crimes that were committed at the end of Sri Lanka’s 25-year conflict with the Liberation Tigers [...]

Lankan expat gets five-year  jail for ‘raping housemaid’
A Sri Lankan expatriate was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for “raping a housemaid” in April 2009 at her sponsor’s house.
The Doha court of first instance heard that the convict, a garment shopkeeper, and the victim were working under the same sponsor.
According to the court papers, the suspect [...]

The tiger, they say , does not change its stripes. The leopard too wont change its spots. This inability or refusal to change is certainly true of the four –legged felines.
There are some – perpetually paranoid- who would say this is applicable to the near extinct two –legged tiger in Sri Lanka too. “Once a [...]

COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan government said on Friday that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s decision to close the UNDP Regional Center in Colombo is disappointing, but it will continue to be engaged with the United Nations system.
The Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement that it ” believes the decision to close the UNDP Regional [...]

FOR PUBLICATION
AHRC-ART-067-2010
July 9, 2010
An Article Series on Human Rights and Culture by the Asian Human Rights Commission
Poems, stories and reports
Welcome to the 5th issue of Vol. 3 of Human Rights & Culture. In this issue we have the poem, …….and I say ‘Cheese’ by Ranjan Abayasekara. This poem was kindly forwarded by the [...]

GAZA: Six years after the court in Hague called for removing the separation wall that Israel is constructing in the West Bank, Palestinian officials voiced despair on Friday for the international failure to stop constructing the wall that had swallowed large areas of the territory.
Palestinian officials said that over the past six years, Israel has [...]

WARSAW – A huge poster of a Nazi swastika behind a 1940s-style naked pin-up model clad only in a Mickey Mouse-mask and stretched across a building has stirred controversy in Poznan, western Poland.
A new art gallery is using the work titled “NaziSexyMouse” by Italian artist Max Papeschi to advertise an exhibition, but a city councillor [...]

 Sri Lanka’s construction industry faces a possible labour shortage given the reluctance of youth to join the vocation if a post-war building boom gets underway, an official said.
Rohan Tudawe, of the Tudawe Brothers construction firm, said almost 500,000 people are employed in construction which contributes about 6.5 percent of gross domestic product.But he said there [...]

Islamabad, July 9 (PTI) Pakistan wants the peaceful resolution of all contentious issues with India, including Kashmir, so that it can “entirely focus” on the western border with Afghanistan to eliminate terrorism, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said today.
Gilani made the remarks during a meeting with a visiting delegation of US Senators.
He briefed the Senators [...]

In a shocking disclosure, which amounts to a massacre of the innocents, illegal abortion centers that have sprung up all over the country are alleged to be carrying out more than 1,000 abortions daily, a survey has revealed.
According to Health Education Bureau Media Unit Chief Dr. Shantha Hettiarachchi the survey conducted last year said about [...]

Dear Readers,
For more than 7 years now, alleged war criminals of Darfur have lived freely, while the innocent people in their paths have lived in fear.
But last month, when two Darfuri rebel leaders, suspected of killing peacekeepers, surrendered themselves to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, the wall of impunity finally began to [...]

Russian and US planes at Vienna airport
Ten people who spied for Moscow in the US have arrived in Russia after being deported as part of the the biggest spy swap since the Cold War.
They were driven away from a Moscow airport in a convoy of vehicles hours after the exchange in Vienna, Austria.
Four Russians freed [...]

JAMMU: Security forces on Friday recovered a huge dump of explosives weighing 176 kgs from a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) hideout unearthed in Kishtwar district of Jammu and Kashmir.
This is the biggest cache of explosives recovered in the state this year, an army officer said.
Acting on a tip-off, troops of 11 Rashtriya Rifles and Special Task Force [...]

 Opposition United National Party (UNP) Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe asked the government today what had happened to the ships and other assets of former LTTE arms procurer Kumaran Pathmanathan alias KP.
“We like to know what happened to the 18 ships that belonged to KP. What happened to the 500 petrol sheds he owned?” he asked while [...]

By Tisaranee Gunasekara
“You’ve made the world in to a madhouse….an enclosure in which the sane are trampled underfoot by a herd of galloping lunatics”. – Ernst Toller (Hoppla, Such is Life!)
We are living through a transformative time, a time when the hitherto inconceivable become the norm.

Take, for example, the hostage-taking demonstration by Minister Weerawansa and [...]

ISLAMABAD: Tehrek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for Friday morning’s suicide blast in Pakistan’s northwest tribal area of Mohmand Agency, in which more than 56 were killed and 105 others injured so far, according to a report from a local Urdu language TV Channel Dawn News.
According to the report, Pakistan’s Mohmand tribal area’s chapter of TTP [...]

The budget for 2010 presented by the government was passed in parliament a short while ago by a majority of 68 votes.  139 votes were cast in favor of the budget while 71 voted against. UNP MP Abdul Carder voted with the government. NFF leader Wimal Weerawansa was absent for the budget vote.

BANGKOK: Thailand’s ruling Democrat Party insisted on Friday that secret weapons training is being organised by an anti-government group in three provinces.
Thepthai Senpong, spokesman for the Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva, said the underground training by the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) did exist and remain active in Bangkok, Nakhon Ratchasima and Ratchaburi [...]

WASHINGTON: While the Maoist movement in India appears to be fairly contained for now, the rebel group’s leaders and bombmakers could develop the “tradecraft for urban terrorism”, a leading US strategic think tank has warned.
Taking a closer look at India’s Naxalite threat, Stratfor said while “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has labelled the Naxalite issue the [...]

LOS ANGELES: There is an apparent link between fish oil supplements and a lower risk of breast cancer for postmenopausal women, a new study suggests.
Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington based their conclusion on a study of more than 35,000 women who were between the ages of 50 and 76 [...]

COLOMBO:  Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapksa here Friday rejected the resignation of his minister who is on a death fast opposite the UN compound in Colombo, a spokesman of the minister said.
Wimal Weerawansa, the minister of Engineering Services resigned his ministerial job on Friday as he lay on a mat inside a temporary enclosure.
“I am [...]

Islamabad/Peshawar, Jul 9 (PTI) At least 49 people were killed and over 70 injured when a motorcycle-borne suicide bomber targeted a government office in a crowded market in Pakistan’s restive tribal belt today, the latest in a wave of terror attacks that have rocked the country.
The attacker detonated his explosives outside the office of the [...]

‘From moon landings to promoting self-esteem.’ This is US President Barack Obama’s latest brief to the US’ National Aeronautical and Space Agency. The latter is from now on expected to reach out to the Muslim world and engage with it with the aim of ‘making it feel good’ about its ‘historic contribution to science, math [...]

BERLIN: Germany’s oracle octopus Paul picked Spain to beat the Netherlands in the World Cup final on Sunday in a live television broadcast watched across Europe.
The two-year-old celebrity octopus, who has accurately picked the outcome of all six of Germany’s World Cup matches so far, quickly tipped Spain to beat the Netherlands. It took him [...]

Minister Wimal Weerawansa has resigned from his ministerial portfolio, a Ministry Spokesman said. President Mahinda Rajapakse has been informed of Weerawansa’s decision.
Weerawansa who is the Minister of Construction, Engineering Services, Housing and Common Amenities, is currently taking part in a death fast opposite the UN Country office in Colombo demanding UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to [...]

       … offers to join devolution talks if govt. & TNA decide on parameters of a solution
The Opposition indicates its willingness to co-operate with the government to abolish the executive presidency and create the post of executive prime minister if the latter adopts a model that is not detrimental to democracy.
Opposition and UNP Leader Ranil [...]

Islamabad: Pakistan today dismissed India’s concern over a proposed Pakistan-China rail link through the disputed Gilgit-Baltistan region in PoK, saying New Delhi has “no locus standi” in the matter.
Abdul Basit, the Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman, dismissed India’s objections to the Pakistan-China proposed rail link through the disputed Gilgit-Baltistan region in the Karakoram ranges.
Amid concerns voiced [...]

A fisherman was killed in an alleged attack by the Sri Lankan Navy personnel on an Indian fishing boat here near Kodiakkarai on Wednesday night.
Chellapan (50), along with three others had gone fishing on Wednesday morning. At about 9 p.m, a naval vessel with about 20 persons reportedly intercepted the Indian fishing boat south-east of [...]

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan exports would suffer over 10 percent slump in volume as a result of losing a European Union (EU) trade concession, industry sources said on Thursday.
“There will be a loss of 12 to 15 percent,” A. Sukumaran, the chief of the Joint Apparel Exports Association told reporters here Thursday.
Sukumaran said the exports affected [...]

Union Home Minister P.  on Thursday expressed the hope that the Army would not be required in the Kashmir Valley for too long and appealed to the people to observe curfew restrictions.
While a major burden of patrolling and law enforcement was being shouldered by the police and the Central Reserve Police Force, the Army was [...]

The largest spy swap between the U.S. and Russia since the Cold War unfolded on Thursday as 10 people accused of spying in suburban America pleaded guilty to conspiracy and were ordered deported to Russia in exchange for the release of four spies arrested in Russia.
The defendants, pleaded guilty in a Manhattan courtroom, were immediately [...]