Athirady

You are browsing the archives of 2010 July 10.

Sri Lanka’s former President, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumarathunga, has denied accusations that she influenced the European Union to withdraw the special trade concessions to Sri Lanka.
The EU has decided to temporarily withdraw the concession, widely known as GSP+, from 15 August as Sri Lanka has failed to respond to its demands on improving the island’s human [...]

NEW DELHI: If you thought the Rs 42,000 crore project to procure 126 multi-role fighters for the IAF was the “mother of all defence deals”, think again. The stage is now being set for an even bigger project—this one worth over Rs 50,000 crore for six new-generation submarines for the Indian Navy.
The Defence Acquisitions Council [...]

Hints of the possibility of an executive prime ministry, as opposed to the prevailing executive presidency, emerged yesterday following one-on-one talks between President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, well informed sources said.
Wickremesinghe confirmed the meeting which he said will be followed-up on Monday when he will lead a UNP delegation for further talks [...]

Netherlands
vs.
Spain

-
11 Jul 6:30pm (GMT)

With full-backs wide and quality passing, Spain make the pitch so big it is hard to press against them. But a team with devilment, who can get behind and put crosses in, can beat Spain

Spain merit the favourites’ tag for the World Cup final. The best international team in recent years, they [...]

Refusal to spend money on luxury items, alleged stinginess, lack of mutual understanding and unwillingness to obey the partner were some of the reasons cited for the break-up by couples last year.
Manama:  The divorce rate in Qatar is going up at an alarming rate with a record number of 1,087 couples divorcing in 2009.
According to [...]

NEW DELHI:India has advised visiting Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians to accept the current realities in Sri Lanka, to be pragmatic, to move on, and work sincerely with President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government to find an enduring political solution to the ethnic problem.
A six-member TNA team led by R. Sampanthan arrived here on Sunday evening, met [...]

Omar said he now wished to speak only about important issues, such as peace in the world as well as seeking the freedom of his family members who are still in Iran.
Doha: Omar Bin Laden, fourth-born son of Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden, called Gulf News over the telephone from Qatar and responded to [...]

Congress high command wants separatists isolated

Even as the turmoil in Jammu and Kashmir continued, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called up People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leader Mehbooba Mufti on Saturday, government sources said, urging her to attend the all-party meeting called by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in Srinagar on Monday. This was on a day that [...]

Abuja, Jul 10 (PTI) A man carrying bags containing more than 70 dead babies has been arrested in Nigeria’s economic capital Lagos.
“We have started questioning the man and we have also invited the people he claimed were his accomplices but it appears to be a corruption case not human trafficking nor ritual, nor murder,” Lagos [...]

To watch the match highlights:
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/fifaworldcup/watch/highlights/?ID=1541589721
To watch the full game:
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/fifaworldcup/watch/match63.html
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We probably won’t have better opportunity than we have right now, US president tells Israeli prime minister
Occupied Jerusalem: US President Barack Obama said in a rare interview with an Israeli television station he thought it may be possible to achieve a Middle East peace deal in the next few years and urged Israel to seize [...]

The UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe met President Mahinda Rajapaksa this morning to discuss the proposed constitutional amendments.
The meeting took place at the President’s House.
The government is looking to bring in amendments to the constitution.
A constitutional change needs the approval of at least 150 members in the Parliament, which means a two thirds majority.
Already the UPFA [...]

ISLAMABAD: Death toll of two suicide blasts which ripped through a bazaar on Friday morning in Pakistan’s northwest tribal area of Mohmand agency rises to 100, said a regional official Miraj Khan on Saturday.
The sharp rise of the death toll is due to the fact that many dead bodies were recovered from the debris of [...]

Day 30: Uruguay vs. Germany, third-place game
Date and location
Saturday, July 10, Port Elizabeth Stadium, Port Elizabeth
Broadcast details
Live on CBC and CBCSports.ca (2 p.m. ET). Consult CBC’s full broadcast schedule.
What’s at stake
Consolation for a vanquished semifinalist, as the winner takes third place at the World Cup. Germany is in its second straight third-place match at the [...]

LONDON:  The new British coalition government revealed on Friday that it planned to put doctors in charge of funding for frontline services in England’s National Health Service (NHS), in a change hailed as the biggest in 60 years.
The change will see family doctors handling budgets totalling 80 billion pounds (about 120 billion U.S. dollars), and [...]

Minister Wimal Weerawansa has ended his fast unto death after President Mahinda Rajapaksa visited him outside the UN office a short while ago. President Rajapaksa had offered Weerawansa water which the Minister accepted and he was later driven away in an ambulance to the army hospital.
Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa and the family of Minister Weerawansa [...]

The Birmingham City University has instituted a scholarship in the name of N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu, for Masters’ studies in journalism at the Birmingham School of Media from the current year.
The “N. Ram Scholarship,” which will provide full academic fees, will be worth around £10,000 and will be open exclusively to graduates of the [...]

Updated by Athirady @ 6.30 AM GMT
National Freedom Front (NFF) leader and Engineering Services & Housing, Construction Minister Wimal Weerawansa says he will continue his fast unto death against the UN and will not stop even at the request of the President.
 
Weerawansa has stated, “Only Ban Ki Moon can stop this. The UN Colombo representative and Moon [...]

Germany and Uruguay will look to rouse themselves for one last game on Saturday when they face off in the playoff for third place at Port Elizabeth’s Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium.
Both sides are downcast after missing out on a place in Sunday’s World Cup final at Soccer City but have a chance to finish their [...]

Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president K.V. Thangkabalu wants Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to condemn, in strong terms, the killing of a Tamil fisherman by the Sri Lankan Navy and the assault on three other fishermen in mid-sea on Wednesday night.
Condemning the attack, Mr. Thangkabalu, in a statement here on Friday, said attacks on Tamil fishermen [...]

India is preparing to make a political intervention in the North and the East of Sri Lanka through the former chief minister for North-Eastern Provincial Council Varadharaja Perumal. The recently formed ‘Tamil Party Alliance’ is to be used for this purpose say reports.   
 
The ‘Tamil Party Alliance’ was formed by merging 9 Tamil political parties [...]

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa, host for the FIFA 2010 World Cup, has its own version of the psychic German octopus Paul which has been successfully predicting winners in all of Germany’s games in the tournament.
He is Jabulani, an octopus at the Two Oceans aquarium in Cape Town.
On Friday morning staff at the aquarium put Jabulani to [...]

VANCOUVER:  The Canada Border Services Agency now admits it has no proof that 25 Sri Lankan boat migrants it labelled as terrorists and kept behind bars for months were in fact members of the outlawed Tamil Tigers.
Last month, The Vancouver Sun obtained a secret CBSA report that stated there were “reasonable grounds” to believe a [...]

HOUSTON: Major progress in British oil major BP’s fight against the weeks-long Gulf oil spill may come soon with a third oil-capture vessel and a new containment cap expected to be put in place as early as this weekend, the U.S. commander for the spill said Friday.
BP currently captures about 28,000 barrels of oil a [...]

Berlin: Paul the oracle octopus has predicted that Germany will beat Uruguay in the World Cup third-place play-off tomorrow, but is now the target of death threats from angry German fans.
The octopus, who has become a World Cup sensation by correctly predicting all six Germany games, plumped for his country of residence today, carried live [...]

Embassies in Sri Lanka have expressed dismay over an “intimidating” protest which has blockaded the United Nations compound in the capital.
Hundreds of people are demonstrating against a UN panel investigating alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka.
Diplomatic missions including those of the UK, US and Germany said blocking access to the UN and “intimidating” its workers [...]

For the fourth consecutive day, Srinagar and other parts of the Kashmir Valley reeled under curfew, even as Muslims all over the world celebrated Shab-e-Meraj, one of the holiest days in the Islamic calendar. Scores of people were injured in clashes at several places, including Hazratbal where the shrine was locked after brief clashes on [...]