Lanka News – Lanka Gazette – Sri Lanka News Portal

Fourteen new parliamentarians of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) – thirteen elected from the five districts in the North and East and one from the TNA national list are to meet in Trincomalee on Sunday (April 18), TNA leader Mr.R.Sampanthan told timesonline.

At the conclusion of the first meeting a press communiqué would be issued, he added.

Five MPs from the Jaffna district, three from the Vanni district, three from the Batticaloa district and one each from the districts of Trincomalee and Amparai have been elected on the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchchi ticket, a constituent of the TNA.

The results of the Trincomalee district have not been officially announced till the re-poll is held on April 20 in a polling station located in Kumburupiddy, a village off north of east port town.

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There were no Avurudu holidays for the soldiers all these years. Instead of the sound of fire crackers that herald the auspicious times of the new year, what they heard were the sounds of guns and artillery fire.
While the rest of the country looked forward to a new beginning with fresh hope, our war heroes were away from their families and friends fighting a bitter battle to save the country from the clutches of terrorism. Continue Reading

Range Bandara attacked by fellow UNPer
2010-04-10 18:50:01

Puttlam district UNP MP Palitha Range Bandara was assaulted and hacked by a gang led by fellow defeated UNP candidate in Chilaw this evening, Police said.

A critically injured Range Bandara was rushed to Colombo National Hospital.

According to Police the gang members have used iron rods and swords to assault Mr. Bandara who was at that time conducting a meeting.

Fonseka court martial hearing to resume on April 19
2010-04-09 19:41:19

The second court martial hearing charges against General Sarath Fonseka on illegal military procurements which met today will recommence sittings again on April 19.

The tribunal comprises Major General Milinda Peiris (President), Major General S.W.L. Daulagala and Major General M. Hathurusinghe.

Call to end victory parades
2010-04-09 19:55:20

An independent polls observer today expressed fears of possible violence after several provocative victory parades continue to take place in several parts of the country.

“Such forms of revelry is not good for a post-election atmosphere since it could lead to all forms of tension that could finally end up in violence”, warned Rohana Hetiarachchi with the People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL).

He said that PAFFREL had already requested party leaders to discourage such activities by their supporters since it is also against the election laws and regulations.

“Such revelry in the past has led to violence and other forms of unruly behaviour , therefore it should be discouraged at every level”, he added.

Meanwhile there have been two cases of post election violence reported from the districts of Amparai and Galle. “Both cases involved assault but of a minor nature”, Mr. Hettiarachchi said. (LB)

‘I will remain as the leader’- Ranil
2010-04-10 13:02:30

Despite the defeat at Thursday’s General Elections, opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said that he will remain as the leader of the United National Party (UNP).

Responding to questions by media personnel on whether he would step down as the leader Mr. Wickremesinghe said that people have not lost faith in him but the present political system.

2010-03-05 13:45:42

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to give evidence to the Iraq inquiry about his role in the events that led to war.

As then-chancellor, inquiry witnesses have said he played a key role. It has also been claimed he cut defence funding after the 2003 invasion.

Mr Brown said last month that weapons of mass destruction were not the main reason he backed the war – it was Iraq’s disregard for UN resolutions.

He will face four hours of questioning over two sessions, from 1000 GMT.

The inquiry is examining events from 2001 to 2009, including the decision to go to war, whether troops were properly prepared, the conflict and what planning there was for its aftermath.

A ballot was held to allocate seats at Mr Brown’s appearance, as happened with his predecessor Tony Blair’s evidence session in January.

Originally the prime minister had been due to give evidence in public after the general election – widely expected to be held on 6 May – but it was moved forward amid some political pressure.

Mr Brown has said he is happy to give evidence early as he did not want people to think there were any “unanswered questions”.

2010-03-31 13:33:05

BEIJING – Yahoo e-mail accounts belonging to foreign journalists appeared to have been hacked and Google’s Chinese search engine was intermittently blocked Tuesday, the latest troubles in China’s heavily censored Internet market.

The Yahoo Inc. accounts of at least three journalists and an analyst became inaccessible over the last few weeks.

They were greeted with messages saying, “We’ve detected an issue with your account” and were told to contact Yahoo, they said Tuesday. Yahoo technicians told one of the four that his account had been hacked and restored his access, but it was not clear if the other instances were related. Sensitivity about Internet security has run high since Google Inc. announced in January it might leave China after a series of cyberattacks and complaints about censorship.

Last week, Google made a partial retreat, shutting down its mainland-based search engine and redirecting those queries offshore, to the freer Chinese territory of Hong Kong.

Analysts have been watching closely to see if China retaliates for Google’s high-profile departure from the mainland search engine market.

Many redirected queries appeared blocked Tuesday on the Hong Kong-based search engine. Although searches for benign terms were met with results on Chinese competitors such as Baidu.com and Soso.com, an error page would pop up when the same terms were typed into Google.com.hk.

Google initially blamed the trouble on an internal revision that inserted some coding that the company thought had caused China’s automated censors to block material that normally wouldn’t be prohibited.

But Google backed off its original explanation within a few hours.

After further investigation, the company said it realized the changes in its search settings had occurred a week ago without disrupting its results in mainland China. That discovery led Google to conclude the trouble stemmed from changes in China’s “Great Firewall” — the nickname for the tools the government uses to block access to sites deemed to be subversive or pornographic.

Without doing anything on its end, Google said its search traffic from mainland China appeared to be flowing freely again early Wednesday morning in Beijing.

“We will continue to monitor what is going on, but for the time being this issue seems to be resolved,” Google said.

Web searches weren’t the only Google service bogging down in China. The company reported that access to its mobile services in the country were “partially blocked” this week after experiencing no issues last week. Google didn’t provide a reason for the mobile disruption.

It was not clear where problems with the Yahoo e-mail accounts originated. All four people affected are professionally focused on China and related issues. They said they had heard of other colleagues having similar problems, including one journalist who lost his Yahoo account entirely in January.

Clifford Coonan, China correspondent for The Independent and the Irish Times newspapers, said he received the “issue with your account” notice when he logged in Tuesday. Another reporter said she received repeated error messages from Yahoo last month.

The Western analyst said he was locked out of his account for four or five days, until he spoke with a Yahoo representative Monday who went through the security questions and restarted it.

“He said somebody had hacked into my registration details,” said the analyst, who would not give his name, citing the sensitivity of the issue. The analyst said he was concerned hackers may have also accessed his inbox.

Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., issued a statement Tuesday condemning all hacking attacks and vowed to “take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach.”

Coonan wondered whether he was just part of a broad attack against Yahoo’s e-mail accounts, or if he had been specifically targeted.

“I’d just be interested to see if anyone in the business community or outside of journalism and academia has had the same problem, then it might be less sinister,” he said. “It’s obviously annoying but if it’s just journalists and academics, that’s scary.”

2010-03-31 13:48:29

VATICAN CITY – Dragged deeper than ever into the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Vatican is launching a legal defense that it hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him answer attorneys’ questions under oath.

Court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren’t employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the “smoking gun” that provides proof of a cover-up.

The Holy See is trying to fend off the first U.S. case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.

The case was filed in 2004 in Kentucky by three men who claim they were abused by priests and claim negligence by the Vatican. Their attorney, William McMurry, is seeking class-action status for the case, saying there are thousands of victims across the country.

“This case is the only case that has been ever been filed against the Vatican which has as its sole objective to hold the Vatican accountable for all the priest sex abuse ever committed in this country,” he said in a phone interview. “There is no other defendant. There’s no bishop, no priest.”

The Vatican is seeking to dismiss the suit before Benedict XVI can be questioned or documents subpoenaed.

The preview of the legal defense was submitted last month in U.S. District Court in Louisville. The Vatican’s strategy is to be formally filed in the coming weeks. Vatican officials declined to comment on Tuesday.

Plaintiffs in the Kentucky suit argue that U.S. diocesan bishops were employees of the Holy See, and that Rome was therefore responsible for their alleged wrongdoing in failing to report abuse.

They say a 1962 Vatican document mandated that bishops not report sex abuse cases to police. The Vatican has argued that there is nothing in the document that precluded bishops from calling police.

AP