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No bags in Sri Lanka buses Monday, 8 January 2007 - 9:41 AM SL Time Passengers will not be allowed to carry big bags or parcels and the workers were advised to search all the small bags, transport minister AHM Fowzie told BBC Sandeshaya. Same regulations will be applied to trains but a meeting with the train workers to be held next week, the minister added. Minister Fowzie said he requested the authorities to allow government workers more time to report to work under the new security regulations. The minister admitted new regulations may delay public transport services. `But the passengers must understand that all these in place are to guarantee their safety`. The authoties have taken measures to step security after at least 20 passengers were killed and over 100 injured in two blasts in buses on Friday and Saturday. 
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LTTE desertions increase as forces step up pressure in East Monday, 8 January 2007 - 3:26 AM SL Time The two-and-half month long campaign involves Special Forces, Commandos and the infantry. The ground action is backed by the air force. `We have inflicted sizeable losses on the enemy. They are on the run,` a senior military official said on Sunday. Referring to bomb attacks on two private buses over the weekend, he said that this could be a sign of desperation. `They are trying to offset battlefield losses by triggering chaos in the South.` Speaking on the condition of anonymity, he detailed a series of successful operations in the Batticaloa theatre, where the army overcame initial setbacks to gradually increase pressure, thereby facilitating forays into the Vanni cadres` heartland. `What we are doing is unconventional. In fact, we haven`t tried this sort of a thing on this scale before. The bottom line is that we are hitting them at their doorstep`
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Time ripe for Lanka to sue India? Sunday, 7 January 2007 - 12:36 PM SL Time With the Tamil Nadu government commencing the dredging of the Sethusamudram canal at the Adam`s Bridge on December 11, international legal experts opine that Sri Lanka has provisions to seek legal redress in an international court of law against the Indian government. The project has military, ecological and archaeological implications on both the governments of India and Sri Lanka. As a result, Sri Lanka is now in a position to sue India, based on the provisions of the United Nations Law of the Sea Covenants. Even if the Sethusamudram canal project is within the ambit of the Indian territorial waters, the United Nations Law of the Sea is also paramount in this instance. Article 2(1) of the Law of the Sea Convention states The sovereignty of a coastal state extends beyond its land territory and international waters, and in the case of an archipelago state, its archipelago waters, to an adjacent belt of sea, described as the territorial sea.
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Security Forum
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STF overruns key Tiger camp Tuesday, 9 January 2007 - 8:46 PM SL Time The Special Task Force yesterday registered a major victory when it overran the Ampara district Tiger main camp - Stanley Base in Kanjikudichcharu - after a fierce battle, the military said. `STF personnel overran the Tigers main camp in Kanjikudichcharu yesterday afternoon forcing the surviving Tigers to retreat,` military spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe said. He said the STF recovered a large haul of weapons, ammunition and other military items left behind by the fleeing Tigers. The spokesman also said the police elite force personnel had found a hospital within the LTTE camp. `This camp had been built by a Non-Governmental Organization and we are investigating into the matter seriously,` Brigadier Samarasinghe claimed.It is considered as a significant and a strategic step forward as the Tiger terrorists were posing a major threat to the security forces from this camp. Continuous targeting of the security forces position in the area by the LTTE provoked the STF to clear the area and bring it under its control.
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Nittambuwa bus bomb death toll rises to seven Tuesday, 9 January 2007 - 8:43 PM SL Time One of the injured in the Nittambuwa bus bomb attack succumbed to his injuries on Sunday increasing the death toll to seven. The victim was under treatment at the Watupitiwala hospital. Nittambuwa police HQI Upul Seneviratne said 24 persons were arrested immediately after the incident and 13 others including four Sinhalese during a cordon and search operation on Sunday. The suspects identified themselves as upcountry estate workers, but failed to prove it. The police were awaiting the government analyst`s report to conduct further investigations. Inspector Seneviratne said security in the Gampaha police division had been stepped up after the incident. Meanwhile police rejected media reports that the bomb explosion in the Matara bound private bus at Godagama off Ambalangoda last Saturday was a suicide attack and confirmed that a high powered time bomb placed on a luggage rack of the bus caused the explosion.
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Tiger bigwig arrested in Indonesia had plan to attack NY Tuesday, 9 January 2007 - 12:55 PM SL Time Pradeepan Thavarasa, a member of tiger terrorist organization who bought arms for tiger terrorists from East Asian countries and supplied them to tiger terrorists, has been arrested in Indonesia. There had been passports of 15 countries in his possession when he was arrested. After questioning him for seven day the Indonesian court has directed that he be deported to the USA . It has been revealed that Pradeepan Thavarasa has had links with arms dealers in East Asian countries and information has been received that he has come to Indonesia to make arrangements to send a ship full of arms to the tiger organization. Indonesian authorities have revealed that he has had a plan in his possession to launch an attack on New York.
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| Politics
Political News Forum
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Goa - new paedophile`s paradise? Tuesday, 9 January 2007 - 8:52 PM SL Time For many years now, certain parts of the world - such as Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam - have had an unsavoury connection with sex tourism: foreigners arriving to sexually abuse children. Now, a BBC investigation finds that the Indian state of Goa may be added to that list. Child sex tourism is threatening to become the darker side of life in Goa`s tropical paradise - and there is evidence that the Indian authorities are turning their back on the problem. Nishta Desai, a consultant to the organisation Children`s Rights In Goa, estimates that there are `hundreds` of children being abused by foreign paedophiles. `It is not getting the attention it requires,` she says.
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Parliament approves journalists` pension scheme Tuesday, 9 January 2007 - 8:49 PM SL Time he parliament officially agreed to implement a pension scheme for journalists, under a special Act. According to the Secretary of the Ministry of Mass Media and Information, W.B. Ganegala, the media will be briefed on this by next week. Journalists under the Government service, in private media institutions and freelance journalists are eligible for this pension scheme. Implementing a pension scheme for journalists has been one of the highly discussed issues for a long period of time. This special act was approved in the parliament on the 08th August 2006. Adding further on the subject, Mr. Ganegala added that providing a pension scheme for the journalists have been one of the assurances given in President Mahinda Rajapaksa`s presidential policy `Mahinda Chinthana`.
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Sri Lanka`s Muslims trapped in a deepening conflict Monday, 8 January 2007 - 10:03 AM SL Time Like thousands of other Muslims, shopkeeper Rasool Haniffa was given just two hours to pack up and leave his home in northern Sri Lanka by the Tamil Tiger rebels. They said he could only take 150 rupees ($1.40) and a set of clothes, and that he would be allowed to return once the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, fighting for a separate homeland for minority Tamils in the north and east of the island, had won the conflict with the government. Seventeen years later, Haniffa and his family of eight remain in a dirt camp of thatched huts in an obscure corner of western Sri Lanka, forgotten and barely a footnote in the deepening ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese, who mostly follow Buddhism, and the mainly Hindu Tamils. `We are the football kicked by both sides,` said Haniffa, 42, sitting in a straw hut where he sells cold drinks to the 1,200 refugees that live in the camp in Alankuda, 140 kms of a mostly dirt road drive from Colombo.
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CTB strike today Tuesday, 9 January 2007 - 8:49 PM SL Time Some 39,000 CTB employees will launch an island-wide strike today demanding salary arrears and other outstanding allowances, union sources said. The All Island Transport Employees Union claimed the authorities had paid little attention to the demands of CTB employees. The employees are also demanding that their allowances be added to the basic salary, the salaries and advances be paid on time and the re-establishing the CTB in a proper manner.
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Volunteer teachers to be made permanent Monday, 8 January 2007 - 9:51 AM SL Time Cabinet approval was given last week to grant permanent appointments to volunteer teachers, in the next four months. Education Minister Susil Premajayantha told the Daily Mirror last week that these volunteer teachers would be appointed first as `teacher assistants`, to be later absorbed as permanent teachers, after completing their University Degree or the Diploma at the National Colleges of Education (NCE). In addition, the Ministry has also decided to recruit over 10,000 graduates and NCE diploma holders as teachers, within the next three months. `Then, we could solve the problem of teacher shortage in the country,` he said. He said these appointments would be made according to vacancies existing in schools. `We will adopt a school-based selection criterion considering vacancies in respective schools. Accordingly, teachers will be posted leaving no room for possible teacher shortages in the future, due to transfers,` he said.
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Petrol up by Rs. 5 Friday, 5 January 2007 - 4:07 PM SL Time Petrol prices were increased by Rs. 5.00 with effect from midnight last night, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) announced. Accordingly the price of a litre of Octane 90 petrol will be Rs. 97.00 while a litre of Octane 95 petrol will be Rs. 100.00 The CPC said it was forced to increase the price of petrol owing to rising world oil prices. Earlier this week the CPC said it would have to incur a loss of Rs. 175 million if the price of petrol was not raised within the next two weeks. Addressing a news conference in Colombo, CPC Chairman Asantha de Mel said the CPC could maintain the present diesel price since it was being transported directly from Muthurajawela.
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| Editorial News
Editorial News Forum
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The bubble has burst! Tuesday, 9 January 2007 - 8:40 PM SL Time The LTTE is making a desperate attempt to make its presence felt. It has bombed a CEB sub station in Wattala. The blast has, no doubt, caused considerable loss to the state and the LTTE is likely to step up such terror attacks on infrastructural facilities, besides blasting public vehicles. What is happening is a serious threat to public security and everything possible must be done to protect the citizenry and public property. But, if the LTTE thinks it can achieve its objectives through such acts of wanton terror, it is sadly mistaken. Through them, it has only demonstrated its bankruptcy, having declared its final war and raised billions of rupees for that purpose. Today, it cannot at least rescue its cadres trapped in Vakarai, let alone carving out a mono ethnic enclave. The outfit is trying to cover up its battlefield failures by means of cowardly attacks on civilians and State property. Who needs foreign funds to the tune of billion of rupees and years of training for so simple a task like the blowing up of a transformer or placing a bomb in a crowded bus?
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A voice for the voiceless Sunday, 7 January 2007 - 12:37 PM SL Time There is nothing sunshiny about war; this is a lesson Sri Lankans have learned all over again in the last year and one they are bound to re-learn in the year 2007, if events of the past week speak true. There will always, in times of conflict, be a sidelining of civil liberties and human rights. These are times when the `bigger` picture must override these concerns, or so the reigning administration would tell us. As a citizenry, however, we are blessed with the ability to observe things more objectively. Not only are we a nation on the brink of full-scale war that will threaten security and the economy in an unprecedented fashion, but we are also teetering on the edge of being internationally snubbed as a pariah state thanks to an abysmal human rights record that has accompanied the escalation of tensions in the north east over the past year. Truth be told, the longer the state continues to treat human rights and conventions of war as things that may be swept under the carpet for the time being, the closer Sri Lanka comes to inviting two dangerous phenomena: (a) the imposition of UN sanctions; and (b) suspension either in part or whole of international funding.
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Of those enemies within Thursday, 4 January 2007 - 8:49 AM SL Time The decision by the army to court-martial officers with alleged links with the LTTE is long overdue. Better late than never! But for the corrupt elements in uniform and treacherous politicos, this country`s war against terror would have been won a long time ago. If the LTTE has emerged as a formidable guerrilla outfit capable of taking on the national military, Prabahkaran must give the credit for his success not to his combatants and foreign friends but to the blundering generals and their political masters who have been in charge of Sri Lanka`s war effort. The country may have a defence against brainwashed suicide bombers but it is sadly defenceless against the moles in uniform. Not even the Army Commander is safe from them as we saw last April, when he escaped from an LTTE bomber by the skin of his teeth. The country has lost many brilliant military officers to the LTTE and the involvement of quislings in some of those assassinations has now been established. One of the officers in custody for working for the LTTE has made a clean breast of the fact that he facilitated Maj. General Parami Kulatunga`s killing, for money.
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| Sports News
Sports News Forum
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Sri Lanka have advantage in deciding game Tuesday, 9 January 2007 - 8:35 PM SL Time With the five match ODI series between Sri Lanka and New Zealand levelled at 2-2, the tourists go into the fifth and final encounter today at Seddon Park here in Hamilton with the psychological advantage following their thumping win in Auckland. The tourists won the game by 189 runs to square the series and handed New Zealand their worst ever defeat in ODIs. Criticism is mounting on New Zealand for the tactics they adopted against Sri Lankans, whom many feel were underrated by the hosts. Sri Lanka have clearly outplayed New Zealand in the six week tour despite conditions not favouring them and will be looking forward to finish off the tour with a win today. `It was a good win in Auckland and the psychological advantage is with us. What`s more important is the time it happened ahead of a deciding game. We need to execute the game plan properly here,` Sri Lanka`s captain Mahela Jayawardene told `The Island` on the eve of the game.
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India loses its last five wickets for 19 to be dismissed for 414 Friday, 5 January 2007 - 4:01 PM SL Time India lost its last five wickets for 19 runs to be dismissed for 414 by South Africa before tea Wednesday on day two of the third and final test. South Africa was 25-1 at the break after opener A.B. de Villiers got an inside edge to a ball from Sree Sreesanth and was caught by wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik for 1. India looked in a powerful position at 350-5 at lunch at the Newlands Stadium, but Shaun Pollock and left-arm spinner Paul Harris combined to take the final five wickets. Virender Sehwag, who had dropped from opener to No. 7, hit six fours and a six before he was caught at deep backward square-leg by Makhaya Ntini for 40 off 50 balls from the bowling of Harris. Anil Kumble was out leg-before-wicket for a duck by Pollock, his 50th wicket against India. Harris then had Zaheer Khan (1) stumped by Mark Boucher.
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Upesh hammers 109 for Dharmaraja Friday, 5 January 2007 - 4:00 PM SL Time Upesh Wijesiri hammered 109 runs inclusive of 12 fours and two sixes while Chamila Ambagaspitiya, Sameera Ranatunga and Chandimal Ratnayake contributed with useful half tons for Dharmaraja College to compile a massive 320 runs in their Under-20 match against Royal College which ended in a draw at Reid Avenue on Wednesday. In their second innings Royal were 123 for 5 at close with Dilan Nanayakkara unbeaten on 50. Royal 184 for 9 decl. (Feroz Ahamed 29, Kusal Perera 39, Banuka Rajapakse 20; Rukshan Suriarachchi 5/57, Tharindu Perera 2/24) 123 for 5 at close (Banuka Rajapakse 20, Dilan Nanayakkara 50 n.o, Charith Fernando 21 n.o; Tharindu Balasury 2/43, Chandmal Ratnayake 2/44) Dharmaraja 94 for 1 overnight 320 for 5 decl.(Chamila Ambagaspitiya 58, Upesh Wijesiri 109, Sameera Ranatunga 54 , Chandimal Ratnayake 51, Feroz Ahamed 2/25, Mahesh Kodamullage 2/77)
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