Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

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We shouldn`t take these issues coming clearly from an emotional place, to the battlefield again, everyone, regardless which `side` you consider you`re on keep it clean and remember more violence is the last thing we need. I hope you all remember that. Some of us here were born into this crap, and those people are sick of people like you, who do more harm than they know. I believe this includes me.

It`s just sad to see some of us who never go down that low and turn out to be hypocritical, we just don`t see it.

Manliness` means upholding and defending moral rules - not preaching hatred, holding grudges and seeking revenge.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), through the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), has donated $6 million (Rs 720.5 million) for non-food aid assistance to provide short-term, life-saving interventions for IDPs in northern Sri Lanka.

This is in addition to USAID`s recent announcement of a $15 million (Rs 1.8 billion) donation of food aid to the U.N. World Food Program.

`I am pleased that USAID can provide this short-term relief, which complements our substantial food aid donations to assist the civilians affected by the conflict in the North,` stated USAID Mission Director Rebecca Cohn.

12 May 2009, Colombo, Sri Lanka: The International Community is expressing its concern over the deaths of thousands of civilians including at least one hundred children who are caught between the crossfire as fighting raged between the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) an internationally proscribed terrorist outfit. In light of the recent developments in the tiny island off the southern tip of India, a recent survey conducted by CNN (http://internationaldesk.blogs.cnn.com/2009/05/11/monday-poll/) on whether the International Community should intervene in the conflict has produced an inconclusive and convoluted set of results.

Sri Lanka is a developing nation that has made great strides in improving that status. The country is rated the highest in many aspects like education, health care and economy compared to other third world countries. Although Sri Lanka is rated the highest in these things, she still continues to improve in them, especially with education and health care. New programs are being administered constantly and Sri Lanka is always looking at how to improve them. By making improvements new problems arise, but Sri Lanka is taking one step at a time and adapting to the improvements that are being made. Sri Lanka still has its fair share of poverty, conflicts between the majority and the minority groups, but each day the country is improving. Sri Lanka has a very promising and optimistic future. After independence was gained, Sri Lanka has done so much to improve living conditions, lifestyle, culture, etc. These improvements are occurring, maybe slowly, but they are continuing on. Agriculture remains a major part of the economy and culture of Sri Lanka, but as time moves into the future, Sri Lanka is becoming more and more industrialized. Sri Lanka overall is rated one of the highest developing Nations in the world and hopefully she will continue on the path that has made this occured. Hopefully one day Sri Lanka will not be considered a developing nation, but a growing competitor in the world market.

KUALA LUMPUR: For eight months, 14-year-old Dil Ruckshan was held captive in a flat in Sentul, forced to do housework and beaten every time he asked to speak to his grandmother in Switzerland.
Bread was all he was given to eat, and even that was on an irregular basis.

The Sri Lankan teenager was brought to Malaysia by a travel agent who had been paid by his grandmother to take him to Switzerland to be with her and his 8-year-old sister.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said that the spending did not target China

Australia is to announce about $73bn ( 49bn) in defence spending aimed at equipping its military for the next two decades.

Key purchases include 100 fighter jets and 12 new submarines, replacing the current fleet of six.

Eight frigates and 24 combat helicopters are also on the list, in the country`s first defence white paper for 10 years.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd denied that the spending was a response to China.

What really happened in 1983? Listen to the true story behind a carefully orchestrated plan of terrorist master minds.

Journalist: a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time he has, the worse he writes.

We have to understand the middle path: that a human has a positive and a negative side. We have a false, ignorant side, but we also have a beautiful potential - Buddha nature.

The US is likely to boycott a UN racism conference, reports suggest, saying a text drawn up for the event criticises Israel and restricts freedom of speech.

An unnamed state department official said the draft document for April`s forum in Geneva was `unsalvageable`.

Canada and Israel have also said they plan to boycott the meeting.

In 2001, US and Israeli delegates walked out of a similar conference in Durban, South Africa, when a draft document likened Zionism to racism.

Just one brain cell is capable of holding fleeting memories vital for our everyday life, according to US scientists.

A study of mouse brain cells revealed how they could keep information stored for as long as a minute.

A UK specialist said that understanding these short-term memories might help unlock the secrets of Alzheimer`s Disease.

The finding was reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience.


If we can identify and manipulate the molecular components of memory, we can develop drugs... to hopefully allow a person to complete tasks without being distracted

Prabhakaran is has been cornered.

From the very beginning there was a philosophy undergirding the Montgomery boycott, the philosophy of nonviolent resistance. There was always the problem of getting this method over because it didn`t make sense to most of the people in the beginning. We had to use our mass meetings to explain nonviolence to a community of people who had never heard of the philosophy and in many instances were not sympathetic with it. We had meetings twice a week on Mondays and on Thursdays, and we had an institute on nonviolence and social change. We had to make it clear that nonviolent resistance is not a method of cowardice. It does resist. It is not a method of stagnant passivity and deadening complacency. The nonviolent resister is just as opposed to the evil that he is standing against as the violent resister but he resists without violence. This method is nonaggressive physically but strongly aggressive spiritually.

No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.