Reuters: Tens of thousands of flag-waving and chanting protesters called on Saturday for a disputed parliamentary election to be rerun and an end to Vladimir Putin’s rule, increasing pressure on the Russian leader as he tries to win back the presidency. The protesters shouted “Russia

SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s mercurial and enigmatic leader whose iron rule and nuclear ambitions dominated world security fears for more than a decade, has died. He was 69. Kim’s death 17 years after he inherited power from his father was announced today by the state television from the North Korean capital,Pyongyang. ...

to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media.The leade...

U.S. presidential election all about the economy First bin Laden, now Iraq Obama shows he can answer the “3 a.m. call” WASHINGTON  (Reuters): President Barack Obama delivered on another foreign policy promise on Friday with plans to pull the last U.S. troops from Iraq. But in a re-election campaign all about the weak U.S. economy, ...

Reuters: Arab foreign ministers stopped short of suspending Syria from their regional organisation on Sunday over its military crackdown on dissent, instead urging the government and opposition to negotiate an end to the violence. “We will call all of the parties of the opposition and government to hold a dialogue within 15 days,” the League’s ...

Reuters: Adidas will invest more in toning shoes, confident that customers will continue to buy even after the U.S consumer watchdog raised doubts over their health benefits, the German group’s chief executive said this week. “We haven’t seen a slump in sales,” Herbert Hainer told journalists in Moscow. Adidas unit Reebok last month agreed to ...

Mismanagement in sports administrationThe role of oligarchs in sports administration, national, regional and international, is not solely a South Asian phenomenon, it is a worldwide cancer. Anyone who has worked in the sports sector in South Asia would have come up against this debilitating factor. It is all pervasive and endemic. Once at a South ...

To say that the Wallabies had an off day against the Irish would be an injustice to the Irish. From the outset the Irish had a game plan and that was to deny the Aussie backs good clean ball. They executed this plan to perfection and Man of the Match Healy, ably assisted by the ...

Establishing a landmark in Sri Lanka’s aviation history, SriLankan Airlines’ makes its maiden flight to the historic city of Moscow, commencing a twice-weekly scheduled service between Colombo’s Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) and Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport on 17 September 2011. Religious observances by dignitaries of the four religions in Sri Lanka will invoke bl...

The Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO) has launched a new campaign with a budget of 19 million euros ($26.7 million) designed to boost international tourism to Cyprus this year. According to Alecos Orountiotis, CTO chairman, the “Cyprus in Your Heart” campaign will promote Cyprus’ history and culture, friendliness and hospitality, its mix of modern and contemporary ...

Reuters: England piled more misery on India with a thrilling six-wicket victory in a one-off Twenty20 match at Old Trafford on Wednesday. After losing the test series 4-0, India started brightly in the shortest version of the game and racked up 165 all out, only to see England reach their target with three balls to ...

Reuters: Novak Djokovic faces the daunting prospect of possibly having to beat Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal to win the U.S. Open for the first time and end the year as the world number one. The Serbian has already won this season's Australian Open and Wimbledon titles and is the overwhelming favourite to win the ...

A son of Muammar Gaddafi, previously reported captured, made a surprise appearance with jubilant supporters in Tripoli overnight, urging loyalists to fight off rebels who say they control most of the Libyan capital. Saif al-Islam, seen as his father’s chosen successor, visited the Tripoli hotel where foreign journalists are staying to declare that the government ...

By S. V. Kirubaharan - in France Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” — Julius Henry, Groucho Marx, American comedian and film star (1890-1977). When life is smooth and everything goes in the right direction, normal civilians can become President, Prime Minister ...

Reuters: A Russian state company plans to start mass production next year of cheap plastic-based tablet computers for school students which it says will rival Apple Inc’s iPad. Anatoly Chubais, an architect of Russian market reform and a head of technology conglomerate Rosnano, told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the new computer would cost about $420 ...

A high level delegation from Russian oil and natural gas giant Gazprom led by its Director General Gulev Valeriy this week met Minister of Economic Development Basil Rajapaksa at his office in order to discuss investment opportunities, especially in the oil exploration in the Mannar and Cauvery Basin, natural gas market as well as tourism ...

By an Independent Analyst The State Assembly of Tamil Nadu (TN) passed a resolution on 8 June 2011, requesting the Indian Central Government to push the international community against Sri Lanka towards imposition of ‘economic sanctions’.  The resolution at the TN assembly moved by Jayalalitha as the Chief Minister passed unanimously with the ruling party ...

By Dushy Ranetunge in London The Sinhalese and Tamil Diaspora periodically launch protests in their host countries galvanised by events that affect their particular tribe. Often they are financed, organised or encouraged by their political formations. The ones perceived as “Tamil” protests are often organised/encouraged by the LTTE or organisations which are affiliated/sympathetic to the Tamil ...

A true blue SLFPer, Abalang Ruhunuputra, was resting his weary limbs and shredded vocal chords after the exhaustive march from Campbell Place to the Town Hall lawns on Sunday when he received an invigourating shot of adrenaline from the TV screen. Barack Obama himself delivered a personal message: American commandos had raided Osama bin Laden’s ...

A number countries in the west including the US have launched a massive attack on Libya with an eye on its oil resource. Libyan leader Col. Gaddafi has said that arms depots will be opened for the people to defend their country. International reports say that a series of missile attacks were directed towards the ...

The Director of the London School of Economics has stepped down over his association with the Libyan regime. Sri Lanka’s President, however, has no problem associating with repressive leaders from Libya, Iran, Burma, Russia and China. In the days of hypocritical realpolitik this may have made sense

By Malathi De Alwis On 18 May 2009, Sri Lanka officially declared the end of a 30-year civil war fought between. Sri Lankan government forces (GoSL) and Tamil militants, namely the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). Such a sea...

by Dr.Dayan Jayatilleka “The contest is never over, the field never quite ours.”- Dave Robicheaux in James Lee Burke, ‘The Tin Roof Blowdown’ (2007) Is it only me, or is not sad that there is no review in the Sri Lankan public space, of the first decade of the 21st century and the new millennium? Should we not be looking back at the road that has been travelled by the world, by our co...

by Ranil Wickremesinghe By the 4th century BC, Asia had begun its first cycle of economic growth and power. This was the reason why Alexander the Great decided to travel eastward to establish an empire. At that time there was...

Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe has said that barren land will be given to unemployed youth to cultivate tea. The Minister stressed that the Government hopes to produce quality tea through the Tea Shakthi Programme. He said that factories were setup to set an example to the private sector. The Tea Shakthi programme was launched to maintain ...

Thus spake Barak Hussein Obama at the Big Apple gathering: “In times of economic unease there can be an anxiety about human rights.” “Today, as in the past times of economic downturn, some place human rights aside for the  promise of short term stability or the false notion that economic growth can come at the ...

By D.B.S.Jeyaraj The  tragic history of post-independence records that the Tamils of Sri Lanka have been subjected to mass-scale mob violence in the years 1956, 1958, 1977, 1981 and 1983. The anti-Tamil violence of July 1983 was the most terrible and horrible of them all. It remains etched in memory even after 27 years. Twenty ...

By Rajan Philips On May 17 in Tehran, the foreign ministers of Iran, Turkey, and Brazil announced that they had reached a deal on exchanging uranium fuel for use in the Tehran Research Reactor....

MIA is the most provocative pop star of her age. Here, the rapper discusses her new multifaceted album, the absence of her father during childhood and having the video to her latest song, in which a child is 'murdered', censored...