IDPs Resettled in North

Yesterday over 40000 IDPs resettled in 4 northern districts in Vavuniya, Mullaitivu, Mannar and Kilinochchi of Srilanka. These areas formally controlled by LTTE and due heavy landmines the process of resettlement delayed for few months. However the landmine clearing process id still carried out by Srilanka ARMY and other Non government Organizations.

Senior President adviser and the Chairman of the Presidential Task Force for the North Development, Mr. Basil Rajapaksha and several other MPs including Tamil Alliance have participated to the event.
Basil Rajapaksa at the function said that Sri Lanka is the only country in the world that speedily resettled a large number of displaced persons who were affected by a civil war. He challenged those who criticize the government’s resettlement drive to name a country, if any, which implemented such an accelerated resettlement program.

Each families resettled given home needs and financial aid by government.

Vavuniya District: 8643 persons of 2583 families
Mannar District: 631 persons from 2644 families
Mullaitivu District: 16394 persons of 4415 families
Kilinochchi District: 0017 persons of 2453 families

President Mahinda Rajapaksha Has given a letter to each IDP resettled yesterday.
The Letter:

My Dear Citizens

I write to you at an important time you when you are on the threshold of a new beginning in life. You are today being moved to the familiar surroundings of your former home, or very close to it.

I am aware that the sufferings your family have undergone are many, and for very long too. These hardships were imposed on you and all other Tamil citizens who have suffered alike, by a ruthless organization that was committed to terror to achieve its narrow objectives, for which the Tamil people were made unwilling pawns. They claimed to be the liberators of the noble Tamil community. As their strategies began to fail, you were herded from place to place, and denied the food, medicine and other essentials that were sent for you. Your children, and even the elders among you, were compelled to carry arms for these forces of terror..

I fully understand that this was not the aspiration of the Tamil people of our country. Finally, you were made displaced persons in your own motherland, after holding you as human shields and hostages for the safety of those who shed so much blood of your own people. Your innocence in all this is recognized today.

That period of immense tragedy is now over, as are the temporary hardships you faced as internally displaced persons. You are moving on to a new life, in the company of family and friends. You will find new and welcome challenges of the future. My Government has done much to make your new life most acceptable to you, providing the needs for a quality of life to enhance your dignity as a person.

The most cherished asset you have today are your children, who you have sheltered as best as your could. This is the time to ensure that your children are guided by you to benefit from the new facilities that are being provided for them and ensure that they are never again allowed to be misled by false prophets or saviours. Together you can build a new life and look to benefit from the many opportunities that will be available in the tranquility of peace and friendship.

I wish you and your family every success and the choicest blessings for the future, with your dreams of success coming true, when we can all live together as members of a single family in our motherland.

Sincerely,
Mahinda Rajapaksha

Facebook And Twitter to prevent Depression

Two researchers from New Zealand’s Victoria University found that Social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter enables people to reduce their depression and tension.

Dr. Tiong-Thye Goh and student assistant Yen-Pei Huang have developed a decision support system to scan social networking sites to flag keywords that people between the ages of 18 and 24 are posting. A high proportion of certain keywords could mean that a user is at risk of depression, suicide and other mental disorders.

“When young people are emotionally distressed for instance, instead of the traditional channel of consulting friends, parents or specialists, social networking blogs may provide a channel to share and release their emotions and intentions,” said Dr. Goh.

“Our technology picks up words or phrases such as ‘depressed’, or ‘I don’t want to live any more’ or ‘I want to kill somebody’. We analyze the database of phrases and rank them according to frequency of use – if certain key words are used a lot it is likely that the particular person may be emotionally depressed.”

The next step for the researchers is to see if approaching people who may be at risk is effective. The researchers are weighing sending messages to these people and asking, “How are you?” with three different response options- “Good,” “A bit down,” or “Bad-need help.”

“The option of needing help would link to an appropriate website that provides useful information and links,” said Dr. Goh.

The researchers say they are working on fine-tuning the technology to improve identification of young people at risk and remove false alarms. Ultimately they would like to see an e-monitoring service used by social networks to engage people at risk.

source: webpro

mano ganeshan will resign from new alliance

Mano Ganeshan the leader of the Democratic Peoples Front will resign from the proposed new alliance (UNA) if they selected General Sarath Fonseka as the common candidate in next presidential polls in srilanka.

The new opposite alliance setup by United National Party, will named as the United National Alliance (UNA). there are few parties already agreed to join with the UNA such as SLFP(M), SLMC, DPF and other parties still considering to join.

However Mono Ganeshan told UNP leader Ranil Wickramasinghe that he will drop from UNA if the General Sarath Fonseka became as the common candidate. Mano Ganeshan further says that Tamil speaking community in srilanka may not accept the Gen. Sarath Fonseka as their Presidential candidate.

Raj Rajaratnam multi millionaire arrested in alleged with Terrorism

Raj rajarathnam 52, a Srilankan born multi millionaire arrested by USA FBI on 17 october. Rajarathnam alleged to have strong connection with Srilankan terrorist activities by funding more than US $3.5 million to the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO), LTTE owned NGO.
U.S. Treasury Department had frozen TRO’s assets as they found direct connections with LTTE.

Raj Rajarathnam

Raj Rajaratnam is listed as World’s 559th wealthiest person according to Forbes. And he is the richest Srilankan in the world business arena.

Rajaratnam also charged having unfair and Illegal Business Practices in USA. And accused of conspiring with others to trade based on insider information about several publicly traded companies, including Google.

Here are some Contributions by Raj:
$26,700 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee
$26,200 to the Democratic National Committee Services Corp.
$11,100 to Hillary Clinton
$10,000 to the New Jersey Democratic State Committee
$4,600 to Barack Obama
$2,000 to Charles Schumer, the New York Democratic Senator

Sources: AT, Wikipedia
Picture: AT

Global Broadband Continue Growing

The number of household broadband connections continues to experience solid growth and one in five households globally will have a fixed broadband connection by the end of 2009, according to a new report from Gartner.

A total of 422 million households will have a fixed broadband connection in 2009, up from 382 million households in 2008, and the market will continue to grow with nearly 580 million connections by 2013.

“Consumers may be watching their household expenditure, but dropping their broadband connections is not on the top of their agendas as a way to reduce outgoings,” said Amanda Sabia, principal research analyst at Gartner.

“Multiple motivations are conspiring to keep broadband growth strong, such as PCs being more affordable, migration from dial-up, affordably priced broadband subscriptions, aging populations requiring broadband connectivity, and even as a result of an economic boost from country-specific economic and broadband-specific stimulus plans.”

At the end of 2008, 21 countries had broadband connections in at least 50 percent of homes. In many countries the rates are much higher. The highest penetration is in South Korea at 86 percent and lowest is Indonesia at less than 1 percent.

Gartner predicts over the next five years, the emerging markets (China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Latin American countries, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa) will combined provide twice as many new consumer broadband connections as mature markets: 135 million vs. 62 million connections respectively.

Pakistan Bomb at a Police Station

A bomb hits police station in northwestern city of Peshawar, Pakistan killed 37 people and several others are wounded.
Over the past two weeks there are more than 150 people dead by the series of attacks by Pakistan militant groups.
Peshawar in Pakistan tend to be attacked regularly by Taliban militants.

Pakistan Attack

Photos: AP/getty/WSJ

US sanction bill against Iran

The United States Senate approved a sanction bill against Iran on Thursday, barring companies selling fuel to Iran from obtaining U.S. government bids.

Under the bill, which was passed, foreign company that sells more than one million dollars’ worth of fuel to Iran would not be able to bid for contracts offered by the U.S. government.

Before this bill U.S senate has passed another bill on Wednesday, which the U.S. state and local governments would obtain legal authorities to divest investments from those companies investing more than 20 million dollars in Iran’s petroleum or natural gas operations.

However All of these sanction bills have to be signed by President Barack Obama before becoming law in United States.

All of these sanction bills are based on that, The United States, its European alliance and Israel claim that Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at developing nuclear weapons, and the UN Security Council also asked Iran to halt its uranium enrichment activities.

However, Iran insists that its nuclear plan is only for peaceful purposes, and continues its uranium enrichment activity despite pressure from the western countries and relevant resolutions and sanctions of the United Nations.

Quote from: xinhuanet