Space shuttle discovery takes off !

The shuttle lifts off on its final mission to carry supplies and spare parts to the International Space Station.


Space shuttle discovery, NASA's most heavily traveled spacecraft, has blasted off from Florida on its final mission.


The shuttle blasted off on Thursday on its final mission carrying six astronauts and a load of supplies, spare parts and a robot for the International Space Station.


The shuttle lifted off at 4:53 p.m. EST (2153 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center, riding a flame-tipped pillar of smoke across the Atlantic Ocean as it soared toward space.


The launch was delayed three minutes when a range safety computer shut down before the planned 4:50pm EST (2150 GMT) liftoff. The problem was resolved with seconds to spare, clearing Discovery for launch.


The launch was the 133rd for the 30-year-old shuttle programme, with up to two flights remaining before the three-ship fleet is retired later this year.


Discovery made 39 of those flights, including both return-to-flight missions following the fatal Challenger and Columbia accidents.


"I think what will be most difficult will be on landing day when we know that that's the end of her mission, completely," said launch director Mike Leinbach.


The shuttle carries a storage room, a spare parts platform and a prototype humanoid robot for the space station, a $100bn project of 16 nations nearing completion after more than a decade of construction 220 miles (354 km) above the Earth.


The shuttles are being retired due to high operational costs and to free up money to develop new vehicles capable of traveling beyond the space station's orbit.


Source ; aljazeera

Upeksha Swarnamali to undergo plastic surgery for injury scars !

Upeksha Swarnamali (Crossed Over MP to Goverment) has been admitted to Lanka Hospital in Colombo for plastic surgery for the injury scars she had suffered at the hands of her husband.


According to hospital sources, the surgery is due to take place today (Feb. 23), and the hospital has been given special protection. No one uninvited will be allowed to go close to her room, and some of her artist friends had been turned away when they had gone to visit her.


She underwent surgery earlier at Sri Jayawardenapura Hospital for the wounds.Her husband Mahesh Chaminda Walawegama has been produced before courts and given bail.

Libyan Uprise - Gaddafi loses more Libyan cities !

Protesters wrest control of more cities as unrest sweeps African nation despite Muammar Gaddafi's threat of crackdown

.Muammar Gaddafi, Libya's long-standing ruler, has reportedly lost control of more cities as anti-government protests continue to sweep the African nation despite his threat of a brutal crackdown.


Protesters in Misurata said on Wednesday they had wrested the western city from government control. In a statement on the internet, army officers stationed in the city pledged "total support for the protesters".


The protesters also seemed to be in control of much of the country's east, and an Al Jazeera correspondent, reporting from the city of Tobruk, 140km from the Egyptian border, said there was no presence of security forces.


"From what I've seen, I'd say the people of eastern Libya are the ones in control," Hoda Abdel-Hamid, our correspondent, said.


She said there were no officials manning the border when the Al Jazeera team crossed into Libya.




People in charge'


"All along the border, we didn't see one policeman, we didn't see one soldier and people here told us they [security forces] have all fled or are in hiding and that the people are now in charge, meaning all the way from the border, Tobruk, and then all the way up to Benghazi.


"People tell me it's also quite calm in Bayda and Benghazi. They do say, however, that 'militias'  are roaming around, especially at night. They describe them as African men, they say they speak French so they think they're from Chad."


Major-General Suleiman Mahmoud, the commander of the armed forces in Tobruk, told Al Jazeera that the troops led by him had switched loyalties.


 "We are on the side of the people," he said. "I was with him [Gaddafi] in the past but the situation has changed - he's a tyrant."


Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, was where people first rose up in revolt against Gaddafi's 42-year long rule more than a week ago. The rebellion has since spread to other cities despite heavy-handed attempts by security forces to quell the unrest.


With authorities placing tight restrictions on the media, flow of news from Libya is at best patchy. But reports filtering out suggest at least 300 people have been killed in the violence.


But Franco Frattini, the Italian foreign minister, said there were "credible' reports that at least 1,000 had died in the clampdown.

Defiant Gaddafi

Amid the turmoil, a defiant Gaddafi has vowed to quash the uprising.

England edge past Dutch !

England avoid early humiliation in Cricket World Cup with six-wicket win over Netherlands with eight balls to spare.


England narrowly avoided humiliation in their opening World Cup Cricket Group B match, clinching a thrilling six-wicket victory with just eight balls to spare against the Netherlands in Nagpur on Tuesday.

Ryan ten Doeschate scored a dazzling century against England to lead the unfavoured Dutch to 292-6 but opener Andrew Strauss gave his team a platform with 88 from 83 balls, equalling the highest score by an England captain at a World Cup.

Jonathan Trott hit 62 at almost a run a ball but England still cut it fine, with Ravi Bopara hitting the winning runs with just eight balls remaining to take England to 296-4.

The Ashes winners were shocking in the field as ten Doeschate smashed three sixes and nine fours in a devastating show of power. The result suggests England could struggle in their next Group B match against tournament favourites India on Sunday.

Defiant Kernal Muammar Gaddafi vows to fight on - Already over 250 youth were killed !

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has vowed to fight on and die a "martyr", calling on his supporters to take back the streets from protesters demanding his ouster, shouting and pounding his fist in a furious speech on state TV.

Gaddafi, clad in brown robes and turban, spoke on Tuesday from a podium set up in the entrance of a bombed-out building that appeared to be his Tripoli residence hit by US air raids in the 1980s and left unrepaired as a monument of defiance.

"I am a fighter, a revolutionary from tents ... I will die as a martyr at the end," he said.

"Muammar Gaddafi is the leader of the revolution, I am not a president to step down ... This is my country. Muammar is not a president to leave his post."

"I have not yet ordered the use of force, not yet ordered one bullet to be fired ... when I do, everything will burn."

He called on supporters to take to the streets to attack protesters. "You men and women who love Gaddafi ...get out of your homes and fill the streets," he said. "Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs ... Starting tomorrow the cordons will be lifted, go out and fight them."

Gaddafi said "peaceful protests is one thing, but armed rebellion is another".

"From tonight to tomorrow, all the young men should form local committees for popular security," he said, telling them to wear a green armband to identify themselves. "The Libyan people and the popular revolution will control Libya."

The speech, which appeared to have been taped earlier, was aired on a screen to hundreds of supporters massed in Tripoli's central Green Square.

At times the camera panned out to show a towering gold-coloured monument in front of the building, showing a fist crushing a fighter jet with an American flag on it - a view that also gave the strange image of Gaddafi speaking alone from behind a podium in the building's dilapidated lobby, with no audience in front of him.

We will vote against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC, India warns Sri Lanka

Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka Ashok Kantha has warned Sri Lankan government that it will vote against Sri Lanka at the upcoming session of UN Human Rights Council if Sri Lanka did not release the arrested fishermen.


In a hurriedly arranged meeting on Friday Ashok Kantha has told Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa that India had no other option as Sri Lanka continuous to ignore polite requests not to kill and harm Indian fishermen.


It is also noticeable that the high commissioner sought a meeting with the Defence Secretary bypassing the normal protocol to meet Foreign Minister G.L.Peiris.


India is very well aware that Prof. G.L. Peiris is a mere puppet with no powers to resolve any issue at the ministry let alone issues on international affairs. Prof. Peiris was only recently strongly dressed down by Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna on the same issue when the pair met in Bhutan.


Analysts are of the opinion that Sri Lanka has clearly burnt its fingers as the island continuously disregarded warnings by India not to create a political uncertainty in India at a time it is facing elections in Tamil Nadu.


Mahinda Rajapaksa government that maintains having no proper foreign policy as the foreign policy and undermines the foreign ministry in its bilateral and multilateral dealings has sunk under the pressure by India, a country that strongly supported its war against the LTTE.

Minister SB's wife forcibly takes hold of a house in Colombo with the help of the IGP !

Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake's wife Tamara Dissanayake has forcibly taken charge of a valuable house in Barnes Place, Colombo with the help of IGP Dr. Mahinda Balasuriya, according to a senior official from the Police Headquarters.The house at 53/3, Barnes Place is owned by a Sri Lankan residing in the USA. Palitha Tenuwara, who had worked for a while at Sri Lanka Telecom, the house on rent and has not been rented out to any one else afterwards.


When S.B. Dissanayake's sons heard of a house in Barnes Place being shut without owners, they had informed of it to their mother and had decided forcibly take the place.


The senior police officer said that although the police have received information about many incidents where people have forcibly acquired lands and houses without owners in Colombo, the complaints have been discarded due to the involvement of politicians and underworld members in such acquisitions.


The official added that while most of these lands belong to Sri Lankan Tamil residing overseas, a large number of acquisitions have been made by underworld members affiliated to Minister Mervyn Silva.


Source; lankanewsweb.com

Karu Jayasuriya Says ; " Outlawed Commissioner turns lawless, Gives illicit support to Govt.

We express our displeasure regarding the decision taken by the Commissioner of Elections to postpone elections of 60 local government bodies indefinitely, even prior to an order is made by the Courts, where 60 petitions have been filed challenging the rejection of nominations.


Already an order has been made by the Appeal Court preventing the conduct of elections for 3 local government bodies, namely, Akuressa, Akmeemana and Moneragala. We consider the decision of the Commissioner of Elections, as a pronouncement made before hand, since he has taken the decision even prior to an order made by a Court of Law.


The present Act for Local Government Elections does not provide powers to the Commissioner of Elections to postpone elections of the relevant local government bodies. Having taken this decision, we doubt whether the Commissioner has taken the law unto himself. 


The above decision of the Election Commissioner has provided an opportunity to the Government to avoid a defeat in the present local government elections.


Visit lankaenews for further details 

‘Outlawed’ Elections Commissioner Mr. Dissanayake postpones elections of 60 local Govt. bodies !

Elections to 60 local Govt. bodies had been postponed indefinitely by the Elections Commissioner Dissanayake after accepting nominations.


This postponement had been made in respect of local Govt. bodies where political parties and independent groups have filed action in courts against the rejection of their nomination papers. Among those local bodies where the elections are postponed are 10 Municipal councils and 49 local Govt. bodies.


The reason cited by additional Elections Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya in defense of this postponement is , as action has been filed in the courts over the rejection of nominations for elections to these bodies , elections arrangements cannot be conducted until the court gives a verdict.


Source ; lankaenews &  Sirasa News First

Cricket Fans left without tickets as website crashes ! - World Cup 2011

If ever a URL contained in its few words an entire saga, it had to be the one that thousands of World Cup ticket buyers found themselves facing on Monday:



http://www.icccwc2011.kyazoonga.com/Tickets/Error/. The ICC World Cup 2011 is now momentarily defined not by its long first round, the presence of its much-abused fringe element, the Associates, or its extremely malleable home advantage quarter-final round, but instead by its ticketing error.


The most prominent errors took place when the official ticketing partners, Kyazoonga.com's servers were overwhelmed with the load on Monday afternoon when they went 'live' with sales for the finals and semi-finals at 1pm India time. Within a matter of ten minutes, the website received hits of close to ten million, many of those caused by people refreshing the site. It would have needed, a Kyazoonga staffer said, a server farm the "size of a football field" to keep up with that kind of demand. The site crashed at 1.05pm and the few people who had got into the system and begun purchasing their tickets found their plans hanging somewhere in cyberspace.


The website went online again at around 9.30pm IST with a statement that no tickets for the finals & semi-finals had been sold on Monday due to the system issues and that updates about the ticket sales would follow. So, all the tickets allocated for online sales will still be available once the Kyazoonga network teams in India, Europe and the United States get their servers up and running again. Kyazoonga were not willing to reveal an approximate time when that was expected to happen.


A Kyazoonga spokesperson said while the surge in traffic had been expected, the site had not anticipated its scale. When ticket sales for World Cup group matches first went live on June 1, 2010, there had been no issues over server capacity. The firm had expected the demand to be several times over for the knockout games, "maybe five to ten times over but not 100." There were even people knocking at the door of the Kyazoonga offices in New Delhi asking to purchase World Cup final tickets.


What has infuriated World Cup fans - whose angry comments on ESPNcricinfo have hit the newswires all day - is not merely the fact that it has been impossible to buy tickets for the final online, but that there are so few tickets available to the general public at a venue with a very small capacity by Indian standards. The 33,000-seater Wankhede Stadium is one of the two smallest Indian grounds hosting World Cup matches. Only Mohali with a capacity of 27,500 is smaller. The rest are as follows: Eden Gardens - 63,000, Motera - 54,000, Chepauk - 45,000, Ferozshah Kotla - 42,000, Nagpur - 45,000, Chinnaswamy - 37,000. Among the 33,000 seats in the Wankhede, only 4000 are for sale to the public - the rest will be distributed to the ICC and the Mumbai Cricket Association's member clubs - which is a disproportionately small number for the biggest event in world cricket. All previous finals have been held at larger venues except for the 2007 final in Bridgetown and the first three editions. Those were played at Lord's, which at the time had a capacity of 28,000, but the number of tickets made available to the public was still somewhere around 14,000.


The ticket pricing at the Wankhede, according to the ICC's official ticket guide, is the most expensive across the World Cup. The price-range for the first match at the Wankhede on March 13, New Zealand v Canada, is between Rs 2500 to Rs 3750. The March 18 match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka ranges from Rs 5000 to Rs 7500. The World Cup finals tickets are priced between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000.


The other issue surrounding tickets that has affected grounds in India is that ticket sales are heavily dependent on the host team's presence in any match. India are hosting most of the neutral games while co-hosts Bangladesh are staging only the six group matches featuring their own team and two quarter-finals, and Sri Lanka are hosting 13 matches, five featuring the home team, six as stand-in hosts for Pakistan, and one quarter-final and a semi-final.


Source; ESPNcricinfo, AFP