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Wednesday, January 27, 2010 COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has won a second term in office, a local news channel reported on Wednesday. "The president has recorded a remarkable victory, with amore than 1.8 million vote majority," Rupavahini said. Official final results were not due for another three hours, but polling showed the incumbent with a powerful lead over his chief opponent, former army commander General Sarath Fonseka. The two war victors turned to foes in a bloody campaign that culminated in a largely peaceful election on Tuesday, with turnout that independent observers placed at between 70 and 80 percent of the Indian Ocean island's 14 million registered voters. Fonseka, a political neophyte, delivered an election day shock by admitting he was not registered to vote, after saying he may have done so but did not want to say where for security reasons. The winner will take the reins of a $40 billion economy which has enjoyed a partial ...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 COLOMBO: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has won a second term in office, a local news channel reported on Wednesday. "The president has recorded a remarkable victory, with amore than 1.8 million vote majority," Rupavahini said. Official final results were not due for another three hours, but polling showed the incumbent with a powerful lead over his chief opponent, former army commander General Sarath Fonseka. The two war victors turned to foes in a bloody campaign that culminated in a largely peaceful election on Tuesday, with turnout that independent observers placed at between 70 and 80 percent of the Indian Ocean island's 14 million registered voters. Fonseka, a political neophyte, delivered an election day shock by admitting he was not registered to vote, after saying he may have done so but did not want to say where for security reasons. The winner will take the reins of a $40 billion economy which has enjoyed a partial ...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 WASHINGTON: The United States has not done enough to protect the country against the threat of weapons of mass destruction even as Al-Qaeda appears intent on staging a large-scale attack, reports said. A bipartisan panel warned that the government had failed to adopt measures to counter the danger posed by extremists using WMD, saying the administration lacked plans for a rapid response to a possible biological attack. "Nearly a decade after September 11, 2001, one year after our original report, and one month after the Christmas Day bombing attempt, the United States is failing to address several urgent threats, especially bioterrorism," said former senator Bob Graham, chair of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. He said that Washington no longer had "the luxury of a slow learning curve, when we know Al-Qaeda is interested in bioweapons." In its "report card," t...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 DHAKA: Bangladesh's Supreme Court confirmed Wednesday the death sentence for the five convicted killers of the nation's founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, setting the stage for their execution.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 WASHINGTON: The commander of NATO-led troops in Afghanistan has said foreign fighters allied with the Taliban cannot be "reintegrated" into Afghan society and some may have to be killed or captured. Plans by Kabul to persuade Taliban members to lay down their arms would not apply to foreigners who had joined the insurgency, often for ideological reasons, US General Stanley McChrystal suggested in a NATO video posted on the web on Tuesday. "I think what we probably will find is where we are successful in decreasing the Taliban, the foreigners just won't have anywhere to go," he said. "Some of them will obviously be killed or captured because... this is just what they want to do," he said. "Some will leave I think. But I think they will be increasingly irrelevant." Foreign fighters are completely dependent on the Taliban and cannot operate without their guidance and networks, he said. The general's co...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 COTONOU: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the First Lady of France, has begun her visit to Benin as part of her ambassador role in the fight against AIDS. She was met on Tuesday by President Thomas Yayi Boni. Bruni-Sarkozy, a Global Fund ambassador, last month renewed a call to eliminate the transmission of HIV from mothers to their children by 2015. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region most heavily affected, accounting for 67 percent of all people living with HIV and 91 percent of all new infections among children. Around 1.2 percent of Benin's population live with HIV in the small West African country of less than 9 million people, where the first HIV case was diagnosed in 1985. Bruni-Sarkozy described AIDS as a plague for the entire world, but said "United we can fight against these pandemic diseases." On Wednesday today Bruni-Sarkozy and Melinda Gates, representing the Bill Gates Foundation, one of the Global Fund's biggest donors, w...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 BELLARY: At least five persons are feared dead and many injured when a six-storey building caved in suddenly in Bellary district, in India's southern Karnataka state The six-storey building was under construction when it collapsed on Tuesday (January 26). The incident took place around 8.30 pm (local time) when workers were having dinner on the ground floor. A weak foundation is reportedly the cause of the incident. A boys' hostel situated besides the building was also damaged when a portion of the building fell on the hostel. Reports say that three hostellers were buried under the debris. However, one of them has been declared dead. Rescue operations were on as excavators tried to remove the debris and look for more survivors. A National Disaster Management team from India's western Pune city is expected to arrive in Bellary on Wednesday (January 27).

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 COLOMBO: Incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa took a strong lead in counting on Wednesday in Sri Lanka's bitterly disputed presidential election, officials said, as armed troops surrounded the hotel of his main rival. Election officials said Rajapaksa who is being challenged by his estranged former army chief Sarath Fonseka, had won 60 percent of the vote with about a fifth of the ballots counted. The winner of the island's first election since last year's defeat of a three-decade insurgency by ethnic Tamil rebels was set to be announced around midday (0630 GMT). Tensions were acute in the capital Colombo, where up to 80 armed soldiers ringed the deluxe hotel where Fonseka was staying with several other opposition leaders. Tuesday's election was the first since Rajapaksa, 64, and Fonseka, 59, engineered the final defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who had been fighting for a Tamil homeland in the island's northeast sin...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 BELLARY: Many workers are feared dead and others injured when a six-storey under-construction building caved in suddenly in Bellary district in India's southern Karnataka state.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE: US troops pulled a man alive from the rubble of a collapsed building in Haiti's destroyed capital on Tuesday, two weeks after a massive earthquake rattled the country. The 35-year-old man, covered in dust and dressed only in underpants, was carried out from the ruins of a building in downtown Port-au-Prince and was driven off for medical treatment. He did not appear to have any serious injuries. The rescue, exactly 14 days after the magnitude-7.0 earthquake killed as many as 200,000 people, came as the US-led relief effort was focused on getting help to hundreds of thousands of survivors left homeless, hungry and injured.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 WASHINGTON: Bob Dylan, the legendary singer-songwriter who's angry lyrics formed a soundtrack for the 1960s protest era, will headline a White House celebration next month of music from the Civil Rights movement. Starring alongside Dylan, 68, will be singers Natalie Cole, Jennifer Hudson, John Legend and Smokey Robinson. Morgan Freeman and Queen Latifah will emcee the evening, which will include readings of famous civil rights speeches. The concert, on Wednesday February 10, to be broadcast a day later on US public television, is the latest in a series of musical evenings hosted by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. Obama, who frequently says he owes his position as America's first black president to the sacrifices of the Civil Rights generation, will make brief remarks at the concert. Previous soirees have focused on Classical music, country music, Latin music and Jazz. It will not be the first time that Dylan, who onc...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 ROME: The city of Rome plans gala Carnival celebrations next month, reviving a tradition last observed in the Italian capital in the eighth century, an organiser said Tuesday. Three dozen events from February 6 to 16 will include fireworks, equestrian shows and a parade featuring floats and "butteri" -- Italy's original cowboys long predating the American version -- on horseback, Fabiana Magri said. The city carried out a test run for a few days last year that attracted 200,000 people, Magri said. This year the event, which will cost one million euros (1.4 million dollars) partly financed by sponsors, will span the same period as the world-famous Carnival in Venice, she said. To dispel any question of rivalry between the two cities, the events will be "twinned", with Venetian artists taking part in Rome festivities and Venice's Fenice opera house to perform the ouverture of Rome's opera season. Rome's Carnival ...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama will take questions from the public via YouTube about his "State of the Union" speech on Wednesday and answer them online next week, the White House said. White House "New Media" director Macon Phillips said in a post on the White House blog that questions can be submitted at /CitizenTube after the 9:00 pm (0200 GMT Thursday) address to Congress begins. "From our live webstream to a free iPhone app, the White House is using technology to make sure the president's State of the Union address reaches as many people as possible," Phillips said. "Now we are excited to announce how President Obama will also be using the Web to offer the public a direct and participatory way to communicate back to him," he said. Phillips said the YouTube questions will be answered by Obama next week "in a special online event, live from the White House." Obama relied heavily on the ...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 BERLIN: Oscar-winning actress Renee Zellweger will join the jury for the 60th Berlin Film Festival next month that will pick the winner of the coveted Golden Bear top prize, organisers said Tuesday. The star of the "Bridget Jones" franchise will sit on a seven-member panel chaired by Academy Award-nominated German director Werner Herzog at the February 11-21 event, the festival said in a statement. Also judging the competition will be Chinese actress Yu Nan, Italian director Francesca Comencini, Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah, German actress Cornelia Froboess and Spanish producer Jose Maria Morales. The jury is to hand out the prizes at a glittering awards ceremony on February 20. Highlights of this year's line-up include fresh releases by Roman Polanski, Martin Scorsese and Michael Winterbottom and the festival opener "Apart Together" (Tuan Yuan) by China's Wang Quan'an. Zellweger, 40, clinched an Academy Award fo...