Even when China's widely-publicised exchange with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in response to the queries over the reports of surging cases of mycoplasma pneumonia and influenza flu triggered the worldwide alert, including in India, China said the spike in respiratory diseases was due to an 'immunity gap'.
Muralitharan is among the three new governors tipped to be appointed by Gotabaya Rajapaksa
President Rajapaksa, through a special gazette last month, appointed the 13-member task force for the establishment of a 'One Country, One Law' concept in Sri Lanka and comprised members from the majority Sinhala and minority Muslim communities.
A change in the name of the Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) magazine 'suggests a refocusing' of the terror group from Afghanistan to Kashmir, a United Nations report has said.
China's Ambassador to Afghanistan Wang Yu and Acting Minister of Refugee Affairs of the Afghan caretaker government Khalil-ur-Rehman Haqqani attended the handover ceremony at the airport.
Indian citizens in Eastern China Region may apply at the Embassy of India, Beijing for availing urgent consular services, the Consulate said in a notice issued on Tuesday.
Afghanistan witnessed a series of terror attacks in the last few weeks as the US aimed to complete the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan by August-end, ending a nearly two-decade of its military presence in the war-ravaged country.
The ATR 72-600 aircraft was accorded water salute as it landed at the Jaffna airport, about 400-km from capital Colombo.
A team of 90 expert divers -- 40 from Thailand and 50 from overseas -- has been working in the cave system. They have been guiding the boys through darkness and submerged passageways towards the mouth of the Tham Luang cave system.
A five-member Indian parliamentary delegation has arrived here in the Sri Lankan capital on a four-day trip to hold bilateral talks. The delegation is scheduled to visit Tamil-dominated Jaffna city, the capital of Sri Lanka's Northern Province, the Indian High Commission in Colombo said on Tuesday.
Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy met Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo and requested him to mobilise other Tamil parties in the northern province besides the dominant Tamil National Alliance to achieve political reconciliation.
The explosions occurred in quick succession at the same site in the northern Baghlan province of Afghanistan, provincial officials said.
Their leaders in the provinces, which have been under the control of Taliban commanders for several months now, speak the language of the bigot. Women are known to have been abducted and enslaved. Several young girls have simply disappeared.
All of the top news of the week gone by, in photos.
The Obama administration has expressed its deep disappointment with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse for relegating the devolution of power in the Tamil majority areas, in the country's northern province, to the back-burner. The international community had urged the Lankan government to put the motion in process after crushing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.
An earlier report had said Baghdadi had been injured in an air strike on a location 65 kilometres west of the Islamic State-held city of Mosul while travelling in a convoy with other senior IS figures.
The US and India are in sync with their foreign policy toward Sri Lanka, particularly over the repatriation of the remaining 40,000 plus internally displaced persons after the government's victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the Tamil-populated northern province, said Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Robert O Blake.
The mission is a battle against time and heavy rainfall prediction for the week, which is likely to flood tunnels once again, making the entire operation difficult to carry out.
For the Lankan army, there are two questions involved -- defeating the LTTE conventionally, and destroying its capability for continuing its struggle for Tamil Eelam through acts of terrorism. The achievement of both these objectives will depend upon a critical weakening of the morale and motivation of the LTTE officers and cadres, leading to increasing desertions and splits in the organisation
He praised former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi for giving more powers to the local self government.
India strongly believes that its economic growth must bring benefits to its neighbours, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today as a stadium in Jaffna renovated by India was jointly inaugurated by him along with Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena.
All of the top news of the week gone by, in photos.
Once Mazar-i-Sharif falls, some isolate pockets of resistance may remain, which the Taliban would tackle through political work or coercion, asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
21 people were hurt when a man with explosives strapped to his body blew himself up outside a mosque in the northern Afghan city of Sheberghan. Dostum, who was inside the mosque at the time, escaped unhurt.
More than 1,800 Thais and foreign tourists are confirmed to have died and the death toll is expected to climb.
Turki Nasser al-Dandani used a hand grenade to kill himself and two other terrorists after police surrounded their safe house in al-Jawf, 900km north of Riyadh.
'Star campaigner' to address election meetings in poll-bound Chhattisgarh, MP, Rajasthan.
Modi said he was glad that his trip "is one to wipe tears from the eyes of those who suffered".
The boys also played footballs with their other teammates and friends on a small makeshift pitch before the press conference.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj arrived in Colombo on Friday on a two-day trip to set the stage for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Sri Lanka next week, the first bilateral visit to the country by an Indian premier in over 25 years.
On June 23, the boys and their 25-year-old coach had entered the Tham Luang network of caves on a team outing. However, they were stranded following a heavy and continuous downpour that flooded the cave.
Voters in Sri Lanka's Tamil majority Northern Province on Saturday began voting in the first local elections in 25 years to elect a council to govern the former war zone, four years after the military defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam after decades of bloody civil war.
Sri Lankan President Mahindra Rajapaksa on Tuesday told the United Nations General Assembly that Colombo is concerned over the growing trend of international interference in the internal affairs of developing countries in the guise of concern for security and human rights.
Sri Lanka's main Tamil party on Sunday secured a landslide win in the historic provincial council polls held after a gap of 25 years in the former Tamil Tigers-ruled northern province, an outcome expected to give limited autonomy to the Tamils after the end of decades of ethnic war.
Modi flew to Jaffna by an Indian Air Force chopper after brief visits to the holy town of Anuradhapura where he offered prayers at the sacred Mahabodhi tree and Talaimannar where he flagged off a train service.
National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon arrived in Colombo on Monday to hold crucial talks on the controversial 13th amendment on devolution of power in the Tamil-dominated northern province and a trilateral maritime security treaty with Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
The rescued boys have been taken to a hospital by ambulances for medical treatment.
The boys, aged between 11 and 16, went missing with the 25-year-old after soccer practice on June 23 after they set out to explore the Tham Luang cave complex in a forest park near by the border with Myanmar.
In a Sri Lankan House of 225 members, the cut-off figure comes to 113. With Wickremesinghe side touching 102 and Rajapaksa's team at 101, the three-party Tamil National Alliance with 16 members and the left-leaning Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna with 6 members hold the key. But with the latter declaring that they will not support either formation in a vote count,that leaves the TNA as the deciding factor, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
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