Sri Lankan Boatpeople rescued after a week adrift

RESCURED BOAT PEOPLE-- The dailt telegraph Pic courtesy of The Daily Telegraph

Joe Kelly, in The Australian, 4 January 2012

A GROUP of 46 Sri Lankan asylum-seekers has been rescued after spending Christmas and the new year drifting about 330 nautical miles off Sumatra in a failed bid to enter Australia. Indonesian search and rescue agency Basarnas was first alerted to the disabled vessel on December 23 by Australian authorities after a tip-off from a recently arrived asylum-seeker. But the stranded boatpeople were not picked up until Tuesday by a nearby merchant ship and were transferred to an Indonesian search and rescue vessel before being taken to the Indonesian port of Teluk Bayur in Padang yesterday. Continue reading

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The SDF for Jaffna: Female Empowerment and Bolstering Smallholders via Micro-Finance

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Michael Roberts
The SDF should not be confused with the STF (Special Task Force). However, the Social Development Foundation does serve as an innovative pathfinder and remover of obstacles in the manner of special combat forces. They have been empowering smallholders and poor rural folk in the District of Jaffna through enterprising savings and microfinance activities for over a decade now. They have sponsored fifty savings clubs in recent times and have 4634 members, with an overwhelming majority (4103) being women. Continue reading

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Ian Vanden Driesen: Exemplary Teacher, Colleague, Friend

IAN VanIan was one of my teachers in the late 1950s at Uni Peradeniya, a place close to both our hearts — a place where he won Cynthia de Soyza’s heart (easily nipping other hopefuls). They left for Nigeria but were never lost to Sri Lanka. In Australia landed they remained bound to their land of birth and Kandy/Peradeniya in particular. And bound too to pals from back there. I count myself lucky to be one.I cry for IAN, a man to have on one’s side in conditions fair or foul.

Michael Roberts ** Continue reading

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CMJ: Another rounded cricket personality departs for the lands above

Michael Roberts

CMJ at LAUSRTEAUSI have never met Christopher Martin-Jenkins in person but count him as a friend and a man of wide breadth whose early death from cancer is a loss to mankind as well as the cricket world. This intervention may seem surprising but cricket in Sri Lanka produces many surprises. One such emerged from a media event sponsored by the Laureus Foundation to advertise their efforts in sponsoring cricket and sport in the northern reaches of Sri Lanka through the avenues being forged by Kushil Gunasekara and his Foundation of Goodness. This event at the Taj Samudra Hotel one Sunday during the World Cup featured a Laureus representative, Ian Botham, Michael Vaughan, Muttiah Muralitharan, Kumar Sangakkara and Martin-Jenkins. CMJ was there in his capacity as the President of MCC. The MCC, I stress, had already invested heavily in sponsoring FOG’s good works in the Seenigama locality in southwest Lanka.

CMJI attended the function as an observer, but never got to speak to CMJ. However, I highlighted the FOG work on my web sites (and have loads more photographs than those displayed because I have always maintained close touch with Anura, Fazana, Kushil and company). However, it was Botham’s emphasis on the “devastation” he had a observed during a helicopter ride to Mankulam in the north that grabbed newspaper headlines. Continue reading

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Degrees from the home computer? Death knell for universities?

Nathan Harden, in http://the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1352 where the title is “The End of the University as We Know It”

END OF THE UNI-HARDENIn fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology driving this change is already at work, and nothing can stop it. The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for everyone; the residential college campus will become largely obsolete; tens of thousands of professors will lose their jobs; the bachelor’s degree will become increasingly irrelevant; and ten years from now Harvard will enroll ten million students. Continue reading

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Tony Greig speaks from the Land Beyond

“You’ve no idea what it means to me to have received the support that I have from so many Sri Lankans in so many different ways. It’s a very special feeling in the heart of someone that there is a nation of cricket-lovers like the Sri Lankans, who care about an individual like myself.” ….

courtesy of mcsdl in ESPNcricinfo at

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/current/story/599038.html

383175-tony-greig     ALSO SEE http://cricketique.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/tony-greigs-cowdrey-lecture/920014-tony-greig

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Thoughts on Christmas Day and Its Significance from a Scholar Bhikkhu and a Burgher Migrant

I: from Bellanwila Wimalaratana Thera*

XMAS TREEChristmas Day is the holiest day for all Christians, and Christians all over the world celebrate this Holy Day in pious solemnity and religious grandeur. The significance of Christmas is such that it is now generally considered a time that induces and encourages all to rise above petty divisions and bonds, for people to live in harmony and peace. But none of these features really highlights the true significance of Christmas. We have to give thought to find out what really is the true significance of Christmas. As a Buddhist I see Christmas Day as the day on which we have to ponder what exactly is humaneness. Continue reading

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Cricket as Teacher: Meeting Crushing Defeat Foursquare Honest

Michael Roberts

Cricket is many things. Above all, it is a great teacher. It replicates the experiences of life, with joy and suffering in good mix though not always in equal mix. In this teaching school the most profound experiences arise in moments of ignominious defeat. One such moment eventuated over three days at the famous MCG during the equally renowned Boxing Day Test Match when Australia rolled over the Sri Lankan XI by an innings and 201 runs. Mustering only 156 and 102 runs in each innings Sri Lanka was simply crushed.

SL ckt at MCg-islandThe toll of injuries which reduced the Sri Lankan XI to eight batsmen in the second innings was only one factor in the eventual outcome. The process began when the leading batsmen batted in needless and careless fashion in the first innings after winning the toss. It was compounded by a series of missed catches – mostly difficult ones to be sure, but nevertheless adding up to sway the outcome decisively in Australia’s favour despite some sharp catches by Mahela and Rangana during the Aussie innings. Continue reading

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Galle serves as hub in fight against Somali pirates

partial overview of Fort+ harbour shoreSri Lanka’s southern port of Galle has become a hub in the fight against Somali pirates who threaten international merchant shipping, a report in a new magazine said. An increasing number of vessels are embarking and disembarking armed guards used for on board protection as they sail past Galle, located close to the main East-West shipping route somali_pirates_in_ship.5530053_stdacross the Indian Ocean, Samuditha, a new magazine for entrepreneurs, reported. This opened up opportunities for companies providing supplies and services to shipping as well as ex-servicemen who make use of their combat experience to work as private security guards on merchant ships, it said. Continue reading

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Rapprochement in South Africa: One pictorial illustration of a welcome process

CRICKET-RSA-NZL Phangsio and Du Plessis celebrate the fall of a Kiwi wicket for South Africa —Pic courtesy of ESPNcricinfo

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