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Admit that North Korea is a nuclear power now. Its audacity is now more obvious. It sent a message on Monday that it should be taken seriously by the big powers. The message came in the form of a nuclear test and a series of short-and-medium-range missile launches. This time around the West and North Korea’s neighbours — both hostile …

  Date Topic Venue   Time Audience Sunday 31st May ‘The role of the Masjid in Islam’ Wellawatte Jummah Masjid 8 pm   Gents Only Monday 1st June ‘The role of women in a modern society’ Madrasa Ayn, Elibank Road, Colombo 5 9 am Ladies Only Monday 1st June ‘Marriage and Family Life’ Miami Reception Hall Wellawatte 8 pm Ladies …

In this Nov.. 18, 2008 file image reviewed by the U.S. Military, guards escort a Guantanamo detainee carrying a book at the Camp 4 detention facility at the U.S. Naval open air common area at the U.S. Military Base, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (AP) Can one visualize a greater violation of International Law, International Humanitarian Law and the most basic …

 (IPS) – Last month in Prague, President Barack Obama vowed that he would seek a world without nuclear weapons. On Tuesday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller spelled out that this policy would apply to Israel, as well. Speaking at a conference on the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Gottemoeller said that “Universal adherence to the NPT itself, including …

Over the past 60 years, victims worldwide have endured the CIA’s “torture paradigm,” developed at a cost that reached $1 billion annually, according to historian Alfred McCoy in his book A Question of Torture. He shows how torture methods the CIA developed from the 1950s surfaced with little change in the infamous photos at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. There is …

“The Independent” — Of course there will be an inquiry. And in the meantime, we shall be told that all the dead Afghan civilians were being used as “human shields” by the Taliban and we shall say that we “deeply regret” innocent lives that were lost. But we shall say that it’s all the fault of the terrorists, not our …