Word: april
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...main issue is access. Since the Sri Lankan Army announced on April 20 the "imminent defeat" of the LTTE, both local and international media organizations have been clamoring to get into the combat zone and witness the end of one of the world's longest running conflicts. They have all been denied. The Defense Ministry set up the Media Center for National Security in 2006 specifically to monitor and control coverage of the war, and it has refused to allow journalists into the war zone in northern Sri Lanka since early 2008. That policy has not changed even with...
...help. The enemy is all but invisible, reinforcing the Sri Lankan government's position that its conflict with the LTTE isn't a conventional war at all, but what Colombo calls a "war on terror." British foreign secretary David Miliband, in a speech to the house of commons on April 30, called it "a war without witness...
...government to halt the fighting until the 50,000 or so remaining civilians can leave. The LTTE are believed to be using them as human shields, but Rajapaksa has been unmoved by entreaties from Western countries to allow aid agencies to enter the war zone to help them. On April 28, the government denied a visa to a Swedish diplomat who was supposed to be part of a European mission to Sri Lanka. On April 29, Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the President's brother, met with the British and French foreign secretaries and upbraided them for being "duped...
...Lankan government has been more welcoming of delegations from sympathetic countries, such as India, South Asia's regional superpower, and Japan, Sri Lanka's largest donor country. Neither has tried to exert similar public pressure. The Indian foreign secretary, Shivshankar Menon, met with Rajapaksa on April 24; three days later the Army announced that "combat operations have reached their conclusion," a declaration that was quickly clarified - it meant the Army would cease only heavy bombardment. On April 30, the Times of London reported that the U.S. and Britain were trying to use Sri Lanka's application for a $1.9 billion...
...weeks after the $2,000 Nano formally debuted in Mumbai, Tata Motors announced this week that it had taken pre-paid orders for 203,000 vehicles during a special 16-day booking period that ended April 25. Dilip Chenoy, director general of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), says the Nano is the first car in India to log more than 200,000 orders at launch. In comparison, the tiny Suzuki Alto, one of the Japanese carmaker's best-selling Indian offerings, has sold 913,000 units in the domestic market since 2000. (See the 10 things you should...