Two weeks earlier, he had been declared successor to the late Velupillai Prabhakaran as leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The man with many names, different faces at different times held several passports. Law enforcement agencies of a number of countries hunted for him but he eluded them. For years, he headed the LTTE's weapons procurement operations, named after his initials as KP wing.

The mobile phone related suicide of 14 year old... student of Museaus College, Colombo became an internationally reported event following the response by the Ministry of Education, instantly introducing legislation banning the use of mobile phones in public and private schools.

....

In Colombo, the prohibition of mobile phones in schools has given rise to a spectrum of reactions from parents, students and teachers. However, the heated debates that have ensued bear little relevance to the fateful incident of July 22, in which three schoolgirls attempted suicide.

"As NASA's first exoplanets mission, Kepler has made a dramatic entrance on the planet-hunting scene," said Jon Morse, director of the Science Mission Directorate's Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Detecting this planet's atmosphere in just the first 10 days of data is only a taste of things to come. The planet hunt is on!"

BANGKOK, Aug 7 (TNA) - Thailand's Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said on Friday that he has ordered the country’s security agencies to provide details following a news report that the head of Sri Lanka's recently defeated Tamil Tiger separatists was captured in Thailand.

The French news agency Agence-France-Presse (AFP) earlier reported that Selvarasa Pathmanathan, a foreign-based leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was returned to Sri Lanka on Thursday for questioning after being arrested in Thailand.

Kumaran Pathmanathan also known as KP is now being questioned in Colombo. The Hindustan Times today quotes MP Basil Rajapaksa as saying KP was flown down to Colombo following his arrest although details of how arrest was conducted was not revealed.

LTTE’s self appointed leader after the annihilation of its top leadership and the organization’s long term international arms procurer Kumaran Pathmanathan alias KP had been arrested in an East Asian country following a joint intelligence and military operation by a Sri Lankan team, defence sources confirmed last night.

Government Defence Spokesman and Minister Keheliya Rambukwella speaking to Rupavahini last night confirmed the arrest of KP and said it was a big blow to the remaining foreign network of the LTTE.

"We just don't know," says Yeomans. "No one saw the object prior to impact."

Indeed, there was no warning. The object emerged from darkness, unknown and uncatalogued, and—wham!—before anyone could photograph the body intact, it had become a cloud of debris.

The cloud's chemical composition holds clues to the nature of the impactor. Orton says ground-based observers are now analyzing light reflected from the cloud to figure out what it is made of. "If the spectra contain signs of water, that would suggest an icy comet. Otherwise, it's probably a rocky or metallic asteroid."

An annual awards ceremony celebrating and making fun of the achievements and failures of security researchers and the wider security community.

The winners of the Pwnie Awards were announced on July 29, 2009 at a ceremony at the BlackHat USA conference in Las Vegas.

An intense bright spot has appeared in the clouds of Venus. Could it be associated with volcanic activity on the surface?

The Solar System is breaking out in spots. First Jupiter took a smack from a passing asteroid or comet, manifesting as a dark scar in the Jovian atmosphere, and now Venus is sporting a brilliant white spot in its southern polar region.

At any given spot along its path, the Aug. 11, 1999, total eclipse offered up to 2-1/2 spectacular minutes of total lunar coverage of the sun. But for two NASA researchers, the show's not over. They're just getting started probing a 50-year-old mystery.