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The CID, three months ago, filed charges against Justice Abrew at the Mount Lavinia Magistrate's Court for sexually harassing his domestic aide.
He was later released by the Mount Lavinia Magistrate on personal bail of Rs. 500,000. Subsequent to the case, the Sri Lanka Bar Association requested the Chief Justice to prevent Abrew from sitting and carrying out functions as a Supreme Court judge.
By Jessie Veeder on Apr 14, 2019 at 7:00 a.m.
As a writer who documents my life weekly, the gift I get in exchange for the deadlines is a chance to look back on previous versions of myself.
Because sometimes I feel compelled to look back, like I did last night as I tried to quiet the worries that come with full-blown adulthood — a worry much different from the ones I used to possess.
In a few weeks, my little sister will be moving her family to the ranch. They’ll build a house right down the road from us. When they’re all bigger, our girls will be able to meet on their bikes to play. In fact, if the wind is right and they find a hill, they could stand outside and yell to make plans.
Time will tell if they ever figure that one out — the same way time has shown us.
Seven years ago, I sat with my little sister on the love seat in the back room of my parent’s house while she was home deciding the next step to take after college, deciding whether or not to move back. And we were a bit younger then, but the same amount of uncertain about how it might all turn out.
The love seat was small and so my sister and I were shoulder to shoulder, and my other shoulder was smashed up against my husband’s leg as he leaned back, sprawled out on the arm of the overstuffed piece of furniture. The three of us, we were a sandwich, and I was the lettuce, the cheese, the pickle, mayo and turkey. T...
We closed our eyes and listened to dad blow the air from his lungs through the harmonica he wore around his neck. We heard a lonesome sound, one that’s familiar and haunting.
We leaned in closer, not knowing then what those words might mean after more years passed, his hair more silver than it was yesterday, his fingers callused, his voice ringing with those pieces of gravel that dug their way in from years of playing songs like this in bar rooms.
We didn’t know then. We just knew it was quiet that night. The dogs were asleep and the trucks were taking a different route. We knew the stars were out.
In the kitchen, the warm scent of brownies my mom was frosting fresh from the oven drifted back to us smooshed together, the sandwich, on the love seat. I couldn’t see her from my position as the lettuce, cheese, pickle, mayo and turkey, but I knew my mother was sipping wine and running her long fingers along the pages...
Everything I ever knew for certain then was filling my lungs and my ears, touching my shoulders and swaying along to all of the things I was on the inside. What I didn’t know didn’t matter then.
I was his lungs and heart and pieces of his gravelly voice.
I was her fingers and worries and holidays.
I was his good-nights, his battles and his wishes.
I was her blood, her memories… her shoulder.
And I remember thinking that if I were not those things, I might not exist at all.
But we are much more now, that sandwich, busy now becoming pieces of the new little hearts we’ve created. And time will reveal to us the rest, but it isn’t good at helping us remember, so I write it down.
When a mushroom foraging excursion was offered by the Napa Truffle Festival, I quickly booked a spot for a memorable hunting excursion. Besides, mushroom hunting is the one type of hunting that is on my bucket list.
Much like an underground rave, the location was not disclosed until the day before the hunt. On the down low.
We woke in the wee hours of the morning and drove to the town of Angwin, a few miles East of St. Helena. The instructions said to meet at the discreet “dirt parking lot where the road doglegs sharply to the right”. This mushroom foraging site must be on the deep down low.
Three mycologists, fungi gurus, would be leading the wild mushroom hunt.
They started with brief introductions to what fungus may be awaiting in the woods, some edible, some poisonous, some neither.
With the Wild Mushroom Hunting lesson complete, the guides let us on the loose to forage.
And, at first, we found nothing. Even Rico, the truffle dog, was coming up empty.
But then, deep in the pines, things started to turn around. This is where I spotted my very first mushroom, a Lactarius Xanthogalactus. Huh? In layman’s terms, a really cute brown mushroom.
There may have been a girlish shrill come from my mouth at my fungus find.
Then, it was a mushroom hunting frenzy as we scoured the forest hillsides for the next two hours.
…Peter hit the mushroom hunting jackpot with this granddaddy, one that even the experts couldn’t identify.
A two foot shroom trumps my dozen one inchers. Size matters.
We walked away from the mushroom adventure with a basketful of bounty.
Even though some of the shrooms could be used to create a delicious meal, I opted to put them on the counter where they could be viewed for the next few days, reminding me of the experience.
Have you ever been wild mushroom hunting?
"Who uses a 0.X version of a filesystem in production?"
ZFS as a filesystem has been out of beta for years already. And I say this because I've been working with ZFS on FreeBSD for at least 5 years now and before that have been using it on Solaris 10/x86 for another 4 to 5 years. And no data loss because of filesystem hiccups I might add. Heck, on FreeBSD I can even put my ...
Now, I'm well aware that you probably meant to address the project and not so much the filesystem, but even so I think this could easily be a reason why some people may be tempted to use this. ZFS has been available and extremely stable for several years and better yet: it's been an open source project as well.
So I don't think it's that crazy that people expect at least some stability, especially considering the age of the filesystem itself.
On December 12, 2000, a controversial decision by the Supreme Court of the United States effectively ended the disputed presidential contest between George W. Bush and Albert Gore Jr. with a 5-4 ruling that revealed the court to be as bitterly divided as the electorate. Four days earlier, the Florida Supreme Court had ...
Brookings Senior Fellow and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne researches and writes on a range of issues that include elections; polling; the role of media in politics; and the role of religion in public life. His most recent book is One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperat...
William Kristol is the editor of The Weekly Standard, is a regular on ABC’s This Week and on ABC’s special events and election coverage, and appears frequently on other leading political commentary shows.
DocuSign, best known for its digital signature business, is releasing new tools that focus on the entire process of drawing up and completing agreements.
It’s part of a broader effort by the company to expand beyond its core offering of e-signatures, in the face of growing competition in that space from Adobe and other rivals. Going forward, DocuSign wants to convince customers it is more than just an e-signature company, a move that opens up new fronts of competition a...
The three new tools are part of an ongoing evolution to owning what the company calls the “agreement cloud.” By providing tools to not only sign documents but create and manage them, DocuSign believes it will double its market opportunity, CEO Dan Springer said in an interview with GeekWire.
DocuSign originally started in Seattle and later relocated its headquarters to the San Francisco Bay Area, though more than a third of the company’s 3,100 employees remain in its original hometown. With 1,074 employees and contractors, the Seattle office is DocuSign’s largest, followed by San Francisco with 816 people.
DocuSign Gen for Salesforce, available on Salesforce AppExchange, lets sales reps and other users automatically generate signature-ready contracts within Salesforce with a few clicks.
DocuSign ID Verification digitizes and automates verifying government identification in sensitive transactions, like opening a bank account, which would normally require someone to present a physical ID.
In addition to these new tools, DocuSign continues to invest in document creation and storage through the integration of SpringCM, the Chicago-based company that DocuSign acquired for $220 million last year.
Springer compared DocuSign’s evolution to when Salesforce branched out beyond sales to focus on broader services approximately a decade ago. He downplayed competition in the company’s new realm, arguing that no one else is providing services to shake up the entire agreement process, and instead said the biggest challen...
DocuSign pegged the value of its original market of e-signatures at roughly $25 billion. But the market opportunity in the full system of agreement is twice as large, at $50 billion, the company says.
DocuSign, which was the long-time leader on the GeekWire 200 list of the top Pacific Northwest startups, went public last April. Its stock shot up 30 percent out of the gate, with investors showing serious appetite for the enterprise software company. The stock has since climbed 43 percent, rising faster than the Nasda...
DocuSign’s surge on the public markets is part of an interesting trend of unprofitable growth companies faring much better among investors than companies that focus more on profits. DocuSign did eek out a small non-GAAP profit for the first time last year, though it has traditionally prioritized growth over profit.
Springer expects DocuSign to post operating profits of about 20 to 25 percent in three to five years, up from the 5 percent profits projected for this year. Springer thinks the company’s focus on growth and scale will ramp up profits in the coming years.
DocuSign capped its first year as a public company by besting analyst expectations for revenue and profits in the fourth quarter. For the full year, DocuSign posted $701 million in revenue, up 35 percent over year-over-year. This year, the company expects revenue of $910 million to $915 million, which would represent 2...
Infrastructure remains one of DocuSign’s largest costs as it delves further into the “agreement cloud.” Rather than working with a public cloud provider like Amazon or Microsoft, DocuSign has its own “rings” of data centers, with three a piece in the U.S. and Europe.
Springer says DocuSign has very high standards for redundancy and making sure its systems are always running smoothly. He gave an example of a customer using its e-signature services, T-Mobile, to show the importance of reliability and why it runs its own data centers.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on September 03, 2018, on page 2.
On Aug. 31, the United States announced that it would provide no additional funding to UNRWA.
At the outset, I wish to convey – with confidence and steadfast determination – to Palestine refugees in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, that our operations will continue and our agency prevail. At the heart of our mission lie the dignity and rights of a very anguished and p...
No matter how often attempts are made to minimize or delegitimize the individual and collective experiences of Palestine refugees, the undeniable fact remains that they have rights under international law and represent a community of 5.4 million men, women and children who cannot simply be wished away.
The responsibility for the protracted nature of the Palestine refugee-hood, the growing number of refugees and the growth in needs, lies squarely with the parties and in the international community's lack of will or utter inability to bring about a negotiated and peaceful resolution of the conflict between Israel and P...
There is sadly nothing unique in the protracted nature of the Palestine refugee crisis.
In January 2018, the U.S. announced that its annual contribution to UNRWA would be $60 million.
Caught a good show by Alan Jackson and Lee Ann Womack last night as HP Pavilion, in front of a sparse crowd reported to be 5,100. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the place so empty. Anyway, I’d never seen Jackson before, and I had a “Good Time,” as the song says. I’ll have a full review up at mercurynews.com momentarily (...
LE BOURGET, France – While it didn't steal the show in Paris this week, a ho-hum Airbus A320 that never went faster than an easy jog could subtly change the airline industry.
The airplane was equipped with a new electric taxiing system, a joint venture from U.S.-based Honeywell and French firm Safran, making a super-efficient commute from the terminal to the runway and back.
The airplane performed quietly and slowly each day, taxiing by the crowd with its engines covered to prove that it wasn't using any thrust to crawl along. The companies say the first benefit is dramatically cutting fuel use while taxiing and waiting for take off. And by using the electric motors on each of the main gea...
Another potential benefit is time savings, according to Safran's Olivier Savin. EGTS gives pilots some autonomy as they don't have to wait for a tug to push or pull them from the gate, an issue that often leads to delays for passengers.
"It's a big improvement of agility and maneuverability at the gate," Savin points out. "It's a reduction of time because you make the reverse by yourself, you make the tight turn and you move on. You reduce by half the minutes needed to taxi."
The EGTS uses a pair of 50 kVA (~67 hp) motors mounted in-between the two wheels on the main landing gear under the wings, but only the outside wheel is turned by the motors. Power is supplied by the auxiliary power unit which is running on existing airliners to provide electricity while the airplane is at the gate. Th...
Honeywell and Safran say they are in talks with the airplane makers as well as the airlines about the EGTS.
"Our priority one is to work with the OEMs," says Honeywell Aerospace CEO Tim Mahoney.
The joint venture hopes to make the EGTS an option for airlines when they order a new airplane, but Mahoney says installing it on existing airplanes is also possible. "It's been architected such that there would be very few and minor changes to the aircraft on a retrofit basis. That's been one of the key design paramet...
There are a few other concepts that are trying to address the same issue of avoiding using the massive jet engines to taxi around the airport.
Taxibot is essentially a modified tug that is maneuvered under the main nose gear of an airplane by an on-board driver, but once the nose wheels are being carried, the vehicle is controlled by the pilot who can steer and brake from the cockpit. The Israeli company behind Taxibot points to the significant fuel savings o...
Taxibot may end up being more competitive for larger, long-haul aircraft where the installation of a system like the EGTS might not be justified because the fuel savings represent a much smaller fraction of the overall fuel use.
Honeywell's Tim Mahoney says the greatest benefit for the EGTS system is on flights where the airplane is taxiing multiple times per day, rather than just once at each end of a long, ocean crossing flight.
Since the EGTS was first used to move the airplane in April, the team has driven the A320 around 100 miles in testing. They've also put it through different maneuvers, including 360-degree turns pivoting on one set of wheels, and under different runway conditions. After the show the next series of tests will include ma...
On the one hand, some aches and pains feel like trophies after a particularly grueling workout. But let's not forget that sore muscles hurt. A lot. Being too sore to do something as mundane as walk up a flight of stairs or sit in a chair is annoying.
It's no secret that a good 'ol massage is a great way to treat sore muscles. Massages are known to reduce pain, help muscles recover, increase blood flow, ease inflammation — need we go on? But adding a massage into your already busy schedule is both time-consuming and costly.
That's where's Lumina's Hammer NRG Deep Tissue Body Massager comes in. This gadget makes it possible to get a satisfactory massage anytime, anywhere. Small but mighty, this tool lets you pinpoint and treat particular muscles. With several speeds, settings, and attachment heads, this funky gadget lets you customize a ma...
We know what you're thinking: "I have to massage myself? That certainly doesn't sound relaxing." The good news is this massager is lightweight, cordless, and has an ergonomic handle. So while your post-workout massage won't be as relaxing as, say, a spa day, this gadget is designed with comfort and usability in mind.
Normally the Hamer NRG Deep Tissue Body Massager is valued at $599, but it's currently on sale for $99. That's significantly cheaper than scheduling a weekly massage.
Defenseman Brent Burns signed an eight-year contract with the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday.
Financial terms were not released, but the contract is worth $64 million, an average annual value of $8 million, according to ESPN.com. Burns, 31, would have become an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season.
"This is a great group and we had a special year [in 2015-16] and it's exciting to build on that," Burns told the Sharks website. "This is a great place to come and play, and when you're having fun it's easier to work. I don't even think of it as coming to work; the people here are great and they love their Sharks. We ...
Burns was a finalist for the Norris Trophy as the League's best defenseman last season, when he had 75 points (27 goals, 48 assists), all NHL career highs.
The Sharks lost a six-game series to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Stanley Cup Final. Burns has 36 points (12 goals, 24 assists) in 58 playoff games.
"Brent is one the most dynamic players in the National Hockey League and we're very excited to get this deal done," Sharks general manager Doug Wilson said. "He has worked extremely hard to be an elite defenseman and at 6-foot-5, 230 pounds, his abilities on this ice are unique and rare. I also want to thank Hasso Plat...
Burns, who won the World Cup of Hockey 2016 and IIHF 2016 World Championship playing for Canada, has 16 points (seven goals, nine assists) in 19 games with the Sharks this season. He has 439 points (148 goals, 291 assists) in 816 games in 12-plus seasons with the Minnesota Wild and Sharks.
"This is a hard league, and every night it's tough and there are great teams," Burns said. "When you put yourself in the special group to fight for a chance, that's what it's about. We're trying to get back [to the Stanley Cup Final] and get over that next hurdle."
There are a plethora of benefits that the government has made available for senior citizens so that they can enjoy a peaceful and hassle-free retirement.
In India, a person above the age of 60 is classified as a Senior Citizen, but you become a Super Senior Citizen when you cross 80. With a view to making life simpler for senior citizens, the government has given them a variety of tax benefits.
Here are the key benefits for senior citizens that you must be aware of.
When it comes to payment of income tax, the government has defined special concessions for people above the age of 60 to reduce their tax burden.
This benefit has been extended to senior citizens in two ways: one is financial and the other is procedural. Let us look at both the benefits for senior citizens. Effective the Union Budget of 2018-19, the interest exemption limit on deposits has been increased from Rs10,000 to Rs50,000 per annum.
This is a great relief for senior citizens who depend on interest income for their post retirement expenses. The second benefit is more procedural but important nevertheless. Prior to Union Budget 2018-19, senior citizens were liable for deduction of TDS on interest income. TDS could be avoided by submitting Form 15-H ...
Premiums paid on recognized health insurance policies for self, family, and parents are eligible for deduction under Section 80D. This deduction was Rs25,000 for regular taxpayers and Rs30,000 for senior citizens till Budget 2018. In the last latest Budget, however, the government has increased the limit for senior cit...
There is one more benefit pertaining to treatment of specific diseases under Section 80DDB. Till Union Budget 2018, an exemption of Rs60,000 for senior citizens (above 60 years) and Rs80,000 for super senior citizens (above 80 years) was available for medical treatment expenses for specified diseases. The revised limit...

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