Mass grave with skeletal remains of over 150 people found in Lanka
Colombo: A mass grave with skeletal remains of around 151 people have been found in Sri Lanka’s former war zone where the government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels were engaged in a 30-year civil war, officials said on Wednesday. At least 14 of the skeletal remains found in the northeastern district of Mannar were of children. The digging work at the old cooperative store site in Mannar was conducted for the 79th day Tuesday to establish if it was a mass burial site. In March, the construction workers had found remains when the ground was dug to build a new construction. The remains have been kept in a special room of the Mannar magistrate court and will be sent for carbon testing. Amidst international complaints of large numbers of missing in Sri Lanka’s conflicts since the 1980, the office of missing persons was set up this year. Mannar was occupied by the LTTE during Sri Lanka’s civil war between 1983 and 2009. (PTI)
New York fixes typo in bridge’s name after 50 years
NEW YORK: A bridge in New York Citywill have its name correctly spelt for the first time in 50 years. The Verrazzano-Narrows bridge was named after Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European explorer to sail into New York Harbor in 1524. The bridge, which connects Brooklyn with Staten Island, was opened in the 1960s. It is unclear how the error originally came about, but it is thought a typo in an original construction contract spelled the bridge’s name with one Z and left the bridge stuck with the spelling for decades. On Monday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that would fix the error in a number of state statutes. Cuomo said: “The Verrazzano Bridge is a vital transportation artery for millions of Staten Island and Brooklyn residents. “We are correcting this decades-old misspelling out of respect to the legacy of the explorer and to New York’s heritage.” The correction will mean replacing 96 incorrect signs, but politicians say there will be no extra cost to taxpayers. (Agencies)