American actor David Carradine has been found dead, hanging by a nylon rope in a hotel room closet in Bangkok, Thailand, according to a Thai police official.

David Carradine became famous in the 1970s after starring in the television series “Kung Fu.

Carradine became famous in the 1970s when he starred in the television series “Kung Fu.”

The rope was believed taken from the hotel room curtains, Bangkok Police Lt. Colonel Pirom Chanpirom said.

Investigators found no sign of a forced entry into Carradine’s room, Chanpirom said.

An autopsy was being conducted at a Bangkok hospital, but no results will be available for another day, he said.

A Carradine family spokeswoman issued a short statement saying the family “is devastated by the news of David’s passing.”

“Circumstances surrounding his death are still unknown, and there will be no further comment until more information can be confirmed,” the statement said.

“The family appreciates the many expressions of condolence, and asks for privacy at this time.”

Carradine’s personal co-manager, Tiffany Smith, said police provided the family with information about their investigation.

Carradine’s friends and personal managers said they were in “complete shock” and brushed aside suggestions that Carradine might have taken his own life.

Actor Michael Madsen told CNN’s Larry King that the one thing Carradine’s wife, Annie Bierman, wanted everyone to know is “David was not suicidal.”

Chuck Binder, Carradine’s manager for the last six years, said he spoke with a producer in Thailand who thought there was foul play.

“I don’t know if I’d call it accidental,” Binder said, adding that Carradine’s career was on a roll and his life was on an upswing.

Carradine was in Bangkok for filming of the movie “Stretch,” being produced by a United Kingdom-based company, Smith said.

“He was the only American cast member,” she said.

Carradine, who portrayed the traveling Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine in the television series “Kung Fu,” was 72. 

Modern audiences may best know him as “Bill” in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” films. He earned a 2005 Golden Globe nomination for his role in the second movie in the two-part saga.

Tarantino, also appearing on “Larry King Live,” called Carradine one of “Hollywood’s great mad geniuses.”

“He was a rock star at the time ‘Kung Fu’ came out,” Tarantino said, holding up a vintage metal lunch box with an image from the popular show.

“I’m in shock,” he said.

Caradine’s career included more than 100 feature films, two dozen television movies and theater work, according to the Internet Movie Database.

“He was clearly an actor who followed his own path,” said Leah Rozen, movie critic for People magazine.

“He was never a guy who talked a whole lot. You knew as an actor, the characters he played, you knew they had a past, you knew there was probably some unhappiness there, but he wasn’t going to talk about it.”

Carradine was nominated for a Golden Globe for his role as folk music legend Woody Guthrie in the 1976 movie “Bound For Glory,” according to a biography on his official Web site.

He also made appearances in television series such as “Gunsmoke” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” His first starring role in a series was as the title character in “Shane” in 1966.

Carradine was married five times and divorced four, according to People magazine.

He was the son of actor John Carradine, a character actor who appeared in hundreds of films, plays and television episodes.

“David’s career as an artist did not begin on the stage, though some of his early career was on and off Broadway. His earliest work was as a sculptor and painter,” Carradine’s official Web site says.

The site also includes an “Art Bio” in which the actor opens up about his life.

“I’ve always had an especially hard time with everything I’ve tried to do,” Carradine wrote.

“I’ve made it pretty big as an actor in spite of being terminally shy. … Invariably, I had huge obstacles to overcome in anything I tried. Had to work against my genes to achieve my dreams.”

The Brazilian air force said Thursday night that debris picked up near where officials believe Air France Flight 447 crashed Monday into the Atlantic Ocean was not from the plane.

Image released by the Brazilian Air Force shows oil slicks in the water near a debris site.

The news came after the Brazilian navy began retrieving debris Thursday that it believed was wreckage from the flight, which disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean.

On Wednesday, searchers recovered two debris fields and had identified the wreckage, including an airplane seat and an orange float as coming from Flight 447. Officials now say that none of the debris recovered is from the missing plane.

Helicopters had been lifting pieces from the water and dropping them on three naval vessels.

Brazilian Air Force planes spotted an oil slick and four debris fields Wednesday but rain and rough seas had kept searchers from plucking any of the debris from the water.

Officials said searchers had found objects in a circular 5-kilometer (3-mile) area, including one object with a diameter of 7 meters (23 feet) and 10 other objects, some of which were metallic, Brazilian Air Force spokesman Jorge Amaral said.

The debris was found about 650 kilometers (400 miles) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha Islands, an archipelago 355 kilometers off the northeast coast of Brazil.

Eleven aircraft and five ships are engaged in the search, including airplanes from France and the United States.

Earlier Thursday, a public interfaith service was held for the 228 victims at a 200-year-old Catholic Church in downtown Rio. Joining family members were members of the Brazilian armed forces, who are leading the recovery effort.

“Whoever has faith, whoever believes in God, believes in the eternity of the soul,” said Mauro Chavez, whose friend lost a daughter on the flight. “This means everything.”

Investigators have not yet determined what caused the plane to crash. The flight data recorders have not been recovered, and the plane’s crew did not send any messages indicating problems before the plane disappeared.

A Spanish pilot said he saw an “intense flash” in the area where Flight 447 came down off the coast of Brazil, while a Brazilian minister appeared to rule out a midair explosion.

Meanwhile, a report in France suggested the pilots were perhaps flying at the “wrong speed” for the violent thunderstorm they flew into early on Monday before the Airbus A330’s systems failed.

Le Monde newspaper reported that Airbus was sending a warning to operators of A330 jets with new advice on flying in storms.

As several ships trawled the debris site in the Atlantic, Brazil’s defense minister said a 20-kilometer (12-mile) oil slick near where the plane, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, went down indicated it probably did not break up until it hit the water.

If true, that would rule out an in-flight explosion as the cause of the crash of Air France Flight 447, Defense Minister Nelson Jobim told reporters.

However, both pilots of an Air Comet flight from Lima, Peru, to Lisbon, Portugal, sent a written report on the bright flash they said they saw to Air France, Airbus and the Spanish civil aviation authority, the airline told CNN.

“Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds,” the captain wrote.

Air Comet declined to identify the pilot’s name, but said he waited until landing to inform Air Comet management about what he saw. Air Comet then informed Spanish civil aviation authorities. The Air Comet co-pilot and a passenger aboard the same flight also saw the light.

But Robert Francis, former vice chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said the question of determining where a plane broke up “is a very difficult one to deal with.” He told CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360″ that “there are lots of things that cause a plane to go out of control.”

He added that extremely strong winds are not unusual near Brazil. Pilots who fly over that part of the world keep track of radar and “are very, very wary about the weather as they go back and forth down in that area.”

Jobim said currents had strewn the debris widely and that the search area had been expanded to 300 square miles.

The Airbus A330 went down about three hours after beginning what was to have been an 11-hour flight. No survivors have been found. 

The NTSB said Wednesday it has accepted an invitation from the French aviation accident investigation authority, the Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses, to aid in the investigation.

The aircraft’s computer system did send about four minutes of automated messages indicating a loss of cabin pressure and an electrical failure, officials have said.

Some investigators have noted that the plane flew through a severe lightning storm. Foul play has not been ruled out.

Air France had received a bomb threat May 27 for a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Paris, sources in the Argentine military and police told CNN on Wednesday.

According to the officials, who had been briefed on the incident and declined to be identified because of the ongoing investigation, the Air France office in Buenos Aires received the threat from a man speaking Spanish.

Authorities checked the Boeing 777 and found nothing. Security was tightened during check-in for Flight 415, which left on time and without incident, the officials said.

Most of the people on Flight 447 came from Brazil, France and Germany. The remaining victims were from 29 other countries, including three passengers from the United States.

French officials say they may never find the jet’s flight data recorders in the ocean that experts say is up to 7,500 meters (24,600 feet) deep in the area where the plane crashed.

But Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva expressed optimism that the recorders, also known as black boxes, would be found.

The recorders are built to emit locator signals for up to 30 days. The French government has sent a research vessel carrying a deep-diving submersible to where the debris was found.

A report released Thursday commended the government for developing plans and stockpiling antivirals after the avian flu scare but warned that gaps still exist and that the health system may not be prepared in a more severe outbreak.

Stockpiling and planning helped in the response to the H1N1 virus, says a report released this week.

The Trust for America’s Health, the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation also listed 10 lessons from the H1N1 outbreak and 10 recommendations. Among them were a call for continuously updating and restocking the national vaccine stockpile, boosting the capacity for vaccine development and production, and reinforcing health care systems.

Nearly 20,000 cases of the H1N1 virus have been confirmed worldwide, with more than half of the cases from the United States, according to the World Health Organization.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported, as of Thursday, 11,468 probable and confirmed U.S. cases and 19 deaths from the H1N1 virus, also known as the swine flu. About 2.5 percent of the cases resulted in hospitalizations.

Health officials have warned that the H1N1 outbreak is not over, with more deaths being reported.

On Wednesday, Connecticut and Michigan both confirmed their first H1N1 deaths; both individuals had underlying illnesses, according to state health authorities. All 50 states have confirmed cases, but flu activity seems to be declining in the nation as a whole, according to the CDC.

During the summer, the agency will take steps to better prepare and coordinate with health systems, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s interim deputy director for the Science and Public Health Program. Scientists are keeping close attention to the Southern Hemisphere as the flu season begins there.

According to the Pandemic Flu Preparedness report, the H1N1 outbreak showed that the “investment the country has made in preparing for a potential pandemic flu has significantly improved U.S. capabilities for a large scale infectious disease outbreak.”

“One of the lessons in this is that everyone was concerned about the avian flu [H5N1], and biology played a trick on us,” said Jeff Levi, the executive director of Trust for America’s Health, a nonprofit organization that focuses on public health. “It was a different form of the virus that became widespread. Most of the preparation around H5N1 is totally transferable to H1N1.”

Avian flu was “a wake-up call for the world that serious influenza threats exist” and resulted in better test kits, diagnostic tests and emergency exercises, Schuchat said.

“There has been a lot of payoff from worrying about the bird flu,” she said. “A lot of lessons have been learned that put us in better shape to be prepared right now. We have a lot more work to do to make sure we’re as well-prepared for the fall.”

After the avian flu scare, county health departments started preparedness drills, said Dr. Christian Sandrock, a physician in infectious diseases at the University of California Davis Medical Center and a deputy health officer for Yolo County, California, who specializes in disaster preparedness and emerging infectious diseases.

“A lot of things we worked on then seemed far-fetched but worked really well,” Sandrock said. “They had mock pills we sent around for years, and we would practice. Then, when it was the real thing, it was just like the drills. So it married what was spent and what we trained on.”

The report also said the H1N1 outbreak “revealed how quickly the nation’s core public health capacity would be overwhelmed if the outbreak were more widespread and more severe.”

Many public health departments do not have resources to carry out pandemic flu plans or respond to a severe outbreak. Laboratory testing is days to weeks behind the on-the-ground reality. Hospitals, which are already overcrowded on a daily basis, don’t have the capacity to treat large numbers in an outbreak.

The report evaluated “what policy changes, what investments might be needed, what policies need to be adapted to better prepare us in months ahead, because it’s likely to be resurgent in the fall,” Levi said.

The report recommended that the federal government provide guidance on hospital capacities and sustain the public health work force, despite tough economic times. Read the entire report

It credited national public health officials with effective communications by having daily briefings and conveying a consistent message about good hygiene and coughing and sneezing etiquette.

“This is where planning paid off,” Levi said. “They were sending a clear message. The public was informed about what we knew. The public was warned that the recommendations may change as the situation evolved. … I think they were appropriately alerting the public. I think the response was quite balanced.”

One of the challenges was communicating the latest H1N1 information to physicians and health care providers. Although public health departments were in contact with the CDC, some medical practitioners didn’t receive guidance in timely fashion.

So those practitioners “start calling public health departments or send patients to the emergency department, or they’re getting lab tests when they don’t need to,” Sandrock said. “What happens is, there’s a surge of patients. That could’ve worked better. It wasn’t a complete catastrophe.”

Better real-time information is needed to track the outbreak, said David Fleming, director and health officer of Seattle and King County, Washington, a report co-author. National statistics were about one to two weeks behind what was happening.

“If this virus returns, it’s going to return in differential and unpredictable way,” Fleming said. “There’s going to be a jigsaw of epidemics around the country.”

June 5 (Bloomberg) — Asian stocks gained, with the MSCI Asia Pacific Index set for its third weekly advance, after BHP Billiton Ltd. and Rio Tinto Group said they’re forming an iron- ore venture and the yen fell to its lowest in a week.

Rio Tinto jumped 10 percent in Sydney as it scrapped an investment from Aluminum Corp. of China in favor of a share sale. BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest mining company, climbed 8.1 percent. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., Japan’s biggest listed bank, rose 1.9 percent in Tokyo as analyst upgrades drove U.S. financial shares higher. Mazda Motor Corp. climbed 6 percent in Tokyo after Nikko Citigroup Ltd. raised its share-price forecast on the stock.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 0.4 percent to 103.52 as of 10:50 a.m. in Tokyo. The gauge has climbed 1.5 percent this week as a Chinese purchasing manager’s index and better-than- expected Australian gross domestic product figures fueled optimism that the global economy is recovering. The measure climbed 47 percent from a more than five-year low on March 9.

“The better-than-expected economic data is convincing people the worst is over,” said Will Seddon, who helps manage $250 million at White Funds Management Pty. in Sydney. “People who are underweight or short don’t want to get left out of the rally.”

Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average gained 0.6 percent, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index rose 1.4 percent. New Zealand’s NZX 50 Index added 0.7 percent.

In New York, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed 1.2 percent after analysts recommended buying bank shares. Keycorp surged 20 percent after RBC Capital Markets named the bank a “top pick,” while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. rose 5.2 percent as Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. raised the shares to “outperform.”

Oil Gains

Rio Tinto, the world’s third-largest mining company, surged 10 percent to A$73.72. The company will raise as much as $15.2 billion in a share sale after rejecting Aluminum Corp.’s investment. BHP also agreed to pay Rio $5.8 billion to form an Australian iron ore joint venture.

BHP climbed 8.1 percent to A$37.94.

Mitsubishi UFJ gained 1.9 percent to 634 yen. KB Financial Group Inc., which controls South Korea’s largest bank, rose 1.5 percent to 40,900 won.

Mazda, which makes 28 percent of its revenue in North America, climbed 6 percent to 266 yen. Nikko Citigroup raised its target price to 350 yen from 257 yen, citing expectations for an earnings recovery in the second half of the business year.

Weaker Yen

Mazda shares also rose after the yen declined yesterday versus 15 of the 16 most-traded currencies on speculation Japanese investors are sending funds overseas to buy higher- yielding assets. The yen traded at 96.56 per dollar in Tokyo, after declining 0.6 percent yesterday to its lowest since May 29.

A weaker yen boosts the value of Japanese companies’ dollar-denominated sales. Sony Corp., which gets 24 percent of its revenue from the U.S., climbed 2.3 percent to 2,700 yen.

The Bank of Japan may upgrade its economic assessment of the country for a second straight month at the conclusion of a policy meeting beginning June 15, the Mainichi newspaper reported.

Inpex Corp., Japan’s largest oil explorer, climbed 7.1 percent to 847,000 yen. Santos Ltd., Australia’s third-largest oil company, gained 2.8 percent to A$14.87.

Crude oil rose after Goldman Sachs said prices may reach $85 a barrel by the end of the year as world demand recovers and supplies shrink. Oil climbed 4.1 percent to $68.81 a barrel in New York, the highest settlement since Nov. 4 after the bank increased its year-end forecast from $65 and withdrew a prediction that prices will dip prior to a rally.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In two years, Angelo Mozilo, the son of a Bronx butcher and a rags-to-riches icon, went from the charismatic helmsman of America’s top mortgage lender to the badly burned face of the nation’s housing meltdown.

Known for a rich tan, flamboyant wardrobe and aggressive risk-taking, the man who built Countrywide Financial into the nation’s top home lender now stands as a colorful poster boy of the dangers of unchecked real estate lending.

On Thursday, securities regulators filed charges accusing the 70-year-old Mozilo of insider trading and securities fraud.

The man dubbed “Tangelo” by business media is the biggest name yet to be accused of wrongdoing by U.S. investigators probing the subprime mortgage crisis and housing market collapse.

Born in 1938 to Italian immigrants and raised in The Bronx borough of New York City, Mozilo evangelized home ownership for everyone.

A golfing enthusiast whose home is said to abut the Sherwood Country Club in Ventura County, California, Mozilo built his company and his own prominence by riding the property boom. In 2006, at the height of its success, Countrywide originated $461 billion worth of loans — close to $41 billion of which were subprime.

But his glory days were marked. Subprime mortgages ultimately poisoned the U.S. mortgage market.

As Countrywide buckled under the weight of mortgage defaults and home foreclosures, its own lenders curtailed credit, forcing it to draw down an $11.5 billion credit line.

Last July, Bank of America Corp bought Countrywide for $2.5 billion, less than 10 percent of what the company was worth in early 2007. Ten months later, Bank of America scrapped the Countrywide name.

FROM HERO TO ZERO

Even with the housing market disintegrating around Countrywide, Mozilo appeared confident about the company’s ability to survive.

Last year, with the housing market in a shambles, he told executives at a mortgage bankers’ conference, “You’ve got to be careful here about blaming ourselves too much.”

The real culprits, he argued, were the Federal Reserve raising interest rates for too long, crooked real estate speculators, falling housing prices and regulators’ attacks on interest-only and other risky subprime mortgages.

In 2007, Mozilo took in $121.5 million from exercising stock options and was awarded another $22.1 million of compensation, according to the industry-backed Leaders of the Center on Executive Compensation.

On Thursday, in a civil lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Los Angeles federal court, regulators accused Mozilo of making more than $139 million in profits in 2006 and 2007 from exercising 5.1 million stock options and selling the underlying shares.

Although they lost to the Giants, 5-1, in the first game of a doubleheader Thursday evening, the Nationals were happy to see left-hander Randy Johnson make history at Nationals Park by the becoming the 24th pitcher to win his 300th career game.

Johnson pitched six solid innings and gave up an unearned run on two hits. After the game, Nationals president Stan Kasten was in the first-floor hallway at Nationals Park when he spotted Johnson and congratulated the left-hander on the magic number.

“It’s a great moment in baseball history. As you know, it’s a rare feat. He has had an amazing and long career,” Kasten said. “All baseball fans everywhere should appreciate the magnitude of the accomplishment. Anyone who is a 300-game winner is by definition a superb player and a clear Hall of Famer. You can’t say much more than that.”

The 300th victory is fitting for Johnson, who won his first big league game in an Expos uniform in 1988. The Expos ended up trading him to the Mariners a year later.

“It’s kind of weird. I don’t know if you call it fitting,” manager Manny Acta said. “He probably is not relating anything to it because we are the Washington Nationals now. But I don’t think it happens very often.”

Reliever Kip Wells, who is on the disabled list because of a right adductor strain, was watching the historic event in the clubhouse, and he was impressed about how Johnson went about his business to win his 300th game.

“It’s a testament to how long it takes to do something like that — how consistent you have to be, lucky you have to be, healthy you have to be and how you have to adapt during the course of your career,” Wells said. “He went from throwing 97-98 miles per hour right down the middle to throwing back-door sliders to 2-1 changeups. It’s a credit to him to be able to adapt like he has. He was able to stay healthy long enough to endure and win 300 games.”

Both Wells and reliever Julian Tavarez don’t think they will see another 300-game winner in the near future.

“It’s not going to be seen very much in the next 50 years or however long because of health and all the other intangibles that go along with it,” Wells said.

Said Tavarez: “I don’t think anybody else will reach 300 games because Pedro Martinez is not playing. Congratulations to Randy. He really worked hard. I’m really happy for him.”

The Second Edition of the International Cricket Council’s Twenty20 World Cup tournament will be launched when the hosts England confront Netherlands at the Mecca of cricket Lord’s today at 5.30 pm local time.

The ground as always looks a picture and the atmosphere here is wonderful with most of the tickets snapped up and a full; house expected to savour the opening ceremony before the game begins.

If the side batting first posts a formidable score, the side batting second would be under tremendous pressure to chase and if they lose early wickets, the game could be as good as lost.

In this style game teams could go in with plans and strategies. That’s well and good. But the bottom line is - that the team performing on the day will emerge victorious. On paper England will be the favourites to beat the Netherlands. England will have the advantage playing on their own backyard, knowing the conditions and also how the wicket would play. England were a bit shaken before the game because their main batting star Kevin Pietersen seemed to have suffered an injury.

Pietersen took part at a training session. But did not do any extra running, especially shuttle sprints. According to captain Paul Collingwood, KP is expected to be fit and take his place in this vital opening game. England would want to have him in the line up now that they are without the allround abilities of Andrew Flintoff still recovering from surgery.

England who have never had their names engraved in the 50 over World Cup will be frightfully keen to at least win this one and make their fans happy.In the previous Twenty20 World Cup played in South Africa in 2007, Collingwood was in charge,and England sadly went out.

England will be hoping that one downer Ravi Bopara would carry his phenomenal batting form which he showed against West Indies into the Twenty20.He has improved his batting tremendously and it would be interesting to watch how he goes. The skipper, Pietersen and allrounders Stuart Broad and Dimitri Mascarenhas must also make runs. James Anderson,Stuart Broad, Collingwood and Graham Swan will have to do the containing job as bowlers Netherlands on the other hand would be no easy beats.

They have some capable performers in captain Jeroen Smits a dashing right hand bat, Peter Borren, Mudassar Buhkari, Tom De Grooth and Maurits Jonkman and could be expected to give England the jitters and who knows if luck plays for them could upset England’s apple cart.

So keep your fingers crossed for an exciting opener.

The Supreme Court yesterday in a landmark judgment annulled the multi - billion rupee privatization of the country’s state owned insurance giant Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation (SLIC) in 2003.

Court allowing the two Fundamental Rights applications filed by the employees of the Insurance Corporation and Nawa Samaja Party Leader and Presidential Advisor Vasudeva Nanayakkara held that their rights as well as that of the public had been violated by the illegal and ab-initio void privatization of the SLIC to a consortium of companies controlled by Harry Jayawardena.

The Court ordered to divest forthwith 90 percent shares of SLIC with the Treasury and restoring the ownership of all its shares to the government. The court ordered to reimburse the capital investment of six billion rupees in Treasury bonds redeemable in five years to the Milford Holdings (Pvt.) Ltd. The Court also ordered that in lieu of the the interest the Treasury was to pay Milford Holdings the profits generated during the period.

The Court further ordered that the current Director Board of the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation Ltd., would stand removed forthwith.

The Court granted time until June 18, to the Secretary to the Treasury to nominate competent persons for the approval of the court to be appointed as the Chairman and Directors to the SLIC. In the meantime the Treasury was to make an interim arrangement.

Justice Nimal Gamini Amaratunga delivering the judgment with Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva PC and Justice K. Sripavan agreeing, observed that the government’s objective to end the monopoly in the insurance industry in order to attract foreign investments had been a total failure since it was transfered to a consortium of companies controlled by one person.

The court came to the finding that the the process was manipulated by the respondnets giving advantage to 38 respondent Harry Jayawardane.

“The manner the privatization process was done shocked the conscience of the Court,” Justice Amaratunga noted. He noted that the Steering committee had been illegally appointed without the approval of the Cabinet.

The court forthwith terminated the service of the auditors Ernest and Young who had served SLIC and SLICL with conflicting interests.

Justice Amaratunga commending the service the petitioners had rendered noted that it could not be valued in monetary terms and directed the registrar of the Court to issue them with free copies of the judgment.

Petitioners Vasudeva Nanayakkara and two employees R. Sarath Nandalal and Ariyawanse Bandaranayake complained to the Court that privatization of SLIC lacked transparency and was tainted with irregularities in the process causing massive losses to the Government and the public.

The petitioners cited that the 38 respondents including former Finance Minister K.N. Choksy, former Economic Reform Minister Milinda Moragoda, former Treasury Secretary Charitha Ratwatte, Distilleries Company of Sri Lanka Ltd., Milford Holdings Ltd., Greenfiled Pacific EM Holdings Ltd. D.H.S. Jayawardane and the Attorney General.

The petitioners stated that consortium of companies controlled by D.H.S. Jayawardane entered into a Share Sale and Purchase agreement to purchase 90 percent of the shares of the SLIC on April 11, 2003.

The petitioners stated that the report of the Committee on Public Enterprise (COPE) in 2007, in its report had pointed out that the steering committee appointed by the second respondent former Minister Moragoda to oversee the privatization, had been done so without the Cabinet approval.

The report also had pointed that the steering committee had appointed Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) Indonesia to act as financial advisers to the Government in collaboration with PwC Sri Lanka too without the Cabinet approval. M.A.. Sumanthiran with Viran Corea instructed by Abdeen Associates appeared for the petitioner Vasudeva Nanayakkara. J.C. Weliamuna instructed by Lilanthi de Silva appeared for the employees.

Counsel Sanjeewa Jayawardane instructed by Sudath Perera Associates appeared for Milford Holdings Ltd. Nihal Jayamanne PC instructed by Sudath Perera Associates appeared for D.H.S. Jayawardane.

Deputy Solicitor General Indika Demuni de Silva appeared for the Attorney General. “When contacted for comment a spokes person for Ernst&Young said we have ceased to be auditors of SLIC with effect from the year ending 31st December 2007,”

Russian gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine could come to a grinding halt soon due to crisis-ridden Kiev’s payment arrears, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned on Wednesday.

“This could happen in late June or early July — a full stop to our transit” across Ukraine, Putin told a press conference in Helsinki.

“No one in Russia is taking pleasure or gloating at Ukraine’s difficulties in paying for the product it receives from us. But it must pay,” the powerful Russian Prime Minister told reporters.

Speaking during a visit to EU member Finland, Putin complained that Europe had rebuffed Russian requests to help Ukraine pay for its gas needs.

“We are proposing to solve the problem with the European Commission. But our efforts to approach the commission about this have not been successful. There is only one answer (from them) — we have no money for Ukraine,” Putin said.

Under the contract that governs Russian gas deliveries to Ukraine, Russian state energy giant Gazprom has the right to start demanding pre-payment from Kiev if any payments do not arrive on time, Putin said.

After that, if Ukraine misses the deadline for one of its advance payments, Russia will cut off the gas to its southern neighbour, he said.

In recent weeks Russia has warned repeatedly that crisis-battered Ukraine would have difficulties paying its gas bills, but Kiev has denied the claims and insisted that it has the funds.

CHINA: The world will witness and celebrate the 38th World Environment Day (WED) today.

The WED theme for 2009 chosen by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) is “Your Planet Needs You! Unite to Combat Climate Change.”

World Environment Day was established by the UN General Assembly in October 1972, to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and adoption of the Human Environment Declaration in June of the same year.

Another solution, adopted by the General Assembly the same day, led to the creation of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

From 1974, the UNEP annually chooses a theme for world environment day to boost worldwide awareness of the environment and enhance political attention and action.

As the development of industrialization, human beings created great wealth by making use of fossil fuels such as coal and crude oil, which has also brought on serious environment problems caused by the emission of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Beijing, Thursday, Xinhua