Custodian monk of Sri Paada Mountain makes a revelation about a proposed hotel in its vicinity The Chief incumbent monk of Sri Paada Ven. Bengamuwe Dhammadinna Thera says that no tourist hotel or holiday reserve is under construction in the Sri Paada sacred area.
The Thera revealed this during a media conference held to announce the forthcoming annual pilgrimage period at the Nallatanniya Grama Seva Office yesterday.
Meanwhile, Ambagamuwa Pradeshiya Sabha Secretary S. Saravanan said that permission was given to build a hotel in Peak Field estate.
Speaking to our news team Saravanan said that the hotel management has received approval from the National Building Research Organization.
Meanwhile, certain social media reported that this property belonged to former Minister Basil Rajapaksa.
Murray Falls which flows to the Kelani River is also located in the upper catchment of Maussakele reservoir.
The proposed hotel is planned to be build near this environmentally sensitive catchment of Maussakele Reservoir. However, environmentalists point out that permission should be given to such a huge construction project only after obtaining an Environmental Impact Assessment report.
Environmentalist and Attorney-at-law Jagath Gunawardana said that this area has been declared a Soil Conservation Zone and EIA report is mandatory to go ahead with such project.
The original rock where Jesus Christ is traditionally believed to have been buried in Jerusalem has been exposed to the light of day for the first time in centuries.
According to an exclusive report by National Geographic, a partner in the project at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the original rock surface has been covered with marble slabs since at least 1555, and possibly longer. During a conservation project to shore up the shrine surrounding the tomb, a team from the National Technical University of Athens in Greece realized that they would need to access the substructure of the shrine to restore it, said Fredrik Hiebert, the archaeologist-in-residence at the National Geographic Society. [See Photos of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre]
"The Greek conservation group are the first, as far as we know, to actually open this," Hiebert told Live Science. "It's pretty exceptional."
Holy site
Some theological historians believe that Jesus was a real man who was born sometime around the year 1 or earlier in Bethlehem in modern-day Palestine, only later to move to Nazareth in Israel. He is thought to have died around the year 29.
Workers remove a marble slab covering the original stone "burial bed" where Jesus Christ is said to have been laid to rest after being crucified. A layer of loose fill material is seen beneath. Scientists were surprised at how much of the original cave structure remained, said National Geographic archaeologist-in-residence Fredrik Hiebert. DUSAN VRANIC/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
The site venerated as the tomb of Jesus is encased in structures like a Russian nesting doll. According to the Hebrew Bible, Jesus was laid to rest on a stone platform in a cave hewn out of a rock wall. In 326, the first Christian emperor of Rome, Constantine, sent his mother, Helena, as a representative to Jerusalem, where locals pointed out one cave among an area of first-century burials that was said to hold the tomb of Jesus.
Constantine had a shrine installed over the cave. The original top of the cave was removed so that pilgrims could look down and view the slab where Jesus' body was said to have rested. This shrine is known as the Holy Edicule, and it was last reconstructed after a fire in the early 1800s, according to National Geographic. [See Images of Jesus' House and Nazareth Artifacts]
The Holy Edicule itself sits within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or Church of the Resurrection, which is a famed pilgrimage site and working monastery. It's built directly over the cave where Jesus was said to be buried; another wing sits over the site where he is said to have been crucified. Three sects jointly manage the site: the Greek Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Armenian Orthodox Church. The three groups agreed in 1958 that conservation of the Edicule was necessary, but it's taken nearly 50 years to agree on a method and to secure funding. (According to National Geographic, the project will cost more than $4 million.)
"There was a moment in which you could see on the faces of the important people of the church, a certain happiness that this has actually happened," Hiebert said of the conservation.
Shoring up history
A grid of iron bars installed in the 1940s held the Edicule structure upright until the project started. Now, Hiebert said, the Greek team — with years of experience under their belts of shoring up ancient structures like the Parthenon — will inject mortar around the marble slabs that make up the Edicule.
"This will permanently restore them, and it won't need supports," Hiebert said.
The conservation team was surprised at how much of the original cave structure remains, he said. They've peeled back marble slabs from the 19th century that were in turn covering slabs from the 15th century, covering slabs from the 12th century, which themselves shield the original bedrock.
As to whether the tomb ever contained the remains of the historical Jesus, "it's a matter of faith," Hiebert said. There are no remains to analyze or DNA evidence to exhume. There is scholarly debate over whether Jesus even existed, said Robert Cargill, an archaeologist and author of "The Cities that Built the Bible" (HarperOne, 2016). A minority of historians think Jesus was a literary construct, said Cargill, who was not involved in the new tomb project, while others think a real person named Jesus existed but that little is known about him.
"We know that Romans crucified people and that people were buried there" in the first and second centuries, Cargill told Live Science. It's also known that there was an oral tradition about the site of Jesus' burial 300 years later, when Helena came to visit Jerusalem.
"We still don't have any [archaeological] evidence that Jesus was crucified, nor do we have evidence that he was crucified there beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre," Cargill said.
Nevertheless, Cargill said, the site is an important one for early Christianity and for the Christian cultural tradition.
"It has been a sacred place for 1,600 years," he said.
The excavations are unlikely to reveal anything new about the history of early Christianity, particularly since the current Edicule structure is only about 200 years old, Cargill said. However, the conservation project has opened up a new view of this old site.
"You can actually look down onto the rock from above, which you couldn't do when the Edicule is actually there," Cargill said. "That's a perspective that most people haven't seen."
A man was arrested today on charges of sexually abusing an air hostess at her residence in Kalapaluwawa, Rajagiriya, the Welikada Police said.
They said the preliminary investigations had revealed that he was working at a construction site next door and had forcibly entered the house about 11.p.m. when the 32-year-old was asleep in her room.
Police said the man had threatened to kill her if she screamed for help.He had fled the scene when someone had knocked at the door.
Meanwhile, the Police said a co-worker at the site had fled the area.The Police are checking whether the person who knocked at the door was the co-worker.
The air hostess was referred to the Colombo JMO for a medical examination.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told Parliament today that former central bank governor Arjun Mahendran had gone to Singapore to attend a wedding.
Joint opposition informed Parliament yesterday that Mr. Mahendran had fled the country and that it was impossible to impound his passport as he was not a Sri Lankan citizen.
The COPE report presented in Parliament this morning has held Mr. Mahendran responsible for the controversial sale of Central Bank bonds.
A diamond tycoon in India has once again given away hundreds of cars and flats to his employees as a bonus for meeting company targets, the Guardian reported today.
Savjibhai Dholakia, who runs a diamond export firm in the booming west coast city of Surat, announced his company would give 1,260 cars, 400 flats and pieces of jewellery to his employees ahead of the Hindu festival of Diwali.
“Our aim is that each employee must have his own home and car in the next five years. So we have decided to gift cars, homes and jewellery to employees,” Dholakia, owner of the Hare Krishna Exports, has told AFP.
He said the rewards were in recognition of the outstanding performance and dedication shown by employees in the last five years.
The company would spend an estimated 500m rupees ($7m) under the loyalty programme to reward an unknown number of staff from a total workforce of 5,500.
Most employees receive presents of some kind from their bosses during Diwali but they are usually boxes of Indian sweets.
But Dholakia has been making headlines by giving expensive gifts to his employees since 2012, when three employees received cars for their performance.
The generous boss gave 491 cars and 207 flats to his employees under a similar programme in 2014.
The company will exclude previous year’s beneficiaries from the new scheme.
His firm is one of the leading polishing companies in India’s diamond hub Surat and exports diamonds to some 75 countries.
The special COPE report on the Central bank bond issue was presented to the Parliament by the Chairman of the Committee On Public Enterprises (COPE) MP Sunil Handunnetti, a short while ago.
The 55-page COPE report recommends that former Governor of the Central Bank Arjuna Mahendran should be held directly responsible over the bond transaction and that legal action should be taken against him and responsible individuals.
The report also observed financial irregularities in the Central Bank bond issue and recommended to recover the losses incurred from those involved.
The COPE chairman said that the report contains 15 recommendations and observations and that there is a clear difference in the report and the footnotes.
Handunnetti said that 16 members of the committee rejected a report with footnotes and that 9 members rejected a report without footnotes.
Minister Rauff Hakeem, addressing the Parliament, said that “we have to keep our political differences outside the committee”. None of us have taken a political stand on this, he added.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe stated that the COPE report will be printed, debated in Parliament and then sent to the Attorney General. He stated that they will act according to the AG’s advice.
The Leader of the House Lakshaman Kiriella moved that the report be printed.
Members of the Joint Opposition requested for a special debate on the COPE report before the budget debate.
Responding to accusations that the former CB Governor has left the country, the PM said that he had traveled abroad to attend a wedding and that he will return shortly.
The Sri Lankan-born international banker was appointed to the helm of the central bank in January, after Maithripala Sirisena was elected as President.
There had been rising concerns in bond markets over controversial deals made by Perpetual Treasuries, a firm connected to Arjun Aloysius, the son-in-law of Governor Arjuna Mahendran.
The money markets were in an uproar on February 27 when the CB announced it was accepting bids worth Rs. 10 billion at 9.50-12.50 per cent whereas clients and most primary dealers had made bids between 9.50 and 10.50 per cent, not in the 11-12 per cent range. Only a few bids, including those by Perpetual Treasuries were made in the 12 per cent range.
Former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa yesterday said that the government will take prompt decisions only if it is going to put a Rajapaksa family member behind bars.
“Apart from that nobody in the government takes decisions. This is why this country is not moving forward as it was under the previous government,” he said,.
The country gained massive development under the rule of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa as he gave full freedom to the government servants to take decisions.
“The government service has become inactive and inefficient as government servants show reluctance to take decisions . They are afraid of taking decision today as those who took decisions in the past are being dragged off to court over their decisions,” Rajapaksa said
The former Defence Secretary was speaking at the inauguration of Viyathmaga professional association in Anuradhapura yesterday. He said that former President Rajapaksa took decisions at right time without any fear and such decisions led to end the scourge of terrorism that had been devastating the country for more than 30 years.
