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National level and District level rankings of the 2011 G.C.E Advanced Level examination results, released last night following a long delay, have been temporarily suspended due to a technical error, the Ministry of Higher Education said.  Secretary of the Higher Education Ministry Sunil Jayantha Navarathna stated that the decision was taken as a result of a technical error which had occurred during the calculation process of the merits and affirmed that the rankings will be re-released after the problem is resolved.  He however added that there will be no change in the ‘Z-scores’ or the A/L results in general as they are correct. (Ada Derana)

Christmas is indeed a jolly time of year for some former Virginia tobacco farmers who have switched to a more health-friendly crop. On a 25-acre Christmas tree farm at Mouth of Wilson, in remote Appalachian Virginia, Ron Cooper has a spring in his step as he awaits the arrival of his seasonal workers. It's just after 8 a.m. on a weekday, and the crew will go to work planting Fraser Fir seedlings, which Cooper says are by far the most popular Christmas tree. The 60-year-old is going out on a limb planting this time of year, having never done so before. He hopes the seedlings, while withstanding the cold, will not dry up and die as he says often happens to crops sown in the summer. Cooper grew tobacco on "anywhere from five to six acres" for about 15 years, last growing it in the early 90s, before deciding he would be better off concentrating on the Christmas tree business. The tobacco growing habit skipped a generation because his grandparents grew the crop

Four men who brutally murdered a Sri Lankan born shopkeeper while his children watched on CCTV have been jailed for life by a UK court. Suppiah Tharmaseelan, 48, died after being stabbed, punched, kicked and eventually chased out of his own store in November 27 last year. Twins Ian and John Meenan, Anthony Bayliss and his half-brother Liam Ryan were given minimum terms of between 20 and 27 years for killing the father-of-four. Passing sentence at Birmingham Crown Court, Mr Justice Wyn Williams described the killing in the Kingstanding area of the city as a “mindless” attack on a vulnerable victim. A fifth defendant, getaway driver James Moore, was jailed for six years and nine months after admitting robbery but being cleared of murder. Following a trial which ended last month, it emerged that one of the victim’s children telephoned the police after they witnessed the attack via CCTV in another part of the shop premises. During his sentencing remarks, the ju

The crash of a CIA drone in Iran has brought into the open what U.S. intelligence agencies would prefer kept secret: intense spying efforts in a country where the United States has no official presence. Iran on Thursday aired with great flourish footage of the captured drone, which appeared largely intact. Pentagon and CIA spokesmen would not comment on whether it was the missing U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aircraft. A person familiar with the situation confirmed that the drone that crashed was on a surveillance mission over Iran. It is believed to have crashed because of a malfunction and not from being shot down or computer-hacked by the Iranians, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. Although there are risks that Iran could attempt to reverse engineer the technology, or sell it to other countries, like China, U.S. officials believe that Iran will not be able to mine the drone's computer systems to learn details of the U.S. surveillance mission. U.S. su

More than a third of U.S. shoppers are already done with most of their holiday shopping, a survey showed on Monday, signaling that retailers need to offer bigger incentives to win sales in the few weeks before Christmas. The findings underscore the fragility of the U.S. recovery, since consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the nation's economy. About 32 percent of people surveyed by America's Research Group said they finished a majority of their Christmas shopping in November. Last month included Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when stores pulled out all the stops on discounts to woo shoppers during their biggest season of the year. More than 6 percent completed most of their holiday shopping in the first weekend of December. The questions were asked exclusively for Reuters as part of a larger America's Research Group survey. "There is very little retailers can do unless they really have some incredible sales that force that consume

Life is about to get a lot better for people like Christopher Mocwane, a worker at one of the world's largest iron ore mines outside this dusty town in the middle of the Kalahari desert. Thanks to an employee share ownership scheme, the 47-year-old, who earns 7,000 rand ($835) a month, is about to receive a 576,045-rand ($68,700) windfall. "I'm going to buy myself a house. The one where I live now, I'll fix it and give it to my mother," he told Reuters, wiping the sweat off his forehead in the scorching heat. "She was very happy when I told her." "My children are still small, but I will now be able to send them to school when they grow up," he added with a nervous smile. Mocwane is one of 6,200 workers at Kumba Iron Ore due to benefit from the plan aimed at ensuring all its workers share the profits of the iron ore producer over the past five years. A unit of global miner Anglo American, Kumba has already paid out 279 million ran