Sri Lanka said yesterday it would not allow aid workers complete access to civilians who remain held in camps after the defeat of the Tamil Tigers until rebels hiding among the refugees had been weeded out.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, on a visit to one camp housing 200,000 Tamils, had called for his staff to be given “unhindered access” to those displaced in the decades-long war that ended a week ago.
Ban, who toured the Menik Farm facility on Saturday, described the conditions as overcrowded and the detained civilians as “badly in need of food, water and sanitation.”
The government responded to his appeal for aid agencies to be permitted to help by saying that “as conditions improved, especially with regard to security, there would be no objections to such assistance.”
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse’s statement warned of “the likely presence of Tamil Tiger infiltrators among the large numbers who had come to the government areas.”
Tamil Tigers founder and leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, who was killed in the last days of fighting, was cremated near where he died, army chief Sarath Fonseka said yesterday.
“We cremated the body in the same area and threw the ashes into the ocean,” Fonseka told the Sunday Rivira newspaper. “Even before Prabhakaran was killed, I knew we had won the war, but I was overjoyed when I had confirmation of his death.”
The government broadcast footage of Prabhakaran’s body after a pro-rebel Web site said he was still alive.
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
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