Brazil guarantees police overtime
Brazil's federal government will pay for extra hours worked by military police during the Olympic Games in August to ensure security is not compromised by Rio de Janeiro's financial crisis, Justice Minister Alexandre Moraes said. Funds will be provided by the government's additional service regime (RAS), Moraes told the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper on Friday.
The announcement came just hours after Rio state's interim governor, Francisco Dornelles, decreed a state of "public calamity", reports Xinhua.
He warned Rio faces "total collapse" as soaring public spending coincides with a sharp drop in tax revenue from the struggling local industry. Brazil's military police fall under the authority of state governments, which are also responsible for their budgets. According to Moraes, details of how much will be allocated from the RAS will be determined when the Olympic security plan is announced on June 21. Brazil plans to deploy around 85,000 soldiers and police during the Olympics, roughly double the number used at the London 2012 Games.Earlier this year, Rio's state government cut $ 550 million from its Olympic security budget. IANS The India-renovated Duraiappah sports stadium in the embattled Sri Lankan city of Jaffna had once laid bare the hidden brutalities of the Tamil civil war when at least 23 human skeletons, including those of some disappeared children buried secretly in the playground, were discovered in 1999.
The stadium, named after a former Jaffna mayor, the late Alfred Thambirajah Duraiappah, Tamil-dominated city in northern Sri Lanka, suffered huge damages and remained abandoned during the civil war.
Its renovation was started in 1999 when the conflict-ravaged northern areas saw relative bouts of peace and calm. The moves to renovate and reopen the play-