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Anti-crime offensive must continue

There is no doubt that the peace-loving sections of Sri Lanka would have been fully supportive of Deputy Defence Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake - and by implication, the Government - when he called on the anti-crime unit of the Police recently, to go steadily ahead with the task of bringing the criminal underworld to justice.

Dismissing rumours that some influential politicians were bringing pressure on the Government to disband the anti-crime unit of the Police, which is beginning to make a positive contribution towards deescalating the crime wave, the Deputy Minister said that the IGP and the Police had the unreserved backing of the Government in their offensive.

While commending the defence establishment, headed by President Kumaratunga, on its bold and correct decision to take on and bring to book the criminal underworld which was terrorising the country, we are of the opinion that there cannot be a let-up in this ground-breaking, crime-busting exercise.

Ideally even hard-core criminals must be given an opportunity to reform and live right but those who do not show such an inclination need to be neutralised within the bounds of the law or brought to justice.

In this effort at restoring law and order, we believe the Government and law enforcers should completely disregard resistance from any quarter to their initiative, including pressure from those politicians who extend their patronage to criminals in an effort to win their backing for the purpose of consolidating power.

If there are politicians who are hand-in-glove with criminals, we expect the authorities to act firmly against them. They must be cast into the political wilderness and be disowned by their political parties, if not brought to justice themselves.

We hope our appeal wouldn't be a cry in the wilderness. It is now or never. The back of the criminal underworld must be broken for good and now is the time to accomplish this long overdue task.

There is no denying that this is a complex undertaking, but it must be done. The possibility exists of some police personnel consorting with and even being in the employ of the so-called kings of crime. This is a disheartening reality of our times which also must be handled firmly and unrelentingly.

The law enforcement agencies must be from now on, cleansed of these elements and this measure too would win unreserved public approval.

The current, country rebuilding process lends tremendous urgency to these undertakings. The country cannot be put on its feet once again if lawlessness is going to be allowed to persist and undermine any of our gains.

The message needs to be sent to the parasitical elements which are ever-zealous to exploit emergency situations that their blatant violations of the law would not be tolerated. Steady crime-busting is the answer.

Fun on the move

Some mobile phone users are apparently demanding more from their instruments. They have had their fill of cameras, voice recording, MP3, FM radio, GPRS, Web browsing and countless other applications. Now Japanese companies have come up with yet another novel idea: phones that morph into toy guns and golf clubs.

According to the latest reports from the land of the rising sun, Subway commuters could get more energetic in Japan through a new motion-sensitive mobile telephone equipped with games that will let people on the move practise their golf swings or shoot up monsters.

The local branch of British mobile giant Vodafone on Monday unveiled the first phone in Japan that responds to movements, which will let users perform basic mobile functions through programmed shakes and jerks. The 142-gram telephone can be used as a golf club. Users look back at the screen to see how well they putted.

The phone can also be moved like a gun for the shoot-'em-up game "House of the Dead," raising the possibility of more adventurous times on the Tokyo subway. And the phone can also turn into a portable television.

This comes hot on the heels of a South Korean mobile phone billed as the world's first motion-recognition mobile phone, which can be used to simulate a fishing rod or race car controls. The phone can also be attached to a jogger's body to chart speed, calories consumption or distance.

These developments show that the mobile phone is still evolving as a so-called 'infotaintment' device, which combines functionality and real-world usefulness with a dose of silly entertainment.

Most mobiles feature built-in and downloadable games and now the phone itself has become a gaming instrument. Golf or angling, the user can now while away the time without necessarily 'chatting up' and incurring a soaring bill.

But how those around the user will react when he 'fires' his or her mobile phone in a crowded place is still uncertain. On the other hand, 'jogging phones' will become popular as there is already a significant market for similar stand-alone devices.

What will they think of next? Hard to imagine at the rate things are happening in the mobile world. We can rest assured that the manufacturers will keep us entertained with totally unexpected uses for the ubiquitous mobile. .

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