Sri Lanka's state owned Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) on Tuesday said it is ready to launch 5G services in the country to facilitate citizens with a 5G experience via fixed wireless broadband access.

In a statement, SLT said the 5G services would reach its customers with high speeds and high data volumes providing a high capacity of bandwidth which is the main concern of the mass users of broadband services.

5G will encourage the blooming of entrepreneurs and enterprises with the low latency which will be needed in times of critical missions and where the fastest responses are desired, SLT said.

"In fact, SLT's 5G is the long-expected service for the growing ICT era in the country as it allows mass connectivity where the user is capable of connecting many machines and many applications in one go," SLT added.

SLT comprises a customer base of over 1.6 million including multinational corporations, large and small corporates, public sector, retail and domestic customers.

SLT said it provides a full range of ICT services in the areas of voice, data, broadband, TV, mobile and enterprise solutions.

A total of 29 officials have been punished as the death toll in a factory blast was intentionally underreported in central China's Hunan Province, local authorities said Tuesday.

The explosion happened on Dec. 4 at a workshop of a fireworks company in Chengtanjiang Township in the city of Liuyang. The initially-released death toll was seven, but the provincial authorities later confirmed 13 people were killed in the accident.

Direct economic loss reached 19.45 million yuan (2.8 million U.S. dollars).

Liu Fayu, then Party chief of Chengtanjiang Township who ordered concealing the death toll and had some bodies transferred and hidden, has been detained for investigation by supervisory authorities.

Other officials who participated in, turned a blind eye to or failed to find the concealment have received penalties such as being removed from posts, major demerits and intra-Party warnings.

Ten people from the fireworks company have been placed under "criminal compulsory measures" on suspicion of the crime of causing a major safety accident.

A dinosaur fossil found in northeastern China has been identified as a new species of tiny, winged and feathered dinosaurs by American and Chinese researchers.

The fossil, which was discovered more than a decade ago, has been housed in the Dalian Natural History Museum in northeastern Liaoning Province.

Researchers from the San Diego Museum of Natural History in the United States, Dalian Natural History Museum, Montana State University and other research institutions reported the new dinosaur species in the U.S. journal The Anatomical Record.

It was named Wulong bohaiensis, or "dancing dragon" in Chinese, for the pose of the preserved fossil.

From the early Cretaceous period, Wulong was bigger than a crow and smaller than a raven with its length doubled by a long, bony tail, said the researchers.

It has a narrow face filled with sharp teeth and was covered with feathers, including a wing-like array on both its arms and legs and two long plumes at the end of its tail.

Researchers said Wulong is one of the earliest known relatives of the Velociraptor which lived 75 million years ago. Its closest known relative would have been the small, four-winged Microraptor.

Jehol Biota, the site where the fossil was found, covers the northern part of Hebei Province, western part of Liaoning Province and southeast part of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and is known for the diversity of its plant and animal fossils.

Ashely Poust, the lead author of the research, said that the Jehol Biota is also one of the earliest bird-rich environments, where birds, bird-like dinosaurs and pterosaurs all shared the same habitat.

Wulong offers a glimpse into what Earth was like 120 million years ago, providing insights on how dinosaurs grew and how they differed from birds.

The Ukrainian passenger plane that crashed shortly after takeoff in the Iranian capital on Jan. 8 was hit by two short-range TOR-M1 missiles, Iranian state IRIB TV reported Tuesday.

"Two TOR-M1 missiles were launched from the northern side at this plane," the TV said, citing the latest report by Iran's Civil Aviation Organization.

"The way how the missiles caused the incident and the analysis of this measure is under study," the report added.

The Ukrainian Boeing 737-800 aircraft from Tehran to Kiev crashed near Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport, killing all the 176 passengers and crew members on board.

Three days later, Iran's armed forces confirmed that the airliner was shot down "unintentionally" by the military, as the plane "was mistaken for a hostile target" near an Iranian "sensitive military site of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)."

The incident occurred amid heightened tensions between Iran and the United States. Hours before the crash, Iran launched missile attacks on two Iraqi bases hosting U.S. troops, in retaliation for the U.S. killing of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC.

Thailand's Constitutional Court on Tuesday acquitted the country's third-biggest political party of seeking the overthrow of the country's constitutional monarchy, a case that had highlighted ongoing political divisions in the Southeast Asian nation.

The court ruled that the Future Forward Party showed no intention of committing the offense, and that the complaint had not been filed according to the correct legal procedure.

The party still faces the threat of dissolution under another pending charge of breaking election laws by taking a large loan from its leader. The party was founded in 2018 during military rule, and takes progressive positions that are anathema to Thailand's royalist ruling elite.

The party's surprising finish in an election last year and its popularity among young people rattled the government, which is led by the same people who staged a military coup in 2014.

The case drew special attention because the complaint had sought to link the party to the mythical conspiracy own as the Illuminati, which is alleged to be an elite organization seeking world domination.

The complaint, filed last year by lawyer Natthaporn Toprayoon, listed statements by party officials supposedly critical of Thai traditions, and pointed out that its logo is an inverted triangle, which if turned right-side up resembles the alleged symbol of the Illuminati. It claimed the Illuminati had sought to overthrow European monarchies and influence the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

The case was one of a series filed against the party and its leader, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkrit. In November, the Constitutional Court stripped Thanathorn of his lawmaker status, ruling that he violated a regulation on media ownership.

There is a widespread belief that one way or another, the party will end up being disbanded, with its leaders banned from political office for several years.

The party has taken positions explicitly critical of the military for its interference in politics. It also seeks to amend the constitution, drafted after the 2014 coup, to make it more democratic.

The party's initial support came from youth and young professionals, but it proved to have wider appeal in many parts of the country.

The army staged coups in 2006 and 2014, allowing an election last March after five years of military rule. While in power, it amended the constitution and other laws to try to ensure that pro-democracy parties could not take power.

The military and the courts are the two main pillars of the Thai establishment, and have consistently acted to curb threats to the status quo.

The court's ruling on Tuesday ordered Future Forward to revise its regulations to be clearer in order to comply with the constitution's stating that any political party must not oppose the constitutional monarchy.

The opposition party's popularity was underlined last month when several thousand of its supporters rallied in Bangkok, the nation's capital, in one of the largest political demonstrations since the 2014 coup.

"I think it shows that people will not tolerate dictatorship anymore," Thanathorn said at the time of the large turnout.