Dec 6 (LG) According to Colombo media (Tamil) a very serious claim has been made without quoting the name of a female journalist that Dr Jayalath Jayawardene had participated in the demonstrations of the LTTE in London. Dr Jayalath Jayawardene is a regular visitor to the United Kingdom and has engaged in wide-ranging forums including radio discussions and interactive public discussion programmes involving the cross section of the Sri Lankan Diaspora community. more..

Dec 6 (CI) Kumar Sangakkara, the Sri Lanka captain, has described the rain-hit, three-Test series against the West Indies as probably the worst Test series of his life. "I've never seen anything like this before," Sangakkara said after persistent rain washed out the fifth and final day of the third Test at Pallakele. The series was drawn 0-0 with the first and second Tests also ending in draws due to bad weather. more..

Dec 6 (TC) The UPFA, in my view, reached its climax at the Parliamentary election held in April 2010. Since then although the UPFA government has been able to secure the support of more MPs to obtain two-third majority necessary for constitutional changes, it seems its support base is decreasing gradually. The cancellation of the scheduled address by President Rajapaksa at the Oxford University may be treated as the first major setback for more..

Dec 6 (TC) President Mahinda Rajapaksa started his second innings as President when he was sworn in at an auspicious hour on November 19, 2010 with all the pomp and ceremony associated with the coronation of royalty. �It Is fitting in a way� thousands of his supporters would say because President Rajapaksa is now �monarch of all he surveys.� Not only his UPFA has bagged two thirds majority in parliament but also dutifully amended the Constitutional two-term restriction more..

Dec 6 (TC) Amaradeva is the creator of modern Sinhala Music. His biography is its history. He set out to discover the genuine idiom of Sinhala music, the highest development of which to date is the art song. He sensed that in this Indian isle called Lanka the foundation of its music had to be based on the Indian raagahadhari tradition. It had to derive its sustenance from Lanka�s folk music. Its enrichment had to come from judicious interaction with other musical traditions of humankind. more..

Dec 6 (TC) Two Sri Lankan Tamils have contributed immensely in internationalizing the Sri Lankan Tamil cause after the communal holocaust in July 1983. The first was Mr. Kandaswamy, who started the Tamil Information Centre in London. Through sheer hard work, perseverance and persuasive skill Kandaswamy sensitized many human rights organizations like the International Commission of Jurists, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to champion the cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils. more..

Dec 6 (TC) The massive WikiLeaks detonation took place in the wake of a significant conjunction of events for Sri Lanka. That was the celebration of Mahaveera day by the Diaspora Tamils and the visit to Jaffna by India�s Foreign Minister SM Krishna. Remember Mahaveera day, when Prabhakaran had his torchlight parades, and Sri Lanka�s state television, Rupavahini, uplinked his speech to the BBC and European stations in accordance with an arrangement entered into when more..

Dec 6 (GDI) The countdown to the ceremonial opening of the much-awaited �Abimansala� at Anuradhapura has already set in with its construction work, tirelessly executed by Sri Lanka Engineer Service (SLE) soldiers day and night, is now being completed several months, ahead of the projected deadline. The �Abimansala�, the brainchild of Lieutenant General Jagath Jayasuriya, Commander of the Army, designed exclusively to house totally dependent disable War Heroes on more..

Dec 6 (LG) The Adolph Hitler�s legacy is still haunting the world. Since the end of the World War 2, the world is still to grapple with the very appalling crimes against humanity by some states and non state actors. The very purpose of the formation of the United Nations remain undermined and the UN being a body representing the sovereign nations is unable to assert its mandate on member states on crimes against humanity, due to inherent weaknesses in its functioning. more..

Dec 6 (LG) I came to England to see my friend Reg Goodwin, Dean of my college at Cambridge. His son Mark who visited me several times in Lanka, wished to have a function on behalf of his father who will be 88 in December. Even for gold I could not refuse and I faced this terrible weather to come here. When I arrived, suddenly I was invited to address Heroes Day. The remembrance meeting was held at the Excel auditorium in London. more..

Dec 6 (NF) The government is creating various conspiracies to disrupt the UNP convention scheduled for the 12th, says Tissa Attanayake, General Secretary of the party. Attanayake said the government was against the new UNP constitution being endorsed. He also said that following the endorsement of the new party constitution on the 12th of this month, the next phase of work would be endorsed within four months. more..

Dec 6 (LG) The poor are ugly, unclean and undesirable; they obstruct flood-control, law and order and development. Colombo cannot become a modern metropolis with clean air, unblocked drains and safe streets while the poor are here. To win the development war, the poor must be removed, en masse. So the Rajapaksas would have us believe. A �humanitarian operation� is to be launched, to liberate the poor from their squalid existence, and turn Colombo into a �slum-free city�. more..

Dec 6 (TC) Sri Lanka has been provoked, and that too, in an unprecedented manner. Not necessarily due to the Oxford Union�s unilateral decision to cancel the scheduled speech of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. But very simply because the cancellation was an outcome of the threats posed by the pro-LTTE, pro-separatist/eelamist groups which, having supported terrorism and the killing of thousands of innocent Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim people are now demanding an more..

Dec 6 (Island) The budget 2011 has not allocated enough funds to the country�s ailing Health sector faced with an acute shortage of drugs and equipment, the JVP says. JVP MP Vijitha Herath said that the government had allocated only Rs. 80,000 million for health. Of this allocation Rs. 15,000 million would be spent on drug imports. The remaining Rs 65,000 million would not suffice to meet the country�s health cost next year, he said. more..

Dec 6 (Island) The inevitable has happened in the US diplomatic cables scandal. Wikileaks has come under cyber attacks. It was only the other day that the US presidential hopeful Sara Palin lashed out at the Obama administration urging it to use cyber tools to deal with Wikileaks and treat its co-founder Julian Assange like bin Laden. A few days on, the whistle-blowing website is at the receiving end of a spate of distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and more..

Dec 6 (DM) In the aftermath of what happened or did not happen during President Mahinda Rajapaksa�s controversial visit to Britain last week and the disgraceful scenes in parliament where a UNP frontliner was virtually manhandled by senior ministers, the government needs to reflect deeply on the reality that we are in a post war era and not a post conflict era. We do have peace but history has shown us that lasting peace will come only through justice founded on the deepest values and more..

Dec 6 (NF) All eight spill gates of the Victoria Reservoir was opened today and according to D.M.C. Dissanayake, Director-General of the Mahaweli Authority, this is the first time after 14 years that all spill gates of the reservoir has been opened. �However, as the water vapour was covering the whole area, two gates were closed,� he said. The spill gates of Victoria Reservoir is designed to open automatically, and accordingly, all eight gates opened. more..

Dec 6 (DM) An army officer, said to be a corporal of the Commando Regiment located at the Kilinochchi Army Camp, had been arrested for possession of Motorola equipment, a pistol and live cartridges believed to have been used by the LTTE organization on Friday night, the Kochchikade Police states. The suspect army officer had attempted to escape but had been arrested in the Daluwakotuwa area by the police with the help of a team of army intelligence officers. more..

Dec 6 (DM) Residents in the Trincomalee District had filed more than 200 submissions with the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) during sessions held upto yesterday, according to informed sources in the area with complaints against the UN, several NGO and INGOs and a few against the government. The Centre for Human Rights (CHR) Sri Lanka said that these submissions included land issues, disappearances etc. more..

Dec 6 (DN) The mobile phone usage ratio in the country has increased to 85 percent recording a rapid growth during the past seven years, Minister Ranjith Siyambalapitiya said. He said that the public demand for fixed lines has now diverged to mobile phones. Mobile phone usage ratio was 12.1 percent for 100 people in 2003. This has increased to 85 percent now. The ratio for fixed line telephones was 4.9 percent in 2003. more..

Dec 6 (DN) Panadura Provincial High Court Judge Malanee Gunaratne sentenced a schoolteacher of Sri Sumangala College, Panadura who pleaded guilty to assaulting a student to two years� hard labour and suspended the sentence to 10 years and ordered to pay Rs 10,000 as State cost. The Judge also directed the accused to pay Rs 500,000 as compensation to the 10-year-old student and deposit the money at the Court to be kept until the student reached 17 years. more..

Dec 6 (DT) The relations between Pakistan and Sri Lanka date back to formative years of the two countries that laid the foundation of their friendship in 1948 when then Sri Lankan prime minister DS Senanayake visited Pakistan. The two countries have continued to maintain strong, robust and reliable relations through increased interaction at the highest political level and people-to-people contact. Their bilateral relations, under the overarching umbrella of SAARC, more..

Dec 6 (TA) In Sri Lanka the undisputed pin-up king is a middle-aged president with a Tom Selleck moustache and a Cheshire grin. So it's no great surprise that Sri Lanka's recent decision to ban advertising images of scantily clad models raised barely a whimper. Most Sri Lankans have also chosen to ignore recent appeals by government hardliners for people to renounce cigarettes and for the country to become alcohol-free by 2016. more..

Dec 6 (BBC) External Affairs Ministry of Sri Lanka will assist the president's secretariat on inquiries on the president's recent visit to the UK where he was due to give a speech at the Oxford Union. The Oxford Union cancelled the speech due to due to lack of security and sheer volume of protest expected against the President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Deputy External Affairs Minister Neomal Perera said "the visit was a private one and it was handled by the presidential secretariat". more..

Dec 6 (BBC) Mothers and wives of the disappeared and abducted in Kuchchaweli call for the safe return of their loved once. Giving evidence to the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), relatives asked the commission to return their husbands, sons and relatives. LLRC received 383 complaints during its three day hearing in Trincomalee district and eighty percent of the complaints were about abductions and disappearances, reported RG Dharmadasa. more..

Dec 6 (MoD) "All of us desire a better Colombo; a city that is clean, green, attractive and dynamic. Let us work together and work hard to achieve this. Together, we can transform Colombo into a world-class city, globally recognized as a thriving, dynamic and attractive regional hub that is the centrepiece of 21st Century Sri Lanka: the Miracle of Asia", stated Secretary Defence Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Thursday (Dec 01). more..

Dec 6 (LB) Kalpitiya which is a picturesque area is a peninsula and is an ideal location to attract tourists. What is happening now is large swathes of land belonging to the state are being illegally occupied by various people under the guise of areas being already in occupation thus depriving the state of billions of rupees. Various individuals have taken over hundreds of state owned land in the Kalpitiya area, which is set to be developed as a tourist hub, more..

Dec 6 (SMH) Ulpotha, a village in central Sri Lanka, could have been dreamt up by Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose writing combines magic and reality. The mud-brick rooms of the yoga and meditation retreat where I'm staying are almost entirely open to the elements. There's only one supporting wall, where a bed sits with a tightly tucked mosquito net. Lamps glow low around the huts and monkeys run past. more..

Dec 6 (DM) Due to the differences of opinion regarding �Patriotism� between him and the Leadership of the UNP, ministerial portfolios were given even to the uneducated with Grade II and VIII qualifications granting them better recognition, while he was constantly ignored, the Governor of Sabaragamuwa Province and former Speaker of the House W.J.M. Lokubandara, said. He was elected to the parliament in 1977 after serving as an Asst. Director in more..

Dec 6 (Island) The JVP yesterday condemned the pro�LTTE protests in London organized against President Mahinda Rajapaksa�s visit there. They said their party was always against separatism as a matter of policy. JVP MP Vijitha Herath said no one should be allowed to raise the LTTE flag. Herath said that President of the Oxford Union James Kingston had invited the Sri Lankan President and a probe was called for to find whether there were links between the LTTE and some of the union members. more..

Dec 6 (NS) With Qatar being picked to host 2022 FIFA World Cup, a job bonanza for construction workers has been created in that country to put up the necessary infrastructure, including new air-conditioned football stadiums. Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau chairman Kingsley Ranawake told The Nation that the bureau would work outside the normal procedure in such a situation to grab and fill whatever job opportunities available in Qatar. more..

Dec 6 (Island) Elephant House, one of Sri Lanka�s strongest brands and a household name for over 100 years, has announced the launch of its own new cola, �Kik�, �which is a giant step towards covering the entire soft drinks market in their existing product portfolio� the company said in a statement. "the Company carried out extensive research in order to get the right formulation, positioning strategy and packaging by drawing expertise from more..

Dec 6 (NS) The former editor-in-chief of Dawasa and Riviresa newspapers, Cyril A Seelawimala (80), died at his residence in Kiribathgoda. After serving as a journalist for 30 years he became a leading script and lyrics writer. Seelawimala composed lyrics for 42 films and prominent singers such as Victor Ratnayake, Sanath Nandasiri, Clarence Wijewardena and many others. Among some of his popular songs are Mohen Mulawela, Meth Mal Pipila, and Sudo Poddak Inna. more..

Dec 6 (NS) Humanitarian organisations have raised concerns over the increasing withdrawal of such bodies from the Mannar District. The latest Joint Humanitarian Update (JHU) compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on December 3 said the reason for the withdrawal was the perceptions that the need for their work has diminished with the completion of resettlement in the district. more..

Dec 6 (Island) In a post-Budget 2011 move aimed at strengthening the Board of Investment, the government is likely to re-appoint financier Dhammika Perera head of that institution. Perera is likely to take over the BOI before the conclusion of the budget debate on Dec. 10. He will succeed Jayantha Bandaranaike, former Managing Director of Ceylon Tobacco. Treasury Chief Dr. P.B. Jayasundera has lashed out at the BOI in the recent past for more..

Dec 6 (ST) The Oxford University Sri Lanka Society has called for the resignation of the Oxford Union President James Kingston following this week's fiasco in which President Mahinda Rajapaksa was told he couldn�t address the Union to which he was invited, 24 hours before the event. In a statement issued yesterday, the Society blamed Mr. Kingston for his "highly unbecoming" conduct in bowing to pressure and questioned his unilateral decision to cancel the address by President Rajapaksa. more..

Dec 6 (ST) It was Dilan Fernando, D Phil student in Biochemistry/Immuno Genetics and President, Oxford Sri Lanka Society, who said sorry over President Rajapaksa's inability to address the Oxford Union on December 3. It has come to light that Fernando had interacted with a Sri Lankan MP to have the Oxford Union invite President Rajapaksa for a second time. Even the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in London was unaware of the organising until the more..

Dec 6 (DM) Amidst talks about the government�s attempts to unseat UNP MP Dr. Jayalath Jayawardane, former Secretary General of Parliament Priyani Wijesekara said that an MP could not be unseated through a �mere resolution� in the House. Mrs. Wijesekara said that it could be done only through a judicial process. Earlier, the government vowed in Parliament to bring a resolution against Dr. Jayawardane alleging that he violated the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution by more..

Dec 6 (DM) Appointment of members to the seven commissions through the Parliamentary Council is expected to be completed within a fortnight, a senior Government spokesman said. According to him the seven Commissions that were introduced by the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution are due to be functional effective from 01st of January 2011. Under the Eighteenth (18th) Amendment that was passed on September 9 a Parliamentary Commission is due to be established. more..

Dec 6 (DN) Officials attached to the Disaster Management Ministry, National Building Research Organization, Meteorology Department, Government Agents, Provincial Chief Ministers and Ministers will meet President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Wednesday (08) to discuss about the country�s disaster reduction activities as the parties will hold the fourth meeting of the National Council for Disaster Management (NCDM) at the Presidential Secretariat. more..