Aug 7 (TM) The family of legendary Gypsies singer Sunil Perera has stated that he is recovering from Covid-19 and is under treatment at an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Accordingly, his condition is reported to be stable. Dismissing rumours of the passing of the popular singer, the Perera family notes that they are disturbed by such false rumours. Further, the family has requested the people to stop spreading unwanted false stories. more..

Aug 7 (Island) SJB MP Lakshman Kiriella yesterday requested the govt to impose travel restrictions to prevent Delta variant of coronavirus entering the upcountry areas. MP said that the Delta variant was not found the upcountry areas. �The Kandy district and upcountry areas could be saved from this virus variant if the govt imposes travel restrictions without further delay,� he said. MP said: �We, as the opposition, wish that more..

Aug 7 (FT) Indoor air pollution contributes to the development of chronic lung disease, lung cancer and infections especially among the people with existing lung disease. The importance of ensuring good indoor air quality has heightened with the spread of SARS COV-2 virus through air. Hence, employers must ensure that adequate precautions are taken to improve the indoor air quality at work premises. This can be achieved by passive flow of fresh air through windows, doors, air vents more..

Aug 7 (CT) Colombo Chief Magistrate Buddhika Sri Ragala yesterday released from all charges, Ahmed Alawdeen, the father of the suicide cadre who blew himself up at the St. Anthony�s Church, Kochchikade during the Easter Sunday attacks in 2019. Alawdeen had been in remand for over two years. The Court decided to release the suspect from the case based on submissions received from the Attorney General, who had informed Court, that he does not wish to further sustain the trial against the suspect more..

Aug 7 (CT) Intelligence Services on Friday, informed Prez Rajapaksa that a total of 120 protests had been held across the country last month and at least 1,500 people had taken part in each of these protests. People getting together in this manner, without following health guidelines, had led to the rapid spread of COVID-19 across the country, they had pointed out. This was informed to the Prez during a meeting held with more..

Aug 7 (TM) With reference to what he refers to as the abduction of senior lecturers, student leaders, and others by police personnel in civilian attire, TNA MP M. A. Sumanthiran warned the Minister of Public Security not to bring back memories of white van culture. �Why do they have to come in civvies? Why do they have to come in white vans? You are reminding them of the white van culture; you want to tell the country � �remember we did this earlier we have brought it back� you want to bring back more..

Aug 7 (TM) Prof. Neelika Malavige from the Department of Immunology and Molecular Medicine at the University of Sri J'pura notes that talking and singing plays a significant role in Covid-19 transmission. She mentioned this on her official twitter handle by quoting from a paper titled Viral Load of SARS-CoV-2 in Respiratory Aerosols Emitted by COVID-19 Patients while Breathing, Talking, and Singing published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society more..

Aug 7 (EN) Sri Lanka will mandate a 70% renewable energy share by 2030 forcing state-run CEB to prepare a long term generation plan to that effect, renewable energy minister Duminda Dissanayake said. �We have decided to produce 70% of the electricity from renewable energy by 2030,� State Minister for Renewable Energy Duminda Dissanayake told parliament. �The balance 30% will be from other sources. more..

Aug 7 (Island) A sinister campaign is reportedly underway to sabotage the army�s successful vaccination drive, which has so far benefited hundreds of thousands of people. Having been called in to assist health workers in carrying out the inoculation campaign, the armed forces have gone above and beyond the call of duty. They have helped accelerate the jab drive so much so that the country has received praise from the WHO. One cannot but doff one�s hat to them for their more..

Aug 7 (TM) Together with the assistance of health authorities and the officials of the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC), community police units have launched an operation to search for unvaccinated individuals in the city of Colombo. SDIG Ajith Rohana says that an inoculation programme is operative at the Sugathadasa Stadium to vaccinate people aged above 30 years living in Colombo city who have not received a single dose of a COVID jab. Accordingly, nearly 5,000 people more..

Aug 7 (AD) The trade unions representing teachers and principals have decided to call off their protest march which was scheduled from Pasyala to Colombo today. The decision was reached after taking into account the prevailing COVID-19 situation in the country, Ulapane Sumangala Thero, the president of teacher-principal trade union federation said, commenting on the matter. more..

Aug 7 (Island) Sri Lanka will see between 200 and 250 deaths a day in two to three weeks unless the govt took drastic action to curb the spread of COVID-19, Prof. Suneth Agampodi, Founder Professor and Chair � Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Rajarata Uni warns. Prof. Agampodi said they had developed a prediction model with two SL colleagues in Harvard and MIT and the model predicted numbers six days back more..

Aug 7 (AD) Sri Lanka is expected to receive 728,000 more doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines from Japan later today, says State Minister Prof. Channa Jayasumana. The shipment, airfreighted from Japan by a SriLankan Airlines flight, will touch down at the BIA in Katunayake this evening. Through the COVAX facility, the Japanese Govt provided approximately 1.45 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in Japan to further boost Sri Lanka�s national inoculation drive. more..

Aug 7 (Hindu) India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives have agreed to work on four pillars of security cooperation, covering areas of marine security, human trafficking, counter-terrorism, and cyber security, in a recent virtual meeting of top security officials of the three countries. The Deputy National Security Adviser-level meeting was hosted online by SL on Wednesday, and chaired by General LHSC Silva, Chief of Defence Staff and more..

Aug 7 (Island) Bishop of the Central Province Dr. Vianney Fernando has, in a letter to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, requested a speedy investigation into the death of Jude Kumar Ishalini, 16, who died while working as a domestic worker at the residence of MP Rishad Bathiudeen. The Bishop has asked the Prez to ensure that all those responsible for her death are brought to justice. Several other senior priests in the province, Fr. Ivan Jayasundara, Fr. Edwin Rodrigo and more..

Aug 7 (MD) Stepping into the new role of a Country Manager for Sri Lanka and Maldives in July 2020 during a global pandemic was no easy feat. For the first three months I worked from Washington DC, due to travel restrictions. Making connections with the country office staff and government counterparts from across the world was perhaps the most difficult part. COVID-19 had already reached Sri Lanka and Maldives and our emergency response operations were in progress. more..

Aug 7 (CT) Following the directive by the Merchant Shipping Secretariat to the owners of the MV X-Press Pearl ship to remove the wreckage at the earliest possible, including underwater containers, the ship owners said they would commence the process in October, said Chairperson, MEPA Dharshani Lahandapura. She pointed out that the owners of the Ship have appointed Resolve Marine, more..

Aug 7 (AD) Three dead bodies including that of a 10-year-old boy have been discovered from a house in Mahananneriya area in Galgamuwa, SDIG Ajith Rohana said. Among the deceased are a woman and a man identified as her paramour. Both were aged 28 years. Preliminary investigations have uncovered that the man had killed the woman and her son following an argument and committed suicide afterwards. Magistrate�s inquest and the post-mortem on the dead bodies will be more..

Aug 7 (AD) The COPE, chaired by Prof. Charitha Herath, unanimously agreed to request Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardana to hold a 2-day debate on two COPE reports tabled in the Ninth Parliament. The second COPE report tabled in Parliament on April 06, 2021 is a special report on the SL Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) Invested and Established by the Mahapola Higher Education Scholarship Trust Fund. The debate on second report presented by the COPE is expected to more..

Aug 8 (CT) The tragic death of a sixteen years young housemaid, Ishalini, occurred in a Muslim politician�s household has created endless controversies, protest rallies and conspiratorial theories among competing vested interests, and is dragging some parts of the country into a communal frenzy against Muslims. That incident is now being investigated by security authorities and therefore it is advisable to wait for the findings. If it was a calculated murder, then the full force of law more..

Aug 8 (SO) If you read daily updates about the Covid-19 pandemic in newspapers, one term may have caught your attention � vaccine passports. It essentially means that you can show proof of vaccination against Covid, either on paper or on a smartphone. Actually, vaccine passports are not a new phenomenon. Travellers heading to Africa for the last several decades have been required to carry such a vaccine passport certifying their vaccination against Yellow Fever, an endemic disease more..

Aug 8 (SO) Govt is powering through amid tragic circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic by adopting pragmatic policies to move the SL economy forward. Instead of borrowing from the IMF with unrealistic conditions and falling into further debt, creative and innovative policies have been adopted by the Govt to attract foreign investment, especially through infrastructure projects. While controlling exchange outflows with import controls, more..

Aug 8 (CT) Covid-19 pandemic undoubtedly is the central challenge SL is facing today along with other countries. All indications are that the world might not be able to come to normal at least until 2023. This is assuming that our govts would be able to implement viable vaccination programs and other necessary measures with people�s cooperation. Even that normal might not be the past normal with most countries facing economic devastations, weak workforces on health conditions, more..

Aug 8 (TM) Preoccupied with its obsession of cracking down on the wave of ongoing protests, it appears that the powers that be have lost the plot in its fight against the raging Covid pandemic. The steep increase in the number of cases as well as deaths over the past week, point to a state of complacency and loss of focus. Donald Trump-style method of creating a false sense of success by reducing the number of tests so that a lesser case load could be shown, proved disastrous for more..

Aug 8 (SO) Minister Dr. Bandula Gunawardana said that the Opposition is full of hatred and they cannot tolerate their electoral defeat. Therefore, they have engaged in a program to somehow grab power in an unscrupulous manner. However, it would never become successful as the people are more intelligent than they think. Minister said when the entire world has faced to Covid-19, Opposition in SL may be the only Opposition more..

Aug 8 (Island) A regular day at work. A medical student, Niluka (not her real name), comes to my office to discuss the presentation she is due to make at a research symposium. In the middle of our meeting she is in tears. Her mother, a single mother, who works as a security guard in remote Polonnaruwa, cannot afford her boarding fees as she has to cover her sister�s A/L tuition classes, as well as her brother�s medicines for a recent health issue. more..

Aug 8 (ST) Health experts kept warning ad nauseam of yet another post-Avurudu surge in detected cases � and that rising fatalities from the COVID-19 virus were on the cards. Given the country�s precarious economic situation, the Govt opted to ignore the health voices and yield to the pressure from other voices to open up the economy. Now, the statistics are alarming, and one suspects the official figures are conservative. There�s no gainsaying that it was indeed a difficult choice for govt to balance more..

Aug 8 (ST) As medical specialists warned that the country was about to be engulfed in a COVID-19 tsunami, Govt and the opposition spent much of their time in Parliament this week trading accusations as to who was responsible for the situation getting so out of hand. On Tuesday, displaying photographs that showed COVID patients lying on mats along corridors in several key hospitals, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa pointed out that hospitals had run out of beds more..

Aug 8 (SO) National Olympic Committee of SL (NOCSL) has obtained rare overseas playing opportunities for SL football players through their top contacts in a number of meetings which they have had on the sidelines of the XXX11 Olympic Games here. President of the NOCSL Suresh Subramaniam and Secretary General Maxwell de Silva had a fruitful round of talks with one of the most respected Olympic officials who not only heads his country�s NOC but is also the head of more..

Aug 8 (ST) In recent times, India�s Union Ministers and State politicians are calling for further people-to-people connectivity between SL and India for tourism purposes as most of the tourists who visit Sri Lanka during the pre-pandemic period were from India. As part of this, plans are underway from the Indian side to revive the India-Sri Lanka ferry service between Karaikal in the Union Territory of Puducherry and Jaffna more..

Aug 8 (ST) My dear Delta, I thought I should write to you as you have invaded us like no one has ever before and are claiming the lives of dozens of people on a daily basis � and we are told the worst is yet to come. We in Paradise have been through tsunamis and wars but nothing has affected us this much. You had your origins in India, when you mutated from the original coronavirus to become deadlier because you went from person to person much more easily. more..

Aug 8 (TM) Recently I was thinking about why people do certain things and why they don�t. I realised there are things that have been banned but still, people do. Consumption of certain types of drugs is just an example. At the same time, there are things that are not banned, but still, some people don�t use them. Smoking is a good example. It�s not banned but data shows that people are now less likely to smoke due to health reasons. Analysing human behaviour shows us that there are more..

Aug 8 (ST) For Mathilda Karlsson, the word heartbreak has a closely-knit relationship off late. On Aug 3, 2021, her heartbreak was purely for failing herself and failing a nation�s hope, when she competed representing SL in the individual jumping event at Tokyo Olympics. Karlsson entered the course as the 13th competitor with her horse Chopin VA and maintained a decent timing until she was eliminated attempting more..

Aug 8 (SO) Gymnast Milka Gehani de Silva who took part at the Tokyo Olympics said that she would win a medal for the country at the upcoming Asian and Commonwealth Games. The experience at the Tokyo Olympics has been a turning point in her life. Milka thanked the Minister Namal Rajapaksa, the National Olympic Committee of SL (NOCSL) and CRYSBRO. Being the first SL representative at the Olympics in the Gymnastics sport, Milka expects to train in Japan until 2024. more..

Aug 8 (ST) Sri Lanka Athletics (SLA) has decided to indefinitely postpone the planned second phase of 99th SL Athletics National Championships, which was to be held at the Sugathadasa Stadium on Monday and Tuesday behind closed doors. The reason for the sudden change of plans, according to SLA sources, is the rapid rise of COVID-19 cases and the athletic governing body�s unwillingness to expose athletes and officials to undue risk, being given the gravity of the present situation more..

Aug 8 (ST) Sri Lanka Cricket�s (SLC) revenue took a sharp dip in 2020 following the cancellation of as many as six inbound tours from the seven listed due to the pandemic. But the Board�s legal expenses during the year skyrocketed with annual accounts reporting fees paid of Rs114mn. This figure is a 114% increase compared to the 2019 financial year, where the Board�s legal expenses were Rs 55.7mn. more..

Aug 8 (SO) The second quarter GDP growth figures are expected to be higher than the first quarter, projecting better and brighter prospects for the economy backed by an accelerated vaccination drive and resumption of work in key sectors, Central Bank, Director Economic Research, Dr. Chandranath Amarasekara said. He said according to information the second quarter growth rate would be in double digits, driven by the extremely low base in the comparative quarter last year more..

Aug 8 (ST) D P Global Ventures (DPGV), the agricultural wing of the David Pieris Group of Companies, recently concluded its first export consignment to the Russian market. The first shipment comprised a range of dehydrated fruits such as Mango, Banana and Pineapple. DPGV manages and operates its own plantations as well as manufactures and markets quality organic, vegan and conventional agri products at their BRC ISO 22000:2005, HACCP certified facility and more..