Jan 20 (LBO) State owned Road Construction & Development Company (RCDC) has closed up, with all its employees sent on compulsory leave till end January. A liquidator has not yet been appointed to dissolve the firm, but a retirement package to shed its 2000 workers, will be rolled out almost immediately, more..

Jan 20 (DM) Inspector General of Police Indra de Silva said he would take necessary action in consultations with relevant authorities to get a salary increase for all police officers as some police officers were not paid the increase of Rs. 1,250/-. more..

Jan 20 (DN) The senior officials of the Interior Ministry have pointed out to President Chandrika Kumaratunga that the Police report on the incident involving the sons of Ministers S.B. Dissanayake and Mahinda Wijesekera was incomplete. more..

Jan 20 (AP) Sri Lanka is seeking additional power generation capacity as a prevailing drought threatens to disrupt the country's hydropower-dominated electricity supply, an official said Tuesday. more..

Jan 20 (AFP) Japan's special peace envoy to Sri Lanka arrived here amid fears foreign donors may not release 4.5 billion dollars in aid due to concerns about the future of the peace process aimed at ending ethnic strife on the island. more..

Jan 20 (AFP) Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's party joined leftists to oppose the Norwegian-led peace initiative but said they would hold talks with Tamil Tiger separatists to end ethnic bloodshed. more..

Jan 20 (Reuters) Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's party formed an alliance with a Marxist party on Tuesday, sharpening a political divide on the island that has held up efforts to strike a peace deal with Tamil Tiger rebels. more..

Jan 20 (HT) The newly formed United Peoples' Freedom Alliance (UPFA), comprising Chandrika Kumaratunga's left-of-centre SLFP and the Marxist JVP, has promised to replace the presidential form of government by a parliamentary system in Sri Lanka. more..

Jan 20 (LT) Daniel Sathasivam, a Tamil businessman, who had been giving information to police about tiger activities, was shot dead by tiger pistol clique yesterday. He was shot at the communication centre he owned at Waidiya road, Dehiwela. more..

Jan 20 (SLA) A Tamil Police Constable attached to VELVETTITURAI Police station has reportedly gone missing on 15 January 2004 after he walked outside in civvies to take a private telephone call. more..

Jan 20 (SLA) The dead body of a civilian, reportedly engaged in fishing alone has been recovered from the general sea area of KOKILAI on 19 January 2004. According to eye witnesses, the fisherman, P. ARANDA LAKMAL (26) was fishing in the sea alone when he was spotted on 17 January 2004. more..

Jan 20 (TN) Mr. Somawansa Amarasingha, the secretive leader of the JVP said that his party is totally against the SLFP policy of sharing power despite the alliance both parties have formed. more..

Jan 20 (TN) Two men who were putting up flags and festoons to celebrate the signing of the MoU between SLFP and JVP were killed in a grenade attack on them in Senaikkudiyiruppu in the Puttalam district Monday, Police said. more..

Jan 20 (CI) Aravinda de Silva, the vice-president of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), has made it clear that .Marvan Atapattu is in line to inherit the Test captaincy from Hashan Tillakaratne. "Marvan knows that it is only a matter of time before he is handed over the Sri Lanka Test captaincy," said de Silva, more..

Jan 21 (IANS) The ironies are as inescapable as the contradicting prefixes to their names - diligent student and dreaded terrorist. India's three most "dreaded killers", Nalini, Murugan and Perarivalan, are accused of conspiring to kill former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi more than a decade ago. more..

Jan 21 (IANS) Ticked off by Unesco for negligence, the Bihar government is putting the final touches to a master plan for protecting the Mahabodhi temple, a world heritage site in Bodh Gaya and the birthplace of Buddhism. more..

Jan 21 (IL) President Kumaratunga has asked Mass Communication Ministry Secretary Thilak Ranaviraja to issue four new stamps to commemorate four eminent public personalities. The four new stamps, which were due to be issued in 2001, had been reportedly delayed due to political reasons. more..

Jan 21 (Bloomberg) Singapore Airlines ranked airport services at Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, second in the world in a survey of passenger satisfaction between April 2002 and March 2003. more..

Jan 21 (LBO) Cathay Pacific will fly daily between Hong Kong and Colombo from March, positioning itself to capture the yet untapped Chinese outbound market – a key growth area for Sri Lankan tourism. more..

Jan 21 (LBO) The Employees Trust Fund has sought Auditor General’s advice to dispose part of its loss making equity portfolio. ETF has fully provided for the Rs. 600 mn odd portfolio, which largely consists of investments in quoted/unquoted firms made in the early 1990’s. more..

Jan 21 (LBO) The new Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) alliance, if voted in, says it would renegotiate the terms of the US$ 4.5 billion in aid pledged by international donors last year. more..

Jan 21 (TN) "If the Sinhala government thinks that our leader's sincere efforts to find a peaceful solution is a maniffestation of weakness and thrusts a war on us, the consequences would be very grave", said Mr. T. Ramesh, LTTE's special commander for the Batticaloa-Ampara District, more..

Jan 21 (TN) The North East Community Restoration Development (NECORD) project has supplied twenty-one ambulances to rural government hospitals in the northeast province at a cost of about three million rupees. The last consignment of five ambulances was handed recently handed over the provincial ministry of health by the NECORD Tuesday, more..

Jan 21 (TN) The Jaffna Magistrate Mr.R.T.Viknarajah Tuesday instructed the Jaffna Police to submit a progress report on the Journalist Mylvaganam Nimalarajan murder case on the next date of hearing, February 24, legal sources said. more..

Jan 21 (OW) A crime wave in Sri Lanka, including murders, attributed to a growing culture of lawlessness and easy availability of arms has forced the government to announce an amnesty for owners of illegal weapons to return these to the government. more..

Jan 21 (Gulf) President Chandrika Kumaratunga's SLFP and the Marxist JVP have agreed to enter into political negotiations with Tamil guerrillas to resolve the Tamil minority ethnic conflict despite the two sides holding different views on finding a resolution to the conflict. more..

Jan 21 (KT) A. Mathews struck a solid century as Sri Lanka defeated UAE by 91 runs in the Asia Cup under-17 cricket tournament being played at different venues in India. Batting first, Sri Lanka scored a challenging 255 for nine with Mathews (131 off 124 balls with 17 fours and two sixes) doing bulk of the scoring. more..

Jan 21 (DN) Japanese special peace envoy Yasushi Akashi arriving in Colombo yesterday on a week long visit told the media that he will not interfere with the internal politics of the country. He however added that he will share "certain thoughts" with the "relevant parties" in a bid to end the political impasse. more..

Jan 21 (DM) About 1400 bags of mail and parcels have been accumulating for the past two months at the Vavuniya post office, because of an imposition of a tax by the LTTE. Vavuniya's Divisional Postal Superintendent W. Kumaraguru said the LTTE was refusing to let the mail vans pass the Omanthai checkpoint unless the department paid the tax. more..

Jan 21 (AFP) Sri Lanka's new political party formed by President Chandrika Kumaratunga and a key leftist group strongly hinted they will ask Norway to withdraw as the island's peace broker. more..

Jan 21 (TN) ‘War is not the solution to the problem. The army does not want war. But we wont let the country be divided by war’, said Maj. Gen. Susil Chandrapala, the Sri Lankan armed forces commander for Jaffna speaking at a meeting on problems faced by refugees and civilians in the peninsula’s Valigamam North Division Wednesday. more..

Jan 21 (TN) The TNA Wednesday told the Japanese special peace envoy Mr.Yasushi Akashi that the international community should come forward to help the Tamils in the north east province with an alternative plan to restore normalcy in their lives and to develop their war-ravaged homeland if the political rivalry among Sinhala political leaders stalls the peace process, more..

Jan 21 (TN) The SLMC leader Mr.Rauff Hakim told Japanese special peace envoy Mr.Yasushi Akashi that necessary steps should be taken to ensure that the foreign aid earmarked for the development of the northeast province to reach all communities in the province in a just and fair manner more..

Jan 21 (TN) “The MoU signed by the JVP and the SLFP after a year of intense dialogue fails to produce any concrete, realistic formula for a negotiated settlement of the Tamil national question. more..

Jan 21 (TN) "We are prepared to face a war" declared Minister Chandrasekeran at the Pongu Thamil rally in Batticaloa Wednesday referring to recent political developments in Colombo. He urged Tamils in all parts of Sri Lanka to unite under one banner. more..

Jan 21 (SLA) Naval troops on duty in the general sea area northwest of POINT PEDRO on 20 January 2004 were compelled to turn away two Indian trawlers poaching inside Sri Lankan waters. Troops however made their trawlers to leave the area.

Jan 21 (Misna) The rebels of the LTTE apparently used the truce in vigour for over two years to recruit 1,722 children in its lines and increment its forces from 6-thousand to 18-thousand, as well as responsibility in various other misdeeds. more..

Jan 21 (MNJ) Sri Lanka appears to be just what the doctor ordered to cure what ails this city. Devinda R. Subasinghe, Sri Lanka's ambassador to the United States, took part in a seminar at Ashland University on Tuesday. more..

Jan 21 (LBO) Rural homes in some of the least electrified areas, are plugging in their television sets to the sun. Solar home systems have changed lives, but industry wants state subsidies that made it possible, extended to far poorer areas. more..

Jan 21 (LBO) The ADB on Wednesday sanctioned a US$ 70 million loan package to kick start the Sri Lanka n rural finance sector. The Program aims to revive the rural economy and promote private-sector led economic growth. more..

Jan 21 (AT) Douglas Devananda catalogued the human rights violations by the Tamil rebel outfit LTTE after the signing of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) with the Government of Sri Lanka, since February 2002. more..

Jan 21 (AT) The full text of the Memorandum of Understanding sign between the SLFP and the JVP at a ceremony held on January 20, at the Bandaranaike International Memorial Conference Centre Colombo is given below: more..

Jan 21 (DJ) The recent alliance formed between a Marxist party and President Chandrika Kumaratunga is against widespread privatizations and only favors opening up the country to foreign investment that won't hurt local producers, a member of parliament for the Marxist party said Wednesday. more..

Jan 21 (Reuters) Sri Lanka's new opposition political alliance pledged on Wednesday to continue a peace bid with the island's Tamil Tiger rebels if it came to power, but gave conflicting signals on how it would do that. more..

Jan 21 (AFP) Tamil Tiger rebels warned that Sri Lanka could return to war following President Chandrika Kumaratunga's latest political pact with a leftist party opposing autonomy for minority Tamils. more..

Jan 21 (HT) The SLFP-JVP alliance would "thoroughly review" Norway's role as the facilitator in the Sri Lankan peace process at the "appropriate time", a spokesman for the alliance said in Colombo on Wednesday. more..

Jan 21 (HT) The LTTE has said that it will not talk to the United Peoples' Freedom Alliance (UPFA), comprising Chandrika Kumaratunga's SLFP and the JVP, because the UPFA does not recognise the LTTE as the sole representative of Tamil. more..

Jan 21 (CI) Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) have signed a television broadcasting agreement with TEN Sports for the forthcoming Australia tour of Sri Lanka. Australia are due to play five ODIs and three Tests in February and March. more..

Jan 21 (CI) The Sri Lankan Test captaincy today became a contentious issue because of the national selection committee's policy of continuing with two captains. The national cry is for one captain for both Test and one-day internationals. more..

Jan 21 (IANS) Just a decade after it ranted against "Indian imperialism", a radical Marxist group here says the best guarantee for Sri Lanka is the country's proposed defence pact with India. more..