July 1 (DN) Two specially designed rehabilitation projects at Sigiriya assigned to the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau are nearing completion. The Japanese Bank for International Co-operation funded, (Rs. 50 million) projects are the new stainless steel platform at the Sigiri frescoes pocket and the reinforcement of the rock wall around the fortress. Once the new platform is established visitors could view the full range of frescoes safely. more..

July 1 (DN) The Sri Lanka Sharia Council whole heartedly congratulates and pays tribute to President Mahinda Rajapaksa for his selfless, commitment, courage, dedication, valiant and tireless efforts by providing leadership and profound direction to the gallant heroes who sacrificed their lives to protect the sovereignty and national integrity of our beautiful Motherland. more..

July 1 (Island) Education in all forms would be his priority since the common man looked forward for development of education, Eastern Province Chief Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan said. The TMVP also pledged support to the Government from outside whenever and wherever it was required, he told The Island. The Chief Minister also said that he had raised the matter of education during meetings with the Minister of Education Susil Premajayanth since more..

July 1 (DM) The All Party Representative Committee (APRC) set up to work out proposals to resolve the ethnic conflict now faces an uncertain future after the Peace Secretariat which functioned as the APRC secretariat was asked to wind up its affairs by the end of this month. However when contacted by Daily Mirror the chief of the government peace secretariat Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha said the APRC would be given one month’s time to complete its deliberations and more..

July 1 (Island) Secretary General of the Government Peace Secretariat Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha said the government was anxious to develop the infrastructure base that would enable the private sector play a greater role in the country’s economy because it is capable of providing opportunities sans discrimination. "A lot of the country’s problems happened because we treated a community badly, although it was not intentional, more..

July 1 (Island) Effective deployment of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and Beechcraft on surveillance and intelligence gathering missions, had been one of the critical factors in Sri Lanka’s successful military strategy against the LTTE. The No 11 Squadron comprised of two types of Israeli built UAVs and US-built Beechcraft of the No 08 Squadron had facilitated a three-year-long offensive spearheaded by the Army which brought the LTTE to its knees last month. more..

July 1 (LBO) A decision on a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for Sri Lanka which is expected in "four to five weeks" will be a test of the objectivity of the organization, a government minister said. Deputy finance minister Sarath Amunugama said technical negotiations were positive for a 1.9 billion bailout when the United States and Britain started to make statements on Sri Lanka's loan application. more..

July 1 (DM) Political parties, civil society groups and NGOs monitoring elections expressed their deep concern yesterday about the danger of people in Uva being prevented from voting at the August 8 Provincial Council polls as a result of not having a valid identity cards. They claimed that in the Moneragala and Badulla Districts some 25 per cent of voters did not posses either a national ID card or any other form of identification and more..

July 1 (NT) Chief Minister M Karunanidhi on Wednesday expressed hope that a government led by Tamils would be formed soon in Sri Lanka. He also said that the ailing Tamils in the island nation could at present get respite only through the Mahinda Rajapakse government. Replying to a special call attention motion in the Assembly over the plight of Tamils in the neighbouring country, he said the conflict in Lanka between Sinhalese and Tamils was taking place for more than five decades now. more..

July 1 (DM) The CID informed the Colombo Chief Magistrate that the director of the Kilinochchi hospital who fled to the LTTE controlled area during the final count down attack on the LTTE had been directly involved with the LTTE. The CID filing a report on their investigations in court informed the magistrate that the Director of the Kilinochchi hospital Dr. Thangamoorthi Satyamoorthy, LTTE doctor Kandasamy Thurainathan and nurse Arumugam Jeyaluxmy had fled to more..

July 1 (DN) The media has reported that the stages two and three of the on-going Norochcholai coal power plant construction in Puttalam would also commence shortly, with the signing of the agreements on 29th June 2009. With the President and the Government firmly behind the project, construction of stage one is moving ahead, to be followed by stages two and three in the same premises. more..

July 1 (LNP) An angry President yesterday warned Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka not to hinder his efforts to implement 13th Amendment to the Constitution and guarantee devolution of power to the provinces. Now that a 30-year war had been brought to an end, the aspirations of the people of the North and East should be met, he told a group of government ministers at Temple Trees yesterday, according to highly placed sources. more..

July 1 (EBR) Sri Lanka’s first solar power enabled village has been established at Galgamuwa in Madulla of Monaragala district. Under the project solar power facilities have been provided for 300 houses in Galgamuwa village. The ministry of Power and Energy says the government of India has provided grants in this regard. The project is implemented under the government’s renewable Energy Development Programme with more..

July 1 (FL) THE debris and imagery left behind by the political tsunami that hit Sri Lanka in the form of the announcement of LTTE chief Velupillai Prabakaran’s death on May 19 and the Tigers’ decimation as a conventional military force is yet to sink in. The repercussions are being experienced by the stakeholders in the three-decade-old ethnic conflict, but not necessarily registering. Only time will tell, if not entirely heal, where the island nation is headed. more..

July 1 (FL) A REPORT titled “The war against the media is not over” in Sri Lanka’s English weekly Sunday Leader on June 7 argues that in post-war Sri Lanka, the culture of impunity must give way to an inclusive and democratic culture. On June 18, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said at least 11 Sri Lankan journalists had fled the country in 2008, accounting for a quarter of all such cases worldwide last year. more..

July 1 (DM) ‘If they be two, they are two so; As stiffe twin compasses are two; Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no show; To move, but doth, if the'other doe’; John Donne’s 'A Valediction: forbidding mourning’ is best known for his rather odd imagery where a lover compares himself and his lady love to a compass, pending a separation. He compares his grief-stricken love of his life to the fixed foot of a compass and himself to the foot which moves. more..

July 1 (Tehelka) Prabakaran had everything: territory, international support and committed fighters. Senior journalist Shyam Tekwani, who has covered the LTTE and Sri Lanka for almost three decades tracks the alarming rise and astonishing fall of a man who sought to live to fight another day, but found only death at the hands of his nemesis. More vividly than anything that came afterwards in the Sri Lanka war, I remember his first handshake. more..

July 2 (CI) With little chance of an out-and-out result and rain threatening to mar proceedings, SLC XI captain Thilina Kandamby gave Pakistan their best shot at a win in the tour game, declaring at 137 for 2 and setting the visitors a tempting target of 83. However, a mini-collapse which saw Pakistan lose 4 for 29 put an end to the possibility of an outright result. The Pakistanis would no doubt have their team strategy in place ahead of the first Test against Sri Lanka in Galle, more..

July 2 (Xinhua) The Sri Lankan government said Wednesday that it has decided to relax stringent security procedures that prevailed on the transportation of goods to the north with the conclusion of the island's long drawn-out civil war. Jayantha Gamage, a senior deputy inspector-general of police said new procedures will come into force from Wednesday. "On the defense secretary's instructions we have relaxed the procedures. more..

July 2 (Xinhua) The Sri Lankan government said Wednesday that it had duly informed the government of India of its work plan related to the IDPs in the north. Mahinda Samarasinghe, the minister of Human Rights told the local radio station Sirasa that a top level Sri Lankan delegation which visited New Delhi recently had apprised the Indian government on Sri Lanka's action plan and the work that had been done so far. more..

July 2 (AFP) Sri Lanka has upgraded its growth forecast to more than three percent this year following the end of the island's decades-old ethnic conflict, the central bank chief said Wednesday. With the government declaring the end of fighting in mid-May, the bank expects economic expansion of 3.5 to 4.5 percent in 2009, up from an earlier projection of 2.5 percent to 3.0 percent at the beginning of the year. more..

July 2 (BBC) The Sri Lankan government and its legal profession must do more to strengthen the rule of law, according to a panel of international lawyers. After a fact finding mission earlier this year, the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) expressed serious concern over the threats to the justice system, legal profession and the state of media in Sri Lanka. more..

July 2 (GDI) A streamlined process to facilitate the students facing the upcoming G.C.E. A/L, O/L and Year five scholarship examinations has been duly put in place in the ‘Transitional Camps’ in Vavuniya, Commissioner General of Examinations, Anura Edirisinghe said today while on a visit to the Kadiragamar Relief Village. A total number of 750 students housed in these Transitional Camps will face this year’s G.C.E. A/L while more..

July 2 (AT) Sri Lanka government opted to use military power to resolve the age-long war. About 80% of the ethnic conflicts which ended with one-side military victory were not followed by violence. Therefore, it could be expected that lasting peace is coming to Sri Lanka pointed out Kumar Rupesinghe. Kumar Rupesinghe in his address said, However, obviously it is not a win-win solution. Besides, during the course of the wars, more..

July 2 (AT) The Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI bestowed the Pallium on 34 new archbishops including one of his close collaborators Most. Rev. Dr. Patabendige Don. Malcolm Ranjith, who has been appointed to the Metropolitan archdiocese of Colombo, Sri Lanka. The newly appointed archbishops represents the universal Church as ten of them are from North America, seven from South America, eight from Europe, six from Africa and three from Asia. more..

July 2 (TA) CONDITIONS for about 300,000 refugees forcibly detained in camps across Sri Lanka remain dire, with reports of a prostitution racket run by officials in a remote camp. Aid workers told The Australian yesterday officials at the internally displaced people's camp in Pulmoddai, a remote northeast region, are running the prostitution ring using women kept in the camp. more..

July 2 (LP) Sri Lankan Skipper Kumar Sangakkara scored another memorable double yesterday (30th June), when he became the proud father of twins. Sangakkara’s wife Yehali gave birth to their first babies (twins) at a private hospital in Colombo yesterday. Yaheli gave birth to a baby girl and a baby boy. The birth of his two babies came in just 04 days prior to his first Test match as Captain of Sri Lanka. more..

July 2 (VoA) The Inter-Parliamentary Union is calling on the government of Sri Lanka to mount a thorough investigation of the murders of three Members of Parliament, two of them Tamils. The IPU's Human Rights Committee, which has wrapped up its latest session, has examined cases of abuse of some 300 MPs in 29 countries. The Inter-Parliamentary Union says the Sri Lankan government no longer has any reason for not investigating the murders of the MPs now that more..

July 2 (LC) The civil war in Sri Lanka is receding from the international headlines, as crises in Iran and celebrity deaths occupy the media's limited space and attention-span. A very large number of its Tamil victims are still, more than six weeks after the fighting ended, confined in government forces in a complex of forty camps in the north east of the country. more..

July 2 (Hindu) President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced his intention to appoint an All-Party Committee (APC) for development and reconciliation work in the country, even as Colombo on Wednesday said it had granted Chinese companies an economic zone; giving a specific area to a foreign country for the first time to attract foreign investments. The Presidential Secretariat said the proposed APC would discuss in depth issues and priorities in development and more..

July 2 (AT) Jathika Hela Urumya and the Wimal Weerawansa faction have faced the ire of President Mahinda Rajapaksa over the devolution issue. In fact, the President is understood to have read the riot act, telling them bluntly that they could leave the government if they don’t like his ‘acceptable’ and ‘sustainable’ solution to the ethnic issue. more..

July 2 (DBS) The conditions prevailing at the IDP camps in Vavuniya and Chettykulam are far from satisfactory. Many of those who serve or have served as volunteers in these camps are upset over the continuing humanitarian tragedy. It is widely acknowledged that the authorities are making sincere efforts to improve conditions as far as possible. It is also accepted that conditions are improving gradually. But there is a crying need for vast and quick improvement. more..

July 2 (AT) Ladies and gentlemen, We are at a critical juncture in our history. We have the unique opportunity to bring our people together and make this blessed island a better place for all. As the Bard said, time and tide waits for no man. We must grab this chance and ride the tide as it rushes in, said Dr. Palitha Kohona. Delivering a keynote address at the Annual General Meeting of Forum of Chartered Institutes more..

July 2 (TC) "What is the procedure in sending relief stuff to the IDP camps ?" asked a friend one morning. "My daughter is helping some group to collect stuff for those people" he added. "We are planning to visit the IDPs next week." another colleague told me. "Rotarians are doing some voluntary work at Menik farm." "I was asked to join a volunteer group to Vavuniya. They had gone once. Is it O-k ?" another asked me. more..

July 2 (SLW) The late M D Jeshuratnam when he took the bench at the Mallakam District Court in the 1970s, he was appalled by the heavy backlog of civil cases that went back years. He was determined to clear them fast and in the process came across one which was a dispute over a piece of land in Vadamaradchy which had a single coconut tree, as mostly the case with homesteads in Jaffna, the land itself hardly developed. more..

July 2 (SLW) Sri Lanka is a plural society in which there are diverse communities of people. They see themselves as Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, Burghers, Malays, Buddhists, Christians, and Hindus, low country and Kandyan, and of various class and caste groups. Sociologists have documented the pluralism in Sri Lankan society from the earliest times when writings were inscribed on stone carvings and its much later acknowledgement during the British colonial period when more..

July 2 (LG) It has been brought to my attention that certain comments have been posted in your website by persons giving the user name of "Jehan" and "Gam", wherein they have made wild allegations and untrue statements against other individuals in the expat community and our own community organization, i.e. SLUNA, with the intent of insulting, defaming and bringing them to public ridicule. more..

July 2 (LG) “LTTE Chief Prabhakaran was inspired by Bhagwat Gita; he was greatly enamoured of the principles enunciated in the Gita; his motto was ‘do your duty but do not expect any benefit from it.’ He found his ideology from the song depicting the discourse between Arjuna and Krishna in the Tamil film ‘Karna.’ The Itihasa-Mahabharata enthralled him. The characters he identified with were Bhima and Karna. more..

July 2 (GDI) The period granted for armed groups in the Eastern Province to hand over their weapons has been extended by 02 days. The deadline was scheduled to end today and the new deadline is 3.00 pm on the July 4. Police has emphasised the objective of restoring civilian life following the defeat of terrorism in the eastern province, DIG Edison Gunathilaka said. He pointed out that the 18 armed groups have been identified in the province. more..

July 2 (GDI) The Government has taken steps to attract more foreign investments to the country by implementing the development programmes, Minister Chamal Rajapakse said. He pointed out that the first phase of the Hambantota Port development project will be completed this month. Initial activities have also commenced on the Dakshina Lanka International Airport to be constructed in Tissamaharama. more..

July 2 (GDI) The Government has taken up the task of creating an efficient public service and the highest tribute government servants could pay to the war heroes for their sacrifice is to render their duty effectively, Minister of Public Administration Sarath Amunugama said at the launching of an office bus service from the Ministry of Transport and the Pensions Department in Maligawatte yesterday (01). more..

July 2 (GDN) THE body of a man found washed up on Asry beach almost two weeks ago is due to be repatriated tomorrow. Sri Lankan Gunawardana Mudalige Lionel, 64, had been missing from work since June 3. His body was found by a Coastguard patrol on June 17 and taken to the SMC mortuary. It lay there unidentified, despite a nationwide search for Mr Lionel, until consul officials and his employers went there on Monday. more..

July 2 (GDI) Indonesian Foreign Minister Dr. Hassan Wirajuda and other high ranking persons in the Indonesian Government commended the measures taken by the Sri Lankan Government to ensure that Tamil people rescued from the clutches of the LTTE have all necessary facilities. Dr. Wirajuda conveyed these sentiments to Special Advisor to the President, Basil Rajapaksa who is currently in Indonesia. more..

July 2 (MoD) Royal College Colombo today (Jul 1) honored the war heroes of Sri Lanka Armed Forces and Police who liberated the country from the clutches of terrorism. At a memorial ceremony held at the college premises the college staff, students, parents, and old boys paid their tribute to the 47 Old Royalists who had made the ultimate sacrifice for the motherland during last 30 years of war on terror. more..

July 2 (LP) In the effort of fulfilling the basic needs and requirements of the IDPs, the National Protection and Durable Solutions (NPDS) for IDPs project of Human Rights Commission launched another programme. This programme was launched by the NPDS focuses mainly on the wellbeing of the IDPs and also pays attention to the locality of the areas. In keeping to the programme, the NPDS project trained several officials of the Special Task Force (STF) more..

July 2 (LP) The cause behind the death of several birds in the vicinity of the Hambegamuwa Tank in Tanamalwila in Moneragala has been identified as an infection of the salmonella virus in the water, according to Provincial Director of the Department of Animal Production and Heathcare for the Uva Province. Villagers of that area have found over hundred corpses of dead birds around the tank area. more..

July 2 (LP) Residents living in the areas of Avissawella, Kithulgala, Yatiyantota and Hanwella have been warned to be cautious as the Moussakele reservoir in Maskeliya has reached spill level. The reservoir has reached spill level due to the heavy rains which are prevailing. The sluice gates of the reservoir needs to be opened and if the gates are opened it could affect on the rise of the water level of the Kelani River more..

July 2 (LP) A Maternity complex with all facilities opened in rural Elpitiya yesterday .Nestled between Galle and Elpitiya running into interior Elpitiya 48 miles from Galle is the access to the new Hospital complex in Elpitiya. The hospital was built with of Rs. 465 million funded by “Ameri-Care” an NGO. It is fully equipped with upto date Maternity Wards with a Surgical Unit and Operation Theatre, Labour complex, Medical unit, On Call Rooms for medical staff and nurses and minor staff. more..

July 2 (LNP) Sri Lankan fast bowler Lasith Malinga will play for Tasmania in this summer's domestic Twenty20 competition. He's the third major international signing for the competition after West Indian stars Chris Gayle (Western Australia) and Dwayne Bravo (Victoria) agreed to play. Tigers coach Tim Coyle says Malinga is one of a few bowlers who can dominate Twenty20 cricket regularly with the ball. more..

July 2 (LT) It is reported that high level political pressure has been applied to hamper police investigations carried out against suspects in an incident where a youth had been murdered and dropped to Kalu Ganga. The body of Buddhika Perera who had been murdered, tightened to a sand bag and dropped to Kalu Ganga was recovered from Galpatha Diyagama ferry on the 29th. One Jayaratne has admitted killing the victim for having an affair with his daughter. more..